What ever became of neighborhood kids doing yard work, etc. for $$$$?

[devilgrrl]

When I was a kid in the 70's it was normal for neighborhood kids to make money mowing lawns, doing yard work, shoveling driveways, etc. The kind of jobs that many illegals do today. What became of that labor force? Did private landscaping companies kill the enterprising teen labor market?

[radwriter0555]

1. No baby, video games, lush lifestyles, parents handing their kids all the

money for all the luxuries they want took care of that.

Child labor?

[BrklynLiberal]

2. If you can find a teen today that is willing to get off his/her ass and

actually do some hard work let me know.

Even the guy who delivers the newspaper around here is a middle-aged guy in a car.

[paul_fromatlanta]

8. They said that about us in the 80's and then we had the highest rate of

They said that about us in the 80's and then we had the highest rate of young adults starting businesses and being productive ever....

[Roon]

16. They don't allow kids to deliver the paper here in Denver

The papers only let adults deliver now.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

40. My son and his friend have done yard work for years...

Just yesterday, he was complaining that all the younger kids are taking the jobs, cause they'll do them for less.

:rofl:

[Rosemary2205]

3. 2 things

Lawsuit mania

Sexual predators.

[senseandsensibility]

4. It doesn't happen around here

My hubby mowed lawns as a kid in the seventies. :shrug:

[paul_fromatlanta]

5. Hmmm I never thought about that

But since we bought our house I don't think I've seen one teen doing yard work.

[Horse with no Name]

6. I was so pissed when the kid that mowed my lawn

graduated 2 years ago and got a real job.
I now have a 50 year old man that supplements his income mowing lawns.
I think you see it in the rural communities more than the urban areas though.
Safety issues and all.

[madeline_con]

7. Video games killed the work force.

They're all overweight, sitting in front of their games, trying to get Mom to bring them something to stuff in their maw so they won't have to go to the fridge.

[TomInTib]

9. Video games, and then dads in the 'burbs found it cool to be...

mowing their own yards, which I never understood.

Personally, I paid people to do my yard so my sons could save their energies and toes for baseball.

[Warpy]

10. No, fast food did

Kids work just as hard pushing burgers and fries, but they get set hours and a set paycheck and don't have to argue with some grouch about how they missed a leaf under a bush and aren't due the full amount they agreed on.

In my area, the guys who come around looking for yard work are mostly youngish guys who look like they've been laid off from IT, telemarketing, customer support, or construction jobs.

[Selatius]

11. They got lazy. That's what. And Fastfood made them unwilling to work.

Why sweat, toil, and labor in 95 degree heat with 90 percent humidity mowing lawns for 5.15 an hour when you could earn 6 or 7 an hour working the cash register at the local air-conditioned Wal-Mart?

Is it harder to work in that kind of heat when you're obese and lethargic as a result? You bet it is. I've never had a weight problem, but I can tell that kind of weather is punishing on those who are unfit for manual labor.

[kestrel91316]

12. All the teenagers do around here is race their expensive

sports cars up and down the streets with boomboxes blaring, and parking them in the middle of the streets for all-night parties. I kid you not.

There are NO teens working in the usual places where kids worked when I was one - burger joints/fast food, dry cleaners/other service businesses (working the counter), bagging groceries, mowing lawns, babysitting. I don't know if there is simply no desire to work, or they can't find work because nobody wants somebody who will go off to college in a year or two.

[CelticWinter]

13. They became spoiled rotten and lazy----

the neighbor lady hired one of the kids up the road to shovel her driveway this winter, she had to go to work so she paid him before leaving....the kid did 2 passes up the drive wide enough for the tires of her truck and called it done. When she called him up and asked him why he didnt shovel the drive his reply was----You didnt tell me I had to do the WHOLE thing---and his mother's reply to this was "Boys will be boys" needless to say she was out 15.00 for the job and nothing was done to the kid by his parents but what can you expect from a parent who drives around in her SUV with a soccar ball sticker and W04 sticker on the back.

[negativenihil]

14. hell, this was the norm when *I* was a kid...

IN THE 80s!!!!

:wtf: :wtf:

[WestSeattle2]

23. Me too...

mowed plenty of lawns in Seattle as a kid, and I'm not that old....OK, I watched Brady Bunch originals, but I'm not that old dammit.

