What did your folks do for work, from early to late?

[Okie4570]

What jobs your parents do while growing up, and as an adult?

Dad pulled cotton as a kid, did other farm work/auto mechanic work through HS and then joined the Army, served from 67'-70'. Was fortunate to do basic then AIT and then him and one other guy went to Germany and was stationed on an Army air base and was a Hawk missile guy while everyone else from that group went to Vietnam. Got back to the states and was a bouncer at a local drive-in (where he met my mom, she was smuggling in other teenagers in the trunk of her Impala lol). They married a short time later, then he became a home builder and bricked his own homes, as well as for some other area builders when he wasn't building. My mom worked at her mom's flower shop as a kid/teen, then a church secretary until retirement.

 

[okietool]

Motels.

 

[Profreedomokie]

My stepdad worked as a mechanic at Lipton Tea, Skippy Peanut Butter, a mattress factory, and retired from the Norfolk Navy Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va. My mom worked a switchboard for Bell right out of high school and retired from Lipton Tea after 38 years.

 

[El Pablo]

Dad worked in a grocery store and my mom worked at tasty freeze in HS. My dad worked as an electrical engineer then a teacher, my mom was a dietician.

 

[TedKennedy]

Dad plowed rocky fields with a team of horses until he moved to Tulsa in 1953 at the ripe old age of 17. He worked at a soda fountain, then Sun refinery, then Youngstown Sheet and Tube, then Grant Supply. Sold steel, valves, tubing to the oilfield, later becoming manager of the Tulsa area, then he and some co-workers founded a new supply business that thrives to this day. Wore a suit to work ever since I remember, extremely well-read and perfect English. You would never know he was 100% hillbilly.

Mom grew up picking cotton, moved to Tulsa to got to business school. Dad called the dorm she stayed at looking for another girl, got my mom on the phone instead. Being the opportunist fellow he is, asked her on a date instead. Worked out pretty good. They celebrated 64 years of marriage last month.

Dad says Mom's family was rich because they had an icebox and a truck growing up. He had neither. (no electricity, although they did get running water in 1946 I think)

 

[Snattlerake]

After dad got back from Okinawa and the Philipines, he was an accountant at a furniture store where he met my mom at Enid Business College. They moved to Kingfisher and started farming with her father. He worked as an accountant at both Solomon Agency and retired from Pioneer Telephone. From then on they traveled in an RV spending my inheritance. Both passed with my uncle and aunt passing before them in 2018.

 

[OK Corgi Rancher]

Dad was a welder from as far back as can remember. He passed in 2000. We weren't very close...he was a compulsive liar and bad alcoholic.

Mom is still around and lives in E Texas. She did various jobs...cut hair, worked for some electronics company in Houston...probably a few others I can't remember right now.

 

[rockchalk06]

Dad: Farm work, college, farm work then became an EMT. Cop after that and ended up retiring from the same PD he started at. All of my life he was a Cop. I idolized that. He started from the bottom and worked his way to Chief with the same Department. I wished I could have followed that.

Mom: So many jobs growing up I lost count. Meter Reader, Day Care, Cook. Never spent more than 3-4 years at the same job that I can remember.

I've had the same line of work since I was 21. My two sisters have changed jobs so many times, it's easy to see who followed in who's footsteps.

 

[swampratt]

Dad worked in Cushing dairy then off to the Navy and then truck driver and then Worked in HVAC until he died.

Mom worked at 7-11 main office.

I worked construction and maintenance forever and at one time for a couple years worked at Godfathers pizza in Moore.

Saved my monies and bought rent houses.
Always worked on cars.

 

[Duncandl]

My dad worked in a slaughterhouse, dug graves with his dad long enough to earn all the burial plots for his family, parents and siblings which is kind of weird but cool.

He left home for the Navy in 1958, got out after 4 years and went to work for Boeing in Wichita but went back into the Navy and stayed until retirement in 1979. Couldn’t find a job upon retirement so he went to college with a family of 5 to feed working overnight at Shawnee Water Treatment Plant until completing school and getting hired at Tinker doing the same thing he did in the Navy, it was a rough stretch for our family as my mother never worked until times got really bad and she went to work for Newton Wall in Shawnee.

My mother had a lot of difficulty as she was very “small town” and never really adjusted well on her own. As hard as life was for all of us we never knew it, we always had a clean house, clean clothes and something to eat.