Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Thursday, June 23. 2011

Fun summer game # 1: First adult jobs

It's summertime, and I like to post a few light-hearted summertime items on occasion.


This one will be the First Adult (ie first post-formal education) job held by prominent or semi-prominent high-achieving people.


For examples:


Ronald Reagan - sportscaster


Ben Franklin - Apprentice printer


Robert Frost (dropped out of both Dartmouth and Harvard) - cobbler, farmer, and schoolteacher


Saint Paul - Tentmaker


Harry Truman - Timekeeper for the Sante Fe Railroad


Mark Twain - Apprentice printer


Add interesting examples in the comments - including your own if you wish...

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 11:08 | Comments (24) | Trackbacks (0)

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Sarah Palin - sportscaster
#1 JimK on 2011-06-23 11:10 (Reply)
1- paper boy
2- gas station attendant
3- stock boy at a hardware store (Bennys in RI)
4-USMC
#2 Lord Whorfin on 2011-06-23 11:52 (Reply)
Oops- that was MY career!!
#2.1 Lord Whorfin on 2011-06-23 17:37 (Reply)
Sean Connery - Milkman!
#3 BD on 2011-06-23 12:00 (Reply)
...delivered shaken, not stirred!
#3.1 Big___Al on 2011-06-23 12:13 (Reply)
I wonder what sorts of jobs - if any- the POTUS had before he graduated from Columbia. Guess I need to go through Dreams From My Father, though what I have read of it I do not recall any such jobs mentioned. What was that Dallas Maverick's owner Mark Cuban said about someone not being able to manage a Dairy Queen?

JFK- coupon clipper? Riding shotgun on one of his daddy's booze smuggling runs? [that was a joke]

Nixon- before college, probably his father's grocery store. Ditto Margaret Thatcher, also the offspring of a grocer. John Kenneth Galbraith was Nixon's boss at the Office of Price Administration in DC - what irony there- before Nixon became a prize poker player in the Navy.
#4 Gringo on 2011-06-23 12:37 (Reply)
Joe Biden: writing term papers for fellow students. Wrote term papers by copying passages from encyclopedias.

Nancy Pelosi: delivering payment envelopes to voters for her father Da Mayuh. Would that make her a bag lady?

Richard Daley: ditto. [not the bag lady]

[attempts at jokes]
#5 Gringo on 2011-06-23 12:47 (Reply)
John Roebling - worked for the government in Germany building military roads.

Washington Roebling was a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg, though it wasn't his first job.
#6 Rick on 2011-06-23 13:54 (Reply)
Albert Einstein - Patent Clerk
Rod Stewart - Grave Digger - IIRC
#7 JLW III on 2011-06-23 16:13 (Reply)
O.J. Simpson - kitchen prep, cuts vegetables and meat
#8 phil g on 2011-06-23 17:52 (Reply)
Barack Obama: President of the United States
#9 Mike saunders on 2011-06-23 17:52 (Reply)
Mike Saunders wins the thread.
#9.1 Assistant VIllage Idiot (Link) on 2011-06-24 23:41 (Reply)
Harrison Ford - carpenter
#10 Roy Lofquist on 2011-06-23 18:45 (Reply)
You know what all those people have in common?

They're not modern kids.

Modern kids can't get jobs. The work rules are such that anything beyond mowing lawns and babysitting are out of reach of teenagers.

Hence we have to warehouse them at afterschool bullshit programs, or let them sit home playing video games and looking for porn on the internet, because there's no gainful employment for teenagers.

The process of making all Americans into helpless infants continues.
#11 Trimegistus on 2011-06-23 19:43 (Reply)
They can't even get those jobs. In today's economy you get a decent summer job through connections. Best to know someone with office or outdoor work available. I was a dishwasher, car washer, landscaper and babysitter. Of these, not only is babysitter the only one truly available, but kids turn their noses up at the others as beneath them. My son would take any of these jobs, if available. His friends? No way.
#11.1 Rick on 2011-06-24 14:37 (Reply)
Modern kids around here work in fast food joints, ice cream parlors, retail clothing stores and as camp counselors. Not too much different from times past.

Clint Eastwood worked as a lifeguard and dug swimming pools before he made a go of it as an actor ...and then director.
#12 LP on 2011-06-23 20:09 (Reply)
Mike Saunders you beat me to it.

to which I add, Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States.
#13 peter on 2011-06-23 20:34 (Reply)
Actually Ronald Reagan's first job was like Clint Eastwood as a lifeguard. Currently listening to Ron Reagan Jr's My Father at 100 and he mentions his father saved 77 people as a lifeguard on the Rock River in Dixon Illinois.
#14 grant1863 on 2011-06-24 06:44 (Reply)
Me:
picking strawberries (so I could buy a skateboard in 8th grade)
prep cook
lifeguard
pool cue factory
night security


...and now I'm a geophysicist who finds oil
#15 model_1066 on 2011-06-24 12:45 (Reply)
Mowing lawns during the summer in junior high.
#16 Sam on 2011-06-24 14:33 (Reply)
focuses eyes to the left .. What was the question?
#17 DerHahn on 2011-06-24 15:16 (Reply)
Strawberry picker (age 13-14)
Volunteer at St. Vincent’s Hospital 20 hours per week - orderly (13-16)
Church janitor (14-15)
Paper boy (14)
Safeway - box boy, bottle boy (15-17)
Paper mill - yard crew, heavy equipment operator, 6th hand, 5th hand (18-22)
Lived in Mexico for about one year - farm labor, English teacher, and hammock maker (22) (irony alert)
Sea Kayak guide (20-28)
Graduated university (24)
Industrial construction/demolition - demolition crew foreman, TIG welder (stainless steel), pipefitter, mason (24-26)
Sales (my worst career choice ever) (27)
Legal clerk (28-31)
Graduated law school (31)
Litigation attorney (32-52)
Mediator (42-52)

I liked them all but found strawberry picker, and paper boy to be all work and no pay. I had no aptitude for sales but being a Rational that was not a surprise.

Mark Sherman
#18 Maddog on 2011-06-24 17:01 (Reply)
Robert Frost, as schoolteacher, BTW, was not a success, according to my grandfather, who had him at Pinkerton Academy. Around 1912, I think.
#19 Assistant VIllage Idiot (Link) on 2011-06-24 23:45 (Reply)
Had a few jobs in high-school, but first post-formal education job?

Reactor Operator, USS Albany SSN-753.
#20 Sean G on 2011-06-25 03:38 (Reply)

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