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| HIGH SCHOOL & COLLEGE JOBS |
I continued to work in the drug store until we moved to Placentia in 1943. Since there was always plenty to do around the orange grove (10 acres of them) that was the way I helped out and earned some spending money. At some point in 1944, a bunch of us high schoolers, boys and girls alike were recruited to help out in a local packing house. This was at Hunt Bros. in Fullerton, and we all did a variety of jobs to process stuff like spinach for canning (to this day I find that the smell of warm spinach still pervades my memory) since many of the regular workers were being utilized in defense plants where they were needed. Also I worked outside with a couple of other guys trucking (by hand and motor) empty crates around the plant. On one occasion when we were at a loading dock a slow inter-plant train came by and I jumped in the truck to back it out of the way. Actually it was already in the clear, but I inadvertantly put it in low instead of reverse and drove right into the side of the train! Luckily the train was barely moving and the truck just gently bumped it, however you can imagine the razzing I took over that incident.
It must have been during that same year, in
the summer, that I got a job in an aircraft factory, Vultee (later
it was Consolidated Vultee, in Downey. I would ride into work
in the morning with Uncle Bill, do my job and then he would pick
me up afterwards. My duty was as a riveter working mostly on the
mid-wing section of a plane known as the "Lightning",
a P-38, which had the unusual configuration of twin booms, or
hulls if you will, and two engines. My task was pretty simple,
hand riveting a small metal plate over an access hole. Also I
did some regular riveting, with a gun, on a large reconnaisance
plane called the "Privateer". One of the great things
about it was the pay...75¢ an hour! After the summer was
over and on a part-time basis I worked in one of the local Placentia
orange packing houses, Bradford Bros., doing no-brainer stuff
like hand-trucking full and empty orange crates mostly with my
pal, Leron Hester. All this combined with helping my Dad at the
"ranch" up until I graduated from high school and joined
the merchant marine.
I'm going to include here a mention of some odd jobs I had either
when I was waiting for a merchant marine assignment or while attending
Fullerton Junior College. One was as a pin-setter in the Brea
bowling alley; this was when you stood behind where the pins were
and after the ball had knocked some down you picked them up by
hand and placed them in a rack. Tricky sometimes and you had to
be on your toes or get clobbered with the ball or a flying pin.
Another was at a little broom factory in Placentia where they
made, what else but brooms. During the summer vacation between
semesters in 1948 at FJC I got a job working at the Glidden Paint
Co. in Buena Park doing manual labor. Some of my friends from
college, Joe Hope, Dick Dubois and Bill Trimble, accompanied me
and we had a good time of it. An important ingredient of paint
was flax seed oil and we handled tons of it, mostly by hand, as
it arrived at the plant. Sometimes it was loose in railroad box
cars and we would scoop it out onto a conveyor belt using a rectangular
board attached to a winch by a cable which would push it out.
It was pretty hard work and hot working inside the box car. At
different times it would be delivered already bagged in gunny
sacks and we would build huge stacks of it. Near the end of summer
we had a dispute with some of the bosses and being young, carefree
and somewhat independent we walked off the job. By then we were
tired of the work anyway and only had a couple of weeks to go
before school started up again.
Another job I had in the afternoons after school was working at
the Fullerton Daily News Tribune as what was called the assistant
circulation manager, a fancy title for the guy who saw to it that
the delivery boys got their newspapers folded and went off on
their routes. They were nearly all bicycled around except for
one who used a car. That was as close to being a newspaperman
as I ever got.
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[packing spinach]  |
[Joe the riveter]  |
[orange packing house]  |
[moving flax seed!] |
[asst. circulation manager] |
[bowling alley- broom factory] |
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