I've been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.
My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.
I have worked really hard since the age of eight, so each phase of my life is equally important.
I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.
So I was shampooing at 14. But I've always thought that had I the opportunity for an education, I would have been an architect. There's no question about it.
I'm a kid who grew up working hard.
I've worked since I was in second grade.
My father instilled in me an attitude that you couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you had done something to deserve it. So, my childhood was spent working on farms or local shops or, when I got older, in banks.
I was selling stuff probably since I could remember, like 6 or 7 years old. I was always out there helping my mom and dad sell watches, glasses, CDs, DVDs, stuff like that. Whatever we could put our hands on. I did it until I was around 17. But I was just doing it because I had to. There was no other option.
Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.
When I was just 13, we went from being middle class to lower middle class and finally lower class, as someone close to my father took away everything he had, including his property. All of a sudden, I started working at the age of 13.
I started learning my lessons in Abbot Texas, where I was born in 1933. My sister Bobbie and I were raised by our grandparents [...] We never had enough money, and Bobbie and I started working at an early age to help the family get by. That hard work included picking cotton. [...] Picking cotton is hard and painful work, and the most lasting lesson I learned in the fields was that I didn't want to spend my life picking cotton.
When I was a kid, from 10 years old, I worked every day for my dad, huh? Never played basketball. I never played tennis - never did. We worked so that we could eat.
I'd been working since I was eleven so I could buy my own comic books. I was that kid knocking on your door, selling subscriptions to the paper and crying because I wasn't going to sell that last paper that would allow me to go to Disneyland.
They were tough times and I started working when I was 10 years old, delivering papers and eventually becoming a waiter.
When I was 17 - 16, my father and I cut wood all day long and I was swinging that crosscut saw and hauling wood.
My stepdad was a farmer, so growing up, during summer breaks, I woke up every morning and went to work. Harvesting tobacco, picking cucumbers, gathering watermelons from the patch, pulling up sweet potatoes... stuff like that.
I worked in Dad's stores, moving boxes - I remember quite well one stockroom that was upstairs - sweeping floors, laying tile. I also had paper routes.
I grew up cleaning stalls and milking cows.
I started working since I was four years old. All I remember is I wanted to become a star.
The restaurant business had a profound effect on my future and that of my two brothers. When we were able to stand on a stool to reach the sink, we washed dishes, and later, when we could see over the counter, we waited tables and managed the cash register.
Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far.
I had to work from a young age.
I was really close to my father since I was young. He always told me that I had to work in order to become a man, so I had to stay with him when my mother left. He always took me to work to help him as a bricklayer. I was just a kid, so I did what I could do to help him.
