How hard could it be?

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Cellar Hound

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When I was in my teenage years, I would spend my summers working on a farm. A friend and I would get paid $5.00 per wagon to unload bales of hay and stack them in the loft. One of us would unload to the conveyor and the other would stack in the loft. We would switch when the guy in the loft was about ready to pass out due to the heat. We typically did about two wagons per hour, which gave us each five dollars for each 60 minutes. This was double the minimum wage at the time. We started at 5am and worked until 3pm.

This was the hardest physical job I have done in my life. At an early age, it solidified the definition of “hard work” in my mind.

What solidified your definition of “hard work”?
 
I was 15 when I got my first real job. I worked for a man who had a contract to renovate the kitchen cabinets in a large apartment complex. I removed all of the kitchen cabinet doors by hand using a manual screwdriver (12 screws per door), then hand sanded the old paint rough so that he could apply new laminate using rubber cement. He would then router the edges. Then I reinstalled the doors (12 screws per door). An 8 hour day would see us complete two apartments, and I would earn $14 ($1.75 per hour) before taxes.
 
Hauling hay, like above. Occasionally, we had access to a tractor trailer and conveyor setup, but mostly it was three guys and a pickup.

Also installing barbed wire fence.

My dad used to say about ranch work: if it ain’t hard, you ain’t doin’ it right.
 
I grew up on ranch. During haying we use a two ton truck with a mechanical bale loader that picked up the bales and ran them up a ramp to the guy on the back who stacked them.
We took turns driving around the meadow picking up the bales and stacking them.
When we got to the barn, the bales were stacked in the second floor of the barn. The truck was parked outside beneath a 4x4 door. One guy was in the barn and the other on the truck.
The guy on the truck threw the bales through the door and the guy in the barn drug and stacked them inside.
Oh yeah...$5.00 a day
 
Narragansett said:
Farm work. I used to work on a horse ranch in RI. Hay, stable work, and loft work as you describe. However we had no conveyor.

I spent a month on a farm in Iowa when I was 16. Now that is real work, 7 days a week. Loading pigs for market is a real treat, plus there were 160 milkers
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Did the same thing back in the 60s. We got paid 5 cents a bale. Hot sweaty dirty work. Usually there was a few wasps in the barn that stung us.
 
One day, the baler guy baled up a bunch of rattlesnakes.
I was doing the stacking on the truck this time.



We didn't know about the snakes until the bale was coming up the ramp on the bale loader. There were snake heads and tails sticking out of that bale everywhere.
iu

When that bale got to the top of the ramp and I realized what was going on, I GOT OFF!!


Soon realized the snakes couldn't do much. Threw the bale off the truck and went back to work.. Snakes were all dead the next day.
 
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When I was growing up both my grandfather and father, who both were farmers, did get away with the animals we had. My grandfather was the first one in the tiny village to have horses and cattle, a big deal back then.

We had plenty of land and a forest to take care of, I loved it even though it was physically demanding. I didn't get paid for nothing, I got to eat 3x a day and a roof over my head ;)

Once my dad sold all the land and we just had the forest I help out neighboring farmers with feeding cattle, mowing grass, picking potatoes, etc. Again, my reward was food. I guess that's why I'm a foodie?! :confused:

But to be fair, not just physical labor is hard work. Many people work hard to provide for themselves and their families, it doesn't mean it can only be farm- or construction work. I think if you get up every morning and "go to work" for yourself and your families, trying to achieve your American Dream, you are working hard.
 
JJEH said:
When I was growing up both my grandfather and father, who both were farmers, did get away with the animals we had. My grandfather was the first one in the tiny village to have horses and cattle, a big deal back then.

We had plenty of land and a forest to take care of, I loved it even though it was physically demanding. I didn't get paid for nothing, I got to eat 3x a day and a roof over my head ;)

Once my dad sold all the land and we just had the forest I help out neighboring farmers with feeding cattle, mowing grass, picking potatoes, etc. Again, my reward was food. I guess that's why I'm a foodie?! :confused:

But to be fair, not just physical labor is hard work. Many people work hard to provide for themselves and their families, it doesn't mean it can only be farm- or construction work. I think if you get up every morning and "go to work" for yourself and your families, trying to achieve your American Dream, you are working hard.
Click to expand...

You make a very good point Jorge. Well said...
 
Cellar Hound said:
What solidified your definition of “hard work”?
Click to expand...

That's easy. Shoveling gravel by the truckload for road repair on the township road department (and no, I was not wearing stripes or an orange jumpsuit). The tar truck would lay down the tar and a bunch of us would shovel the gravel to cover the tar. We had square shovels and we learned how to flick the shovel so that the gravel would fly out in a square pattern and three of us could cover that tar with gravel in nothing flat in a regular pattern. Later on I became the backup roller operator, but still shoveled gravel most of the time.
 
