Work

My parents taught us to work.  When we were little, we had chores to do and a chart on the bedroom door.  If we did our chores all week, we got an allowance.  If we didn’t, … well let’s not go there.  My mother took us to Jones’ farm on Van Bibber Road to pick tomatoes.  Farmer Jones paid 10¢ for a 5/8-bushel basket of tomatoes, picked and set at the end of the row.  Not much money, but great pay if you had no income at all.  I now realize that it cost my mother more in gas money to get us there than we got paid to do the work.  But she wasn’t interested in the money; she was teaching us to work.  My younger brother, Phil and I mowed grass for our Aunt Ilene because her kids were too young to mow.  She paid us $3 to mow the whole yard.  Way better than Farmer Jones - and Aunt Ilene brought out ice water.  Farmer Jones didn’t.  Then in high school, we went to work for Barberry Sod Company in Darlington, Maryland.  They paid us to pick up cut sod and stack it on pallets to be used at new housing projects in Baltimore.  We got paid $1.50 per pallet.  We could make twenty dollars a day!  Great money in the summer.  Of course, dad provided the 1958 Volkswagen for transportation.  He paid the insurance and gas and repairs.  My parents are gone now, but their teaching has helped me through the years.  All four of my children are hard workers.  Not because of me, but because of the training that I got from my parents, who got it from their parents, who … well, you get the picture.  Are you teaching your children to work?  Are you teaching your children to love God?  Bring your children to church with me and we can learn together.