Never had much snow to shovel, but my brother and I both mowed lawns and did yard work all summer. Of course our mother didn't tolerate vegetation either....like in her sons vegetating in front of a tv.

Now it seems normal for kids to play video games 24/7....not a very healthy lifestyle. I go to my nephew's school stuff, (concerts, games etc.), and I swear 40-50% of their classmates are obese. Pretty much guarantee very few of those kids will be out mowing lawns this summer.

[Mabus]

15. I guess it depends on what neighborhood you live in

We still have some of the neighborhood kids coming by offering to do jobs like snow shoveling and lawn mowing.

[ecstatic]

17. Kids today are lazy & spoiled; they get allowance &don't have to work nt

[Horse with no Name]

19. Not my kids. nt

[TygrBright]

39. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez, do you people spend any TIME with kids...?

Sure there's lazy ones, overprivileged ones, etc. There were back when I was a kid, too. (I first campaigned for LBJ, so that's some time ago.) There are ALWAYS kids like that, I know some.

But I know a LOT MORE who are busy every minute of every day, doing volunteer work, helping out with their family businesses, doing school projects, playing in a band (dang, some of these little punks have TALENT.... AND they work hard at practicing and doing something with it, too,) setting up family websites for their grandparents and teaching them how to send and receive e-mails, raising money for the local Humane Society putting on a Mutt Strut at their middle schools, and more other worthwhile projects than you can imagine if you don't hang around with kids much.

A lot of them are working at hourly-wage jobs because their parent(s) can't afford to buy them shoes for school or even clothes. They work hard, too, as hard as their employers will let them, which is sometimes too damn' hard.

Why focus exclusively on the minority who are f***ups? (BTW, not all of them will stay that way... I know, I spent several 'lost years' of my young life being one, and managed to still make a worthwhile contribution to society when I outgrew it.) Today's young people are awesome, inspiring, and fabulous. They're attending antiwar marches, they're setting up cell-phone networks to pass on information about protest meetings, they're making art (some amazing art, at that,) they're writing songs, they're devising way cool software, they're schlepping crates down at the Food Bank, they're taking Peer Counselor training, they're planning for trips abroad to learn about the rest of the world. There's lots and lots of them like that.

Sorry you can't find someone to mow yer lawns for five bucks. Why not consider plowing them under and planting low-maintenance native groundcover plants?

querulously,
Bright

[Redstone]

18. No, I don't think it's the Evil Immigrants.

Jesus.

Can we find something else to blame the immigrants for?

Posts like this on DU tonight are making me want to vomit. I think it's time to leave for the night before I lose my temper.

I can't stand fucking racists. And xenophobes are that close to being racists.

Redstone

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Redstone]

31. I thought it was here:

"The kind of jobs that many illegals do today."

But I probably misunderstood something. I do that now and again. Sorry.

Redstone

[devilgrrl]

35. Nope, not blaming illegals.

Just wondering where that all went over the years and how we became so lazy.

[sandnsea]

20. Why pay an unskilled teen

When you can get a skilled illegal for less. Where are the kids? Hmmm. Feeling hopeless because not everyone can get a scholarship, grants don't cover college, if they can find a job it takes a week to earn a pair of shoes, and if they can't they can't even mow lawns anymore. Why do we have 2 million people in jail again? Why is there a meth epidemic?

I swear this thread just makes me puke.

[NNN0LHI]

21. I noticed something else the other day while walking the dogs too

There aren't no more tree houses/forts in the trees. I used to walk a mile with hammers, nails, etc., to build such contraptions. Every kid did. Yet where I live now there are a lot of kids. A lot of trees. But not one single tree house? If I had been a kid around here there wouldn't be one tree with at least a ladder hammered up to the top of it. Nothing like that no more.

Don

[Horse with no Name]

26. I really think it is the environment

I live in rural Texas.
We have swingsets, forts, treehouses, tire swings, etc. in most yards.
BUT, we don't have malls, skateboard parks, public swimming pools, etc.

[NNN0LHI]

30. I live in rural Illinois

No malls, no skateboard parks, no public swimming, no nothing.

