QotD: My First Gig

What was your very first job? 
Submitted by Laurel.

Probably hauling hay.  What great work that was, really.

I don't remember when I started, maybe around age 16.  My brother Kevin (same age as me -- we're step-bros) and I had a friend named Alec Briggs, who I think got us into it.  He and his brother Curt (Kurt?) were in their early 20s, and they were cool to hang out with on Friday and Saturday nights, driving around drinking alcohol and smoking pot and listening to rock & roll.

I've actually tried to find Alec since then.  I spent those couple years in Missouri a few years ago, and I thought it'd be cool to get with him and drink some alcohol and smoke some dope and listen to rock & roll and just talk about whatever'd happened to us in the world since those days.  He was a great guy, the best kind of bad influence, really pretty responsible, considering the terrible irresponsible behaviours in which we partook.

Anyway, hay hauling.  It was usually me and Kevin and Alec and Curt, one of us (I don't think it was ever me) driving the truck, one of us on the back of the truck, and the other two walking along beside, picking up bales of hay and tossing them up to the guy on the truck who would then stack them.  Fucking sweaty work, and we'd suck back water and pop salt pills all day and pour water from our pores in steady streams.  It really got you into good physical shape.  I remember my friend John Nelson saying something about how I was always walking around without a shirt, showing off my buff body.  I really wasn't showing off, I just wasn't embarrassed to go without a shirt in the oppressively hot and humid Missouri summer.

One year, the day after the first day of hauling, I literally couldn't make my body move enough to get out of bed.  My Dad harangued me and hassled me and finally made me get up, but it took literal herculean effort and I could barely move.

When we first started out we used to each get 3 cents per bale, but we were very good and got a good reputation, so we got to a point where we'd get 5 cents each per bale on jobs.  Sometimes a job'd be 1000 bales, so $50 at a time or so was good for alcohol and whatever meagre requirements I had as a teen.

I should write more about the Friday and Saturday partying with Alec and Curt and Kevin.  I'm drinking right now, so it's all feeling like pleasant memories...I miss feeling good, even if I'm not sure I ever did.