Most of the good ones have already been mentioned but you all forgot the most important one.
We walked a mile to school, uphill in both directions!
Seriously, we went to the Catholic grade school that was a little more than six full city blocks from our house. We walked to school in the morning, walked home for lunch and back (one hour lunch break) and walked home at the end of the day. My sister actually went to the old neighborhood and measured the distance and we were walking about 2 miles a day just to get to school and back. That is more exercise than most kids get in a week today. It was a rare treat to be driven to work because most of the time, our family only had one car and my dad had that at work.
And how about working or helping neighbors out? We used to walk around the neighborhood and shovel snow or rake leaves and we were lucky to get 50 cents for an hour or two of work. And our parents would not let us take money from the older neighbors because we were supposed to help them out without charging.
Lastly, I had a paper route and delivered over 60 newspapers everyday of the week for about $15.00 a week. I still remember the serious conversation I had with my parents and my news station manager when I bought my route--yes you had to buy your route from the previous carrier! The station manager impressed upon me that I was buying my own business and it was up to me to make sure that my business was successful by doing a good job with the current customers and adding more customers from the non-subscribers on the route. And during the two years that I owned the paper route, my parents only drove me once and that was because there was an ice storm in Detroit and there were trees and power lines falling all over the place--but the paper had to be delivered. Every other day, rain, shine, snow or sleet, I rode my bike and delivered those papers to the front door, side door, milk chute or mailbox--whatever the customer wanted. The Detroit News would not let us just roll the papers and throw them on the driveway or porch. Learned a lot from that experience about dealing with customers and managing money.
Tim
