Child’s pay

By Joe Rector

I’m not sure if children today have “chores” that they are required to complete. Neither am I sure whether or not young people receive an “allowance” for performing those jobs assigned by their parents. Today’s world is so different than the one in which I grew up, and although I don’t think the present one is bad, I many times don’t understand it.

When Jim and I were young, we did have jobs to complete around the house. Every Saturday morning, we broke out the vacuum and cleaned our assigned rooms. This job was to be completed on Mother’s timetable, not ours, and on many mornings, she threw a hissy fit when we didn’t begin cleaning. We were to vacuum all corners of the rooms and under furniture. Next, we had to dust each piece of furniture. On a couple of occasions, I broke knick-knacks by dropping them while cleaning the dust from them. The loser was assigned the bathroom. While no dusting was required, the commode was scrubbed with a brush, and the sink and tub were cleaned with Comet. Most days, our work took half a day since one boy used the vacuum and the other dusted or scrubbed.

Daddy never trusted Jim or me with the lawnmower. Big brother Dal Gene was honored with that job. Jim and I were the “grunts” for outside work. We had one pair of clippers and took turns clipping grass and weeds from the edges of too many flower beds and around the foundation of the house. If the grass had grown too high, we boys were handed rakes with which we gathered thick, juicy grass clippings into a pile and then lugged them to the woods for disposal.

For all that toil and sweat, we received the allowance sum of zero. Sometimes we’d hear a classmate talk about his allowance, and we’d garner enough courage to ask Daddy about starting one for us. The reply was always the same.

“Your allowance is the food on the table, the clothes on your back, and the shoes on your feet,” he’d state plainly.

Our family wasn’t destitute, but money was tight, and Daddy didn’t believe in wasting even a nickel. Our lunches usually were sandwiches that Mother made and a frozen raisin cake from the day-old bread store. Each of us had milk money. It was placed weekly in our individual Vienna sausage cans. If we forgot to get the money, lunches were dry experiences. Every once in a while, we received extra money to buy a Nutty Buddy or Creamsicle during ice cream break at school.

I used the same line on my children when they asked about an allowance. I don’t remember if we gave them one or not, but I do know that they had extra money when an event came up. My wife did a wonderful job of teaching them how to wash clothes and other individual jobs that they’d perform for the rest of their lives. I cleaned the house because no one could complete the job to my satisfaction. Amy had the heaviest load of all as she cooked, cleaned, and washed, all after putting in a rough day at a full-time job.

I see the things that my wife did all those years ago and wonder why she even put up with me. I took care of the outside tasks, not much of a “chore” when it was compared to all Amy did. These days, I many times don’t have the energy or “want to” to run the vacuum and dust. I decide to leave the work until tomorrow, which means whenever I am inspired or forced to do those things. I still have the same allowance as I did back years ago: the food on the table, the clothes on my back, and the shoes on my feet. Life is amazing in its consistency in some areas.