When I graduated from High School at 17 in 1962, I worked at Birdseye Frozen Foods and Walla Walla Cannery, and I drove a wheat truck for 23 days straight, 12.5 hours per day, with 30 minutes for lunch. I began both these jobs when I was 16.
I made $1.85 per hour at Birdseye as the flume man, one week on the day shift and one week on the night shift, and almost as much at the Cannery, packing cans as they came off the belt. Driving a wheat truck, we made $ 18.00 per day, plus great food and a one-room bunkhouse. That was good money in 1962: a check for $414.00 when we completed our work.
With the money I made, I joined my high school friend, Mike Friedman, and hitch-hiked to New York City. 44 rides and 4.5 days. After two wild weeks in New York City, through a friend of my father's, we got a free ride on an S-4 Freighter carrying US military equipment (primarily jeeps) that brought us from the Brooklyn Navy Yards to Bremerhaven, Germany, with stopovers in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Norfolk.
This began a 10-month odyssey around Western Europe, including West and East Berlin, where I had a 3-hour visit with a Russian relative at their Embassy in East Berlin. I know this may seem unreal to some, but even stranger and crazier things than this happened on the journey
This picture was taken in Rome, where we spent almost three weeks, including quietly breaking into the Colosseum and other wild adventures. From Rome, we went to Barcelona, Spain, with some stops on the way, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I'll put a bookmark here.
