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Boy Scout Camp Counselor I held several jobs while still a teenager. My first summer job, other than mowing lawns and such, was at Bear Creek Scout Ranch near Hunt, Texas in 1969. The summer before I had trained for 3 weeks at Indian Creek Scout Camp (Ingram). At Bear Creek I taught camping skills to the Scouts. I was an Eagle Scout but still quite young (15). I learned several cool knots that I still remember to this day. We camp counselors slept in single-man tents on concrete slabs with cots - much nicer sleeping quarters than the scouts endured. I remember we were at the camp during Apollo 11 flight. The camp leader I worked with was an old retired military man and he did not believe that Neil Armstrong actually walked on the moon. On weekends, we would go into town (Ingram or Kerrville) and talk about raising hell but never did. Being the youngest, I just went along for the ride. One time, we drove into the Camp Waldemar girl's camp parking lot quietly then turned the radio all the way up, screamed out the windows and sped away - now that was raising hell! Trap and Skeet Puller The summer of 1970 I worked as a Trap and Skeet "puller" at the National Gun Club out Culebra Road in San Antonio. I would ride out there at 5am with my friend, Roby Chapman, and we would load the machines with clay pigeons and then work the ranges when the shooters came. Skeet was a lot more fun than trap but you had to start off in the trap pit. There, you had a box of clay pigeons ready and open. The arm of the machine flung around, shooting the pigeon out of the pit. Before it swung back around, you had to load the next pigeon into the machine. Once you mastered that job, you could get out of the pit and be a puller for skeet. You would load a stack of pigeons into machines in houses on either side of the range, then stand by the shooter and when he yelled "pull," you hit the button, alternating the sides of the range where the pigeon flew from. You also recorded the scores. For this, I earned $1.25/hour. I was a growing 15 year old so lunch consisted of 4 or 5 sandwiches that I had made for myself and crammed into a paper sack. I never got enough to eat so I usually hit the snack bar after eating. Fish Hatchery Construction Worker The summer after graduating from high school (1972), I got a job at the National Fish Hatchery in Uvalde Texas. Ten students from from Holmes High School joined ten students from Uvalde High school for this Youth Conservation Corps program. We lived in the top floor of the Briscoe Hotel, boys at one end, girl at the other. Each morning we would bus out to the hatchery where we built catfish pens and other construction work. One weekends we would hang around Uvalde where the big thing to do was to "drag Main and Getty." One weekend we went to garner State Park and another we went to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in the valley. A couple of weekends I went home to San Antonio with my friend Griffin Jones. Since my parents had already moved to El Paso, I would stay at Griff's house. At Joan's dad's funeral, I met a relative of Joan's family that worked at the hatchery while we were there and we had an interesting conversion. Tennis Racket Stringer After my freshman year of college (1973), I flew to my parents new home in El Paso. Through a family friend, Jim Denton (son off Dalton Denton for whom the champion racehorse Gay Dalton was named) I got a job at Cooks Sporting Goods. I strung tennis rackets and sold in the tennis section of the store. In my spare time I played enough tennis to where I actually made the Southwest Texas tennis team during my sophomore year. I would return to this job in the summer of 1974. Pot Scrubber, Night Watchman, Store Clerk When I went off to school at Southwest Texas, I had to pay my way after the freshman year. I had no idea what this would take so I pretty much grabbed every job that came along. The fall semester of my sophomore year I simultaneously worked as a pot scrubber in the school cafeteria, a night watchman to let the co-eds into their dorm after hours, and at a small sporting goods store near campus (Sports Skeller). After several weeks of this, I figured out that I could eliminate the pot scrubbing job. During the second semester, I quit the night watchman job. I could make enough at the Sports Skeller working 20 hours a week at $1.75/hr. to get through school. I worked there during school until I graduated, ending pay rate was $2.25/hr. Chili Dog #2 was next door so I could buy a couple of Chili Dogs for lunch on those Saturdays when I manned the store by myself. Singer For several months during college, I also got a job singing on Wednesday nights at Jon Bones (bar and restaurant) for $20/night plus a hamburger. I had a repertoire of over 100 songs. That was the best college job I had! Office Copy Boy In 1976, I lived with brother Jim and his wife Debbie in San Antonio and worked in the copy shop of Datapoint Corporation. I would operate heavy machine to copy, cut and drill paper for reports. Programmer/Analyst Upon graduating from Southwest Texas with a business degree in MIS, I landed a job with City Public Service as a programmer. I programmed on a Univac mainframe there for a couple of years. The best part of the job was the dominoes (21) and spades at lunch and the softball team. The job was in downtown San Antonio and had some interesting aspects. I still remember Pat Bediker (sp?) leaving at 4:55pm and saying "well I cam in a little late this morning so I'm gonna leave a little early." Systems Programmer After a couple of years at CPS I moved on to Datapoint Corporation which was in Northwest San Antonio and closer to our home. I was a programmer there as well, working an Communications Management products. It was a much different atmosphere than CPS but I blended in after a time. The company, however, began to experience problems in the early 1980s. Sr. Vice-President of Software Development I heard that an old Sul Ross Junior High School friend, Richard Hahn, was part of a company in Austin that programmed Datapoint gear and soon we were off to Austin where I was to work at hal Systems Corporation. This was in 1982 and a totally different culture (both work and the city). hal Systems is a small company headquartered in Dallas. I have been with them ever since and run the Austin office (www.halfile.com). I've done a lot of traveling in my work to exotic and not so exotic places such as Ottawa Canada, Fairbanks Alaska, London and Plymouth England, Washington D.C., Victoria Canada, Bismarck ND (10 below zero), Tampa FL, San Diego CA, and Edna TX. Student From 1987 to 1992, while working fulltime at hal, I drove to San Marcos for night school to work on my MBA. This was a very rewarding experience and in my last year I was named the Outstanding MBA Student of 1992 at SWT. I was proud of myself and my family for our accomplishment when I accepted my diploma in 1992. |