The adventures of a Florida boy (part 13)

In the 1960s, kids ran as far and wild as their imaginations would take them

ONE OF AN OCCASIONAL SERIES: My boyhood was spent in Florida in the 1960s on an island called Coquina Key. My parents’ waterfront home overlooked a large expanse of Tampa Bay. Back then, parts of the island were undeveloped, which left plenty of room for climbing trees, digging forts in the sand, and swimming in shark-infested waters (though we didn’t give the latter much thought).

This is part 13 of a random and mostly lighthearted series that I might eventually combine into a memoir. I’m telling these stories to the best of my recollection and changing names and physical descriptions just because it seems like the right thing to do.

All my jobs

Like most people, I can be accused of a lot of things. But laziness isn’t one of them. Until I retired about a year and a half ago, I worked long hours at stressful jobs without much of a break for most of my adult life. A lot of people can say the same. But for some of them, the difficult jobs started when they became adults. For me, they began when I was 12 years old.

Mowing lawns at 90 pounds (ages 12-13)

At age 12, I was 5 feet 4 and weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet. But I was strong and athletic for a kid my size, and I was always hyper-anxious to prove to people that being skinny didn’t mean I was a weakling.

A woman whose husband had recently died lived a few houses down from mine, and one day she asked me if I could mow her lawn. She offered me $2.50. I jumped at the opportunity. Back then, $2.50 could buy enough sodas and snacks to last a week.

The word spread. Soon, I had a second customer and then a third. My friend who lived down the road asked to join me. He was a year older and quite a bit bigger, so he brought legitimacy to a growing operation.

Back then, Coquina Key had a popular little newspaper that was distributed to everyone on the island. It contained news and notes of hugely important stuff like someone’s boat sank or the local convenience store (then called Little General) was expanding its parking lot. But it also included a page of advertisements, including kids who mowed lawns. My friend and I joined the list. At first, were were the last of at least 10 listings. Two years later, we were at the top, the Kings of Coquina Key lawnmower dudes.

During the school year, we mowed lawns after school and on weekends. During the summer, we mowed lawns pretty much seven days a week. Overall, we mowed hundreds and hundreds of lawns. For kids our age, we were loaded with money. My body might not have been a chick magnet, but my wallet was.

I averaged $25 a week.

Cleaning movie theaters in the middle of the night (age 14)

For one long summer, I worked for a janitorial service that cleaned the Plaza Movie Theaters and other businesses in the middle of the night. Quite a few times, the two men who ran the business left me alone in a theater while they went off to another job. Being alone in a massive movie theater at 3 in the morning is the stuff of nightmares for a 14 year old, especially when the theater was showing horror movies and there were posters of vampires and werewolves all over the place. As I would walk along each aisle picking up all manner of debris, I would swear that I saw something rise from behind a seat in the corner of my eye. It scared the living crap out of me.

The good news was that I usually found a couple of dollars’ worth of change on the floor, which I adeptly pocketed. I once found a wallet with more than $400 in it. But as the sun rose while I finished cleaning the glass doors and windows at the front of the theater, a panicked man came to the door and laid claim to it. Oh well, I wouldn’t have felt good keeping it anyway.

Sometimes, I worked all night and then continued working until noon. The service would pick up an extra job, say, cleaning debris around a new house under construction. I still remember sitting in an empty bathtub in 95-degree heat scraping droplets of paint off the acrylic surface with a razor blade.

This was the only job I’ve ever had where I worked all night and slept all day. It was weird.

I made $1.65 an hour.

Frying chicken and burning my thumb (age 15)

When I was 15, I worked for most of the year at a fried chicken restaurant called Chicken Unlimited. The place was damn popular and sold a lot of chicken. I became the best fryer on staff. And sort of like a car mechanic who smells like motor oil, I smelled like fried chicken even after a shower.