We have 2 gas stations, 3 bars, 3 churches, and no grocery stores. Pop. 1500.

Nearest civilization is over 20 miles away one way.

I think it is something else.

Don

[Mabus]

42. My neighbors' kids live in the trees

Two of my neighbors have boys (5 and 4) who practically live in the trees. They don't have a ladder but they have a chair and a favorite tree. This old tree has a great fork that is big enough for them to sit in. Whenever I walk the dogs in the morning I'm challenged by characters (from Robin Hood, Lord of the Rings, Ninja Turtles, Star Wars or some characters they've made up from whole cloth) wanting me to explain myself with a "Hark, who goes there?". I always have to ask who they are and then they go in long explanations of their characters and motivations. Beyond these two there are plenty of "kids" playing in the street year round they are more likely to be the college kids up the street. We actually have kids in two groups. The first is kids under ten. There are about 14 of them. The other group are the college kids between 18 and 22. There are about 10 of them. There are no teenagers in my neighborhood. That's a little strange.

We throw balls with the kids in the neighborhood. We're soft touches. When we're doing yard work in the front yard we're the couple of indeterminate age that the kids know will play with them. We've thrown our fair share of baseballs and frisbees with the two groups of kids. The younger kids also help us pull weeds and, bonus, they'll do it at no cost. The other day I was pulling some weeds and one of the neighbor boys came over. He helped me pull weeds but the whole time he told me *all* about the Bruce Lee movie he had just seen - several times he told me. He also reenacted scenes. Okay, he didn't really help, none of them do, but it's fun. The younger kids do pull weeds from the sidewalks on their own but it is usually when they want a smoother surface for riding their bikes, skateboards, skates or when they are running. There's a park a block over and a number of the parents will go over with the kids. They usually do it in bunches so there's a few parents to watch the kids.

Overall we've actually got a pretty cool little neighborhood. It is a mixture of older retired couples, Section 8 housing and us younger home owners. There's quite a bit of racial diversity too. There are four households with Native Americans, three Hispanic households, five Black households, three Asian and the rest are either white or mixed race. We have a neighborhood block party once a year and tend to help each other out the rest of the year. We had a microburst recently that knocked out power. Campstoves and chainsaws came out and we helped each other clean up yards and make sure everyone was fed. Our neighbor across the street practices with his bluegrass band at his house about once every six weeks. When the weather allows they practice on the porch and most of the neighborhood goes outside to listen to them. We've also got a rock and roll band that gives free concerts. They're pretty cool. Before they practice they go around and tell everyone. We trade vegetables during growing season and watch out for each others kids. We go to each other's houses and play video games, poker and help light water heaters. I've also held the hand of the neighbor who lost her son a couple of years ago. One of our neighbors had his both his legs amputated due to diabetes. We take turns cutting his lawn for him.

But we don't have a paradise by any means. There are a couple of people in the immediate neighborhood that we stay away from. We've got a female peeper. She's one of the Section 8 residents and she's in therapy and on medication now. She's got a bunch of other problems, mostly mental, and she can drive people back into the safety of our houses pretty quickly when she's on a tear. I think one of my neighbors is either a hooker or a dealer. She's got men coming and going all day. Since it's just guys I figured she was a hooker. I rarely see her. On the days she has her grandkids she gets no other visitors. Her grandkids use our basketball goal and ask if they can help us walk the dogs. She's pretty friendly but I've never asked her what she does and she's never asked me what I do. There's also a place across the street from us that rents to month-to-month tenants. It's kind of a half-way house as result. There have been some great people in there but there have also been some doozies. There was one guy who would walk downtown (about eight blocks), get drunk and then steal a bike to get home. At one time there were at least a ten bikes in the yard. There was one couple that broke out every window in their apartment when they had a fight one night.

We also have the only driveway on the block. I can't tell you how many times I've had to call the police to get someone towed because they've parked in our driveway. I'm usually patient and I'll wait. I understand about mistakes or stopping for a few minutes but I've had people pull up in my driveway to work on their car. If I need to leave and the car is there for more than an hour I'll go knock on doors and try to find out who owns the car. If I can't find an owner - because they are sleeping in somewhere - I call the cops and have it towed. So far I've had four cars towed because neither me or the cops could find the owner. What's weird is that no one has come to our door to ask us what's happened to their car in two of the cases. I also have had some of the college kids knocking on my door at weird hours asking to use my printer because they need to print a paper and their printer broke, ink ran out or they ran out of paper. They usually bring beer or coffee with them so I let them in.

