Sometimes I felt like I WAS digging with a shovel and a stick, but mostly a stick.  Teaching was not easy.  It was rewarding but not easy.  I taught for 6 years before Tommy and I got married.  My starting salary in 1962 was $2,600 a year.  Now in case you didn't read that correctly, it says twenty six hundred, NOT 26 thousand.  Yep.  That was my starting salary.  My car payments were $76 a month.  I also paid Mother $50 a month room and board (which she, unbeknowns to me, put into a savings account which she gave me when I married Tommy).   Somehow I managed to pay all my bills and never went into debt.

I fell in love with my students, and since they weren't much younger than I was, they wanted to hang out with me on the weekend as well.  I had twin girls who loved to walk by my room, look in, shout "Hello Pat!" and run!  They loved calling me by my first name.  Of course I had to act all mad, but they knew I loved it.

I made so many friends and have so many wonderful memories of those years.  I had teacher friends too, who loved me and helped me be the best teacher I could be.  Their example made a huge difference in the way I taught.

When I quit teaching in 1968 I was making $4,100 a year.  

​I don't know how I found out about this job, but I headed out to work even though I was ignorant as to what it entailed.

I had a car at this point.  I bought a 1962 Corvair.  I had taught school for one year and it was my first summer after that.  I wanted to work in the summer, so found out about this camp.  It was called Camp Sky-Wa-Mo (Sky, Water, Mountain) and it was in the mountains of Upper East Tennessee.  We stayed at the camp all summer in large tents with wooden floors.  We actually had a bed to sleep in so living in luxury!  We had one twelve hour day off and one 24 hour.  When those days came, I was ready.  It was hard work.  

I loved the girls though (for the most part!) and always hated to see them leave.  They came for 2 weeks, then we got another group.  We had "outhouses" which were spotless because that was one of the jobs of the girls.  They were "HTH'd 3 times a day.  Another job was keeping our kerosene lanterns trimmed and full of oil.  That's all the light we had.  We had one shower in the camp with hot water (the rest had cold), and I waited until my girls were asleep to use that shower because it was outside my section.  They were wooden enclosures and the top was open to the sky.  I could look at the stars while showering!

One of my favorite stories from those years is from a night during a terrible storm.  We had a lot of those in the mountains!  One of my girls came running down to my tent and said that one of the other girls in her tent was lying out in the rain, half in and half out in her bed!  That particular girl had been a "drama queen" all week.  I told her friend to tell her to either get out of her bed and pull it back into the tent or stay out in the rain all night.  I was going to bed!  And I did!  

Another night I was coming back from dropping the girls off for a canoe trip.  I had driven to the lake at the top of the mountain and was driving the truck back down to camp.  It was pitch black and of course there were no houses.  All of a sudden a man appeared in the road in front of me dressed in white.  He was waving his arms.  What did I do?  I gunned it!  I knew for a fact that a thriving moonshine business went on in those hills and I was not going to wait around to find out if he was a part of it.

Ok. Ok.  Now you are going to tell me I left an angel on that dark, dangerous road.  I would tell you that if he truly was an angel, hopefully he flew away!

​I didn't realize until I was grown and started earning my own living, what a sacrifice my parents made to send me to college.  I know that my Daddy only made $300 a week during those days and the college I attended (Milligan) was one of the most expensive around.  I suspect that my sister, Millie also helped, although she never said.

Because it was so expensive, I did a work program where I worked at the school and what I earned went on my tuition.  My first job was in the kitchen.  I did everything there was to do from serve food to doing the dishes.  I loved that job because I got to talk to all my friends going through the line.  

One day we were in the kitchen doing the dishes and we decided to see how high we could stack the plastic glasses before they fell.  We had gotten them to a pretty good height when our supervisor, Mrs. Ritz, happened to look in and see what we were doing.  For some reason, the first name out of her mouth was PAT COMBS!  I don't know why!  I wasn't the only one.

I also worked in the library and ended up my last year working for the Dean, Dean Oaks.  He forgot to turn my work hours in, so when I graduated, there was no diploma!  All my family was there for my graduation and when I opened the diploma cover to show them
it was empty.  Of course I straightened it out, but again, I was so embarrassed!  

I also cleaned my sister Millie's apartment every week and she paid me a dollar.  One week she asked me if I had seen a shoe of hers.  I told her no, but I would look.  This went on for about 3 weeks...her asking me if I had seen her shoe and me saying no.  Finally she told me she knew where the shoe was all along...underneath her bed.  She just wanted to see how long it would take me to actually sweep under there and find it!

While in college, I worked every Christmas at Knox Department store in downtown Knoxville.  I lined up my job every year for the next Christmas.  The men's department always asked for me because I kept the tables with pants stacked on them straight.  NOT an easy job.  

