Monday, March 17, 2008

Volkwagon Summer Post #6

Friday morning had gone by without much incident. I was thankful that I was only asked to try on clothes for one of my mother's customers. My sister had run out of muffins by 10am and was in the kitchen for round two; Kool Aid and Chocolate Chip Cookies. She had the cookbook open and was using her finger to keep her place. She had flour on her cheeks and was wearing one of my mom's patchwork aprons. "You making any money?" I asked as I popped a few chocolate chips into my mouth. "Some. I plan on taking it to California with me and buying me some really cool sunglasses and a beach bag," Linda said as she measured the flour into a cup and poured it into the silver mixing bowl. "I don't have much I'm going to take, just some cash I earned while mowing lawns with Kirk." Kirk was my older brother who started up his own lawn mowing business when he turned sixteen. He had just graduate from high school and he and his buddy had bought their own truck and lawn maintenance equipment and had hired two employees, myself and my friend Theresa. Now I didn't know what minimum wage was and frankly I didn't care. I was just excited to be making some money. How hard could mowing lawns be? Well I found out soon after April began and his client list grew to nearly 20 a week. I spent every Saturday mowing acres and acres of grass. Theresa and I were in charge of the mowing, while my brother and his business partner were in charge of the trimming and clean up. Our reward was lunch, a Slurpee and $20 a day. I had collected my earnings and stored it away in my jewerly box. We were leaving for California the Monday following the garage sale and I had nealry $200 to take with me on the trip. I had never had that much money in my life, but I was sure my friends who had real jobs were making much more money on their paychecks. I grabbed a handful of chocolate chips and went back outside to the garage to check on my little brother who I had left sorting buttons in the fabric section. I dropped a few chocolate chips in the muffin tin that he was using to sort. "Choc chips, " he said and he tenderly picked one up with his two fingers and placed it into the side of his mouth. The afternoon had been slow and my mom had used the time to reposition her items and clean up from the early morning rummaging. I stepped out of the garage and sat down on the grass, picking up a nearby dandelion and rubbing it on my leg, turning it yellow. I heard the roll of skateboards on blacktop and looked up. It was Scott and Matt, two of the cutest guys in the Freshmen class. I tried to avoid looking up and hide behind a blade of grass, but I couldn't make myself small enough. They rolled into the driveway, flipped their skateboards into their hands and stopped directly in front of me. "Hey," they said, causing my heart to skip a beat. "Hey," I said self conciously, holding my had up to block the sun from my eyes.

1 comment:

Emily said...

My husband and I lived in Germany for a year. While we were there, we had a bright orange Volkswagon Bug. Adventure and Volkswagons must go hand in hand, because reading your blog entries have brought back some of the crazy experiences we had in our own Volkswagon!