The Job Jar

When I was eight my parents instituted a “job jar” for my younger sister and me. It was a Chock Full of Nuts coffee can with eight pieces of paper in it, folded. Each Saturday morning we took turns taking our four weekend tasks.

Our reward was fifty cents a week allowance, that was basically our reward for being on the planet. Fold diapers. Dust. Vacuum (ugh), weed (ugh). We actually had a country house incinerator put in by the previous owner so burned most of our trash, sorry, carbon footprint supervisors.

The most feared were the ones that said “Ask Mom,” and “Ask Dad.” Getting both was a double whammy because who knew what their projects were that weekend.

Just as I find shortcuts to the grocery store or through town everywhere I live, we were tricky. If one was unlucky enough to get both feared tasks, do Mom’s first. It’ll last 3-4 hours, like weeding her entire garden. Then with sweat on your brow and dirt on your face go see Dad and say “I just weeded the entire garden, what would you like me to do?”

We were little kids! He would say “See that screwdriver over there? Hand it to me. OK, you’re done.” My boyfriends used to call him Old Eagle Eyes. He can have quite a stern demeanor but he’s a softie underneath that Germanic crust.

A job jar may be a good way for a large family to operate. I’m seven years older than my brother and 11 years older than the youngest sister so they couldn’t do chores. We could and this unfinished house was a HUGE project that took us three years.

Alongside the job jar came whatever house project was on deck for that week. Paint the house, we used creosote as that is what was there. That cancer-causing substance is not allowed anymore but we used it. We dragged rocks for weekend after weekend to build a retaining wall.

When the septic tank backed up the plans didn’t show where it was. The former owner who built the place knew the general area but no specifics. So we had our work cut out for us.

One story people love is that my Dad wanted to build a front stoop. It was actually the back door, the one we used, because the front door was twenty feet from a 150′ cliff.  Which we climbed after the first week and Papa got us a solid rope with knots every foot so we wouldn’t get hurt.

So we got several hundred pounds of sand. Portland cement. He said 4x3x3 for the base, then build the step from brick. My father thought he meant three FEET deep. If that house blows away in a tornado the stoop will still be there.

I was the “chef” mixing cement with sand and water in our wheelbarrow, load after load after load. Then we started tossing in rocks and whatever we could. We went to the hardware store several more times for cement and found out what was wrong but it was too late to fix it.

Luckily we had extra sand so built a sandbox with railroad ties to hold in the sand. A year later I was taking horseback riding lessons from our high school neighbor on an unruly pony named Pickles, who would lay his ears back then do something to rattle me, like jump the creek.

It was our final lesson and we went along our back 40 at a walk, then my instructor told me to trot, on the diagonal, alone. He cantered, got to the end of the line and stopped dead in his tracks. I was thrown over his head, and landed in the sandbox and only my pride was hurt. He ran home and my instructors’ parents (he taught at the university) were having a dinner party and they all walked down the 1/4 mile driveway to see who Pickles threw. Was my face red?

I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason. Someone had a load of sand they couldn’t sell, we got it, built the stoop and I didn’t get killed or break any bones. Pickles is long gone now but I haven’t been on a horse since. Cheers! Dee