Childhood Memories of Earning My Own Money - in the 1960s

On the back of comic books or children's magazines, there were ads for kids to sell things door-to-door to make money or get prizes. My older brother sent off for this offer and told us (the three younger children) we could make money by knocking on doors and asking if they'd like to buy boxes of greeting cards. He gave us a quarter for each box we sold.

But my mother found out what he was doing. The company gave 50 cents for each box of cards sold, and my brother was keeping a quarter of it. He was making a pretty good profit for doing nothing! So she ordered some cards and let us sell them and keep the whole 50 cents.

Later on, we also sold ink pens, cigarette lighters, flower and vegetable seeds, and other trinkets. People were nice even though not everyone bought something, We had enough success to keep it up for a couple of summers.

Photo by Burntchestnut

During the summer I had fun making money by catching lightning bugs for the Sigma Chemical Co. in St. Louis. They were using lightning bugs for research and paid children to catch them. I had a lightning bug net and could catch a lot of them every evening. The net had a little pouch at the end to shake the lighting bugs into and they couldn't crawl back out easily. When I finished for the evening, I shook the bugs into a glass jar and put the jar in the refrigerator. The cold made them hibernate and then they could be counted. At the end of the week, my mother mailed the lightning bugs in a special container provided by the company (telling the post office to keep the package refrigerated).

The company paid according to how many bugs you caught. You received a certain amount for a hundred or maybe two hundred, and then the pay went up. After I had caught one thousand lightning bugs, I began receiving a penny apiece for them. It made me feel important to receive a check in the mail every week.

Later, as an adult, I was telling this story to someone who lived in Tennessee. She said when she was a child, the kids caught frogs for money. She couldn't remember if it was for a college or a research company.

Photo of lightning bug / firefly from Wikipedia

Glass soda bottles were worth two cents each and there were plenty to be found. I'd often find several bottles as I walked to the neighborhood store to spend my allowance. If I found three bottles, that was an extra 6 cents added to my 20 cent allowance. It didn't matter if the bottles were dirty - the store took them anyway.

One day, finding a soda bottle helped me get more than just two cents. I was walking along looking for soda bottles, when I saw two quarters that had fallen through a drainage grate. The bars over the grate were too close together for me to get my hand through, and the grate couldn't be moved.

I looked around and saw a soda bottle nearby. I picked it up and walked to the store and turned it in for two cents. I bought two pieces of bubble gum, chewed one piece and put in on the end of a stick. I pushed the stick between two bars of the grate and pulled up one quarter, and then the other one. I was rich!

There was a small neighborhood store within walking distance and I went there every Saturday to spend my 20 cent allowance. Most of the time I bought pieces of candy that were a penny each. Candy bars were five cents and comics were 10 cents. The candy was behind a glass case and I bet the clerk didn't look forward to me coming in and pointing out 20 pieces of candy.

One Saturday the store clerk told me I had to pay a new tax of a penny on 20 cents. I was outraged when I had to put back a piece of candy.

I thought it over and the next Saturday I was prepared. I bought ten pieces of candy and paid for them. Then I chose ten more pieces and paid a second time. After that, I always bought half my candy and paid, then bought the rest. I never had to pay the penny tax again.

My Favorite Penny Candy

Candy Lipstick
Candy Cigarettes
Double Bubble Gum
Pixie Stik
Sugar Babies
Candy Necklace
Milk Duds
Candy Buttons
Licorice Snaps
Mary Jane

Photo by 2KoP on flickr

My mother would pay me a quarter if I washed the kitchen or living room floor, or a dime if I cleaned the bathroom floor. If I was really desperate, she usually found something else for me to do; like polishing the copper on the bottom of cooking pans, cleaning out the garbage cans, or pulling crabgrass out of the yard.

Sometimes I went through my bedroom and gathered comic books (which is what I bought if I didn't buy candy) and any other books or toys I didn't want any longer. I spread everything out on a sheet in my front yard and sold them to the kids in the neighborhood; just like a little rummage sale. I usually had a complete sell-out. Then, of course, I promptly went to the neighborhood store to buy candy or more comics.

Photo by Burntchestnut

When I was 12 years old, my family moved from the St. Louis suburbs to a small town in Illinois. I still wanted to earn money in addition to my allowance, so I got a paper route, delivering papers after school.

After school was out, I walked home to change clothes, then to the newspaper office to pick up my papers. We all had large canvas bags to hold the papers. The bags had a wide strap to drape over our shoulders (I didn't have a bicycle). I delivered a paper to each house on my route, placing it in a curled metal holder under the mailbox which hung on the front of the house. Sometimes people had an enclosed front porch and asked me to put the paper inside.

At the end of the week I had to collect the money for the paper. Sometimes people left money in their mail boxes or inside the front porch, but most of the time I had to knock on doors. If I couldn't catch someone at home, I had to pay the money myself until I could collect it. One time I delivered the paper for five weeks before I could catch the person at home! Collection day always took longer, but sometimes I received a dime or quarter tip, or maybe even a candy bar. At Christmas I might get a dollar or two, or sometimes some Avon powder or other small gift.

Delivering papers was a good job during nice weather, but I also had to deliver papers when it rained, during the hot summer, and cold winter. Sometimes the customers would feel sorry for me and let me come inside to warm up a minute when it was cold, or give me a cold drink when it was hot.

Every so often the newspaper office held a contest to get more subscribers. The paperboys and girls would get extra money for signing up a new subscriber. And if we got a certain number of new customers, we'd get a case of soda delivered to our house, or the route manager would drive us in his car one day to deliver papers. That was special because we didn't have to walk and carry the heavy papers. We really appreciated these little treats.

Photo of Paperboy from Wikipedia