One day I went into work and the perfume counter person wasn't there so they asked me to fill in.  I picked up a perfume bottle and pushed the spray button and it was aimed toward me!  It went right into my eyes!  There was a cop there that I had become friends with during the years I worked there, and he told me to go to the bathroom and wash out my eyes and he would man my counter!  Honestly!  What in the world was I thinking!!!

During the summer while in college, I worked on the city playgrounds.  It was hot, exhausting work and I had to ride the bus or walk to and from work.  It paid $25 a week.  I saved it for college as well.  One day one of the children climbed a fence that had crossed wire at the top and he fell and ripped a chunk out of his arm.  I took him to the hospital and called his Mother.  He was hysterical, and I almost was.  When the Dr. started to sew him up, I had to put my head between my legs.

When his Mother came in I realized why he was so hysterical.  He kept saying, are they going to take my arm???  His mother only had one arm.  No wonder he was upset!

After my senior year in college I worked for 3 summers as a girl scout counselor at a girl scout camp.  To be continued......

​I have had so many jobs in my life that I decided to tell stories from each of them..at least the ones I can remember.

The first one that comes to mind is baby sitting.  When I was in the 8th grade I had a wonderful girl scout leader.  Her name was Marti Marsh.  When she took over our troop she realized that we had not honestly earned all the badges we had sewn on our badge sash, so the first year she made sure we all earned them honestly.  One of the badges involved hiking one hundred miles, which we proceeded to do that summer.  They weren't easy hikes either!  I remember one was called "plowing the brush."  We went up the side of a mountain down in The Smokies, and we didn't follow the trail,  We went through the laurel bushes and if you have ever seen Mountain Laurel you realized how tangled and close together the trunks are, 

Marti was married to a lawyer in town, and she had two small children,  She started calling me to baby sit.  She and Frank, her husband, would go out on a "date" on Saturday night and leave me in charge,  They usually  stayed out until one in the morning and I was paid a whole dollar for the evening. I would go about 6 p.m. and Frank would bring me home at midnight or one a.m..  

One day she called and asked if I would come and help her wax her floors.  Her house had all wooden floors and it was a rather large house.  I rode my bike to her house one Saturday morning and spent the day helping her clean and wax her floors.  I finished about supper time and peddled home.  She paid me $3 for that job!  I was rich!

During those baby sitting years, Marti was taking all of the scouts on camping trips and I didn't have a sleeping bag.  I had my eye on one that cost $12.  I saved my baby sitting money until I had enough to buy my sleeping bag.  I was SO proud of that!  Not just the bag.but the fact that I bought it with my own money,  I also saved to buy a canteen to take on our hikes,

I had other baby sitting jobs during that period in my life, but they were mostly during the day.  One in particular I remember because it was for my cousin who lived in a neighborhood where all the houses looked alike.  One day I went to work, parked my bike and walked into a house where a bunch of strange people were sitting around.  I had gone into the wrong house!  Of course the people were very gracious, but I was embarrassed to death.  I couldn't get out of there fast enough.  I never got it wrong again!

I remember one other baby sitting job.  I cannot remember who it was but they only had one small toddler.  I put her to bed upstairs in the nursery, then came back down the stairs to read until the parents came home.  After awhile I heard a noise upstairs so I went to investigate.  She had managed to crawl out of the crib and was standing at the top of the stairs.   I ran and grabbed her just as she was about to fall!  That night I thanked the Lord over and over for letting me hear "something" and going to investigate just in time.  I had a hard time shaking that one, thinking of what might have happened!  I stayed upstairs the rest of the night!

The second job I remember having was when I was 13 and a freshman in high school.  The librarian in Fountain City hired high school girls to shelve books.  The job paid 50 cents an hour.  It was the summer before my freshman year so I wasn't actually in high school yet.  I used to go down on Saturday and shelve books for the librarian free, so when the actual job came open she said she was going to hire me  because she liked me.  I worked there every summer during high school and sometimes after school if she needed me.  I saved that money for a down payment for college.  I think I had a whopping one hundred dollars to put down on college!

My college work days are many and varied, so will wait until the next blog to write about those.  Stay tuned!

​We had been saving our money for awhile to come to Florida and go to Universal Studio.  We came down this past weekend, which is Easter weekend, and went to church at Ormond Beach church where our good friend Joe Putting is minister.  Charles  and Melanie Dolich are the worship ministers.  They have served there for many years and the church is thriving!  We went to the early service..8:30.  They had one on Saturday night and 3 on Resurrection Sunday!  We had to get up at 5:30 because we are staying in Kissimmee and it's about an hour and a half away,  It was well worth it!  Wonderful service!!!

Afterwards, we came back and went by Universal to pick up our tickets which we had ordered online.

We had to go through security (of course) and after we got through (without being arrested) a woman behind us started walking off with her children, when one of the guards called out to her.  "Mam...you left something in your tray,"  She turned around and walked back.  After seeing what she had left, she grabbed it and said "MY LIFE"!!!!

No..she had NOT left one of her children.  Want to make a guess???

HER PHONE! 

Is that YOUR life????
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