First Job
Jan Adams - Although you might think my first job was at Star Dry Cleaners, it wasn’t. My first job was in records as a student at UTM through the Work Study Program. I didn’t work at Star until after I married. If need be, I could still top pants and blow a dress on the steamer.
Barry Allison - I was paid 25 cents an hour (at the age of 12 or 13) to be YOBO (yard boy) for Mrs. Myrtle Phillips (the Registrar at UTMB).
Mike Biggs - My first job was as a paperboy for the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Every afternoon I hopped on my bike and threw newspapers into yards all over my side of town. Our beagle Popeye ran with me ... well, until he started eating the groceries out of the back of Mr. Estes’ delivery truck. Then it was just me!
Mike Blake - I picked strawberries with mom at age five for five cents a quart. I ate more than the quart I picked, Mom got the money and I got the experience. I quit after one day. As an early teen, I mowed yards with a push mower and earned a few dollars. Then, I hauled hay and picked corn for an allowance of fifty cents a week. As an older teen, I raised calves and kept the sale money.
Peggy Bradberry - Two weeks after graduation from high school, I started working at the old Weakley County Hospital. When I witnessed a woman in labor, I instantly fainted. Both the hospital staff and I knew that I should not seek a profession in the medical field.
Randy Brooks - I had my first job working at Esso Station on the corner across from the Baptist Church. Jim Bell White was the owner and I worked every Saturday for $5 a day. I washed cars and pumped gas and loved it! I had a car, so I was at least sixteen.
Phyllis Burkett - My first job was as a car hop at the El Rancho working for my first cousin Ken Boyett and my aunt Geraldine Fugitt. I was very shy, but this job helped change that. Kids drove around the El Rancho and headed back to town, over and over again. Riding around, we called it. Three guys from Dresden had identical 1964 Chevrolet SuperSports. Richard Shannon (grey), Donald Davis (dark blue), and Roy Pierpoint (candy apple red). That’s where I met Roy and we’ve been married 48 years!
Bill Byars - At the age of thirteen, I began selling concessions at the Varsity Theatre. A bag of popcorn, a small coke, and a candy bar could be bought for a quarter. At eighteen, I learned to operate the projectors to show the film.
Roger Bynum - My first paying job was mowing lawns for Carlos Bowers and Hezzie Dortch who each owned country grocery stores in Hyndsver. I earned $10 each plus a Pepsi Cola and a Moon Pie. I also hauled hay (hated it) for 10 cents a bale.
David Carmichael - My first real job was with the shirt factory, also known as Martin Manufacturing Company. I had inside help as Helen McKnight, the vice-president, was also my dad’s twin sister. At the age of 14, I worked in the basement, mostly loading and unloading trucks. I was making $1.25 an hour and thought I was doing well.
Joe Clem - My first job as a child was a paper boy for the Weakley County Press. When I was a teenager, I worked at the Gulf Service Station. By that time, I was probably driving my first car, a 1948 black Chevy.
Dennis Coleman - My first job was driving a tractor all day in the third grade. My first paying job was manual labor at the Weakley County Co-Op at age 17. My first car was a 1956 Chevy. I bought it with the profits from five acres of cotton in 1966.
Charlene Copeland - My first job was babysitting for Dr. and Mrs. Truett who lived on Peach Street, just down from us. I was 16 and made $.50 per hour. My first real job was Christmas gift wrapping for Dabbs Jewelry store.
Jim Corbitt - In the summer of my freshmen year, I worked at Liberty Supermarket for Mr. Hyde sacking groceries. I can’t remember the pay but I know they didn’t give any tips back then! After that my summer jobs were at the New Johnsonville Telephone Company.
Paula Covington - I worked at the UTM Library. I read shelves and made sure books were in line. I enjoyed helping students doing research with the card catalogs. I was paid about fifty cents, maybe a dollar, an hour before I graduated. My first job taught responsibility and money management!
Sara Culvahouse - I babysat the girl next door after school until her mother came home from work. I helped her with her homework and her piano practice.
Ronnie Dane - As soon as I was big enough to carry bricks for my dad, I was doing it! That was my first job!
Barbara Davis - I always liked having money, so at the age of fourteen, I waited tables at the Gateway Restaurant, right in front of Argo-Collier Truck Lines. I loved being paid everyday – tips, you know.
