PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

August 24, 2022

SUMMER JOBS

                Tuesday, July 28, 2020, I along with Diane and two of our grandsons spent the day touring the Wisconsin Dells.  First, we took one of the original Wisconsin Ducks and toured the lower dells and surrounding area.  Then we took a dells boat and took a two hour tour of the upper dells.  The pilot and tour guide for the Duck tour and the pilot for the dells boat tour were college students.  The tour guide for the dells boat tour was a high school senior.  Each of them did about three tours a day.

From my experience tourism in south central Wisconsin depended a lot on college students and high school students who were employed for the summer.  We saw them at restaurants, stores, Devil’s Lake State Park and the House on the Rock.  Without these summer employees tourism in Wisconsin would be in serious trouble.

I remember back at the summer jobs I had.  One summer I rode the South Shore to Chicago where I worked in the lab at Cinch Manufacturing.  Another summer I worked in the parts department for Smith Chevrolet in Hammond.  One of my more interesting jobs was delivering free samples of Puffs and Downy in Gary.  I had a summer job at Purdue working with the grounds crew.  Got to see a lot of the campus that most people never see!

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.”  The Book of Proverbs describes some of the skills that are necessary to be successful in life. Besides making money for school, summer jobs can help students learn skills which can serve them well the rest of their lives.  One of my shorter summer jobs was selling encyclopedias.  I was not very good at it.  One of my problems was that I could not deal with failure.  My supervisor told me that generally a good salesperson would sell a set of encyclopedias at every tenth house.  Failure for him meant that he was one house closer to the house where he would sell a set.  While intellectually I could buy the logic, emotionally and personally it never stuck.  I still have a difficult time dealing with failure.  Being able to deal with it is a skill I have never mastered.

When I was the pastor of the Trinity United Methodist Church in Kendallville, Indiana, I was asked to serve on an Industrial Task Force.  A part of our work was to interview employers in the area.  There seemed to be general agreement that they were looking for employees who could read, do basic math and take instruction.  However, the most important trait for which they were looking was that employees would show up.

I have five grandchildren who have summer jobs.  Four of them are in college and one is in high school.  Three of them work at Target, one works at a bakery and one works at a restaurant.  Even though they are entry level positions, they offer the opportunity for them to learn the basic skills and work ethic that are necessary to be successful in life.  Sometime they learn indirectly.  One of them has a friend who was fired because she continually missed work.  There is something to be said for just showing up.

Summer jobs are important for the economic vitality for many communities in the United States.  They come in all shapes and sizes.  They also provide a place for young people to learn and perfect the skills and work ethic that are necessary to be a success in life.  Hopefully they are training young men and women in the right way from which they will not depart when they are old.