It was summer 1961. I was 17, skinny, 6’ 2”, 130 pounds. We were living in Fargo North Dakota where my father was Commandant of Cadets for the AFROTC program at North Dakota State University. He made me go down to the unemployment office every day that I was not employed already, and take whatever job was available. I hated him for making me do that.
I worked baling hay for a mean old farmer, sun up to sun down. I worked construction where the foreman told me to “shovel like a man.” I helped set up a rig for the motorcyclist at the carnival who rode his cycle around a vertical circle at high speed. I cleaned out a corn silo and almost passed out from the fumes of the rotting corn.
I worked as a bell hop at the Fargo Hotel, operating the elevator. It was tricky getting it to line up with the floors. It was usually pretty quiet except when the drunken Shriners came to town. Once the manager caught me hiding in the phone booth reading Grapes of Wrath.
I hated him, but of course now I am grateful to have had such a father. He was much better at it than I have been.