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Sep 30, 2016 5 min read

You hear story after story these days about how youngsters are overweight, with some even developing diabetes. Apparently parents are worried about the safety of their kids playing outside and figure they’re better off staying indoors even if they gain a few pounds doing so.

I don’t think thatÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵ the right approach, but I guess each to his own. ItÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵ quite different, though, from the way I grew up.

In the summer we’d have breakfast, go to the local playground and play ball until noon. We’d come back home for a quick bite to eat and then head on over to the local municipal swimming pool, where we’d spend our afternoons.

After dinner, we’d either go back to the playground or if we had a ball game that night make our way up to the Little League field. It was quite the life. We never sat still, and we enjoyed every minute of it.

We also had various jobs while growing up. Everyone was expected to pull their own weight. It was simple. If you wanted any spending money, you had to earn it. It was good training for life. Basically, you learned the value of a buck. You also learned the value of showing up on time and working with others.

However, as I think of some of those first jobs I wonder if any of them even exist today. My first job was working in my grandmotherÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵ neighborhood grocery store. I didn’t make much money, but I got all the candy and pop I wanted, which was better than money back in those days.

At one time it seemed like every neighborhood has a grocery store, but these days they’ve become pretty much extinct.

I started working as a newspaper carrier when I was 12 or 13. I helped my brother with his route for several years before taking it over when he moved on to other interests. Most of the people were very nice and tipped me well. However, I still remember those people who refused to pay their bills. You could see the television and lights on, but there was no way they were coming to the door. Who they thought they were fooling was hard to tell. But it was a little hard to take because you only got paid off what you collected. So you were the odd guy out when someone failed to pay up.

However, today most of that work is done by adults, and itÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵ rare to see a paperboy or papergirl.

Then, my next job was a pinsetter at a bowling alley. I set up for men and women and liked the men the best even though they could send the pins flying high near the bench were we sat. They were quick and bowled a lot of strikes, meaning you only had to bend down once. But the women took forever and rarely threw strikes, meaning you had to bend twice to set their pins. Trust me, all that bending added up, even at a young age.

However, most bowling lanes today are automated, eliminating the need for pinsetters.

Then, while going to college I worked for three summers at a local factory, where my dad was employed. They used to hire hundreds of students with the only qualification being that you had to have a parent who worked in the factory. They were good jobs, paying probably double the minimum wage. And the jobs weren’t hard, at least most of them.

I also had a chance to work with my dad. We didn’t work directly with each other, but our shifts overlapped and we used to meet up in the restroom. We exchanged some funny stories and then went home and complained about how hard we worked that day.

Again, it was a valuable learning experience, as I soon came to realize that I wasn’t particularly suited for a life of manual labor.

However, most of those factories are long gone now. And I doubt very much if any business these days hires college students like they did back in the day.

In college, I worked at a variety of jobs, including driving a cab and washing dishes for a couple of restaurants. But I also had a lot of jobs through various work-study programs, which have been reduced or eliminated.

So, I wonder what kind of jobs young people get these days. While we moaned and groaned at the time, they definitely honed my work ethic and helped me become the person I am today.

In fact, I kind of feel sorry for kids today, who don’t have those types of experiences. You have to think they’re missing out on valuable things such as learning to take nothing for granted and appreciate what you have.

Those things alone have held me in good stead over the years. And they certainly made me realize just how fortunate I was to grow up when I did.

Mark O’Keefe is the editorial page editor for the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ. He can be reached by email at mokeefe@heraldstandard.com.