The only tip I ever received from a customer was not during my 42 years in the hardware store in Cobden, but when I was a young lad of 9 or 10 during the early 60’s.
At that time, Dad was operating the planning mill/sash and door factory on Jason Street, which eventually became our original store, where rough-sawn lumber was dressed down to a standard thickness, and to make it smoother.
All the shavings from the planer and other machinery was sucked up a 12″ pipe to a bin or hopper about 12-foot square and 12-feet high. The local farmers would come in and haul them home for livestock bedding.
I had a job after school and on holidays sweeping up the place, and would sometimes help them load up by climbing into this bin through a small upper door and push shavings down into a half-ton truck with high racks where the farmer would pack them down with his feet, then cover the load with a tarp so they wouldn’t end up all over the road. Today shavings are pressed into bales.
One Christmas eve as we were getting ready to close early around 4 p.m., a truck pulled in to get a jag of shavings. After we were finished loading, the man came to the office to settle up with Dad, then gave me a tip, in the same amount as he had just paid for the load, 25 cents.
Merry Christmas to all,
Doug Schauer
