Making money – out of touch with the good old days

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I’m old and perhaps out of touch, I admit it, but it still upsets me when I hear talk of little opportunity, no money to be made, unfairness, inequality even. What’s new? I say there are always opportunities, just look for them even if it occasionally means lower self-esteem. Never give up. 

During the years working, like a lot of people, I was subjected to the affects of nepotism, playing favorites, back stabbing and all the baggage that goes with corporate life. I took it and worked around it although embarrassed at times. Never give up. 

Counting while in high school, I worked, often two jobs, for 56 years. As long as I can remember I earned money, not much for many of those years, but something. My first real job after high school was at $1.49 an hour. Literally the lowest paid job in a company of 15,000 employees. 

Long before that there were money making schemes. I collected deposit soda bottles-often from trash cans in the local park. Each was worth two cents and occasionally a nickel. 

I collected the evening garbage in our apartment building, shoveled coal cleaned out the furnace and hauled the ashes for about a $1.00 a week.

Since we lived in an apartment there was no lawn work, but the fall brought leaf raking in the neighborhood and winter snow shoveling. 

We shined shoes and sold greeting cards door to door. We also made and sold potholders. The neighborhood kids put on plays and carnivals in the buildings small yard. We lured parents to pay a dime to participate. The highlight was throwing a wet sponge at their child. 

I tried my hand at raising tropical fish and selling them. 

I worked in a pet shop after school and Saturday for $5.00 a week. Later I worked in the city library running a mimeograph and shelving books at $0.75 and hour rising to $1.10 after two years. I also worked part-time at the base library while in the army. 

I may be wrong, but I don’t sense that level of initiate in todays youth, or even in their parents in some cases. It seems there is more complaining about what is done to them as opposed to a can do attitude. 

Opportunity sure looks different from the 1950s, but it’s still there. Heck, before I turned off the advertising on my blog, I was making $1.05 a month. 

I still pick up every penny I see on the ground. It’s an old person thing who remembers that what we complain about these days, we wish we had back then. I can talk to my new car for Pete’s sake.