Actually I'm feeling pretty damned lucky right now. I live in a pretty good neighborhood. It is vibrant, friendly and full of life.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

22. No. Some Neighborhood Kids Still Will, The Others Are Busy With Their

Ipods, Cell-phones, Playstations, and other technologies. Same reason you don't see as many stick-ball games goin on in the street as you used to when we were growing up. For that matter, I don't even seen the kids come around to shovel either as much, and believe me, my lazy ass looks out for em every damn snowfall LOL. I don't think this has anything to do with landscapers.

[Redstone]

32. Stickball! In Philadelphia, we played a wild subset of stickball called

"halfball." You cut one of those pink rubber balls in half, and played with that. Want to talk about loony fluttery pitches and popups? Crazier and more unpredictable flight than a Wiffle Ball even.

Redstone

[Art_from_Ark]

25. In the '70s, I did lawn work

$3.00 each to mow two quarter-acre yards. With gas @ 35cents/gallon (one gallon per yard), plus gas for the truck to carry the damn lawnmower, I figured I ended up netting about 2.50 per yard, or about 1.70/hour, not including the cold lemonade I got at the end of each mowing.

Then there was the time I raked leaves for an hour, and got nearly a dollar for my effort.

And I won't go on about the time I watered someone's lawn for 2 weeks in the summer, and got three whole quarters for my effort.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

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[Art_from_Ark]

29. Actually, they were little old ladies

I think that must have been the going rate when they were kids

[WestSeattle2]

27. OMG...

we sound like our parents! I'm really feeling old right now. Ugh.

[seaglass]

34. That's exactly what I was thinking...kids these days....n/t

[DemoTex]

33. What I don't do myself, I hire bonded/insured/licensed/etc. only!

I mowed yards for $$$ cash as a kid. That was the early 1960s. Now, 45-50 years later, I can afford a yard service. I cannot afford a law suit.

[Coexist]

36. My son started his own Christmas-light hanging business this year

and plans to do it again next year.

The St. Augustine here in Tampa is hard for anyone younger than a grown man to mow. I can't do it.

[MidwestMomma]

37. People with money hire landscapers

People without money do their own yard work.

I don't think it's the kids as much as the adults have changed.

People in fancy subdivisions have such high standards to keep up with the jones that they can't 'afford' to have an 'amateur' do their yards. They either do it themselves as a hobby to make sure every little thing is perfect or hire a company.

People in regular neighborhoods either a) don't have a lot of kids around b) are afraid to hire kids for fear they'll injure themselves and then sue the homeowner or c) do it themselves for relaxation after a day in the office or because the can use the money they would pay a kid for something else.

Me, I hate yardwork but do it myself because I can't afford to pay someone else to do it. You can't get your yard mowed for 5.00 anymore.

Also, I think parents today are leery of letting their kids go mow yards and do work for people they don't know. Because today, people don't know all the people in their neighborhood. I know I wouldn't have let my daughter go door to door asking people I didn't know if she could mow their yard. Just seemed like too much of a risk to me for the lesson of learning what hard work is all about.

And maybe the reason why some people don't see 'kids today' working at mcds, etc is because there are so many adults looking for work and an employer will hire an adult if possible. They pay them both the same and they know the adult has real bills to pay and will always show up for work. So once again, not really the kids fault.

I don't think kids today on the whole are any worse then any other generation. They are just different. Just like my generation was different. And I remember the adults were always complaining about 'kids today' when I was I kid. :)

I think kids today on the whole are a great lot and are dealing the best they can growing up in these times. But I'm a mom of a great kid so I have a definite bias :)

[Blue_Tires]

38. lol

I grew up in a safe, comfy suburb in the late 80s, and at that time, I just KNEW that the universe revolved around me, and that the world owed me fame and fortune....I don't even want to know how much worse today's kids are with modern technology and super entitlement complexes

[alfredo]

41. Neigborhood associations killed off a lot around here.

Liability concerns convince some home owners to go with landscapers.