We didn't have a skidder till in the '80's. Did the skidding with a team of horses. I got to do all the grunt work behind our sawmill. Also helped Dad load a lot of 4' lath bolts by hand. With a little practice it isn't as hard as most people think.

When i was about eight or nine (late sixties) my brother and I went into business for ourselves. We'd wade in the three ponds on a local golf course at night and find golf balls that had been hit into them. We'd clean them up with the courses own ball washing machines then display them in egg cartons along a T-off. We'd get fifty cents a piece for the like-new Titleists, Spaldings and better brand-name balls, a quarter for the lesser brand-names or scuffed-up balls and a dime for balls with cuts or dings in them.

Soon after I went to work for a gun club as a trap boy. Back in those days some kid had to crawl into the trap houses and manually feed clay birds onto the thrower. It was dirty, dangerous work. I got a quarter for each squad (five men, twenty-five rounds each). I eventually graduated to scorekeeper which doubled my pay. I had to push a button to release the birds when a shooter called for one. Today, everything is voice-activated and automated.

And of course we trapped, mostly muskrats. This was a time when my weekly allowance was $5.00. One brown muskrat would bring that much, black ones up to $8.00!