summer jobs at my country home

​How many people can say that their first paid job was walking (cooling down) snot spitting, sweating, bunting hot polo ponies between chuckers.  I was maybe 14 years old if that and under five foot tall yet I sometimes lead 4 huffing and puffing horses up and down hills for them to cool off before they entered the next chucker.  Hopefully, they all got along but if they didn't I would have to reverse my direction and force my way between them leading them all out the other way in a hopefully more friendly order.  Usually at least one of them would decide to scratch their head on my back shoving me forward even faster.  I was paid ten cents a horse per chucker; a chucker lasted 7 minutes.  One of those players whose horse I walked was in his late teens.  I would years later date him for a long time.  
These polo games weren't part of any national/international organization that I know of.  The rancher who owned the ranch my father worked on and we lived on, decided he wanted to play polo so built a polo field on his ranch.  Several of the local ranchers came on Sunday afternoon to play.  Some of them brought their horses, others stabled them on the hill above the polo field.   Although I don't believe that dad had any part in building the polo field, he did build all of the corrals on the hill.  I often watched as he scaled the bark off the trees with a garden spade, hand sawed them to shape and hand drilled all of the bolt holes.  My dad was not a big man but he was strong from years of physical labor.  After the corrals were complete and horses occupying them, Dad then had to feed and water the horses.  I often think back on that scenario and wonder why those corrals were built on top of a hill with absolutely no shade for horses that spent all week waiting in them just to run full speed on Sunday.  Dad got in trouble even though it probably wasn't his fault because one or more of the horses managed to escape their corral and get into the grain.  Too much grain causes founder and sometimes horse don't recover.  
 
After the novelty of polo wore off the field was shut down.  I had my usual chores helping dad feed or clean pens which was a chore of love for me.  If mom said "Go help your Dad," I was gone without any question or rebuttal.  For money I went on to baby sit for various families until at age 15 I got my one and only job as a waitress.  I actually enjoyed it and learned a lot about proper behavior.  It is amazing what you learn when a mirror is put up in front of your face.  What I thought was joking around turned out to be flirting in the eyes of the owner and I was given a warning to cease or walk.  I always took direction well and toed the mark.  The job didn't last the summer as I was thrown off my dad's stallion and injured my back finding out 4 years later I had actually broken it.  
The summer of 1963 I first worked a fulltime job as babysitter, housekeeper, cook and  ironer of laundry for the wife of the ranch owner.

I may have been paid $1 an hour.  The ranch owners would often order my older brother to mow their lawn or do chores for them.  He was paid but was very defiant about their ownership of our family.  One weekday when I was babysitting, Dan came up to mow with two of his friends.  I invited them to come in for a sandwich with I and the two kids at lunch .  I was reamed up one side and down the other for inviting my brother and his two friends in for lunch.  The following week I went to the Bargain Barn Grocery store, applied and got the job.  I totally loved working there as a checker and would until the end of my senior year.

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