Tommy Dinwiddie - A couple of years during high school, I helped deliver show ads for the Varsity Theater on Saturday mornings. My pay was free entrance! On some Saturday afternoons I was even in charge while Mr. Byars when home for a few hours to rest.
Donald Elder - My first job was mowing lawn for Mrs. Annie Cravens in the summer of 1964. The next summer I was a sack boy at Liberty Supermarket and couldn’t wait for summer to be over so I could quit and go back to school. The summer after graduation I worked for Tom Farmer at Lovelace Farmer Wholesale Grocery warehouse. I got a real-life education there to complement the scholarly education at UTM. It has served me well.
Martha Freeman - I babysat for several UTM coaches and teachers for 50 cents an hour, regardless of how many children there were! In my senior year, I wrote a weekly article about MHS happenings for the Weakley County Press at an unknown low salary. The most difficult story I wrote was when Sandy Wright died.
Frieda Fuqua - My first job was for Mr. George Horton, an entomology professor at UTM. It started at $0.75 an hour and lasted through my four years in college. I typed letters on a Royal manual typewriter, cut stencils for tests, and ran the mimeograph machine. However, the most memorable assignment was to make “kill-jars” for students to use collecting insects. Boring holes in rubber stoppers for glass tubes and filling with arsenic was truly a new experience!
Richard Glasgow - I worked at Miller Electric on the production line packing lights. This is where I learned I did not want to work on a production line or to punch a clock. The Lord granted my wish.
Jimmy Harrison - As an early teen, I racked pool balls at Pop’s Pool Hall. I played for the house, too.
Van Hazlewood - My first job, at age 15, was at Mt. Pelia Grocery Store where I sacked groceries.
Chris Hester - My first paying job was picking cotton for ten cents a pound at age 9 or 10. My first real summer job (at age 16 as a babysitter and housekeeper for a large family in Martin) enabled me to buy clothes for the upcoming school year for the first time.
Morris Hicks - At age 12, I mowed lawns with a push mower all over Martin, pushing that mower up and down the streets. At age 16, my first real job with taxes held out was at Big Star Supermarket making 40 cents an hour!
Helen Hoover - My first job was at age five. My mom was afraid of mice, but we kept mice traps set up in our loft. That worked fine as long as my dad was around. When he was travelling with his work, he hired me to bring the traps down and empty them in the yard. Then I would re-set the traps and return them to the loft. I used my nickel in earnings to buy five peppermint sticks!
Jimmy Jackson - My first job was as an assistant in the Psychology Lab at UTM under the direction of Dr. David Gibson. It was here that I learned an important life lesson: if you have a choice between cleaning a rat cage or a pigeon cage, always pick the rat cage because pigeons have squishy poop.
Betty Johnson - My first job was probably babysitting for various families. In college, I worked in the Ag Department in the Work Study Program.
Brooks Kennedy - I was a grocery sacker at Rooks Big Star, began at 75 cents an hour and got a raise to 85 cents and was thrilled. I also raised Hereford (white faced) cattle at home and helped my uncles and cousin on the farm (no pay on this one).
Diane Kupfer - My first job was through Work Study at UTM. My sister LaDon and I both participated in Work Study to help finance our education. The summer that I graduated from college, I waited tables at The Hearth. This was not my cup of tea.
Sarah Leonard - From age 10 on, I cleaned rooms and registered customers at the Len Haven Motel on Sharon Highway, which my parents owned.
Patricia Mathis - I had several jobs as a teenager: cleaning houses and Southside Baptist Church, babysitting and being hospital tech. I am humble and thankful to the people who had the confidence in me to work for them. They are: Bonnie and Johnny Tuck (two sons); Ruby Tuck (cleaning her house); Estelles and Evie Marshall (one son); Betty Brockwell King, RN (one son) at the hospital; and Southside Baptist Church.
Dwight Merritt - As a floor boy, I was a ‘floor boy’ at the old skating rink on the Sharon Highway. My job was to pick up people who fell while skating and do other stuff, but mainly I was paid to skate all the time. And that was wonderful! A lot of girls from Sharon skated at the rink and that’s where I met my future wife, Diane Cammire. I guess you could say she was the best person this ‘floor boy’ ever picked up off the floor!
