You kids today have it made...

My first full time job after graduating from trade school in the spring of 1976 paid $3.10/hr and I thought I had the world by the tail! Now I make many times more per hour and it seems like I have less disposable income than I did then after paying the monthly expenses. I fear the day is coming soon, when the US dollar won't be worth the paper it is printed on.

My first job (at age 14 - they didn't check ID in those days), was ushering at the famous Hollywood Bowl (see 1st pic, below) on Saturday evenings during the summertime. We ushered the people to their seats, and once the performance started, we were finished with our work and could sit on the stairs and watch the performance. For this 'hard work' we were paid $2. It was terrific. Every Saturday night we got to see the most amazing celebrity performances.

My second job was also pretty cool. At age 15, I worked as an usher again, but this time at Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theater (where they have the famous movie star's footprints and hand prints in the cement, and lots of "Red Carpet" premiers -- see 2nd pic below), for 75 cents an hour. The only problem was, in those days "first run" theaters only showed one film, every day, all day and evening, for weeks and weeks at a time, so this job didn't last long, cause once I had seen the same film over 20 times, I was going bonkers and finally quit.

Next job wasn't so glamorous. I worked at a department store (for 75 cents an hour - again) in the Men's Shoes department. It was a very slow department with very few customers. Got a lot of homework done though.