My First Job and other early teen memories

My First Job and associated memories (updated 10 Dec)

As an early teen and freshman in High School (1953) I had a few jobs one of which was riding the Bond Bread Truck selling pastries door to door.

I used to hang out at the corner of Hamilton Ave and East Main St. in Norwich. There were two competing fountain shops on opposite corners Lu's Lunceonette on East Main and Pedace's on Hamilton Ave. Lu's had a pinball machine that cost a nickel a game and depending on score you could rack up a bunch of games. The owner would buy the games from you too but that was defined as gambling and the city shut that down. It only went underground. The store made money from the sodas (real fountain Cokes with a squirt of cherry flavoring) and candy (squirrels made of caramel and nuts and nearly as big today’s bite sized bars and only a penny then), magazines (Car Craft, Hot Rod etc.) and sandwiches (Grinders BLT, Hamburgers etc) that we bought while playing. I soon learned that there was no point to standing in front of a machine, jabbing the flippers, and gently nudging the machine just to build up a score. If you weren’t gentle it would register a tilt quitting and losing that game (and your nickel) and possibly the ones you had won. There were a couple of guys that were real good at pinball. Kinda like the Xbox today. I did not receive an allowance so I had to guard what money I did have carefully. Spending it on the pinball machine or the juke box did not make sense. I could watch and listen and enjoy it just as much.

We hung out at Pedace's which was a smaller scale luncheonette. Jimmy Pedace owned a house about a mile down Hamilton Ave across the street from a large mansion like house the he and his brothers built. Later on I believe he sold the property and a series of high rise apartment buildings were raised there and as I remember it they were rented to senior citizens. The Pedace family were involved in Norwich politics. The cooler (tougher??) guys hung out at Lu's and we were not quite as cool so we hung out across the street.

The usual activity was standing on the corner watching all the girls go by (good oldie song) with friends like Francis Delaney. The only problem was that in this part of town there weren’t many girls passing, mostly cars. To really see the girls we had to go down town and hang out in Franklin Square at the Woolworth’s five and Dime store coffee counter but that is another story and later in life.

From about 14 years old I have purchased most of my wardrobe. As I earned money I spent it on the latest fashions, pegged pants, bopper chains etc. A pegged pant was made as narrow as possible at the cuff and pleated at the waist topped off with a white T-shirt. A bopper chain was a golden watch-fob chain and which attached to your belt by a clip and then draped loosely down the leg to almost the knee and ended back in your pocket. A lot of times we had our lucky rabbit’s foot on the end. Most of the time we just stood on the sidewalk, menacingly twirling the chain around our forefinger and glaring at those who drove by. Oh, the most important part of the attire was the “DA” hair cut. The coolest guy had a pack of Lucky Strikes at his shoulder with the T-shirt sleeve rolled over it to keep it in place. For an example of how we looked just remember the movie “Grease” or the “Fonz” on Happy days. But I digress as this was a little later than the Bond Bread days.

Other entertainment was trading baseball cards, flipping cards and pitching pennies against the wall and talking about cars. Girls were not really a topic yet.

Twice a week the Bond Bread driver would stop and pick up a kid to go with him on his route. He drove an early 50’s panel truck. In this era door to door sales was a common thing. We used to have a Watkins man come to the house with his demo case of high quality spices and other kitchen needs. The Fuller brush man also went door to door selling high quality brushes. I understand that the Watkins Co still markets their wares in this manner. They didn’t repeat visits as my mother never did buy anything.

The Bond Bread man would stop at various homes and I would grab his tray that was loaded with lots of goodies like doughnuts and other pastries and go to the door of the house and ask who ever came to the door if they wanted anything today. Some times we would change the make up of the tray depending on past purchasing history of that customer. We would work the streets off East Main St in Norwich and go as far down rte 2 to Hallville ( a village in Preston) where there was one frequent customer who lived in the house by the mill there. The sales never amounted to more than a dollar or two and usually less than a dollar. For me it was more of a lark than a job and the seventy five cents I got was icing on the cake. This driver would change the price at different places and this didn’t seem right to me so I quit. Shortly after that he stopped coming to our area and I presume that his bosses found out about his dishonesty.

After Marilyn and I married she related a story of how her family would drive from Manchester CT. to the beaches in Westerly RI. When they got to Norwich her father would say “roll up the windows this is a tough town.” Little did either of us know that it might have been me that they observed, twirling my bopper chain and looking tough. If they only knew how much of a façade it really was. I also had a couple of lawns that I mowed using a push reel mower that I would walk to their houses to mow the lawn pulling my reel push mower. I usually got 50 cents to a dollar each. I also had the lawn at home to do but that was just part of the chores to be done at home and it was expected of me and not paid.