dchs1955.org - Clarence Milburn

     To earn make money when I was growing up, in winter there was snow to be removed from the sidewalks. I would go around town with a shovel cleaning sidewalks for the older citizens. I delivered newspapers, both in the morning and afternoon. I think I had every newspaper route in town one time or another. I would spend all Saturday morning collecting for the Des Moines Register & Tribune to pay my bill with the paper company.

     Glenn Paul worked with the Methodist Church Youth Fellowship. He arranged with farmers to get us jobs walking the corn and bean fields. Glenn took crews out with hoes and corn knifes to cut volunteer corn from the bean fields and the weeds from the corn fields. Later we rode bean buggies so we did not have to walk. We could ride on a bean buggy and cut the corn without getting off.

     There was always baled hay to be put up. We would ride on the hay rack and stack the bales on it to be taken to the barn and stored. Once farmers knew one would do that type of work there were a lot of calls from different farmers wanting help.

     There was also corn detasseling to do for the seed company. That was a job for both boys and girls. We walked along the corn rows and pulled tassels out of the top of the corn stalks. We worked in all kinds of weather. The corn would be wet in the morning when we got to the field. We would get all wet and muddy, but we kept going for the money.

     When I got old enough to drive a tractor I did a lot of plowing for different farmers in the area. Most tractors used then were small compared to those used today and pulled only a two-bottom plow. After I plowed all day I would sometimes wonder that I had plowed so little. I would sometimes begin work after school and work till dark and sometimes work on weekends. I worked for one farmer all summer from eight am till five pm five days a week for $25.00. That was good money them. It kept me in spending money and gas for the car.

     Often, especially girls did babysitting for 25 to 50 cents an hour. My sisters would hope someone would call them so they could earn some money.

     The city of Dallas Center purchased softening salt in whole railroad boxcar loads for the town water works treatment plant and then hired boys to move it from town the three miles out to the water works. First, we would hand shovel the salt onto a pickup truck, then haul it to the waterworks at the Raccoon River, dump it and then head back to town for another load.

     That is how times were in the 1950's. If you wanted something you worked for it or went without. Then, there were always jobs to be had if you wanted to work. Jobs like these are mostly gone now so young people of today do not have the chance to learn from them like we did.

     I wrote this as a boy who lived in town. I know there were boys who lived on the farm and worked for there parents on a daily basis. I do not know what if anything they got for doing the work, but I do know that when I worked for my parents I got two things - room and board.