No Time To Work A Summer Job

By: Betsy Reason

I remember when I was in high school, and I wanted a summer job.

I thought it would be fun to work. One of my friends did corn de-tasseling. But she quickly told me how much hard work it was, as did my dad, who talked me out of it.

So I applied for a job at a local grocery store. They called and interviewed me for a job pushing out customers’ carts. Remember when stores used to do that?

I applied for a job at a bank as a teller, but they wanted employees who would return after graduation and not a student heading to college.

I ended up going through a program for local students and got a job working over the summer in my own high school’s front office, answering phones and making copies on the Ditto machine for the summer-school teachers. Remember the smell of the Ditto copies?

This spring, my daughter said she wanted an all-summer job (Last summer, she got her feet wet working five days at a local fireworks shop just before the July 4 holiday). This year, she went as far as going and picking up a job application at a local eatery and talking to the manager in person.

We tried to figure out her schedule to see what hours and days of the week she had open.

Busy people make good employees, right?

As the days went by, and we put all of her summer activities on the calendar, it seemed there was no time left for a summer job.

Being the summer after her junior year in high school, she quickly filled her schedule to the brim.

She auditioned for The Belfry Theatre Apprentice Players’ “Willy Wonka Jr.” summer youth musical the first weekend of summer break. And rehearsals would immediately begin four evenings a week through the entire summer break.

Plus, she signed up for two summer school classes, a math class through NHS and an Economics class online, both for high school credit.

Being a Conner Prairie youth volunteer, in her sixth year, she was a camp helper for Conner Prairie camp the first week of summer break. That was seven hours a day, morning to mid-afternoon.

At Conner Prairie, she is also a spinning co-captain who will co-lead her Sheep to Shawl team that will compete with other Conner Prairie teams to spin, card, warp and weave a scarf in four hours on the last day of the Indiana State Fair, so there is spinning to do all summer and lots of prep working, plus helping to teach spinning trainees the art.

Also, at Conner Prairie, she applied for and was selected as a pottery apprentice, so she learns how to make pottery on a wheel in Prairietown under a trained potter there a few times a month.

She had a dozen graduation parties to attend the first few weeks of June.

Don’t forget singing the National Anthem the first Saturday of each month at Legacy Keepers’ StringTime on the Square, plus Legacy Keepers’ July 1 all-day music festival, for which she coordinated a few of her musically talented NHS friends to perform during her Addie & Friends segment. 

Plus, she was among about four dozen young cast and crew members who represented “Willy Wonka Jr.” in the Noblesville Fourth of July Parade through downtown Noblesville.

A Hamilton County 4-H’er of nine years, and her club’s president, she also has 4-H projects to finish before the 4-H Fair, July 20-25.

Right after that, “Willy Wonka Jr.” musical takes the stage for five performances at The Ivy Tech Auditorium in Noblesville.

Just as soon as the musical closes on the last Sunday of July, school starts on the following Monday.

Surprisingly, we squeezed in a three-day weekend trip to Nashville, Ind., in Brown County. And she practiced driving enough to take and pass her driving-skills test at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get her driver’s license.

-Betsy Reason writes about people, places and things in Hamilton County. Contact The Times Editor Betsy Reason at betsy@thetimes24-7.com.