I'm glad to see so many farm boys here or at least farm workers. Like said above growing up on the farm everyone worked and did not expect any money, just the way it was. My dad had a dairy and beef operation and that meant work went on 365 days/year. At age 11/12 I made a little
money picking strawberries for a neighbor and was paid 5 cents/quart. Being a slow picker I could make $2.75-$3.00/day.
Starting at age 13 I worked for different neighbors hauling hay and was
paid a penny/bale, no conveyor as we bucked bales into those hot lofts.
Worked part time in a custom butcher shop, not that hard.
At 17 I worked in a lumber yard warehouse unloading box cars on the
rail siding. Try laying on your belly in the top of a hot box car handling
2 inch lumber up to 24 feet long, after a couple hours you could work your way down to the place where the loader stood while loading and
you could stand upright.
While doing all these jobs I still worked on the family farm.
But as Roy Clarke said in his song, "I never picked cotton" or worked as
a kid in an underground coal mine.
 
I, too, was raised on a family farm, and learned to work. I actually enjoyed baling hay, as dirty and sweaty as it was. But we didn't put up the enormous amounts of hay that some farmers did -so it may be that the task never continued long enough to alter my view of it.

I also dug post holes and built fence, but the very hardest physical task I ever did was to load manure onto a spreader by hand -with a pitchfork. Dad had sheep for nine of my formative years, and it seemed we never got around to removing the manure from the barn until it was about axle high to a Ferris wheel. On top of that Dad didn't at the time have a manure loader for the tractor, and we failed to regularly get new straw in the manure so that it didn't get hard and packed down.

All the above made for a backbreaking task that lasted a long time.

I've never heard the expression "hard work" actually defined, though it has some general connotations that seem to fit the bill. As stated earlier, there are many whose jobs aren't physical at all, but require an extraordinary amount of time and effort. It seems to me that such people qualify as hard workers.

Regards,
Andy
 
Years ago, I worked as a guide for an outfitter based in Vail and Eagle.

We had a string of about 40 horses. First thing in the spring, we had to shoe the horses. I learned to shoe horses well enough not to do any harm.

I’ve never done anything as physically difficult. After a day of bending over, sometimes being leaned on, removing old shoes and fitting and hammering the new ones I’d be stiff and sore enough that standing up straight was almost impossible.

Since then, I’ve never begrudged a farrier his fees.
 
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My heroes are the millions of people that go to work every day, most of their life. The moms and dads that raise a family, have good morals and ethics and make America the best country in the world. (Yes, I'm biased.)

To me, it's a lot easier to do a heroic act one time than to do it day in and day out for several decades. I applaud the newsworthy heroes, but even more so, those who will never make the news, but make the lives of those around them better, one day at a time. That is hard work.
 
Rpg said:
Years ago, I worked as a guide for an outfitter based in Vail and Eagle.

We had a string of about 40 horses. First thing in the spring, we had to shoe the horses. I learned to shoe horses well enough not to do any harm.

I’ve never done anything as physically difficult. After a day of bending over, sometimes being leaned on, removing old shoes and fitting and hammering the new ones I’d be stiff and sore enough that standing up straight was almost impossible.

Sine then, I’ve never begrudged a farrier his fees.
Click to expand...

Farrier work is like some other professions, it helps to have the
correct body structure. When I had horses I would shoe them,
it took me a 1/2 day to shoe two gentle horses. Good farriers
could do that in an hour.
 
Digging stumps and splitting large blocks of wood to sell for firewood. We cut trees year round, but most of the splitting was done before the firewood season (thank God!!!). Digging stumps was also year round. Later on that's how I paid my bills and expenses while in college and later in seminary. My brother got the wedges and sledge hammer. I kept my axe ... True Temper Kelly Perfect. Just about ideal for the job. Sincerely. bruce.
 
Rpg said:
Years ago, I worked as a guide for an outfitter based in Vail and Eagle.

We had a string of about 40 horses. First thing in the spring, we had to shoe the horses. I learned to shoe horses well enough not to do any harm.

I’ve never done anything as physically difficult. After a day of bending over, sometimes being leaned on, removing old shoes and fitting and hammering the new ones I’d be stiff and sore enough that standing up straight was almost impossible.

Since then, I’ve never begrudged a farrier his fees.
Click to expand...




Been there done that on a dude ranch in New York and on the ranch..That's as hard as anything I've done.
 
Cleaning out molasses tanks.

Tank had been drained, but there was a foot or two of molasses still on the bottom of the tank because, well, it was thick as molasses.

Opened up port to tank, went in, shoveled out molasses around you until you could bring in the disassembled wheelbarrow. Reassemble it (DON’T drop a screw).

Then shovel molasses into wheelbarrow, roll over to port, shovel molasses out port. “Rinse and repeat.” Had a fire hose, used it to cut a path.

