When kids worked for their money, I earned half of a quarter for a nasty job.

A blog post I read today reminds me of some of the jobs I’ve held in my life. 
A job, to me, is anything I have been paid to do. Therefore, my first job was when I was about eight years old and my sister Gay was six. 

The work was tough and gross, but we were promised a quarter. Not a quarter each, but one quarter for both of us, for doing a job no one else wanted to do.

We lived on a farm. 

Chickens lived in and around the barn. Hen nests hung on the walls, and we gathered eggs there every day. On a hot summer day, my daddy asked Gay and me to take a dead chicken down to the woods where we would leave it for wild animals to devour. Yes, there are animals that eat such things. I guess you could say this was recycling. 

Mother and Daddy standing behind Glenda, with braids, and Gay.This is about the ages we were when we earned our quarter.

Daddy saw our faces when he first mentioned it, and I’m sure he could tell it did not appeal to either of us. Then he said something that caused our ears to perk up.

"I'll give you a quarter," he said.

For two little girls who never had any money of our own, a quarter meant ice cream, Cokes, and candy from Hancock’s store. Gay looked at me, as she usually did, to see what I would say. We wanted the quarter, and I knew if Gay and I worked together, we could do it.

“OK. Where is the dead chicken?”

“Behind the barn, in the lot,” Daddy said.

Gay and I headed out to the barn. From outside the fence we could see the feathers of a white leghorn hen, and it was obvious, by the smell, she had been dead a few days. 

Holding our noses, we took a shovel into the lot and approached the decaying mass. The overpowering stench made me gag. I knew I was going to throw up. But I needed both hands to push the shovel under the hen and carry it. How could I do that and hold my nose, too?

After a few tries, Gay and I came up with a plan. I don't know who had the idea, but we have always worked well together, and it was the only way we could take care of this chore.

While I wrangled the heavy round-pointed shovel under the mess that was once a laying hen, Gay pinched my nostrils together with two fingers and held her own nose with her other hand. That was the beginning of a great working team. 

My father watched us that day. 

He laughed many times over the years as he told what became a family story, of how the two little girls carried the stinking dead chicken all the way to the woods with Gayholding both our noses and me hauling the heavy remains on the shovel. 

Thank goodness I never had such a bad job again, although I had some that I hated, and people I worked for who disgusted me. I’ll write about them in the days to come.

If you want to write stories about your life for your family why not start with the first time you worked to earn money. You will enjoy recalling the memories and telling the story.

I was inspired to write about my jobs by the blogger, roughwighting. She tells quite an interesting story. 

 http://roughwighting.net/2016/01/22/a-tongue-twisting-time-in-a-transmuted-ivory-tower/#more-3744 

Do you remember your first job? 

Write for your family. Leave a written legacy.

At holiday time, we all look back on those times when we were young and had parents, grandparents and family that gathered around tables at someone's home. We remember the stories we heard, the faces of those who are gone now, the laughter that roared from the adult table as everyone remembered a favorite narrative and heard it again from a  brother or another dear family member.

We all have family stories. Some might be sad or bad, but we also have many stories of our family history that make us who we are. My father was a story teller. My uncles were also story tellers and my brothers told stories I'll remember all my days. 

Those of us who like to write have a responsibility, I think, to keep those stories alive. The days of several generations sitting on the porch or around a dinner table listening to family stories are fading away. Families are scattered all over the world. Grandparents get to see their grandchildren on Skype for a few minutes, but that  is a far cry from conversing face to face with plenty of time to share.

That is why I am passionate about writing those stories, leaving a written legacy for the future. Even though I have no children, I have always been the family historian and have documented many of the stories of my father's family in a  hard bound book: Profiles and Pedigrees, Thomas C. Council and  His Descendants.

I have also written a collection of short stories based on stories about my immediate family -- father, mother and my sisters and brothers. One day I hope to publish them for my family.

For over a week I have been listening to a memoir by Pat Conroy, the southern author of The Great Santini and Prince of Tides among other excellent books. He writes a detailed story of the life he has led with his abusive father, mother he adored, his siblings who all suffered from growing  up in the dysfunctional family. One of his brothers killed himself. A sister seemed to suffer from mental illness. Pat, himself, had several breakdowns and several marriages. All of this made for interesting reading, but those are not  the stories most of  us want to tell about our families. 

