Work Life

A bunch of jobs. Recall that my HS years were during the depths of the Depression where even an extra Nickel was big money. One job was picking raspberries at a raspberry farm for 3 cents per quart. Pick all day from 6AM till just about dark and one could earn a dollar. I worked for a truck driver who hauled coal into Pbgh. Along with one other kid, he would dump us off, unload the coal and go back to the Tipple, some 20 miles back, for another load. Our job was to get the coal in the customer’s cellar, either by shoveling it into a chute or by carrying it in via bushel baskets. Shoveling paid 25 cents per ton, carrying paid a dollar per ton. Then after I was 16 and got my driver’s license, my Dad bought me a used truck and I started hauling coal into Pbgh myself on Saturdays. I went door to door to find customers. In the summer time, I bought eggs from a local grocery store and drove into Pbgh and went door to door to sell them. My commission was 5 cents per dozen. My dad had a one acre garden, grew tons of tomatoes which I also peddled locally. I remember making enough to buy, from Spiegel’s in Chicago-a catalog company like Sears and Montgomery Wards-a brand new Lefty O’Doul baseball glove for $1.89. It was the pride of my life. Then one summer, my Jr year in HS, a buddy and I worked a full month cutting and stacking corn shocks for a farmer. We got 5 cents per shock and I earned enough to buy my HS ring-about 5 bucks.

Hey Scooter, my best job is only one of two. Though I taught at St Joe’s for 7 years, my 33 years at RCA provided the job I loved most. Like Lou Gehrig, I was the luckiest man on the face of this earth to land a job there in ‘53 as an Electrical Engineer. My first job there was to design the Radar transmitter for Ivan Kinchloe’s plane, the F-104. It was a Lockheed plane designed especially for him to set a new speed record. Fatally, the F-104 failed him and he died in a plane crash. Later, Lockheed sold zillions of 104’s to the German Luftwaffe and it was rumored that more 104’s crashed than the planes the Allies shot down in WW2. Though I was an engineer on the Apollo program till Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, I’d have to say my best RCA job was as systems engineer for the ARC 168 radio for the P3C airplane, the navy sub-chaser that Lockheed built. I was out at Lockheed for many a moon testing and proving the radio, then down at Patuxent Naval Air Station - Pax River - flying with the plane as the navy tested the radio and the whole system. I usually sat in the Navcom seat on the starboard side of the cockpit and operated the radio while the crew ran system tests. I have many fond memories of those days, the navy crew, the Lockheed engineers, plus the evening crabs and beer down at Pax. Luckiest man on the face of this earth.