>>What Your Neighborhood List-Serv Tells You About The Demise of America
>>http://thefederalist.com/2013/09/20/what-your-neighborhood-list-serv-tells-you-about-the-demise-of-america/
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>>I read the subject line for the latest message on my neighborhood listserv with interest: “Kids Cutting Grass?”
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>>A few years ago I’d used a post with a similar headline to find someone to do some yard work. My husband and I hired a neighborhood kid whose Dad had died the year prior after a long illness. Maybe 13 years old, he’d taken to doing yard work to raise much-needed money and have something to do.
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>>But this email was very different. It read:
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>>“We just had a group of adorable and entrepreneurial kids (young, maybe 9-11 years old) offer to mow our grass. Not to be Scrooges in the neighborhood, but what is the general consensus on this around [the neighborhood] re: safety? They looked pretty young, and we didn’t see a parent with them supervising. I realize kids want to earn spending money, but I was interested in getting the pulse on this sort of thing. Teenagers, maybe. But these kids looked like they may be older elementary school aged (guess). We had a family member lose a couple of toes mowing while a young kid, so maybe I’m just overly sensitive.”
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>Jake .I'm with you on this one.
>Kids should be out learning how to make a buck.
>Many of the jobs I had as a kid have been obsoleted.
>I set up pins in a bowling alley (pinspotters now), delivered papers on my bike (adults do it now.. that should tell us something too), caddied (golf carts) and shined shoes ("soft shoes" now)
>As a young caddy I came into contact with some wonderful people who helped me in many ways off the course.
>You can't do that for a golf cart.
>My son pumped gas ( he was terrible at arithmetic but the owner taught him how to make change correctly and that helped his grades) and mowed lawns. When he was 14 he could rebuild a lawn mower engine.
>His sons, though - both teens now- have never earned a penny.
>That's a shame, I think.

I had a paper route, too. An excellent first job IMO. It taught the fundamentals of earning an income and doing it right. I had about 70 customers and put the papers inside the front door before 6, before hardly any of them were awake. I still get the paper delivered 4 days a week -- definitely stuck in the past there -- but as you say it has all changed. A guy drives by in a car at about 30 mph and throws it out the car window into the driveway.