On the Fourth of July, a couple of people called in sick, and so only the manager and I were there. I ended up working from noon until past midnight, during which there was a line of people at least 10 deep for 12 straight hours. My stepdad finally drove up, gave the manager hell, and took me home.

Another time, I was cleaning one of the fryers and my right thumb accidentally slipped into the searing grease. I howled in pain. A coworker brought me a cup of ice water. As soon as I put my thumb in the water, the pain went away. But if I took my thumb out, the pain returned with a vengeance. Several hours later, I finally removed my thumb and lay in my bed with tears in my eyes until the pain went away. At least I didn’t suffer any permanent damage.

I gave up frying chicken not long after that.

I made $2.65 an hour.

The seafood restaurant: work, exercise, homework (ages 16-20)

The next job I had was as a busboy at a seafood restaurant called Seaman’s Cove. It was located on the water within a thriving marina. The restaurant was extremely popular—and like most busy restaurants, it was crazy Friday through Sunday. It was owned and operated by a German couple who were mostly nice and who treated their employees well enough.

My job was to clear tables, and I became a champion at it. I could lift ten water glasses—five in each hand—at once. I could clear a table, clean it, and then set up napkins, silverware, and fresh glasses of water in about five minutes flat. The waitresses loved me. My lawnmower friend also worked there, and many nights it became a competition between the two of us who could clear the most tables during the rush hours. To this day, both of us would claim we were the better busboy.

Meanwhile, the owners began toying with the idea of having a valet service. Parking was at a premium in the marina, and people often parked all over the place, blocking driveways and annoying the crap out of the people who lived on their boats in the marina.

Across the street from the restaurant was an enormous dry dock that held a couple of hundred boats. It was probably four stories tall and as wide as a warehouse. Behind the dry dock building was a large parking lot that was too far away for customers to park but not too far away for a teenage boy to run to.

Another friend of mine who was a busboy became the restaurant’s first valet, sitting at a card table out front. At first it was slow, but customers got used to it and started using the service. It was free, but most people tipped 50 cents or even a dollar. My friend eventually took another job and I took over as valet. At this point I was 17, and it became my final job before graduating from college. In fact, it helped pay for most of my college education (which was much more affordable back then) and also gave me spending money on top of that.

I loved being a valet because it killed three birds at once: 1) it was my job; 2) I got tons of exercise running back and forth from the restaurant to the cars; 3) during slow periods, I got most of my homework done.

I became one of the fastest men in the world. My exploits were legendary. I was like Forrest Gump with brains. Watching me run became one of the highlights for Seaman’s Cove customers. I also made a lot of money—probably far more, even, than the owners realized. If they had known how much I made, they might have wanted some of it back.

Another perk of the job was that I got to drive every make and model of car imaginable—from Corvette Stingrays (which I covet to this day) to Rolls-Royces.

Speaking of Rolls-Royces, I was a stickler when it came to not allowing customers to park in non-designated areas. But I made an exception for a rich guy who drove a gorgeous Rolls-Royce the color of Dom Pérignon. He was probably in his 50s and his wife—who wore skirts so short I had to turn my head when she got out of the car—was probably in her late 20s. But none of that mattered to me. All I cared about was that he tipped me $20 to park his car where I wasn’t supposed to park it. And I did this greedily. Keep in mind that $20 in the 1970s was equivalent to $50 or more now.

I graduated high school at age 17 and college at 20 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Soon after, I quit the valet job and began my first career. I ended up being an award-winning journalist for more than 35 years.

But from age 12 until 20, it was quite a run—both literally and figuratively.

(Oh, in case you’re wondering, I averaged about $250 a week as a valet.)

The adventures of a Florida boy — past episodes

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12

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Books 1 and 2 of the teen fantasy adventure Dark Circles are now available and are appropriate for readers 13 and older. But adults are enjoying them as much as young teens.

Book 1 (May 2023) is titled Do You Believe in Magic?

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Book 3 (coming February 2024) will be titled Do You Believe in Miracles?