We asked readers to share their most memorable summer job growing up in the Chicago area. Here’s what you told us, lightly edited for clarity:
“I worked as a demonstrator, now called a guide-lecturer, at the Museum of Science and Industry when I was 17 during the summer of 1961. I learned to give the U-505 tour and can still recite the trophy room speech that started the tour.”
— Tom Judge
“I painted all the billboard posts from Gary to Lafayette on I-65 in the summer of ’92.”
— James Beasley
“Gate staff at Ravinia. I learned two fantastic life lessons: how to be OK with being bored and how to deal with entitled people.”
— Jordan Mainzer
“For two summers, when I was 14 and 15, I detasseled corn in fields just west of Naperville. You walk the rows, manually pulling out the tassels from the female plants in mid-July to allow farmers to cross-pollinate the plants. It was hot sweaty work but I have a deep respect for farmers and farm workers to this day.”
— Laurie ShoulterKarall
“A fruit stand in River West.”
— Danni Coutee
“I worked at a Cafe Brauer hot dog stand at the Chess Pavilion at Oak Street Beach during the summer of 1968. Great weather, friends with the lifeguards, flirting with the girls, free Sunday music concerts in the park across LSD in Lincoln Park.”
— David Kraft
“In 1976 and 1977, I worked at Marriott’s Great America when it was still a great place to go. I worked at the circus as an usherette.”
— Angela Cantu
“Taste of Chicago, 1982. The Park District/Soldier Field had refreshment trailers around the fest. … We sold pop, dogs, chips and, oddly, candy — free for any Chicago cop and Mayor Jane Byrne. My friend Joey and I made $800 each over three sweltering days — big cash for 1982.”
— Marty Regan
“I worked three summers in the back of a dry cleaner, loading clothes and chemical cleaners. The back room also had the steam tables for pressing the clothes and ironing the shirts. … I got 90 cents an hour.”
— Bob Steinmetz
“[Working] for a printing company-sign shop. Hours in a tin box building with no AC, standing up, washing items in paint chemicals, breathing it all in while sweating, then shuffling heavy paper products across the factory floor. … It taught me hard work and to go to college to get a comfortable indoor job where I could sit.”
— Kirk-Jefferson Park