Unique Occupations

 Today’s Automobile:

Joe's 1958 Chevy Convertible:

Just some thoughts:

I have had many different jobs in my lifetime, but most of them very normal.  How ever I have always enjoyed learning what others did for a living.

I met Dugan, my daddy called him  a ‘Wayfaring Man.’ He would spend the night with us maybe once a year for about 6 years. I made the mistake of calling him a bum, when I was talking to dad, I was about 8 yrs old. “Son Dugan is not a bum, he is a Wayfaring Man. He has no home, but you notice he is clean. And he always pays your mama with new, good quality needles and pins.”

 He went on to tell me that wayfarers were brought about by the depression. Dugan walked everywhere he went and going thru the countryside he sold needles and pins to farmers wives.  It was really a service to country folk and his products took up very little room in his pack. I looked at him from then on in a different light.

Joe in Belmont.  Our grandson Ben ran with his son. Joe also interested me because he had a beautiful 1958 Chevy Convertible (opening picture). It was used every year in the Belmont Christmas Parade.

Joe earned his living somehow picking up old tires at service stations and taking them somewhere in Charlotte and was paid for them. I have asked around and no one knew how much he could make on the tires. I have seen his truck neatly stacked with hundreds it seemed.  Sadly Joe passed away before I took the time to find out how that worked.

While camping in Chicken Alaska we met a modern gold prospector. His rig was a 4 wheeler with a trailer. On the trailer he had a generator, pump and ‘shaker’.  The shaker was sorta like the ‘rocker’ used by the prospectors during the goldrush.

(Above is a Gold rush Rocker Box.)

He traveled the creeks in Alaska’s back country pumping the sand etc from the creek’s bottom and his set up separated the gold. He said he found enough gold in the three months to live the rest of the year in the lower 48. Some of you may remember the little cannisters 35mm film came in, he used those cannisters to hold his gold.

(remember when camera's that took film. I have used those containers for a lot of things, t'would be nice to have one full of gold.)

He let me feel the weight of one and it was pretty danged heavy. I sure liked his ideas. For awhile I wanted to try that. LOL 

Any odd occupations you can mention?

Nite Shipslog

PS: