Drumbeats for the cashless society

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That's what they WANT to happen.

The reality is the opposite. I'm traveling in the American Southwest right now - and cash is welcomed, even by motels that for years, would only allow CC payments. Some truck stops give discounts for cash sales - even small gasoline sales at the auto pumps.

The only advantage to CCs, now, is in not having to worry about your supply of green paper. I've got a couple of stashes around the truck body, so I'm a bit moar secure that way. Oh, and buying gas with a credit-card is quicker. Costs you a few cents moar a gallon, and opens you up to electronic hacking/theft by scanning-theft devices on pumps...but it's moar convenient.

Side note: I didn't realize until last week that TRAVELERS' CHEQUES are now unobtainium. Those were a great way to protect your money - even if the po-po confiscates them, they could be replaced. NOBODY could turn them off.

Now they're gone.
 
Where you at? Close to northern Arkansas?
 
Viking said:
Where you at? Close to northern Arkansas?
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I'm at my second night in the Grand Canyon. The park is beautiful; but the ugly social dynamics are on full display. As an Engrish Spreaker, I'm in a minority here.

It's amazing how Woked-up the park has become. Now, they cater to the top 2% - all here in their expensive van-conversions, their new Wranglers with pop-up rooftop tents, and diesel motorhomes.

The coffee at the concession stands is...Starcucks.

I may or may not stay a third night. I found, to my surprise, that not only do I get a free permanent pass, as a Persian Gulf veteran over 65, but also Handicapped reduced rates on direct pay-per-use facilities. My campsite is $15 a night.

I didn't even plan to go here. My aim was to travel and photo old Route 66...which is CLOSED from 40 miles out of Barstow, all the way to Needles. I could see from the freeway that sometimes parallels it, that the businesses run to cater to tourists have been closed and some knocked down. Gentrification...more Cali land to sell to Gates or the CCP. I went to the park on a whim - I was here 36 years ago with my ex.

Arizona had large parts of it, but it seems from where I'm at, in GCNP, I-40 has been laid on top of it, except for short stretches. Not worth it.

So when i break camp, I'll head north to Colorado, try making peace with my siblings, and then head home. It's been nice weather, anyway...
 
Kids today dont want to work. Not all kids, obviously, but for those of us in our '60s and '70s it an entirely new dynamic out there.

Like most of you I never got shiite unless I worked for it. The old man would throw me a buck or two a week "sometimes" but I had to schlepp up and down 4 storys of our building every day to empty garbage "yes back then building owners empties the garbage of their tenants". Then I had to mow grass, shovel snow, clean windows, gutters, and everything else they could think of. And the old man wouldn't tell you a 2nd time. From there in about 6'th grade I got a morning paper route and really made some cash but it was a 0400 hrs wakeup and you had to fold your papers and then run your route to finish in time for 0630 hrs mass for when you were assigned as an altar boy.

I didn't mind that. Serve the early mass's and they'd throw you the weddings which is where the real money was. Nobody tipped for funerals.

From there I Lied on the form to get a job at a grocery bagging grocerys. A real union job with great benefits but we had to work our ass's off. Which I did and got promoted to stock work when I was 16yo, "by then they knew I lied but was such a good worker they didn't care". So when I was 15yo I bought my first car, a 1963 Buick Wildcat with a 445 cu big block, and drove that illegaly for a year without even a permit let alone a License or insurance. When I turned legit 16yo I found a beautiful 1966 Ford Mustang with 30,000 mi on it, garage kept, with a .289 V8 and custom "Pony" interior.

But boy, talk about work. Back then a 2400 piece load would come in on pallets and every single box of items would have to be lifted and put on a roller table where one guy would cut open the box, another would stamp the price, and another "usually me" would have to load the table and unload it after the box was stamped and put it on to two wheel trucks that we'd have to wheel out to the aisle where every can or bottle or box would have to be taken out and put on the shelves. Even if you were bagging or checking every item for sale would have to be inputted manually and bagged into paper bags. If you worked outside in the freezing cold you'd have to put the bags into customers trunks.

I'm not complaining, it was a wonderful upbringing, and we learned to work the honest way. The way that made this country great. We had bowling nights and parties. Sundays we had Monty Python night where we smoked dope, drank beer, and laughed like hell at the TV. And in between all of this we played softball, football, hockey, box'ed, went to drive ins where we banged the girls. The world was our oyster. And if the cops ever stopped you for anything they'd always ask if you worked and since I worked and went to school full time, and was a star on the local football team, I never got tagged for speeding.

Today I went to the grocery store for food and there were baggers older then me. I bet the average age of the work force in there was 50yo. Ive never seen one kid working in there. Not even on weekends.
 
