Our oldest son brought home his first paycheck last week. I'm not sure what he's more excited about: the money or not having to hear me say, “You need to get a job. I was working when I was 10 years old.”

That's not just one of those “I walked to school barefoot in the snow” stories. Like a lot of kids in my generation, I was born to work. My family lived on a farm.

When I was a teenager, nearly all my friends had a summer job working in tobacco. In Franklin County in the 1970s and '80s, if your daddy didn't grow tobacco, then chances are that your uncle or your cousin did. There was always work on somebody's farm. Even if you weren't old enough to drive, somebody would come get you and let you ride to the field in the back of the pickup.

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