Between the Iron and the Pine by Lewis C. Reimann

Author:Lewis C. Reimann [Reimann, Lewis C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Wars & Conflicts (Other), United States, 20th Century, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9781789120554
Google: 18VQDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2018-03-12T03:04:59+00:00

Earning Spending Money

Spending money was hard to get, especially where there were only one or two breadwinners to feed a dozen or more mouths, clothe them and furnish them all with the necessities of life. There were no luxuries. We had no such thing as an allowance. We depended upon handouts from our parents and these were seldom and small. If we did earn some money at odd jobs, part of it had to go into the family exchequer.

One of the men who worked at the cooperage mill brought his sixteen year old son with him from “down below.” The boy lived and ate at our boarding house and earned six dollars a week at the mill. His father drew the boy’s pay-check and kept it, doling out only such money as was necessary to feed and clothe him. This went on for several months and the boy was In a virtual state of family slavery until some of the men at the mill learned about it and told the father in no uncertain language, flavored with a few threats, that he had better give the boy an allowance. Thereafter the youngster received fifty cents a week for spending money.

During the summer school vacation, in addition to working on our small farm, we brothers picked up odd jobs, which were few in number, for almost every family was self-contained and did its own work. We gathered and sold salvageable articles like worn-out rubbers and whiskey bottles thrown away by the innumerable imbibers. We scoured the alleys and yards for castoff brass, iron, copper, tin and zinc. A Jewish junk buyer, known to us only as “Louie, the Jew”, came to town periodically with his team and wagon and bought up our collections. He stabled his horses in our barn and slept and ate at our boarding house. He claimed that he paid us boys more than he did others because he knew our parents and we were his friends. We always had a box or gunnysack full of articles which we saved toward his coming. He was a kindly old man who lived in Iron Mountain and drove over two counties buying junk. “Louie” was the victim of one of the first crimes I heard about. On one of his trips over a lonely road near the village of Saunders he was waylaid by two tough Flynn brothers who robbed him of his purse and beat him into insensibility. When he finally reached Iron River a week later he still bore the marks of his terrible beating.

We brothers and sisters picked blueberries, raspberries and strawberries which grew wild in the fields and roadsides and sold them when we could find buyers. I recall hearing my sister Mary tell of her experience selling raspberries to a rich but stingy dowager. The woman crushed the berries in her hand while transferring them from Mary’s lard pail to her own measure and packed them down In order to get more for her money.

Oshinsky’s drygoods store was always good for odd jobs and a few dollars spending money each month.

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