(Photo by Art Smith) Pam Jones stocks shelves at the Speedway at Colegate and Muskingum Drive around 1980.

The Way I See It

Art Smith

I have been a part of the newspaper business for a long time.

It was not, however, my first job. My first job was as an assistant soda bottle sorter. Go ahead, reread that line.

Pull up a chair kids and listen to a story about how we once made a little extra spending money.

When I was 13 (barely) I somehow got a job sorting pop bottles at the Colegate Food Center. The grocery store was once on Colegate Drive and Sunset Lane. I lived a block away so I could walk to work. A good thing since I was years away from being able to drive.

As the assistant soda bottle sorter, I oversaw sorting bottles when the normal person was unable to. What exactly does a soda bottle sorter do you ask? Well kids, back in the dark ages of the 1970s when you purchased soft drinks they came in reuseable glass bottles. You paid a 10 cent per bottle deposit on them when you purchased an eight-pack of 16-ounce bottles, and you got the deposit back when you returned them.

People were not very good at putting them all back in the right cartons, so you had Coke and Pepsi mixed in with Tab, and Double Cola and Nehi Grape. The job of the assistant soda bottle sorter was to make order out of this chaos and put everything together with other bottles of the same variety and then put three cartons together in one of the cool wood boxes that you may have seen in an antique store somewhere. The bottles would then go back to the soda company to be washed out and refilled with soft drinks for another customer.

The job was in an outdoor metal shed that was either freezing cold or blazing hot. The pay, a whopping $1.65 an hour — and I walked uphill both ways to get there.

I was not the only person in the Marietta High School class of 1979 with a job of course, although I assume most waited until we got out of junior high to start working. I recently reached out to my former classmates to find out what their introduction to work was like.

Bob Kyer, like many high school students, snagged a job at Stacy’s Farms helping to pick vegetables; he made even less than an assistant soda bottle sorter, making 90 cents per hour.

Juli Lynn Smith Haessly started younger, at 10, helping sucker and tie tomato plants at her uncle and aunt’s farm for 50 cents per hour.

Many of my classmates’ first jobs were in food service. Brenda Way made around $2 per hour working at Elby’s. My wife Lori worked there as well and still cannot get over the hideous brown polyester outfits they had to wear. Dale Winstanley worked there as well, starting as a dish tank operator and working his way up to manager 10 years later.

Leslie Pape Schall worked at Baskin Robbins, a cool little ice cream shop where Subway is today at the Frontier Shopping Center. Becky Lyons worked as a waitress at the Cherry Tree Inn. Cathy Gans worked at the Tastey Freeze for $1 an hour. Lora Davis was busy washing dishes at the Elk’s Lodge.

A lot of classmates worked in retail at a wide range of stores that we had in Marietta in the late 1970s. Lisa Derner Wenzel wrapped gifts during the holiday season at the JCPenney on Putnam Street. Kim Harris Jones worked at Harts, one of the three “department stores” we had in town. Jeanne Gathings worked at Heck’s on Pike Street.

Bob Ollom worked at Rink’s during a time when it was more than a flea market, putting prices on items in the automotive and home improvement section. His future wife Pam Jones was busy working at Marietta’s three Super America stores, where at some point at my second job I took a photo of her stocking shelves for a story, not realizing at the time I would be using it to illustrate a column nearly a half century later. At times she had to put on a bear costume and wave at passing traffic. I am sorry I missed that shot.

Cristie Beth Hackathorn Johnson worked at Forma Scientific cleaning and detailing incubators and blood bank refrigerators in the Shipping and Receiving department, which frankly sounds more exciting than sorting pop bottles.

Gene Hollins worked with friend Mark Hall at Burger Chef on Pike Street, before jumping ship and moving to the Pennyfare Grocery Store. Mary Simmons Walker worked at Burger Chef too before becoming a cashier at Big Bear. John Spiros worked at “The Bear” as well before later joining the Air Force.

Rick Bogard worked at The Marietta Times for a bit after graduation, helping to get the papers out the door after it was printed. Stacy Mergens did the hard job of hauling hay and grain to customers’ cars at a feed store. Melissa Wilson Cogswell worked as an operator for Ohio Bell on Fourth Street at her first job.

I recently asked the same group of “kids” what they are doing now. Nearly half of the 58 classmates that responded are retired, 37% are working full time, and 13% are part time. At last check, no one is working as an assistant soda bottle sorter.

No matter what your first job was, I hope it brings back pleasant memories. None of us got rich from them, but we likely gained skills that helped us for a lifetime.

Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times and Parkersburg News and Sentinel, he can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com