Very similar growing up in a small rural town in AUS in the 1970's

1'st official job at 15 yrs. My 6 weeks school holiday was spent working in the towns only Pub. Picking up glasses/load washer/unload into chiller & empty ashtrays ( smoking was still everywhere then ). 7 days, 10.00 am till 10.00 pm ( that was closing time then ).

I made $100/week. Good money as a Tradesman was making $200/week then ( mate working local Gas station was making $20/week ). 1 hr & free lunch from the Bistro kitchen. On the side mate in the bottle shop stashed a bottle of " Southern Comfort " round back for me to pick up when leaving.

So wild nights & hangovers. Slept rough quite a few times. But I was always dressed & ready for work at 10.00 am.

Pub owner wanted me to quit school & work fulltime, but I went back to school & got an Apprenticeship.

 
SilverStacker said:
Kids today dont want to work. Not all kids, obviously, but for those of us in our '60s and '70s it an entirely new dynamic out there.

Like most of you I never got shiite unless I worked for it....
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Yeah, much the same. Except I didn't work while in school. Hustled a bit - lawn mowing, some leaf cleanup, odd jobs - but no regular jobs. Partly because I was a lousy student and my grades were low.

On finishing, I was so fixated on getting out of the house, I took a summer job far away. Slept in basement quarters in a swampy wooded property. Took a rowboat with a five-horsepower outboard, across a lake daily to report for work. Sound like fun? Not when a Great Lakes morning thunderstorm was blowing in. The water I was on was not Lake Erie, but we were 12 miles away.

So, I'm the summer gofer in a sewage-treatment plant. Not a hustle job but a nasty one. REALLY nasty - sewage is normally not that bad, but jobs like the Grit channel (mechanical scraper to clean it, but holy god, did it ever stink!) and cleaning tampons off the grates that protected the primary-treatment settlement pond. We had an oscillating grinder that was to keep it clean - but it was designed before flushable tampons, and condoms, became ubiquitous.

(THERE's a word you didn't hear often in the treatment plant!...)

Fall brought no plans, slowing economy, and Jimmuh Peanut - a collapse unfolding, as we're looking at now. So I stayed with the village, and at age 18 I wasn't banging girls at the drive-in. I was banging garbage cans on the back of the Garwood (make of packer).

Life was hard and stayed hard. Hard weather. Winters, my rent, although cheap - off-season seasonal apartments in a resort town - it was still stretching that $2.30/hour income. An old VW, in a cold region. How many know of the original Beetle's heater issues?

Then I went to college. That made life more interesting but no easier. Working two nights a week at a fancy hotel - NIGHTS, 11-to-7. Night desk clerk and Night Auditor. You don't see that job now, with computerized hotel records; the Night Auditor worked up the daily cash take; set up the Night Deposit (the owner's son was a bartender and he would take the money to the bank night-drop) and figure out the City Ledger - credit-card balances as of midnight on that day.

And I wasn't even aiming for Accounting. That was all I wanted of working a calculator. Old-school, with a tape printout.

But...yeah. Nobody asked me if I wanted to stay up all night, two nights a week...PLUS work a full-time summer job. I just had to.
 
I think everyone here over sixty has a similar story.
No grocery store work for me — I wasn't related to the albertson or safeway store owner.
Farm work was all that was available. Unloading potatoes, picking up hay bales, driving silage trucks or harvesting corn.
 
You grow up in the PNW?

Back fifty years ago...that would have been a good life...
 
Working on a mate's Dad's farm stacking hay bales 13 - 14 yrs old for extra pocket money is Real Work
 
Bottom Feeder said:
Moved to seattle in 65.
Nineteen year old farm boy from Idaho.
Lived here since.
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Then you saw it, when it was normal...civilized....and lacking a certain disruptive element.

I was there for a few months in 1990, and it was STILL relatively normal.

It was the Tech autistics that messed everything up...them voting, and some getting into government and then enacting Leftist destruction...
 
Bottom Feeder said:
Develops those stringy lifting muscles.
I had to flip them up on the hay wagon for my buddy to stack.
5¢ a bale, shared between us.
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Bucking hay was what we called it. Late ‘80s was $3.75/hour. better than a nickel a bale, split. So hot you got chills. The ride back to the field in the bed of the truck was our break to cool off in the wind. Still remember my employer telling me how neat that my older brothers would jog to the next bale…..
I only mowed a few lawns, but that was usually good money and i usually jogged behind the little mower. Hah

Worked a few weeks at a county landfill for Davis-Bacon(?) wage and the manager told me not to run. “It was unsafe.” [and probably made the other guys look slow.]

Went to school in seattle six years to avoid doing much more of that. Hat off to anybody who does a good job at their work
 
Luxury !

We had to get up at two in the morning, eat cold gravel, then do a 23 hour shift sweeping road with bare hands !
Kids today , they’ve got no idea …..
 
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