My first job

…I used to pick ripe blackberries growing along the irrigation ditches in the summer time for one dollar a gallon. I needed to raise money so I could afford to go to the Josephine County Fair before school started again in the late summer. My folks would pay my entry fee into the fair but if I wanted to go on any rides or play the games I needed to pay for that frivol-ness . My first real part-time job began right after I finished the sixth-grade. My mom had heard that an old schoolmarm who lived not far from the State Forestry Guard Station where we lived was looking for a young lad to mow grass and pull weeds. It was at one of the nicest houses in the valley; the house set off the roadway a short distance and nestled in nicely along the Illinois River. It had large green rolling lawns with huge Birch trees intermixed with what seemed like acres of flower gardens. I had pedaled my Stingray bike, the kind with the raised handle bars and banana seat, many times past this beautiful house, on the way to the big swimming hole a short distance farther up the river.

This was at Enid Birch’s house and I knew she must be really famous because the county road she lived on was called Birch Drive. My mom had made me a small lunch and handed me it just before I jumped on my bike to go see if I could become the new yard hand. Pedaling to Mrs. Birch's house was easy on my bike because it was almost all down hill getting there. Pedaling up-hill back home, now that was a different story. Parking my bike next to the smooth graveled driveway and walking up to ring the door bell, which I thought was pretty cool, not many houses back then had real push button door bells. A stately looking elderly lady answered the door and said, “Yes?” Clearing my throat, I said “I’m Bill Hickerson; I heard you were looking for help doing yard work.” With her stepping out on her porch I could feel her looking me up one side and down the other. She asked do you have gloves. I pulled the leather gloves my mom had provided for me out of my back pants pocket. Mrs. Birch told me in a no nonsense manner, I only pay $1.50 an hour. Which I quickly replied, that would be fine.

Leading me out to one of her many flower garden areas she pointed out her dilemma. She being an avid gardener, she had to have some of every plant that grows. A couple years earlier she had planted some bamboo in a planter. The planter box had broken and the bamboo had escaped. Escaped into her lawn, burrowed into her pristine flower beds and was uprooting her rock walkways. Handing me a digging tool she said I want it all gone, pointing towards the bamboo. Walking back towards the house she quickly turned around and reminded me to take care to patch the lawns after I tore the bamboo roots out of them. To which I replied, yes ma’am. For the next two months I did nothing but battle with this fast growing bamboo jungle. You could chop down bamboo stalks and dig bamboo roots all day long just to find a dozen more veracious sprouts popping up across the lawn someplace else the next day. In addition to that chore, I mowed the lawns with a push mower and battled with the “normal” weeds that grows in any person’s garden, like dandelions.

One day I was on my knees carefully digging weeds in her precious rose garden located behind the house. I heard what sounded like a tapping on a window; looking towards the noise I saw nothing so I went back to the task at hand. A few minutes later I heard a louder banging on a window and looking up from my toil, this time I noticed a figure of a person waving at me from inside the house. This person was urging me to come closer. I did not recognize the man in the window motioning for me to come in the patio door leading into his room. Slowly I opened the door leading into the house and said “yes sir, in a quiet voice?” An older man with a bold tone said “young man, come in here” as I slowly entered and closed the door behind me. Propped sitting up in a big bed was a frail gentleman holding a cane. I did not know who this man was but presumed it must be Mr. Birch? With no introductions, pointing with his cane, he said young man; you see that picture hanging on the wall. Looking at it, I see a grainy black and white picture of a cowboy looking guy with a big cowboy hat on his head. With what looked like four dead guys, two propped up against an old building on each side of him. The cowboy had a big star on his chest; actually he looked more like a sheriff as I looked closer. It appeared that he was blowing pretend smoke off the barrel of one of his two revolvers in the picture. The old man blurts out, “that’s when I captured the Everly Brothers Gang”. From my prospective it didn’t look like he had captured anybody, those dudes were dead looking to me. I asked “is that you in the picture”? Proudly he says “Yep”. I ask him, “You were a Sheriff?” The old guy yells in a drawl, “HELL NO, I was a Texas Ranger son”.

About then out through the window I could see Mrs. Birch looking for me in the back rose garden, calling my name, “Billy”. Seeing me through the window in her house she bolted in the back door leading to this old mans bedroom of sorts. Scolding me, she asks “What are you doing in here?” Not knowing exactly what to say, the old man breaks in. “Enid, go get us some milk and cookies” I say “Oh no sir, I need to get back to work”. Mr. Birch again tells Enid “go get those cookies”, he motions to me and says “young man you sit down next to my bed right here”, where he begins to tell me this huge tale about the Everly Brothers and their train robbin days. Mrs. Birch leans over towards me and informs me that “your off the clock until you get back to work outside”, before she retreats for the milk and cookies.

As the weeks passed I got a fifty cent raise after more bamboo battling, more taps on the window, more milk and cookies, but best of all more stories about when Mr. Birch was a Texas Ranger, in all places, but Texas of course. In his magical cowboy bedroom he had a Texas Longhorn head mounted with his best lariat coiled over one of the huge long horns and the bridle of his favorite horse drooped over the other one. In the antlers of some unlucky deer he had killed long ago he had his old fashion looking long barreled rifle wedged. “Yep that’s the rifle I killed the varmint Paranoid Pete with. Shot him dead at five hundred feet at a full gallop” he told me. It got to a point that I knew when I saw Mrs. Birch coming my way in the yard with her feet dragging in the loose pea gravel on the pathway, her shoulders slightly hunched forward she would be frowning at me “Mr. Birch would like to see you now”. She would still remind me, “You’re off the clock”.

The funniest part was the cold milk and cookies were waiting for me now on the small table next to Mr. Birch’s bed as his stories would begin. At first I wasn’t sure if I believed all the tall tales this old lawman told me, but as time passed he convinced me. He sounded like he was one mean hombre of a Texas Ranger when he was years earlier a younger cowboy.

One afternoon I was working in the yard as several very nice looking cars began driving in the driveway and parking. Out stepped aristocratic looking ladies as Mrs. Birch met them in the yard and pointed out her beautiful, bamboo free, flowers beds to all of them. Mrs. Birch was having a ladies tea on the patio that day as she shuffled me off some ways away so I wouldn’t interrupt their pleasantries. Or maybe she didn’t want to have to get milk and cookies for Mr. Birch and me in front of her friends. As the party began to unwind one of the older ladies walked over to where I was bent over weeding. Leaning down she whispered in my ear “I’ll pay you fifty cents an hour more then whatever she is paying you” slipping me her phone number on a small slip of paper before she walked away…