Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 10

Childhood ends when you go to Junior High. You are then a teenager or “tween” as we now call it. Between childhood and teenager land. Closing childhood was actually a good thing for me. I enjoyed it, playing and being carefree, especially during the summers. Summers now meant work and my own money. It also meant that I had more freedom to make my own choices. The summer between 6th and 7th grade, I worked at my first job for about 3 weeks, bunching radishes for Charlie Bangerter (related to the Bangerters that owned the orchard, but different). Bunching radishes is tough work. You are on your knees in the sun all day, pulling radishes and bunching them up using a rubber band. We were paid 8 cents per bunch. If I bunched 100 bunches a day, I could make up to $8.00 per day. Big money for a 12 year old. I never made that plateau. I think I managed about 50 or so a day for the three weeks I was there. Charlie was a crotchety sort and yelled a lot which I didn’t care for. If I was slow or didn’t pick as many as he thought I should he was on me, telling me that I was lazy, worthless, etc. The other boys would snigger or cower, depending on who they were. I worked hard, but it was back breaking and hot. I do remember listening to the radio, a cool 7 transistor model, all the time. “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys was big that summer on KNAK, my favorite radio station. It lifted my spirits then and still does to this day. The Beach Boys were important to me, I loved the harmonies. After 3 weeks I had had my fill and went home. Besides the other thing that would affect me for the rest of my life would occur soon.

My little brother Alan was born that summer. He was 12 years younger than me and, since my mother worked, he became my responsibility for a large part of the day. I learned to change his diaper, feed him, bathe him and rock him to sleep when he was upset. I am very grateful for that experience, because it taught me to be patient and caring towards someone who couldn’t take care of himself. That’s a key lesson to learn when you are 12. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind it either. He was a sweet kid and ran me ragged as soon as he could walk. He jumped off of things that I would never even attempt at 12 or 13. He would just climb up on something and announce to the world that he was going to “Leap!” and then do it. Disconcerting as I was supposed to be responsible for him. The experience with Alan made me a better father when I had my own children because the willingness to sacrifice for a child was already there.

That summer I joined the Boy Scouts and that would also change my life as I met two men who would have a profound impact on me over the next several years. It was a changing of the seasons that summer in more ways than one. I was growing up.