After my Junior year in high school I was close friends with a guy named Roger Hamlyn.  He was a geek and had started his own radio station in his bedroom. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, but just friends.  He introduced me to his friend, Bill Howard, who was the manager of the Chautauqua Park facility in our neighborhood.

Roger and Bill were talking about how they needed some workers for their concession stand in the park and I said I’d be interested in trying the job.  My parents didn’t want me to work until I got out of school, but I insisted that I could walk to the park each day (It was around a 20-minute walk) and walk home at the end of the day.

My first assignment was for a Jerry Lee Lewis concert.  There was this great big concert hall at one end of the park and they had big events all the time.  I drew fountain sodas at the concert.  No alcohol was allowed because of the Christian Chautauqua thing.

Jerry Lee Lewis brought down the house.  He played on the top of the piano, under the piano and from the floor.  The crowd loved him.

I got paid 75 cents an hour and I believe I was there for two hours.

My next assignment was the actual concession stand.  I made cotton candy (which I despise to this day), snow cones, corn dogs, popcorn and drew fountain sodas.  We had to wear these little aprons for our uniform, so I took one home and my mother made one for me.  It was red and white checked.  It really helped save my clothes as snow cones and cotton candy make a mess.

I met a ton of kids that summer.  We had a deaf Christian camp group come through and I learned a lot of sign language.  I met boys from New York, Michigan, and Indiana.  We sometimes stayed after work and went to the coffee shop and had burgers with some of the campers.

I got to know the girl who ran the Putt Putt golf course and she did the best thing in the world for me.  We kids who had the same hour lunch break would get together and cook our lunch sometime.  She had a hot plate and brought the stuff to make sloppy joes.  I was so inspired that in the next few days, I made sloppy joes for my family for dinner.  I can’t even remember the girl’s name but she definitely changed my life.  Maybe her name was Jane.

Before that I had never ventured into my mother’s kitchen.  She didn’t like me in there because I broke things.  I cleaned her bathroom, which she considered too unsanitary to clean, and I stayed out of the kitchen.  That summer I also had a cheerleading seminar at a local college where I ate lasagna for the first time.  When I got home my mother and I learned to make lasagna.

Because of that job, I was hired at Frisch’s Restaurant in the new Dayton Mall.  I was the fountain girl.  I came in early to do prep work, made ice cream sundaes as ordered, wrapped sandwiches for the carry out, cut and prepared the pie display and whatever else I could do to help the restaurant run smoothly.  I loved that job!