My first job, at 14, Huron Country Club. 1963

 

I found my first job more by accident than on purpose. I had just turned 14, full of the energy and hormones, and little common sense. The Huron County Club had a swimming pool, the only pool in town. Most of my swimming time had been with friends at Ravine Lake, a small swimming hole on the northeast side of town. We didn't belong to "The Club" until my dad was promoted and Armours started paying the dues. I’d go to the Club pool when my parents gave me a ride but didn’t spend a lot of time there except to play golf. The pool was relatively new at the Club and consequently the rules and procedures were still evolving. The country club staff was mostly volunteers, men helping with golf and the bar, women helping with pool and restaurant stuff. 

The pool did not have a snack bar but did have a large coat closet with a door that opened onto the pool deck. Someone suggested that the door be changed to a Dutch Door and the room into a snack bar…no seating area, just shelves of candy, a freezer for ice cream treats, and a cold drink fountain. Hot “meals” were to be cooked by some of the women and brought in for resale as a fund raiser for something, I don’t remember specifics. I think the home cooked lunches would only happen on the weekends.

And who would be in charge when the women weren’t around? That wasn’t so easy. They somehow picked my friend and former nextdoor neighbor, Craig Andersen. He was almost 16 and could drive. Driving was necessary because someone had to shop for candy bars, ice cream and other snacks. Craig hired me. I think for thirty-five cents an hour. And there we were. Two kids in charge of a “commercial” operation. I think we had great fun, at least for a while. I only clearly remember a couple of things. 

Candy bars were a nickel, the most popular bar was the Snicker Bar. The problem with Snickers was they’d start to melt in your hand when you were only halfway finished! I thought, why not stick them in the freezer and give people a choice, regular or frozen. And then it dawned on me, why not charge a dime for the frozen bar? Certainly people would see the extra value in a frozen Snicker…and they did. And who did we have to ask about this price increase or really about anything? Well, we didn’t know who was in charge and so we just did what we thought was best and the most fun.

The other thing I clearly remember was going with Craig to the supply warehouse. The warehouse was the old train station warehouse, dark, dank, and filled with box after box of really cool stuff. This was a “merchants only” store but we could go in because we were the Country Club. No such thing as credit cards, Craig would just sign for whatever we bought. He bought candy and ice cream of course, and a case of cigarettes! Oh my God, he smoked! At 16! He bought the cigarettes there because they were so very cheap. I distinctly remember him saying, “I wonder if I could freeze a case of cigarettes, do you think they’d keep?” What did I know. At the end of the summer, Country Club management decided to take over control of the snack bar, seems like we hadn’t made any money. 

The following school year I applied for work at the Club and got a kitchen job…dishwasher! I was fascinated by the dishwasher itself…a magic machine, we did not have any kind of dishwasher at home except for my sister and me. Eventually they expanded my role to busboy, bringing in the dirty dishes and then washing them. Not glorious work except that I was able to share in the tips. I don’t remember what my salary was, either thirty-five or fifty cents an hour. I was very interested in how the chef cooked for the people in the dining room. When the orders weren’t too crazy, he’d show me what he was doing. Eventually, he said, “You want to try something?” And I did and he’d watch. One Saturday he said, “Alright, you cook lunch.” And I did. It was a lot of pressure. Summer started and he was going to cook a Hawaiian Luau. He and I went to the butcher shop and picked up a whole butchered pig. We cooked that thing for 24 hours. What I remember the most about that job was the smell from cleaning off the dishes, that smell would go home with me and stayed for days despite showers and baths. 

Each July 4th the Country Club would put on a spectacular fireworks event and the entire town of Huron would line the roads around the club to watch the show. There were no professional fireworks people, only the members of the Mens Club and if you were a CC member and a man, you belonged to that club. That year, they asked me to help, my job was to bring the fireworks to the “shooters.” The fireworks looked like paper sacks with a foot long paper fuse on top, which in fact they were. During the day, the Mens Club members would dig holes into the ground and put in thick cardboard tubes which were the launching “cannons” for the fireworks. The method was to put the sack partially into the tube holding it by the fuse. Using a lighter or a cigar, the “shooter” would light the fuse and (hopefully) drop the sack to the bottom of the tube. If the sack did not reach the bottom of the tube, the launch was unpredictable. Sounds easy right? Except that all of the men had been drinking most of the day. I do not know how they escaped injury.

One more thing about the Country Club, gambling. The bar in the club (adults only) had slot machines, nickels, dimes, and quarters. Not the modern electronic machines but the old mechanical machines that made that awesome noise of whirring wheels and chunking, ringing jackpots. My mother loved those machines and would play the dime machines hour after hour. Wednesday night at the Club was Stag Night. I don’t think they had dancing girls but they did have craps, roulette, blackjack and poker. All the tables were run by a local guy characterized as Huron’s gangster. Gambling was illegal in South Dakota, this was supposed to be the Country Club’s little secret but it really wasn’t a secret. All the rich and influential people in town were members, however, so shutting it down proved difficult but eventually, I think around 1970, gambling stopped at the Club.