During my teenage years I spent a lot of time taking care of my brother Lowell. I also helped my dad build several houses and had little time for a “real Job” It my late teens I worked for a while refurbishing Electrolux vacuum cleaners in a small store front on west main street in Belleville. My 1second job, before I left Belleville for college, was at my uncle's baker shop, Beyers’ Bakery. I started out cleaning pans and stocking supplies and I graduated to donut frying after a few months. I also delivered bakery goods to a second Belleville store and a store in New Athens, Illinois about twenty miles from Belleville. I started work at five in the morning My uncle arrived about an hour earlier and had the donuts, bread and other pastries rising in the steam cabinet and I fried donuts for several hours. My uncle would feed the bread pans and coffee cake pans into the oven. The raised donuts were put on a wire rack and gently lowered into the hot grease. I iced and filled filled the jelly donuts and put the regular donuts on a long dowel rod glazed them, set them upright on a sheet pan and put them on rack. I helped my uncle remove the pans from the oven. We use long wooden paddles to bring the pans to the edge of the over and grabbed them with heavy gloves and put the hot bakery of cooling racks. I loaded the panel truck and delivered the donuts to Belleville High School and the other stores. I returned and washed pans until about t three in the afternoon. Some mornings I had to carry the bags of flour and mix from the basement storage. He was a dark and dank cellar with a stone foundation. When you turned on the light you would often see rats scurry away. I would quickly hoist the floor sack on my shoulder and climb the small rickety stairs. I could hear my uncle say, “what a baby...scared of few harmless rats”. The days were usually ten hours long six days a week. My pay was fifty cents and hour. My uncle did offer me dollar an hour if I would forgo college and help him with the business. I am sure glad I decided to walk away.
My uncle, like my dad was a stern taskmaster. He criticized me a lot and made fun of my size and quiet demeanor. I did not complain much but the abuse was intolerable most of the time. I eventually walked off the job and was severely berated by my father for being a “quitter”. Fortunately, I left for college shortly after quitting. I did no see my uncle for many years. We did reconnect when I returned to Belleville to teach. At that time his Bakery business was going bankrupt and he owed a lot of money. He left in the middle of the night with his family and purloined baking equipment and headed for Florida.
