My family originally from Williamsport PA - home of Little League, moved in 1955 to Cape May NJ which was just a small town at the end of the Garden State Parkway - exit 0. Affordable for a basic wage earner like my non-HS-graduate father. Seven children, typically a new one every 18 months except for the 5-year gap for #7. Used to say it took 6 for them to figure out what was causing it.
Great to go to school from K to 12 with the same kids, most of whom stayed in town even until today. Those were the days when we were all outside somewhere when not in school, on the beach in the summer and roaming the streets in the winter, looking for someplace warm to hang out. Cape May is still a great place to grow up, albeit way too expensive for average folks.
My first job was at age 7, where I delivered the occasional telegram for 10¢. Of course, I also sold 5¢ newspapers on the street, earning 1¢ each, except for the Thursday local paper which sold for 7¢ where we were paid 2.5¢ per paper - so my goal was 40, sold mostly to tourists. Better part of a 7¢ paper was that people might give a dime and have you keep the change! I worked as a shoe shine boy, a stock boy, mowed grass in the summer and shoveled snow in the winter, a gas station pump guy, and any odd job that paid a few bucks. We were really poor but I didn’t seem to know it at the time.
My folks just never had the opportunity for higher education. I’m still the only person in my extended family with a college degree. The best job was after HS grad for the summer where I worked in a glass factory. A union job that paid 3x what I had earned in any of those local jobs. With a shop steward who made sure that the bosses didn’t take advantage of the new guy. What an experience.
After HS, I got scholarships and grants enough to afford to go to Lycoming College back in Williamsport as long as I could live with my father’s sister. I certainly could not afford to live on campus. After my first year, I decided to take a semester off to make a few bucks, and had no idea that doing so meant that my draft deferment (didn’t know what that was either) was withdrawn.
Damn…here comes Vietnam, unless I could find a way out of that nightmare. I soon learned that “The USNavy is not just a job, it is an adventure!”