Whenever my siblings and I would complain about having to do a distasteful job, my dad would trot out stories of working in chicken houses or cleaning spittoons in his family’s bar. Judging from the photo, it doesn’t look like the shady gangster hideout I pictured in childhood.

Of course these jobs always paid a quarter. But that one coin could buy a hamburger, french fries, a chocolate malted, a day at the movies, a bag of jacks, a phone call to ma from the corner booth to tell her he’d be late for supper, a big green marble, admission to the carnival, a bag of popcorn, a peek at the fat lady, and three rings to toss at empty grape soda bottles to win a big blue elephant for the girl next door.

Luckily, I have stories like this to share with my kids. My family didn’t own any kind of business where I could do the jobs nobody else wanted to do, though. My first real job was at an amusement park called Fun Junction. I learned how to install a new roll of tickets in skee-ball machines and fix them when they got jammed. I learned how to operate amusement park rides:

1. Press the green button.

a. The ride should be long enough so patrons don’t complain to 17-year-old supervisor.
b. The ride should be short enough to ensure nobody launches hot dog lunch onto their seat.

2. Press the red button.
3. Above all else, look bored.

Starting wage for this job was $2 an hour*.

Someday my kids will be wide-eyed at the miniscule amount I was paid. They’ll be even more shocked when I tell them everything I managed to do during the summer of 1987 with so few funds.

For $1.05, you could get a taco and small Pepsi at Taco Bell. Movies were cheap, especially at the drive-in with a boost over the pathetic fence from a friend. It was free to drive up and down and up and down and up and down North Avenue for hours on end, listening to cassette mixes of bouncily depressing music. You could borrow mom and dad’s camera to take artsy black-and-white photos of run-down buildings and interesting doors—but you had to wait a week to see the pictures because black-and-white film was sent to Salt Lake City for processing. That’s okay, because you’d be busy playing bad tennis, writing bad poetry, and working on your tan in anticipation of the first day of school and the debut of a brand new you for Junior Year. A more confident you, a wiser you, a richer you—because you had a job, but you didn’t let it have you.

*we made less than minimum wage because it was categorized as seasonal work