Your First Job

Do you remember the first real job you ever had?  Not doing chores for your parents or grandparents but a real, honest to goodness JOB?  My memories of my first job are very vivid, but some of that may come with age.  As I get older, some of the stuff that may have happened becomes fact!  The good news is that there are few people around to challenge it.

In 1960 our family moved back to Mannford from Pampa, Texas where we had lived for four years.  Dad was working in Tulsa and Mom got a job at Mannford State Bank, working for L.R. "Dick" Jones.  I was 14 years old and it was time for me to go to work, too.  I don't remember how I heard about the job washing dishes at one of the local cafes, but I went up there and applied to the owner, Callie Fields.  She was the wife of Gene Fields and was a bit intimidating to a fourteen year old boy.  My starting salary was 30 cents per hour.  After a few months, Callie sold the cafe to Lilly Hudson.  Lilly was just the opposite of Callie, she was one of the nicest, warmest people I've ever met!  Life was good; plus, I got a raise to 40 cents.

The name of the cafe is questionable but I do remember that it was called Gene's Cafe for a while.  Other cafes in town were the White Way, the City Cafe and the Coffee Cup cafe.

Judy Shaeffer and I worked there for a year or so, I would guess, and took turns doing dishes, cooking the easier things, and waiting tables.  I also got to work with Ollie Farrow there.  She was the mother of one of my classmates, Jesse, and was one of the finest women I knew.

To this day, I remember some of the prices of the meals.  Hamburgers were a quarter, hamburger steaks and chicken fried steaks were $1.25, "veal cutlets" were $1.35, and T-bone steaks were $2.65.  To prepare veal cutlets, we took a tenderized raw chicken fried steak and cut it into two pieces.  We may have put it in a different coating, I don't remember.

Judy must have worked the morning shift because she talks about preparing sack lunches for the workers who were building the roads, parks, and bridges in preparation for moving the town.  On the other hand, it seemed that I was always working in the evenings.  The only lunches I remember packing were for Lilly's husband, Otis.  He had a job as a night watchman on some of the construction sites and Lilly would pack a lunch for him in the evening.

About once a month, Dick Jones would bring all the employees of the bank over in the evening for dinner.  Everyone ate T-bone steaks and had a good time.  That was kind of strange for me because I had to wait on my mother.  I couldn't begin to name all the employees at the time but they included Bobby Greenwood, Paul McCrackin, and Hazel Tate.

Just east of the cafe on the corner was a covered triangular area.  This obviously had been a gas station years before but was closed when I worked at the Cafe.  We used it for storage of soft drinks and other supplies.  Lilly used to send me down there to fetch supplies and I would read magazines while I was there.  Lilly knew I was goofing off but she was too nice to say much about it!

I think your first job is alway kind of special.  At least, mine was.  I think I enjoyed it more than my last one but that may just be the years fading my memory!