Let's Volunteer

It seems like during my whole life I have had the opportunity to volunteer at one thing or another. It started at a very early age. When I was about eleven or twelve, I had earned enough money delivering papers to purchase a new reel lawnmower. My father didn’t like the rotary type of mower so we got a reel. My father helped me with some of the money which I was to pay back, and I did.

I earned money watering and mowing lawns all over town. I also cleaned some of the businesses uptown and worked in the grocery store sorting soda pop bottles. I cleaned the Nava-Hopi, the Greenwell’s flower shop, Bob Broadbent’s drug store and the old LDS church.

Many of my jobs were lucrative, and I was able to save some money. I also ended up with some jobs that were not quite as lucrative. It seems as though whenever a widow needed her lawn cut or windows washed, I “volunteered.”

I remember in church often they would come to the quorum meeting and ask for volunteers to do one thing or another. If not enough people volunteered, they would then say, “How about you, Brother Stubbs, (referring to me), I think that you might have time to do this job,” and so I had just volunteered. Usually by my dad. I shouldn’t complain too much; some of the things I was volunteered for were great.

Jim and Leonard Stubbs

I was volunteered to mow the church lawn but ended up getting paid ten dollars a month for the lawn care. Then I was asked to volunteer to clean the old church each week. I drew the line there, which was not easy because the person always volunteering me was my father, the bishop of the ward. I said that I wanted to get paid if I were to do that volunteer job. My father agreed, and I was paid thirty dollars a month for lawn care and for cleaning the chapel. After doing this job for a little over a year, the bishop, still my dad, came and said that I wasn’t needed to take care of the church cleaning and the lawn.

I found out that he had hired someone else to do the job I had done for thirty dollars a month for one hundred dollars a month. He said that the man hired needed a job and to earn some money. He didn’t do any better job than I had. You can be sure that I checked on him, and he wasn’t any better. In fact, he was not as good.

Along with my volunteering for people I wasn’t related to, I was needed to earn enough money to buy clothes for my siblings. I just gave the money to my parents, and they did the rest. I remember that they were so upset at me one time because I had spent some of the money I had earned. I later learned that they were counting on the money I earned to pay the bills for the family. I think it must have been hard for my father to earn enough. It was probably harder to know that I made as much as he did with the lawn work and cleaning.

One of the more enjoyable jobs that I was volunteered for was with Hattie Musgrave. I took care of her yard, and I read to her a couple of times a week until she passed away. Billie Bates was another one that I enjoyed. I have written about her before. She was a wonderful person.

There are many events happening that need volunteering for. I was not always anxious to jump in and volunteer. I am grateful to my father who not only volunteered me but himself as well. He spent many hours away from home helping others in the ward and people that lived around us. He wired and rewired many homes for people without pay. He actually did the wiring, and I volunteered to help wire my wife’s parents’ home. My father was always very generous with his time and knowledge, and he taught me to do the same.