Mike Miller - I hung tobacco in a barn to be cured. We used sawdust and slabs from a sawmill to make the smoke to cure the tobacco.
Nancy Neese - I shelled butter beans with my granddaddy (5 cents a quart) and babysat for the Boyette (T-Room) family for 15 cents an hour for three children aged 0, 1, and 2.
Martha Ogg - When I was ten or twelve, I picked cotton all day long on a Saturday and made three dollars.
Jack Reese - In grade school, I delivered bottled milk to the front doors of my McComb Street neighbor’s customers for a quarter a day. Sometimes twice that. I also sold hangers to Freeman Cleaners on McComb Street for a penny a piece. In high school, I life guarded at Clearwater Swimming Pool for 50 cents an hour. Richard Bragg and I did various cleaning jobs at UTM for the same rate. My step-brother Rickey and I raised row crops on our family farm. We also raised Angus beef cattle and bucket calves we bought from Kirby Buchanan’s family. Boy was that a lot of work!!
John Russell Sandefer - My first real job was as a lifeguard at the Martin swimming pool the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. The pay? Fifty cents an hour! The two previous summers I had been through several Red Cross water safety and lifesaving courses and received certifications that netted me a job for “The Man”, MHS Coach Hardy Lloyd. A nice guy and great boss.
Pat Sanders - I baby sat for a young UTM couple, named Ethridge, and their little girl, Julie, at the whopping rate of 35 cents an hour. They lived in a trailer on what was then called “incubator hill,” now the site of the Grove Apartments. My second job was at McAdoo’s Pharmacy. Baeteena and I were hired in high school to take care of the front of the store, but often we escaped to the back room to relax until we got caught. We were paid $1 an hour!
Cathy Shelley - My first job was picking strawberries for a nickel a quart and cotton for three cents a pound. My schools never let out for cotton picking, but when I was eight, my mother made my first cotton sack out of a 25-pound bag flour sack. When I grew, she cut the bottom out of the first and added a second sack. Later I picked 100 pounds in a day with an adult sack.
Susan Smith - Being in a family of 6 children I had a lot of first jobs starting at an early age...none of which paid an hourly wage but we did get an allowance every other week when Dad was paid at the post office. A trip to Ben Franklin, better known to us as the dime store, was where our allowances were spent for small items like yoyos, caps for our guns, Golden books, jump ropes, etc.
Dennis Suiter - I was part of our family businesses, American Café and Fairlane Bowl. My first “real paying” job was working for the Wrights at the K N Root Beer as a car hop. It was a great experience in so many ways and Roy and Barbara became my second set of parents.
Frank Tedescucci - I collected and sold cock roaches for fishing bait at Reelfoot Lake at a penny for two.
Donna Thompson - When I was thirteen, I babysat a little three-month-old boy who lived across from us on Cleveland Street. Later I kept his little brother for a total of five years. They called me “Nerma” for ‘nother mama.
Mike Thompson - I worked at Thompson-Vincent Implement a couple of summers just helping out. I liked it at the time.
Gary Tuck - At the age of sixteen, I worked with my Dad, who was a brick mason. I was mostly his gofer, but he tried to teach me how to lay bricks. It took a long time and by the time I learned, he had converted to being a carpenter.
Cyndy Vincent - My first job was as a counselor at Lakeshore Methodist Church Camp in Eva.
Shirley Wade - My first paying job was wrapping Christmas presents at Pennick’s Department Store. It was located next door to where Van’s is today. Sherry Cavin was his niece.
Betty Waggener - I didn’t get paid for working with Daddy, but I was grilling burgers when I was old enough to stand on a chair and flip them at Waggener’s Café next door to the Old Williams Hotel.
Bobby Winston - My first job was a real job. I worked for Preston Burton on his Sealtest Milk Route in my junior and senior years from 4 am until 7 am four days a week and Saturday from 4 am until noon. We went in snow and ice, no matter the weather. I called him Preston and we became friends. I earned $37.50 a week, kept up a B average and participated in sports.
