Summer Heat: Another High School Adventure

What a kid will do for cash

When you’re young and ambitious, you do whatever it takes to reach your goals. In high school, whenever our own farm work was caught up, I worked for neighbors. Most farmers back then needed help haying, hauling silage, or just getting a break from their dairy chores.

I didn’t make much money at home—certainly not enough to buy much of anything. I wanted a motorcycle, and later a car, so I did whatever I could to earn a little extra cash.

Haying, for a farm boy, wasn’t a big deal. A typical haying day meant unloading and mowing around ten loads of hay with about 150 bales per load. That kind of work builds stamina, especially in hot, humid weather.

One afternoon, a friend asked if I could help stack hay for a farmer he was working for. The elevator fed into one bin of the haymow, but we had to stack it into two bins side by side. The farmer fed bales as fast as he could while we stacked, then ran back to the field to bale another load. By the time he returned, we had just finished stacking—and then we’d do it all over again. That went on all afternoon. He was a bit tight with money, so we earned $1.10 an hour.

I remember raking hay for a neighbor when I was thirteen. I missed going to the park to swim with friends, and for about two hours of work, I earned a whole dollar.

I also hauled loads of silage for one neighbor whose fields were mostly uphill. Hauling them down a steep gravel road wasn’t for the faint of heart. I was probably seventeen then, but I’d been drivinga tractor since I was twelve, so I knew enough to downshift before heading downhill.

Milking had its own adventures. Doing your own chores is one thing—doing someone else’s is another. One time, I forgot to shut the valve on the bulk tank until I was about a quarter done milking. That one took a lot of explaining and didn’t come with much pay. You learn pretty quickly which details really matter.

Another time, I got a manure spreader stuck in a spring on someone else’s farm. He had to pull it out the next day. Luckily, they were coming home—otherwise Dad would have had to rescue me.

Eventually, I scraped together enough money to buy a motorcycle. Later, in 1969, I earned enough to buy a car for about $800. That was a lot of money for me back then, but it was a good deal.

Working long hours for little pay taught me something important about the value of time versus the cost of things. I realized that working for others put a ceiling on what I could earn. Being your own boss seemed better, though, then you only have yourself to complain to. Of course, being your own boss has its own drawbacks. You’d better get it right.

Farming back then had plenty of challenges, especially financial ones. Ironically, some health issues that eventually pushed me out of farming turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Otherwise, I might never have started my inspection business.

Well, as Forrest Gump said, that’s about all I have to say about that.