My first job for pay was sweeping the feed warehouse. It was a job that had to be done once a week and it took enough time that it didn’t work as an after school task. I swept on Saturdays. I don’t remember how much I was paid, but it didn’t take much money for the things I wanted to do in those days. As I grew older and gained skills, I had a variety of other jobs around our father’s farm supply business. Some of my jobs focused on facility maintenance like sweeping the feed warehouse and painting. It seemed like there always a painting project underway. Other jobs were more directly related to the business. I did a fair amount of assembling machinery. Many of the machines we sold arrived on train cars partially assembled, with boxes and bundles of parts that had to be added before the machines went to work in the field.

I remember wanting one of the jobs around the shop. There was a 25 gallon propane tank on a dolly with a weed burning torch attached. The torch was lit with a striker like a welding torch and the tank was heavy, not unlike the oxygen and acetylene bottles used in the shop. The shop was surrounded by gravel lots on which machines for sale were displayed. Weeds grew up through the gravel and periodically someone would go through the lots with the torch to burn off the weeds.

As soon as I got the job, I was pretty much tired of it. It was hot and dirty and the tank was heavy. The small wheels of the dolly were too small for the rough gravel surface and the hose attaching the torch to the tank wasn’t long enough to reach very much without having to move the tank again.

Over the years there were other jobs that I ended up doing that I didn’t like. One fall an out of town combine crew was loading a self propelled combine onto a truck when something went wrong and the machine was damaged as it fell off of the truck. My uncle bought the damaged combine from the insurance company and spent the winter making the necessary mechanical repairs. Combines have a lot of sheet metal. Much of the metal could be straightened, but the paint was damaged in the process. My cousin was trained in auto body repair and had the equipment to do the painting. Before painting, however, the combine needed to be sanded. The areas with paint needed to be sanded to rough up the surface to take new paint on top. The edges where the paint had to be sanded to make the surface smooth. A few places where surface rust had appeared over the winter had to be sanded down to bare metal.

A combine is a really big machine and even though large areas could be sanded with an electric sanding disc, there were lots of corners that had to be sanded by hand. Day after day I would work at the task, covered in paint dust. The combine was red and I showered daily to wash the red out of my hair and off of my body. I didn’t enjoy the job, but was proud of my work. The combine remained a part of my uncle’s harvest fleet well into my adult years and each time I saw it I remembered the summer of sanding.

The work of a pastor is varied. There are the public tasks that are seen by the congregation. Preparing sermons is behind the scenes, but it is evident each week when the sermons are delivered. Visiting in homes, hospitals, and care centers is also pretty visible. The job, at least the way I approached it, involved a lot of meetings. I’ve spent my fair share of time listening to people who needed to talk, sometimes extending meetings well beyond the amount of time it took to do the work. I tired of meetings at times.

I used to joke that ministry was 50% moving furniture. Churches are equipped with moveable furniture. Folding tables and chairs provide for flexibility for a wide variety of different activities. Big churches have paid janitors and sextons to move furniture and set up rooms. The congregations I served depended upon volunteers to do the work. I did a lot of working alongside other volunteers setting up and taking down furniture.

I was also the go to person for clogged toilets, jammed printers, computer network connections, copier toner refills, closet cleaning, responding to spills, and a lot of other chores.

I imagined that being retired would involve a bit less of the jobs I don’t enjoy and a bit more of the tasks I like. However, I find that I have the ability to get involved in jobs that I won’t describe as fun. For example, when we bought our house it came with a hot tub. The hot tub is big and it is old. It was filled and useable for the first year we lived in the house but a slow leak became bigger and one thing led to the next and the tub was declared to be beyond repair. I drained it and disconnected it from its electric supply. I procrastinated about hauling it away because I couldn’t figure out how to get the job done. I asked a hot tub company about having someone pick it up and haul it and the minimum charge for the service was more than I was willing to pay.

I spend much of the day yesterday jacking and blocking and lifting and prying and have succeeded in moving the tub a little bit. I also have moved it enough to know that the task is beyond my abilities. Perhaps if I had three or four strong people to help it could be tipped on one side and rolled onto my trailer. At least that was my theory. For now, however, the job remains undone and I have visions of the summer of sanding the combine. I really don’t want this job to take up all of my time. Options include figuring out how to cut it up and haul it away in pieces and, of course, paying to have someone else haul it. I haven’t decided what I am going to do. Being retired, however, does seem to involve jobs that I didn’t imagine before I got to this place in my life.