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What jobs did you have growing up as a kid or a teenager? Did you like them? What was your wage?

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Well as a girl Which it shouldn't be the case at all because guys make it to I was a babysitter and So my early jobs as a babysitter we had a judge that lived behind us and Find so for judge find something so they hired me and they paid me 25 cents an hour they had three children not really nice they weren't that nice of kids and The wife the husband the judge Really nice man very nice man whereas his wife Not really fond of her and so they would call me up I'd get you know feed them dinner do the dishes pick up and she'd call and say we're bringing friends home Would you do?

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Da-da-da-da-da-da so I would do more da-da-da-da-da to get the house ready for them having friends over when they came home And you think maybe they might have paid me a little bit more or anything But nope they didn't and then around the corner, and I can't remember these people's names This was more my summer early summer jobs I babysat for this family and she worked at the TV station downtown Denver and Interestingly enough the TV station. I think it was on Lincoln or Broadway. It had a swimming pool A really nice grassed area and swing pool So if I were taking care of her kids for the day, I was allowed to drive them downtown Park in the TV station lot and we could go up and go swimming and then get food From the TV station now. She paid me a little bit more And it was an all-day job. It was not a night job It was a daytime job and I did that I think at least one full summer and that was my main job

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And then oh, I don't know why I think it when I was 16 I had to have been able to drive because I drove these kids Down to that swimming pool unless we took the bus. No, we took the bus. That's what we did We took the bus down to the TV station. I didn't drive because when I turned 16, I went and got a job This was my you know first real business job at a place called cottage 313 It was for junior sizes 3 to 13 It was in the Cherry Creek shopping center in the real Outdoor mall area the original mall area next to Bowers and Fauncia's shoes the Denver dry goods It was a classic and it was a small little store Probably no bigger than our living room dining room And again, it carried sizes 3 through 13 and it was connected to the store next to it Even smaller than that that was called the maternity mode and so they had maternity clothes

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so the staff worked both of those I was predominantly cottage 313 and I don't remember. I think I got 50 cents an hour. It was kind of a cool place because All the inventory and stuff was kept in the basement And so there was like this elevator shaft that you would go down. There was a safe down there Interesting clientele. I had a guy that was in the mob and he had a wife and a mistress He paid cash. He'd come in and give me a thousand dollars. He paid thousand dollars and he had it all with cash I had a really good Manager of the store her name was mrs. LaVoy and She was an excellent kind of early mentor in my life She taught me how to be Customer focused she taught me about how people could short change you and how to manage money

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How to turn your bills the right way how not to put your money in the drawer until you've given the change She taught me so many good Important skills like that that you should serve you well throughout your life and just how to be a good person I followed her from cottage 313 to when I went to college She he had a the man that owned these stores owned a conrad's mademoiselle Which was out at villa atalia mall, which I think has been torn down And so that was close to boulder and I was staying in boulder My junior year or my sophomore year to junior year And so I was able to work at conrad's mademoiselle. It was a very large store carried kind of everyday wear for Everyday people a lot of elastic waist pants You know polyester things like that and you know, I learned about customer service

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But those I mean again, this is the voice she she came to my wedding She taught me how to walk down the stairs, you know, I don't follow that today because sometimes arthritic things But she just was a really lovely lady and I did love those jobs a lot and I was blessed to have something I could draw on Throughout my life of you know college and high school And a good job made money because I got at conrad's we actually got We got commissions too. So and nice people to work with really got a discount on clothes Yeah, the cottage 313 that was not good because getting a discount on those clothes. I was you know Didn't take home a lot of money, but um, it was good So though, I think those were my early jobs babysitting and working in retail. I never worked fast food So My chief jobs were guess what Vaughn mowing yardwork

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Yes, I remember which you continue to excel at my The first job I remember getting paid Was there is a lady in boulder that lived further east in martin acres Who went to the same?

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st. John's Episcopal church and she was divorced And she needed some yard work. So my dad volunteered me And her grass was really long. It was like four inches long and it was a push reel lawnmower Oh my god, I didn't like it. It was no fun. It was hard. It's really hard when you're in fourth grade Even though I semi big so that was kind of my first job Then to go to day camp. I had to sell ymca mints And that was a terrible salesman I was embarrassed. I didn't want to go up I had no drive to interact And I'd stand in the drive and go they don't want to buy any. Let me go to the next drive. They don't want to buy any And it was my dad was all about matching