My students want to tell about how life was when they were kids. They want to tell about living without electricity, going to school in one room with all ages of students, the games they played when they were kids, their first car, their first date and many of those turning points they would tell their grandchildren if their grandchildren were available. They also want to tell about  where they went to school, their military lives, their work, the accomplishments and even their failures. I hope they will also tell the sad stories, the hard times that helped mold them, the loss of loved ones and beloved things. I hope they will  tell about the time they spent with grandparents, what they remember about those family members. 

One of my students told me he decided he should write about  his life when his little grandson said, "Grandpa, I know about your life. You had to  fight Indians and live in a  log cabin."

It is hard to entice young people to care about anyone or anything but themselves once they are in their teens. But those kids will grow up and one day they will be so happy to read about their family history. 

Here is a good post about writing family stories. 

In March, 2015, I will teach a class on writing life stories at Tri-County Community College. If you are local, check with the Community Enrichment department, Lisa Thompson, to register. 

Family is Fodder for our Stories

I had four brothers. Each one had a major impact on my life. I’ve written about them in  memoir and in my poetry. As poet and teacher Scott Owens said, if we make a list of all of our family members, we can use them as fodder for our writing and we will never run out of subjects.

Hal Council

Last weekend our family gathered to honor and celebrate the life of my brother Hal who died suddenly and unexpectedly in August. His grandson, Sam, delivered a moving and eloquent eulogy. He summed up special moments with the man he called Da, his grandfather. He had labored over the words he had written in his effort to speak not only his feelings but those of his mother, his aunt and his cousin. He made us laugh and also brought tears to our eyes

I probably won’t remember much of the service, but this young man’s words will stay with me for a long time. I know Hal would have been pleased to know that his children and grandchildren loved him, admired him and remembered the many happy times they had enjoyed with him. I was happy his eulogy was not all about his career, although he was a very successful business man. We heard instead of how he played with his grandchildren, spoiled them, and encouraged them to reach high for their goals. He lent a helping hand to others in the community who were in need and was appreciated by all who knew him.

I can write a number of stories about Hal. One of his most loveable traits was how he turned fiascos into hilarious adventures. He and his pretty wife, Yvonne, Barry and I went to the Georgia – Florida football game (the world's largest cocktail party) one year. Not known for his punctuality, Hal waited too late to get reservations at a decent hotel. We ended up in a moldy, smelly place called the Floridan across from the bus station.

To get to our rooms on the third floor, we had to take the elevator which must have been installed 100 years before. A small woman with iron-gray hair and deep lines etched in her brown face perched on a stool by the controls. Like everyone in Jacksonville that day, she was drunk as a skunk. Pulling a lever, she did her best to line up the door of the elevator with the opening on the third floor. We lurched up and then dropped like a rock. We lurched up again and dropped again. Over and over, she struggled to get the floor of the elevator even with the floor we were to step out on.

Hal teased the wizened little woman saying, “You know how to drive this thing?”

She cut her eyes up at him and said, “I get you there. Just hold on.”  She pulled on the lever and we zoomed up a few feet. She pulled again and we dropped a foot at the time.
I, being the worrier of the group, feared the ancient relic, its operator and all of us, were about to drop to the bottom of the building.

Hal said, “You might need a drink. You got anything to drink?”

She pulled a half-empty whiskey bottle from her pocket and held it up for him to see. We laughed at the smug expression on her face. Hal began to badger her to give him a drink, but she couldn’t be talked out of a drop of her liquor.

Hal and Barry found the entire scenario humurous and especially the old woman. They kept her talking with their banter but she finally managed to line up the spaces enough we could get off.

That was how our  wild weekend started. A football game weekend we talked about for years. The bad weather, the crowds and any inconvenience we had did not bother Hal. When he told about it later, he had his listeners wishing they had been with us at the Floridan trying to sleep with the bus station neon light blinking off and on in our windows and bus destinations and departures resounding throughout the night.

Hal said he never felt stressed in his life – not until his wife became seriously ill. He stayed with her day and night at the hospital and in rehab while she recovered from hip surgery. He came home that Sunday morning to change clothes and go back. While putting on his shoes, he collapsed with a heart attack.

I have other stories about my life with my brother, Hal. Do you have family members who could become characters in your stories?  Could you write a poem about them?