I had been working almost a year. I was only 15 but you were allowed to work as a bag boy at the local grocery stores back then even though you weren’t 16 yet. The job kind of sucked between the dorky vest you had to wear, you prayed you never saw any girls you knew from school and in the South Florida summer you were constantly running from the store which had the AC set at about 65 to the parking lot which was cooking at around 95.
On top of that there have always been aholes, especially in Florida and you might load a whole minivan worth of groceries where they complained the entire time you weren’t doing it right for nothing more than a thank you.
But…it was a cash business and while the actual paycheck barely payed for your meals and frequent cokes that you needed to keep from passing out in the summer, if you knew how to be nice to the right people, the tips were where it was at.
In 1982/83 with the right combination of hustle and personality, I could make $5 just moving groceries from the cart to the vehicle, of course back in the store you also had to know how to bag things right and if somebody wanted things done a particular way that is where you made your money.
If your average was $3 per customer for 15 minutes, that was $12 and if you worked 4-5 hours that was $60 a day. You could do an 8 hour shift on weekends back then. I averaged three weekdays plus saturday or about 200 days a year. Less during the school year but 5 days during summer.
That still came out to something like $1,200 a month (half of which had to go to a college fund). My dad made sure I had the basics for food, clothing and shelter but if I wanted a pair of shoes that were fancier than Keds, I was on my own dime.
I spent a lot of it on martial arts weapons, gear and magazines as they were a primary interest, but I did make two significant purchases that year.
Grabbed a brand new HK91 and HK93 for $350 each. These were my first HK rifles and $700 was a big chunk of change for a 15 year old kid. The only other modern military rifle I owned was a SP1 carbine which I bought around 1981 and pretty sure I paid $175 for it so I really felt like I got taken advantage of when I bought the HKs.
But I wanted them and was glad to have them. Moved to Iowa that summer because I was going to finish high school at the same school my dad graduated from and I brought all three rifles with me. I really loved that handy SP1 carbine, but the 91 quickly became a favorite.
We had a really nice rifle range about 5 minutes out of town from the school so almost every thursday and friday I’d load my 77 Blazer with all three rifles and a few hundred rounds of ammo just sitting in the school parking lot all day long. It never got broken into, my friend and a vice principal knew they were there but nobody called the FBI. But I did take my vice principal to the range one time so he could try the HK91 because he was seriously thinking about buying one. He decided later he just couldn’t afford it and I did my best to shame him by suggesting he get a job sacking groceries like I did.
Suffice to say I feel much better about the $700 deal these days and have no regrets, well only one that I wasn’t able to budget a HK 94 as well. This began my love of all things HK and then they made a film called “Die Hard” that just made it much, much worse.
