Jobs That Are Enjoyable . . . and Jobs That Are Not!!

  For many people, work is about making enough money to make ends meet, having a little extra to spend for fun activities and perhaps saving for the future. But if we are lucky enough to have a job we also enjoy, work can provide satisfaction and a sense of pride. I have had three primary professions…teacher, police officer and librarian. I certainly didn’t become wealthy at any of these, but all three were enjoyable. I always looked forward to going to work each day.

   I have also had other jobs, mostly temporary, that left a lot to be desired. I grew up on a farm, so my father had plenty of jobs for me “to earn my keep” . . . some were OK, such as feeding the livestock, working the fields, baling hay, etc. Others not so fun were cleaning out the hog barn and cutting weeds. Like many youngsters, when I was 13, I signed up for detasseling at DeKalb seed corn company. We were taken to fields all over the county, where we walked down the rows of corn and pulled off the tassels by hand. We worked an average of 60 hours a week and suffered from heat, bug bites and leaf cuts. But the pay was great . . . 60 cents an hour . . . weekly gross $36. I managed to do that for three summers!

   After I graduated from high school, I needed a job until I started college. I became a busboy at the Holiday Inn. I received $1.10 an hour. I stayed one day, for 12 hours . . . that was enough! I headed back to DeKalb and became a foreman on a detasseling machine crew at $2 an hour. I also coached the Little League baseball team that summer and was paid $500 for two months. That was fun! I started attending General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich. that fall, but I was there for only two weeks, having decided that becoming an engineer and living in a big city was not for me.

   I wanted to attend Purdue, but I was two days too late to enroll for the fall semester. I needed to find a job until the spring semester began. A Kroger grocery store in Lafayette hired me to work in the produce department . . . $1.85 an hour. The produce guy had been there forever. On my first day, he told me, “I’m going to teach you everything you need to know . . . how to clean carrots, wrap lettuce, display the fruit and organize the produce section. When I retire in a couple of years, you’ll be able to take over.” I just didn’t have the heart to tell the old fellow that becoming a Kroger produce manager was not my goal in life. I was there for a month, and decided that scooping hog manure at $1.50 an hour for my future father-in-law was more enjoyable than wrapping lettuce.

   I married my high school sweetheart that October, and started Purdue in January. My wife was a typist and brought home $50 a week. I loved going to Purdue, but it was necessary that I find a job to make ends meet and pay for tuition and books. I was hired to work the evening shift at National Homes corporation in Lafayette at $2 an hour. A worker sprayed adhesive on aluminum siding and ran it through a furnace on a conveyor. Another fellow and I were stationed at the opposite end of the furnace. We had to turn the siding over, place it on fiberboard, and run it through a press. We had to wear heavy gloves and the furnace hot air blew directly on us. That evening I suffered my first migraine headache. When I arrived home at 11:30 p.m., the pain was so bad that an ambulance transported me to the hospital. After receiving a shot, I recovered a few hours later. I didn’t want to go back to work the next day, but I persisted because I needed the money.

   During the next year at National Homes, I was assigned to work in the window and frame department. Two other workers and I spent eight hours a day hammering windows in place in the prefabricated walls. The noise was almost unbearable. During my third year, I was assigned to stuff fiberglass insulation between the wall joists. We were not provided with masks, and I coughed constantly. My skin itched all over, and taking a shower didn’t help at all. However, I stuck with it, as my pay had increased to a whopping $2.10 an hour!

   After graduating from Purdue with a major in sports business and sports writing, I applied for the job of newspaper sports editor. The publisher interviewed me one afternoon and offered me the job. I was very happy . . . until he told me the salary . . . $115 for a 50-hour week. That was less than what I had been making at National Homes, but I really wanted the job. I thought it over and called him back that evening. I would take the job if he could just pay me $10 more each week. “No, we just can’t afford that.” Seriously? The next week I became the sporting goods manager at the new Woolco department store in Lafayette . . . pay $235 a week! It was a great job, but the manager told me that if I wanted to move up in the organization, it was necessary to move around the country to other stores. After a year, I headed back to Purdue and obtained my teacher’s license. My sixth grade teacher retired, and I was hired to take his place at my former school. I loved it!

    How I ended up becoming a police officer, county sheriff and librarian later on in life is an entirely different story. But suffice it to say, I enjoyed all three occupations, and for several years worked two of those jobs at the same time! It was a lot of hours, but when you love your job, it’s worth it!

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 35 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.