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So if you want to go to day camp, here's what it costs. You have to make half of it Shoveling snow mowing lawns or selling mints And I was much better at shoveling snow and mowing lawns So I did a lot of snow shoveling and we moved top or michigan I did a little fill in as a paper route guy. My little brother was quite the little paper boy He delivered the Mining gazette every afternoon got Christmas tips and all this Because he was a charming little blue-eyed blonde boy And played hockey and it was pretty good at it. So we had all these patches from winning things I wasn't as good a hockey player as my brother

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But I was a hell of a snow shoveler So I had a couple of jobs and they didn't pay you by the time they didn't pay you by the inch You were on retainer by the month And so I'd have to get up early and we get you know 6 to 12 to 14 inches a night So it was a full-time gig from Before Thanksgiving kind of right after Halloween Until the end of March So I did a ton of that then in Iowa from Houghton we moved to Mount Vernon, Iowa then it was

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It was working for Cornell College on the lawn mowing crew. They had the morning crew and the afternoon crew and this was all the sons of professors admin people my dad was vice president in charge of development And so you know you would go out there and there'd be five or six you've yeah and the guys we called the never sweats the true groundskeeper guys would We don't know where they went while we were mowing They disappeared But we made some money doing that Then high school I worked two summers on a ranch Above basalt the frying pan where we'd been camping and stuff and my dad had met these

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this one owner of A bunch of land in Kansas City, Missouri Shawnee mission. He was a huge developer and his partner in the ranch was one of the biggest international harvester dealers in Kansas, so they bought this really nice ranch above basalt and so I got to work there two summers as a not so much a cowboy my little brother got to do more of that I just got to be a irrigator and a fence builder and a fix-up corrals ranch ranch hand not cowboy stuff And that was really kind of fun because you'd ride your horse out and irrigate And they taught you how to do irrigation with ditches and dams and a shovel and a horse

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And so that's still I could still do that. I learned a lot. The foreman was a tough old bird from texas Mr. Bowman much like my father Better do a good job better Stay on the straight and narrow be honest Work hard got 150 dollars a month and room and board For two different summers and so I came back to play high school football. I was in pretty good shape It was crossfit before there was crossfit. We had to bale hay buck bales Round up your horse ride around The only day off was sunday And we'd take a horse and go up and gallop and ride around do all kinds of fun stuff

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So that was really a fun job And then last year before boulder My dad we lived in rockford, ellenoy at this point and he knew a businessman through rotary Who had a shop that was uh rockford was a big machine shop place And this guy rockford acromatic products made cups for universal joints Was one of the main things he built And so he was a good hearted man and he had a big old house with a lot of land And there was a guy a year ahead of me that was his kind of gardener boy but I started working on the in the inspection of parts department

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Which was me and two or three other high school boys the dads knew him from rotary He would these little cups and they put needle bearings in them so They were heat annealed and some of them would crack And so the the head women that plugged gauged them to make sure they would fit but Sometimes they would get Like a box it was like a foot by a foot three feet tall And they would not pass A gm or ford or whoever christler. And so they would come back. So the way they checked these for flaws Not the sizing but the cracks we would sit on the back dock No, he wouldn't throw them you'd take about six of them in your hands

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And you would shake them And if there was a crack it was a flat sound And if they all rung true You'd put them over here. Well, how'd you find the one that cracked you'd shake them?

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There'd be a dead dog in there There'd be a dead one and then you'd just open your hand go good one good one crack good one good one crack highly scientific Highly scientific. Well, it turns out all fowler was reliable Fowler could shake cracks pretty fast and was effective and the kid that was jacking around at his house wasn't doing a very good job No, he had to go off to boy state or something He'd been the school body president and all this good shit. Well, it's like my brother. Yeah, he was like your brother He didn't do a good job as a gardener So guess who is now the new gardener?

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me And it was a blast because I'd ride my bike over to his house his wife would feed me lunch And I got to use a blower One of the early blowers to blow off his driveway The rest is history the rest is history He had a regular push lawnmow lawn boy And then he had a tractor Tractor with a mowing deck, baby You're an F. Yeah, and I'd pick and all these you know, it was like a five or six acre place was huge All these branches downfall, you know, and you'd say okay, Jeff what I want you to do is just pile all those in this ditch And when it gets up to the top of the ditch Just take some gasoline and pour it on it and light it up

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And the first time I did that I was like, holy sh I didn't realize gasoline had fumes that spread quite so far So as a conflagration I get a little hair burned off my arms So that was good Then I went to college and worked food service And more food service and more food service laid side sometimes and Came home and started looking for vet school jobs built houses for four summers And that was it My storied career of yard work It was four times yeah, because we did that I did that on the ranch too Once a week we'd have to mow the lawns of three or four three places The boys get busy feed the horses feed the pigs

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Feed the cattle over there Generally work