Brenda Wright - In the 7th and 8th grades, I babysat the Crutchfield girls where I earned enough money to buy a mouton coat. My mother took me to Libby’s in Union City for the big purchase. The coat had roll up sleeves and cost $55! That was a lot of money!
Barry Allison - I was paid 25 cents an hour (at the age of 12 or 13) to be YOBO (yard boy) for Mrs. Myrtle Phillips (the Registrar at UTMB).
Mike Biggs - My first job was as a paperboy for the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Every afternoon I hopped on my bike and threw newspapers into yards all over my side of town. Our beagle Popeye ran with me ... well, until he started eating the groceries out of the back of Mr. Estes’ delivery truck. Then it was just me!
Mike Blake - I picked strawberries with mom at age five for five cents a quart. I ate more than the quart I picked, Mom got the money and I got the experience. I quit after one day. As an early teen, I mowed yards with a push mower and earned a few dollars. Then, I hauled hay and picked corn for an allowance of fifty cents a week. As an older teen, I raised calves and kept the sale money.
Peggy Bradberry - Two weeks after graduation from high school, I started working at the old Weakley County Hospital. When I witnessed a woman in labor, I instantly fainted. Both the hospital staff and I knew that I should not seek a profession in the medical field.
Randy Brooks - I had my first job working at Esso Station on the corner across from the Baptist Church. Jim Bell White was the owner and I worked every Saturday for $5 a day. I washed cars and pumped gas and loved it! I had a car, so I was at least sixteen.
Phyllis Burkett - My first job was as a car hop at the El Rancho working for my first cousin Ken Boyett and my aunt Geraldine Fugitt. I was very shy, but this job helped change that. Kids drove around the El Rancho and headed back to town, over and over again. Riding around, we called it. Three guys from Dresden had identical 1964 Chevrolet SuperSports. Richard Shannon (grey), Donald Davis (dark blue), and Roy Pierpoint (candy apple red). That’s where I met Roy and we’ve been married 48 years!
Bill Byars - At the age of thirteen, I began selling concessions at the Varsity Theatre. A bag of popcorn, a small coke, and a candy bar could be bought for a quarter. At eighteen, I learned to operate the projectors to show the film.
Roger Bynum - My first paying job was mowing lawns for Carlos Bowers and Hezzie Dortch who each owned country grocery stores in Hyndsver. I earned $10 each plus a Pepsi Cola and a Moon Pie. I also hauled hay (hated it) for 10 cents a bale.
David Carmichael - My first real job was with the shirt factory, also known as Martin Manufacturing Company. I had inside help as Helen McKnight, the vice-president, was also my dad’s twin sister. At the age of 14, I worked in the basement, mostly loading and unloading trucks. I was making $1.25 an hour and thought I was doing well.
Joe Clem - My first job as a child was a paper boy for the Weakley County Press. When I was a teenager, I worked at the Gulf Service Station. By that time, I was probably driving my first car, a 1948 black Chevy.
Dennis Coleman - My first job was driving a tractor all day in the third grade. My first paying job was manual labor at the Weakley County Co-Op at age 17. My first car was a 1956 Chevy. I bought it with the profits from five acres of cotton in 1966.
Charlene Copeland - My first job was babysitting for Dr. and Mrs. Truett who lived on Peach Street, just down from us. I was 16 and made $.50 per hour. My first real job was Christmas gift wrapping for Dabbs Jewelry store.
Jim Corbitt - In the summer of my freshmen year, I worked at Liberty Supermarket for Mr. Hyde sacking groceries. I can’t remember the pay but I know they didn’t give any tips back then! After that my summer jobs were at the New Johnsonville Telephone Company.
Paula Covington - I worked at the UTM Library. I read shelves and made sure books were in line. I enjoyed helping students doing research with the card catalogs. I was paid about fifty cents, maybe a dollar, an hour before I graduated. My first job taught responsibility and money management!
Sara Culvahouse - I babysat the girl next door after school until her mother came home from work. I helped her with her homework and her piano practice.
Ronnie Dane - As soon as I was big enough to carry bricks for my dad, I was doing it! That was my first job!
Barbara Davis - I always liked having money, so at the age of fourteen, I waited tables at the Gateway Restaurant, right in front of Argo-Collier Truck Lines. I loved being paid everyday – tips, you know.
