| Deaner - 6/30/2020 08:38
Do you remember what that town job paid? And what year?
Was trying to remember what we got paid walking beans as kids. Prob late 60's and 3 of us would get dumped out in a 167 acre field out on the prairie, an then occasionally checked on from the road. This was the first time I'd seen hemp dogbane, and that was one of the main targets we were supposed to pull out. Couldn't help but notice we never got the whole root, and began to suspect the patches were interconnected underground. lol. Maybe 33 cents an hour. It was a big payday when baling jobs finally hit $1/hr. Put up grain bins in summers mid 70's and was thrilled to make $3/hr., with LOTS of OT with them taking adv. of desperate youths. Think we eventually got bumped up to 3.25/hr, but it was all about the OT. One summer made around $3000, as we often could put up a shell per day with long hours. Remember one time we put the door in the wrong place, then after realizing kept working to correct our mistake until the police came out after a parent had called to check on their son who was in the crew. Must have been about 10pm or so. lol
Then got on at the old First Miss fert. plant, which was my first real full time job in the Green Bay bottoms in SE Iowa in the late 70's. Made about 25K my 1st year there, which at the time was one of the better non union blue collar paying jobs in the area. Was an operator, crazy place sometimes. Wasn't unusual to get a trainee who would last one day with eyes wide open after seeing what it entailed. Dangerous, with many emergency situations. Supposedly OSHA was payed off and left us alone, IDK if there's any truth to that, but surely today those kind of work conditions wouldn't be allowed. Go thru about a pair of jeans per week as the H2SO4 and other chemicals exposed to worked their magic. Crazy stories I could tell. That shut down in Oct. 1981, although got hired back in 82 to run out some inventory. From there had to make a decision on whether to go to Beluah, ND to work at a coal to natural gas plant that offered 50K and a house or try to find a local job and try to continue farming. FIL told me to not take away his granddaughter, which I took to heart, so took an operator job at the Ft. Madison water plant in 82. Started out at 15K/yr., which was less than half of what I had been making, but it wasn't too stressful and worked pretty well with trying to farm, although had to live in Iowa since we had a phone system that would call you if problems arose while the plant was unattended. Never made it back to FM income levels. Our pumphouse building was built in 1916, and we had positive suction river pumps in the basement. Even in normal times, the old brick building let in a lot of seepage water and multiple sump pumps ran constantly. Then in 93, we were sandbagging the plant and building via rowboat as the water level kept rising. Eventually we just sandbagged around the doors and had about 5' of water on the river side of bldg. Now it was taking big electrical pumps shooting fire hoses out the window to keep pumps in basement from flooding. We had set up back up generators to switch over to if we lost power. I think I worked 70 some straight 16 hr. days, but maybe with time the number of days gets stretched, not sure anymore, lol. Had switched to midnights years earlier to help with farming plus also coached Jr. High girls softball.
Then came the night where the rain was coming down hard, and we lost power in a storm, maybe around 2 am. Couldn't get switched over to the generators fast enough to keep basement from flooding. The Niota levee went out, then later the Green Bay levee the same night. We still had 2 wells, plus one of the 3 river pumps had an elevated motor with a shaft running down to the lower capacity pump so we could still keep up the water supply. That was the beginning of the end for me working in town, as it was starting to take a toll on me. Once the bridges were closed, had to go 80 miles thru Burlington to make the usual 5 mile trip to the farm in Illinois, or in other words didn't make i over much that summer.
Turned down offers a couple times to be the Grade 4 supervisor, and we could run w/o one for periods of time before the State would get after us, and waited to see how the next guy hired for the job would turn out. Once I assessed the hired Hoosier was a nut job, waited a while and then put in my 2 week notice in 95. Was still making less than 30K when I quit, not very good for a teamster, lol. Took them years, maybe lawsuits, IDK, to get rid of that boss. Eventually they hired a local guy that worked his way up thru the system which worked out great.
Bet you're sorry you asked now. lol
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Solar corridor 2020