Tank was 110 ft in diameter. Did three of them one college break. I somehow got teamed up with two of the higher ups sons who I think were being taught a lesson. Me? I just needed the money.

I don’t know about the other two, but I sure remember it to this day.
 
Having worked "Iron" for 33 years...........

does grabbing a two hand full of 30 foot rebar and lifting to your shoulder and you and your partner carry it 25 to 50 yards to a area on a freeway bridge that is being built.........
place each single bar close to where it goes and when done, shake them out straight as you can get them on the bridge flooring, then bend over and tie them to other pre-loaded rebar carried out earlier, with wire and a pair of pliers, for an eight hour day.

An average day might be placing eight ton of rebar and tying it in place.

We did not mind carrying the little #4 or #5 rebar.......
just got a heavy workout when we had to move up to the #18 bars that were the diameter of a beer can, used for main foundations for large jobs or high rise building footings, like the old Reno MGM, that went 33 stories.

However, having to climb up a 40 foot column, with a full structural belt with a metal sleavier bar, spud wrenches, drift pin, sledge hammer and bolts to connect the iron and get into position to grab the coming iron beam that will be added to the building, was also a heck of a work out.
A good day was 100 peaces of small iron...... 80 if large iron that you had to more careful with, since a mistake could cost someone their life.
 
Cellar Hound said:
....
This was the hardest physical job I have done in my life. At an early age, it solidified the definition of “hard work” in my mind.

What solidified your definition of “hard work”?
Click to expand...

Pouring concrete.

Right out of military service and with several months to fill until college started, I get a call from my uncle who has a small construction business, just a few crews working a handful of jobs at a time.

“I hear you’ve got time to make some money”, he says. Turns out he took a contract to build several hundred feet of concrete retaining wall on a hillside, and doesn’t have enough people. In the small town, really just a village, where he was, you can’t just pick up extra workers.

“The money is great, I’ll pay you cash, you can stay with Auntie and me for free and we’ll feed you, and it’s simple”, he says.

And that’s how I found out that simple and easy are NOT the same thing. I spent about three months building and dismantling wooden molds and shoveling wet concrete. No matter how careful you got, when the mixer trucks poured their loads into the molds, plenty splashed everywhere. Every night you could step out of your pants and they’d keep standing by themselves.

I was quite proud that I didn’t quit before I had too. I made great money, and in hindsight is was a great learning experience. I didn’t just learn to work hard, but also to never romanticize hard work.
 
My two most laborious:

1: in '69-'70 I worked part-time and the summer at the old Cincinnati Gardens hurriedly changing out the arena floor for basketball, hockey, rodeos, the circus, tractor pulls, demolition derbies, roller derby, pro wrestling, concerts, gun shows, ice capades, etc, etc...back breaking.

2: in '75 I worked for Roanoke Construction Co who was building a dam in Ramseur, NC. I worked on the grout crew. We would drill 40' into bedrock to force inject thinned out cement into every crevasse. We did that every day for three months....grueling and yet again, back breaking.

After that every thing has been a cake walk.
 
I remember mowing the lush so. Florida grass when I had to push the mower by the cross piece on the handle.
Dad had me filling wheelbarrow load after load of sugar sand and bringing it to him to spread when I was too short to lift the handles.
I had to squat and get my hands under and lift and the handles were way wider than my shoulders so I had to scrape and refill when I dumped the load.


Hanging upside down in a hole scaling pipe, breaking asphalt chasing main breaks and replacing fire hydrants was a breeze, tho I'm glad I'm done with that stuff.
 
I've done a lot of things and don't remember any of them being easy. The last thing I was doing was water filtration and the main thing was residential homes. About three days a week I'd fill up the truck with 25 or 30 bags of salt weighing 60 lbs each. They used to come in 80 lbs size but I guess others complained. Each house would get three or four sacks, Always on the far side of the house. I'd rather haul 3X80 over 4X60 and save myself a trip. Almost every weekend I would go out and do my personal accounts.

About five years ago I kept getting bad back aches and over all numbness. I finally went to see what's up. I was a mess and will only get worse with time. Deterioration due to me working hard.

I've had recent x-rays and they're worst than the last ones. I'll be 61 in December. I got disability at the beginning of this year.
It's not how I envisioned retirement.

Now the hard work begins,,,,,,,,,,,,
 
Iggy said:
One day, the baler guy baled up a bunch of rattlesnakes.
I was doing the stacking on the truck this time.



We didn't know about the snakes until the bale was coming up the ramp on the bale loader. There were snake heads and tails sticking out of that bale everywhere.

When that bale got to the top of the ramp and I realized what was going on, I GOT OFF!!


Soon realized the snakes couldn't do much. Threw the bale off the truck and went back to work.. Snakes were all dead the next day.
Click to expand...
If your place was anything like where I grew up it got fed too.
 
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