Tommy Dinwiddie - A couple of years during high school, I helped deliver show ads for the Varsity Theater on Saturday mornings. My pay was free entrance! On some Saturday afternoons I was even in charge while Mr. Byars when home for a few hours to rest.
Donald Elder - My first job was mowing lawn for Mrs. Annie Cravens in the summer of 1964. The next summer I was a sack boy at Liberty Supermarket and couldn’t wait for summer to be over so I could quit and go back to school. The summer after graduation I worked for Tom Farmer at Lovelace Farmer Wholesale Grocery warehouse. I got a real-life education there to complement the scholarly education at UTM. It has served me well.
Martha Freeman - I babysat for several UTM coaches and teachers for 50 cents an hour, regardless of how many children there were! In my senior year, I wrote a weekly article about MHS happenings for the Weakley County Press at an unknown low salary. The most difficult story I wrote was when Sandy Wright died.
Frieda Fuqua - My first job was for Mr. George Horton, an entomology professor at UTM. It started at $0.75 an hour and lasted through my four years in college. I typed letters on a Royal manual typewriter, cut stencils for tests, and ran the mimeograph machine. However, the most memorable assignment was to make “kill-jars” for students to use collecting insects. Boring holes in rubber stoppers for glass tubes and filling with arsenic was truly a new experience!
Richard Glasgow - I worked at Miller Electric on the production line packing lights. This is where I learned I did not want to work on a production line or to punch a clock. The Lord granted my wish.
Jimmy Harrison - As an early teen, I racked pool balls at Pop’s Pool Hall. I played for the house, too.
Van Hazlewood - My first job, at age 15, was at Mt. Pelia Grocery Store where I sacked groceries.
Chris Hester - My first paying job was picking cotton for ten cents a pound at age 9 or 10. My first real summer job (at age 16 as a babysitter and housekeeper for a large family in Martin) enabled me to buy clothes for the upcoming school year for the first time.
Morris Hicks - At age 12, I mowed lawns with a push mower all over Martin, pushing that mower up and down the streets. At age 16, my first real job with taxes held out was at Big Star Supermarket making 40 cents an hour!
Helen Hoover - My first job was at age five. My mom was afraid of mice, but we kept mice traps set up in our loft. That worked fine as long as my dad was around. When he was travelling with his work, he hired me to bring the traps down and empty them in the yard. Then I would re-set the traps and return them to the loft. I used my nickel in earnings to buy five peppermint sticks!
Jimmy Jackson - My first job was as an assistant in the Psychology Lab at UTM under the direction of Dr. David Gibson. It was here that I learned an important life lesson: if you have a choice between cleaning a rat cage or a pigeon cage, always pick the rat cage because pigeons have squishy poop.
Betty Johnson - My first job was probably babysitting for various families. In college, I worked in the Ag Department in the Work Study Program.
Brooks Kennedy - I was a grocery sacker at Rooks Big Star, began at 75 cents an hour and got a raise to 85 cents and was thrilled. I also raised Hereford (white faced) cattle at home and helped my uncles and cousin on the farm (no pay on this one).
Diane Kupfer - My first job was through Work Study at UTM. My sister LaDon and I both participated in Work Study to help finance our education. The summer that I graduated from college, I waited tables at The Hearth. This was not my cup of tea.
Sarah Leonard - From age 10 on, I cleaned rooms and registered customers at the Len Haven Motel on Sharon Highway, which my parents owned.
Patricia Mathis - I had several jobs as a teenager: cleaning houses and Southside Baptist Church, babysitting and being hospital tech. I am humble and thankful to the people who had the confidence in me to work for them. They are: Bonnie and Johnny Tuck (two sons); Ruby Tuck (cleaning her house); Estelles and Evie Marshall (one son); Betty Brockwell King, RN (one son) at the hospital; and Southside Baptist Church.
Dwight Merritt - As a floor boy, I was a ‘floor boy’ at the old skating rink on the Sharon Highway. My job was to pick up people who fell while skating and do other stuff, but mainly I was paid to skate all the time. And that was wonderful! A lot of girls from Sharon skated at the rink and that’s where I met my future wife, Diane Cammire. I guess you could say she was the best person this ‘floor boy’ ever picked up off the floor!
