Definitely glad we came home yesterday after reading that people were shoveling snow on the 401!
Got a response from Wayne to one of my recent posts:
To follow-up on my history project:
I got my first job when I was 12. Bar-Don Lanes opened that year and I set pins four nights a week until I turned 17. Did my homework in between bowlers.
After my dad died, the owner of the lanes, Wilf Barlow, became my surrogate father, as he was for several of the guys my age who had lost their fathers. And he eventually invited some of us to join the Stoney Creek Optimist Club, where he was known as "Mr. Optimist".
In High School I added another job, helping the caretaker to clean the class rooms after school, five days a week. Then home for a quick bite and on to the bowling alley.
And then I was recruited, by the student who had the job but was moving on, to work Friday nights and Saturdays at Clayton's Men's wear. By now it's probably becoming clear why I never had the time or the interest to learn to cook! And why I lost contact with Wayne.
The summer after my dad died I worked at Dofasco. They closed their eyes to me being underage and gave me a job carrying maintenance requisitions around the plant to get Superintendent's signatures. I did that job for two summers.
When I finished grade twelve, mom asked me to quit school and get a full time job (she obviously didn't ask me to learn how to cook). I had a sister who was 10 when my dad died, a brother who was two, and a sister who was born four months after his death. Mom was not a very confident person, had lost the love of her life, and was five months pregnant at the time. I don't know how she held it all together! The social safety net was non-existent in those days and mom needed money to support all of us. And I had become a pseudo dad to my younger siblings.
So, I turned my part-time job at the men's wear store into full time.
A year later, the owner of the store, who had a pilot's license, got a job flying supplies into the north where Canada was building the Distant Early Warning System. I was too young and inexperienced to run the store so he asked me to help an older man get up to speed. He also advised that he couldn't afford to keep both of us on, so I was to be finished in three months.
I was offered employment by the owner of Lee's Hardware and by the Manager of the Royal Bank, but decided to go with the Dofasco family instead and got a night job in the Time Office.
So, for three months I worked at the store during the day and at Dofasco at night. My weight dropped 15 pounds in that time, but I was getting rich! Making $35 a week at the store and $43 a week at Dofasco. Mom was relieved.
My Dofasco time will come in a future instalment of the blog. To be continued......
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Stay well.
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