Oh damn. White guy here....was my first job a black job? NGL, my old man smoked Newports. The only difference is that dad let me take the station wagon. I was 12. (In my old man's defense, it was rural North Carolina, and there was only about 100 foot of paved road, and we had been driving since I was 9).
Driving to the store at 12 to get Newports is the top tier of early black jobs.
I used to drive at that age too but only on our family land and my dad would let me drive is parking lots. I could drive manual transmission better back then than now.
It is so hard to explain to younger people that I used to walk by myself at like ages 8-10, about 20 minutes, to the store armed with like $5 and a note and I would come back with cigarettes, penny candy and, more often than not, alcohol for my parents. And the store owner would just read the note and be like, yeah, that seems legit. She knew my grandma, and knew me, but still.
And then there were the times I took like $5 in paper food stamps and would buy 1 piece of penny candy per dollar, to get enough money to then buy the cigarettes and such. Wild times.
My dad taught me to drive at 5/6 by sitting me on his lap in empty parking lots and letting me tell him what pedal to push. He would get out to run inside stores and tell me “if the car starts rolling step on the brake til I get back”. He would send me in the gas station to pay sometimes, while he pumped gas, and then we’d leave pretty quick. I realized later he was shorting them a $ or 2 at a time and we were leaving before they could stop him 😂 I miss that man RIP
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u/HungAndTheRestless 3d ago
Walking to the store with a note stating what type of cigarettes my mom wanted and what numbers (lotto) to play.