I don’t have the exact day or age that I started working, but it seems that it was sometime in Jr. High when I started my lawn mowing service. I started with a few accounts around the block and then worked my way further out of the area. In those days, before I had a car or license, I would simply push my mower, gas cans, and trimmer up to about two miles for my furthest customer. That was how I spent most summers until around 14, when, continuing with mowing, I took over grounds keeper at First United Methodist Church. For the next several years, I kept the grounds watered, mowed, free of trash, etc.
As soon as I was able to drive, legally, and be employed at a “real” job, I became a proud employee of our new (first and only back home) McDonald’s. I did that through the summer and into the first of the school year, until school and football practice started to take a considerable bit more of my time.
The following summer, I worked a variety of odd jobs ranging from two months spent shingling roofs to helping area farmers put in test plots. The last two summers before college, I followed up with one of the farmers and was his sole, full time employee. I spent countless hours plowing, planting, harvesting, and just about any other task you can imagine in a farming environment.
All of these early job taught me valuable lessons in hard work and responsibility. Whether it was learning that you have to follow through on committing to mowing a yard, every Saturday morning while your friends were off playing or that 100 hours a week during harvest was the only way to get the job done, these lessons have been invaluable in defining the way I have grown in my professional career.