Starting in the summer after the 7th grade I worked to have some spending money of my own. I would get up at 5am during strawberry season, catch the “berry bus,” and spend about 6 hours crawling around in the dirt (and sometimes mud) picking strawberries. I usually earned about $5 for my day’s effort. It was hard work, but at the same time fun being out there with my friends. Every once in a while a berry fight would break out and we would all be in trouble with the “Berry Boss.” We would all be filthy dirty and tired when we left the field.

For a while when I was about 14, I worked for Jake Benchoff, a plumber and family friend. I got blisters digging ditches and cutting holes through cement foundations with a hammer and a star drill. That was hard work, but it put a few bucks in my pocket. Through my sophomore high school year my friends and I would do whatever we could think of to earn money.

During the war the government built hundreds of small homes in North Portland, Oregon to house all the shipyard workers brought to Portland to build “Victory Ships” needed to transport supplies to the troops fighting overseas. These houses were one story and about 800 square feet in size. As soon as the war ended, these neighborhoods were phased out and by 1955 or so the houses were all empty and scheduled for demolition. One large neighborhood of these homes was located one block from our family home on Oswego Avenue in the St. Johns neighborhood.

On the roof of each of these empty homes was a plumbing vent stack that was wrapped with lead sheeting. As I remember, each weighed about 10 pounds. I don’t remember the name of the older boy, he must have been at least a junior or senior in high school, who had the idea of liberating these vent wraps from the roofs, melting them over a fire and selling the amorphous lumps for scrap.

Joe Hoffman and I were suckered into getting on the roofs, prying them off, and throwing them onto the ground. The older person would then take them somewhere, melt them, and take them to the scrap yard. I don’t know how much he sold them for, but I’m sure Joe and I took the short end of the stick after taking the greatest risk of being arrested. This was only one of our attempts, and the only illegal one, to have some spending cash.

After I turned 16, my Grandpa Duckham got me a job working in Richey and Gilbert’s fruit packing warehouse in Yakima during the June and July fruit harvesting seasons in 1958, 1959, and 1960. I have to say I truly hated this job. It was nonstop except for two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute lunch break per day. Sometimes we would have to go home, eat dinner, and return to work for a couple of hours. If I was working on the packing line, the fruit was wet and cold and my hands froze all day.

Sometimes I was assigned to putting lids on baskets of fancily packed fresh prunes. That involved placing the woven wood lid over the two wire hoops sticking up above the basket sides, and bending the wires over. I would wear out a pair of gloves in less than a day and my hands would ache for hours after work.

The only bright spot was seeing the beautiful young Hispanic girl who also worked there. Too bad I was so shy, but then she didn’t give me the time of day anyway.

Ken Kaiyala
4-20-23