I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that, I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
For the longest time I was afraid I'd have to keep on working at the factories. There was a steel mill and a pottery; if you didn't go to college, you went to work in those places.
As I grew older, farms in Kentucky provided me with many jobs in hauling hay and in cutting tobacco. In addition to helping fund my college years, these jobs helped me to meet an array of very interesting and amazing men and women.
In '38, this time I did a job for Mr. Stryker. I went on his payroll at about half the salary I was getting before, to cover what he called Harvest in Ohio.
As a little boy, my first job was delivering newspapers, and then I had a variety of different jobs. I worked in a butcher shop. I worked in a supermarket. I worked in construction. I dug ditches on the Long Island Expressway in 1954, 1955, 1956.
The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too - eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko's, Fatburger, Subway - I was a sandwich artist - and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.
I moved to Princeton, Indiana, and became a professional Farm Manager for that Princeton Farms.
In 1975, I quit my tenure, and we moved from Ann Arbor to New Hampshire. It was daunting to pay for groceries and the mortgage by freelance writing - but it worked, and I loved doing it.
My first job entailed spending a summer working in a cornfield in Nebraska.
My first job out of college was six weeks of picking fruit alongside a dozen or so men from Mexico. The orchard was in Emmett, Idaho. The men spent almost nothing on themselves. Their paychecks went directly to their families back home.
I grew up in Southern Oregon. My father was a sawmill worker and a logger, and his job put food on the table.