A Martinsburg Boy's Memories and Stories from the 1950s

SUMMER JOBS IN THE 1950s

John Bush was raised in Martinsburg and graduated from Central High in 1961. He spent most of his adult life in the Pacific Northwest. He has many memories as a boy in the 1950s that give some insight to the people and culture of Martinsburg in the 1950s. John likes to tell stories and over the years he has repeated the stories of his youth many times. His belief is that those years in Martinsburg influenced him all of his life. Some of the stories are historical in nature, some are colorful, and some are personal. He wishes that you enjoy them.

In Martinsburg there were many things to do for those age 12 or under during the summers in the 1950s, such as church camps, Little League, Bible school, activities at Memorial Park and Tuesday bus rides to swim at the YMCA in Roaring Spring.

Somewhere around the age of 12, many of the town boys began to look for odd jobs but they were scarce. Landing a job mowing lawns was a good deal because the common wage of one dollar per lawn seemed like big money but most people mowed their own lawns. Bob Turner, Monty Gearhart and I somehow got the job of mowing Clad Hershberger’s lawn at his stone farm house. I think only two of us worked there at any one time. Clad paid us each two dollars. That was one of the best jobs, because Mrs. Hershberger always stopped us for a break with her lemonade and cookies.

I mowed Floyd Bush’s lawn by the dam on Spring Street. It was a pretty big lawn and I mowed it with my dad’s 24-inch, gas push lawn mower. One day my friends helped me so I could join them for a game of pickup baseball. We took turns like a tag team, running the mower as fast as we could. The problem was that the mower bounced and the grass was not cut evenly. Dad made me re-mow the lawn the next day.

I had one of the five paper routes for delivering the Altoona Mirror. Besides delivering the newspapers, we were responsible for collecting the monthly fee each month. I carried around a leather-bound receipt book in my cloth shoulder sack. Each day there was scrap paper that was used to bind the bundles of newspapers that were delivered and dumped downtown. Those scraps went into my cloth sack for disposal at the end of the day’s delivery.

One day I dumped the contents of my sack into my dad’s trash burner and the book got burnt. What a boyhood disaster. At least I always took the money bag to my room each night and therefore was able to make a list from memory of who paid, which matched the amount of cash in the bag. As I recall, I delivered about 50 papers per day, six days a week. We did not deliver the Sunday paper. I generally had pocket money for candy, pop and other stuff like toy train purchases. Most of the paper route jobs went to boys but Bonnie Bush, and later her sister Connie, covered the area around the shoe factory on the east end of the town. Steve Dilling, Jim Moose, and Monty Gerhart also had paper routes and, for a while, we all got our papers dropped off at Monty’s house across from Dilling’s store.

During the 1957 recession there was a massive layoff at Bush Electrical. I recall overhearing a discussion between my dad and Uncle Clyde Bush at our house one evening. Apparently, Clyde was surprised that he was on the posted list of layoffs at the shop and the discussion was about the prospects for Clyde who still had daughters at home. He got a new job as time keeper at the New Enterprise Stone and Lime Company in Roaring Spring. They were expanding at a rapid rate due to the federal government’s new interstate highway program. New Enterprise S&L began to dominate central Pennsylvania’s concrete and road construction work and their red trucks and other equipment seemed to be everywhere.

Overall, summer jobs for teenagers and young people in Martinsburg during and after that recession were scarce for several years. I believe that summer jobs were also scarce throughout the Cove. They were even scarcer for the girls. Maybe there was the perception that girls were not supposed to hold summer jobs. The summer job market continued to be weak into the ‘60s. Four of my high school friends returned from their first year in college and were not able to get work in the Cove.

The cannery hired boys in July and August to pick corn. You had to be fourteen and big enough to pull and throw ears into a truck all day long. Bill Reese recalls that his dad would not allow him or his brothers to work at the cannery. Without my mom’s permission I showed up to work one day but was not able to keep up with the truck and left.

Jobs at the shoe factory were generally taken by unmarried women who had finished school and married women who had to work to help support their family. George Baker and a couple of his classmates worked as butchers at the IGA grocery store. Dennis Heisey, a friend from church, went out west to work driving combines as they moved from the southwestern states northward into Canada over the course of the summer. Ritchey’s Dairy hired a couple of girls to sell ice cream. If you were lucky, your dad had a business or worked for a family business and you got work each summer. Of course, in some cases, you were not paid much for working for your dad. I went to work for my Uncle Floyd’s electrical construction company when I was 14 and worked there each summer until after my junior year in college in 1964. The work crews traveled anywhere from an hour away to more distant to jobs in West Virginia. This gave me an education that most boys in Martinsburg did not receive. The men voiced opinions and talked about topics that were never mentioned in my home. It is interesting that decades later when I applied for Social Security the summers of employment at my uncle’s added to the number of years that I paid into the system and increased my benefits.

The bowling alley at Memorial Park did not have automatic pin setting machines. Teenage boys were hired to jump down into the lane, grab the downed pins, and place them in slots in a piece of equipment above their head. Then the pins were set by pulling down a horizontal bar which was released before one jumped back up out of the way. Several friends worked there but I don’t think they made much. I tried it a couple of times but being small made it difficult.

Steve Dilling, who was also short, did work there for a while. Terry Dilling, another boyhood friend, worked there for a long time. I think you were paid by the bowler and did not receive an official check from the bowling alley.

Many people, in retrospect, have asked me, “Why didn’t you work on one of the many dairy farms, especially those near town?” Most farms in the 1950s were small and family run. The farmers’ children generally did the farm work during the sum mers, working most days, so help was not needed and/or not affordable.

The Slagenweits rented Floyd Bush’s farm that was, in part, within Martinsburg’s borough limits. Most of that farm is now occupied by houses of The Village at Morrisons Cove retirement community. It was not unusual to see the whole family out picking up bales of straw or hay. Mr. Slagenweit and his oldest son Paul would be on the wagon to grab the bales from Mrs. Slagenweit and their daughter Linda. Gerald, who was my age, drove the tractor when he was little. I remember helping out a couple of times by driving the tractor as I was too small to buck bales. I didn’t get paid, I just thought it was cool, and Mrs. Slagenweit generally served freshly baked pie after the wagon was loaded. Many of the local townies helped on the farms, but not for pay. So, summer farm jobs were generally not to be had. Most town boys did home chores and some received a weekly allowance. The town boys grew up thinking how lucky the farm boys were to have summer work. Later I realized many of the farm boys were paid very little or not at all. I was very fortunate to have extra monies because I worked for my uncle.