When I was 16, my first job was at Harvey’s in Shillington:

The hamburgers really were 15 cents. After the cashier kept ending his shift with MORE money in the till than should have been there (by short-changing the customers) the manager asked me if I could make change. Of course! So, I took over the “front”, which was fine with me, as cooking the fries and apple turnovers and mixing shakes was greasy, sticky and repetitive. My cash register tray was always on the penny when I went off-shift. It was a game I played to be exactly even after an 8-hour shift. 

Every hamburger bun had to be accounted for. I think I earned a dollar an hour. I rode my bike to work. We wore white pants, sneakers and short-sleeved shirts with little white caps like at In-And-Out, except for Carol, the plump “Dutchie” woman with thick glasses who worked the grill. She wore a hair net that made her look decades older than her years, lived with her family in Pennwyn and rode the bus to work. She and the manager were the only people who were permanent employees—lifers. The rest of us were part-time teenagers who wanted to earn a modicum of financial independence from our parents.

There was NO A/C in the place, which made for some steamy days during the summer of 1966, when the tarmac parking lot was as hot as the grill. One of my co-workers told me that Black people never order chocolate shakes. I told him he was crazy—but he was right! They would always order strawberry, and if we were out of that flavor, vanilla. To this day, I can’t figure that one out.

When the summer ended, so did my career as a cashier. I was a junior in high school.

Richard