What Were Your Summer Jobs At The Lake

[Senter Cove Guy]

Whether you were a Lake Winnipesaukee area native or a visiting flatlander, most teenagers got jobs around the lake every summer. I’m glad to say that I was one of them.

I had many different jobs at the lake during my teenage and early 20’s years.

I’m going to anecdotally describe what I did and then I hope others will perhaps do the same. It will be interesting to see what made our summers go round and round during those formative years.

1958 - I worked as a Busboy at Bald Peak Colony Club. I applied for and received my Social Security Number. We worked breakfast, lunch and dinner. We started at 7am and worked until about 1pm. Had the afternoons off until about 5pm when the dinner service began. We were allowed to eat dinner there before work but you had to show up early. Saturday nights were special as the chef always carved an ice statue from a block of ice harvested from the lake the previous winter. The ice statue was displayed in the dining room on the buffet dessert table. As I recall, I think I made about 50 cents per hour.

1959 - I worked running a very small convenience store at Lanes End Camp in Tuftonboro. Lanes End, at the time, had both summer long and weekly vacationers renting cottages there. The store carried milk, bread, eggs, donuts, soda, candy and ice. Not an especially busy place but my friends would regularly stop over and we’d chat and play cribbage. The man who was married to the owner of Lanes End at the time would occasionally stop by in the afternoon and we’d play chess. Most of the time he won but we had several draws and I checkmated him once. There was a resort wide cribbage tournament at the end of the summer. My friend, Jackie R and I took the crown.

1960 - I split the summer at 2 different jobs. During the first half of the summer, I worked at Castle in the Clouds. Vacationers who toured the castle needed to be driven from the lower parking field to the castle in a VW bus. I was a driver. We had to learn the history of the castle so that we could provide commentary to the customers while driving them up there. I also spent some time as a castle guide. After hours we privately toured parts of the castle not then open to the public. These were the days when Norm Langdon and Al Brac managed the castle.

During the second half of the summer, I returned to Bald Peak Colony Club as a Greens Keeper. I held that job for the next 3 summers.

1961 thru 1963 – These were some fun summers. The day was 7am – 3:30pm, 6 days a week and sometimes 7. I remember listening to WBZ, AM radio 1030 while waking up and eating breakfast before heading to “The Club”. Don Kent’s weather was important to listen to each morning. The first task every day was to sweep the morning dew from the greens. A 12 – 15 foot tapered bamboo pole was whipped across the surface of the green to disburse the dew. Every other day the greens needed to be cut. The 18 greens were divided among 3 Greens Keepers who used a special power mower to do the cutting. Sweeping and cutting basically took the whole morning. Then it was back to “the Barn” for lunch. Following lunch, the tees needed mowing, ball washers needed cleaning and filling and a wide variety of miscellaneous golf course maintenance tasks needed to be done. We were allowed to play the golf course after work so long as there wasn’t a tournament going on. Our boss was Al Malucci. Other full time workers included Gil Morris, Ken Haley, Charlie Plummer and Leo Phelps. We, the summer help, were paid 90 cents per hour in 1961, one dollar per hour in 1962 and a whopping one dollar and ten cents per hour in 1963.

1964 – This was another 2 job split summer. I was a general laborer for the first 2 weeks and then became a milkman for the now defunct Brewster Dairy in Wolfeboro. I had delivery routes that took me to Tuftonboro, Moultonborough and Alton. The day began by getting to the dairy around 4:30am to load my truck. Then it was off delivering. Most days I was done by noon but, on shorter routes, it was possible to finish by 10:30am. Either way, the rest of the day was left to enjoy, boating, swimming, waterskiing, etc.

1965 – This was the final summer before graduating from college. I worked as a laborer for Walter Smith in Tuftonboro. We did land maintenance, water maintenance, building and demolition. You needed it done and we did it. Some of the full time employees that I worked with included Walter’s son Richard, Grady Hodgdon and Guy Woodman. When I said my goodbyes to my workmates, I told them I would be going to work full time the following summer. They all wished me well.

The bulk of my post college work career was spent in the data processing world as a programmer, systems analyst and manager. I continued to spend part of every summer in the Lakes Region until 2010 when I retired.

OK, now I’ve told you my story. What’s yours?