The haying season has started.
And that stirs nostalgia.
50 years ago, I turned 14 years of age during the summer of 1973, and was hoping I would finally begin to get paid for working on the Norden Laboratory farm near Valparaiso that my father managed.
I had helped Dad and the other Norden workers the previous four summers, but my labor was all gratis.
There were several Saturday and Sunday afternoons that I would be riding the hayrack behind the New Holland hay baler. I would pull the 40-pound (or thereabouts) bales off the chute and stack the bales on the trailer so the Norden guys would have plenty of hay to unload first thing Monday morning.
It was common for me to have handled up to 500 bales per weekend.
Some of the rides got a bit bumpy.
If Dad saw storm clouds building on the horizon, the tractor moved a little quicker, and the PTO spun a lot faster.
It seemed as if the National Weather Service issued a storm watch every other day while I was growing up in eastern Nebraska.
While daytime storms didn’t bother me much, nighttime storms were a bit more nerve-wracking because I couldn’t see the clouds. My family would spend a few stormy nights each summer in the basement, but we never ventured there during afternoon thunder-clappers.
As an adult working in western Nebraska radio for 30 years, storm watches – and even most warnings – didn’t cause me much anxiety. I guess since I was used to dealing with hundreds of weather alerts as a kid, storms simply didn’t – and still don’t – bothered me as an adult.
Norden Laboratories couldn’t legally hire anyone to work on its research farm that was under the age of 14, so when I turned 14 on July 1, 1973, it was time to start counting the cash.
Unfortunately, counting the cash didn’t begin until late August. For whatever reason, there was a holdup in hiring me, and I had to wait over a month before Dad got the official green light to add me to the payroll.
My excitement mounted even more when he told me I would earn $1.73 an hour as opposed to $1.60 an hour, which was the minimum wage at the time.
I received my first paycheck on August 30, 1973.
My pay was $59.31, which seemed like all the money in the world.
I had planned to use my first check to buy a huge “Go Big Red” Nebraska football rug, but Dad beat me to the punch and got me one for my 14th birthday, so I spent the $59.31 on Nebraska football souvenirs at the State Fair in Lincoln that September.
I spent hours under the old red-brick horse track grandstand negotiating with vendors and trying to get a reduced price on some of the football memorabilia, which included numerous buttons, pennants, and posters.
I also bought my first NU football press guide for two dollars, which was face value. The guide offered an artist’s drawing of Coach Osborne on the front cover, as well as Cornhusker players Dave Humm, John Dutton, and Daryl White.
My bedroom was crowded with Cornhusker memorabilia, and I was now adding to the collection instead of relying on Mom and Dad’s birthday and Christmas gifts.
My total income for working in the hayfields in 1973 was three hundred and forty-four dollars, and most of it was spent on Big Red memorabilia.
While several Big Red items have been donated to community fund raising events and to younger family members to add to their collections, some of it remains in my Big Red collection.
All thanks to – half a century ago – tossing hay bales for $1.73 an hour.