Mike Miller - I hung tobacco in a barn to be cured. We used sawdust and slabs from a sawmill to make the smoke to cure the tobacco.
Nancy Neese - I shelled butter beans with my granddaddy (5 cents a quart) and babysat for the Boyette (T-Room) family for 15 cents an hour for three children aged 0, 1, and 2.
Martha Ogg - When I was ten or twelve, I picked cotton all day long on a Saturday and made three dollars.
Jack Reese - In grade school, I delivered bottled milk to the front doors of my McComb Street neighbor’s customers for a quarter a day. Sometimes twice that. I also sold hangers to Freeman Cleaners on McComb Street for a penny a piece. In high school, I life guarded at Clearwater Swimming Pool for 50 cents an hour. Richard Bragg and I did various cleaning jobs at UTM for the same rate. My step-brother Rickey and I raised row crops on our family farm. We also raised Angus beef cattle and bucket calves we bought from Kirby Buchanan’s family. Boy was that a lot of work!!
John Russell Sandefer - My first real job was as a lifeguard at the Martin swimming pool the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. The pay? Fifty cents an hour! The two previous summers I had been through several Red Cross water safety and lifesaving courses and received certifications that netted me a job for “The Man”, MHS Coach Hardy Lloyd. A nice guy and great boss.
Pat Sanders - I baby sat for a young UTM couple, named Ethridge, and their little girl, Julie, at the whopping rate of 35 cents an hour. They lived in a trailer on what was then called “incubator hill,” now the site of the Grove Apartments. My second job was at McAdoo’s Pharmacy. Baeteena and I were hired in high school to take care of the front of the store, but often we escaped to the back room to relax until we got caught. We were paid $1 an hour!
Cathy Shelley - My first job was picking strawberries for a nickel a quart and cotton for three cents a pound. My schools never let out for cotton picking, but when I was eight, my mother made my first cotton sack out of a 25-pound bag flour sack. When I grew, she cut the bottom out of the first and added a second sack. Later I picked 100 pounds in a day with an adult sack.
Susan Smith - Being in a family of 6 children I had a lot of first jobs starting at an early age...none of which paid an hourly wage but we did get an allowance every other week when Dad was paid at the post office. A trip to Ben Franklin, better known to us as the dime store, was where our allowances were spent for small items like yoyos, caps for our guns, Golden books, jump ropes, etc.
Dennis Suiter - I was part of our family businesses, American Café and Fairlane Bowl. My first “real paying” job was working for the Wrights at the K N Root Beer as a car hop. It was a great experience in so many ways and Roy and Barbara became my second set of parents.
Frank Tedescucci - I collected and sold cock roaches for fishing bait at Reelfoot Lake at a penny for two.
Donna Thompson - When I was thirteen, I babysat a little three-month-old boy who lived across from us on Cleveland Street. Later I kept his little brother for a total of five years. They called me “Nerma” for ‘nother mama.
Mike Thompson - I worked at Thompson-Vincent Implement a couple of summers just helping out. I liked it at the time.
Gary Tuck - At the age of sixteen, I worked with my Dad, who was a brick mason. I was mostly his gofer, but he tried to teach me how to lay bricks. It took a long time and by the time I learned, he had converted to being a carpenter.
Cyndy Vincent - My first job was as a counselor at Lakeshore Methodist Church Camp in Eva.
Shirley Wade - My first paying job was wrapping Christmas presents at Pennick’s Department Store. It was located next door to where Van’s is today. Sherry Cavin was his niece.
Betty Waggener - I didn’t get paid for working with Daddy, but I was grilling burgers when I was old enough to stand on a chair and flip them at Waggener’s Café next door to the Old Williams Hotel.
Bobby Winston - My first job was a real job. I worked for Preston Burton on his Sealtest Milk Route in my junior and senior years from 4 am until 7 am four days a week and Saturday from 4 am until noon. We went in snow and ice, no matter the weather. I called him Preston and we became friends. I earned $37.50 a week, kept up a B average and participated in sports.
Brenda Wright - In the 7th and 8th grades, I babysat the Crutchfield girls where I earned enough money to buy a mouton coat. My mother took me to Libby’s in Union City for the big purchase. The coat had roll up sleeves and cost $55! That was a lot of money!
