Reminiscence: A Summer Job

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1

My first summer job came when I was thirteen years old, between the seventh and eighth grades. I did yard work for several different families, my parents driving me back and forth from home. Miss Mattie, Miss Edilene, Miss Louisa and her husband Rev. H----. These were all members of our church; I don’t know if it was my mother or my father, the well known Dr. Derrick, who lined them up. I also kept the yard for a neighborhood family during their month-long vacation. Their daughter Jeri was a school acquaintance, and I had probably told her what I was going to do for the others.

My most memorable summer job was between eleventh and twelfth grades, when I worked as a bell-boy in a historic guest lodge in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. It was the grown-up son of a church member who hired me, which by this time seemed normal. How else would a kid get a summer job except through church contacts, set up by his dad?

So it was Mom and Dad, mostly Dad, who arranged for my many summer occupations… Or at least that was true until the summer after my high school graduation.

Boy, did I feel like a grown-up! Not only was I preparing to go 1,100 miles away to college in three months, but also my job that summer had come along entirely because of my own efforts. All my life I had been my parents’ son. I wanted to be “Byron Derrick,” not “Dr. Derrick’s son,” and the time for that was coming soon. What a good feeling.

2

At the beginning of my junior year, my seventh grade English teacher, who had also been advisor to the junior high newspaper, replaced the retiring high school journalism teacher and advisor to that schools’ newspaper. To be frank, we hadn’t gotten along very well in English class. Most of us had found Mrs. M----- boring if not incompetent.

Looking back I realize that the state curriculum had seventh graders read quite unsuitable literature for youngsters. Maybe Longfellow’s Evangeline might have held some interest, at least for the girls, but the curriculum emphasized the fact that this was POETRY, to which reverence was due. We concentrated on learning what a dactyl was and counting feet. It seemed an interminable time we spent on this magnus opus. But even less suitable for kids our age (and high energy level) was the novel we were assigned: George Eliot’s Silas Marner, which is about a very old man and a very young child. None of us could relate to that, even those of us who were dedicated readers.

(I think this was just at the end of the period when Mother would take me to the children’s room of the downtown public library once a week, and I always checked out six books - the maximum number allowed. I preferred Kazan the Wolf dog and White Fang over Silas Marner, and I read biographies of great Americans more than any other one thing.)

So it was suprisising to discover how well Mrs. M----- and I got along in second-year journalism in high school. Toward the end of that year, in fact, I was named Co-Editor of the high school newspaper for the senior year. I was to write a regular column and whatever other stories I wanted. I was the reporter-editor; K------- was the copy-editor; all the staff had to sell ads.

I figured I must have done well when, in April of the senior year, Mrs. M------ told me about a local weekly paper that was starting up; she was the editor-in-chief. She showed me a copy of the first issue; it looked like a real newspaper. It was called The Women’s Press. I showed it to my father, who was always interested in local papers. He said it looked good.

Well, Mrs. M----- wanted to pay me for reporting for TWP, starting right away but working full-time in the summer. Mom and Dad said it was all right, so this was my first job that I had earned for myself.

3

It was a local election year, with the real action being in the Democratic Party since the Republicans ran someone only for Mayor (and never won). My job was to write stories about the candidates for City Council. There was an enormous number of candidates; the districts must have been large and the number of seats small in comparison. I plunged in, first reviewing all the candidates’ printed material, not ignoring what the daily papers were writing, of course. Then, dividing them up I focused several articles on the opponents for each seat. It seemed like a heck of a lot of work for a guy finishing his senior year, but I really liked it. All the candidates and all of their little staffs took my stories seriously and gave me what seem like a lot of time every time I called them up.

We were planning on much more in-depth reporting for the summer leading up to the primary. I was going to interview some of the top civil servants about the issues mentioned to me by the candidates, and eventually I was going to interview randomly-selected voters to see which ways they were leaning and why. It all seemed real authentic and was pretty impressive for an inexperienced high-school kid.

And then, very suddenly it was all over.

Mrs. M----- called me at home one afternoon a week or so before the end of the school year and asked me to come over to her place right away. It wasn’t far from my house and since there was no car to drive, I wrote a note for Mother and walked over. Mrs. M----- had apparently been crying and did not seem herself at all. Now that I think back, I wonder if she had had a couple of drinks. She told me flat out that we were both out of jobs. The business manager had disappeared with all the money, there was little hope of tracking him down, and the owner - who may have been Mrs. M----- herself - had decided to bag the whole enterprise.

4

Now, I was up a creek. All the usual church contacts were all played out that late in the year, and this time it was important since the family had all been counting on me to earn most of my spending money that summer for the college freshman year.

Dad got on the telephone right away and called an acquaintance at the local book publisher. They weren’t looking for anyone to read proofs or that kind of thing for just a summer, but he had Dad bring me in for an interview, which seemed pleasant enough but didn’t seem very hopeful.

So, there I was, thinking I was on my own, earning my way by my own devices, only to find that I wasn’t going to be earning anything at all! I think Dad was unhappy too, feeling he had let me down.

The week before high school graduation, however, Dad told me his friend had just called and there was an opening, not on the publisher’s editorial staff, but at their print factory. It would be hard work, but the pay would be good. I had nothing to lose, so the next day I drove myself out to the factory on the far edge of the city at exactly the right time, and opened the one door I saw off the big parking lot; the noise bursting out was overwhelming.

But a guy wearing a white, short-sleeve shirt and a tie met me just inside and led me by the huge four-color printing press to his little office in the back. Closing the door helped a lot. I had to fill out a few papers and sign a couple of others. He mentioned that I would be the only non-union employee, but for one summer that was no problem.

He said he would take me to my work station. The noise again. He cupped his hands over my ear and said that it was so humid in the factory because the air conditioning was set up to keep all the presses running. We went by another huge press, this one a web press with big spools of paper winding up and down from one end to the other.

After the noise and the related vibrations, the most noticeable feature of the factory was how dirty it was. It seemed dim too, with only the work stations scattered here and there being brightly lit. In-between the presses were stacks and stacks of paper on wooden pallets. As we made our way toward a back corner, I thought I may have seen a rat shuffling around among the paper.

Wow, I was thinking, isn’t this great! I’ll bet my dad never worked in a huge, noisy, dirty factory like this. This was me. I was doing this, making my own way.

We came at last to what seemed by comparison a tiny press, only about 10 feet wide by 20 feet long and 8 feet tall at the highest spot. That was where a white-haired, wiry little Hispanic man was transferring this black wax-like ink from a tray balanced on his arm to a big, long tray at the top of the press.

The man in the tie cupped his hands around my ear again and said he would introduce me and pulled on the other’s trouser leg. The little man looked me over as he came down from his ink-spattered step ladder.

This is real life, I was thinking. I’m on my own, and I’m going to make it!

Cupping his hands around Frank’s ear, the supervisor said something at which the dark, wiry old guy started, looked back at me, turned and bounced over.

Ink-spattered hands around my ear, he said in a bright, loud voice:

“Not Dr. Derrick’s son?!”


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