12 Summer Jobs South Carolina Teens Had in the ’70s That Barely Exist Now

In the mid-1970s, 437 textile mills ran across South Carolina, and a teenager could pick up a summer shift at almost any of them.

Try finding that job today.

The paychecks that filled a teenager’s summer back then came from work that machines, new laws, and cheaper imports have all but erased.

These are the summer jobs teenagers once counted on that barely exist now.

1. Cropping Tobacco at Dawn

In the tobacco summers of the 1970s, a teenager in the Pee Dee was out in the field before the dew burned off.

Cropping meant snapping the ripe leaves off the bottom of the stalk by hand, row after row, bent double the whole time.

Back at the barn, you handed the leaves to the stringer, who tied them onto sticks to hang and cure over a flue.

The sap turned to a black gum that coated your fingers.

Your hands turned black.

Mechanical harvesters and bulk curing barns arrived around 1970 and cut the hand labor to a fraction, and the number of tobacco farms in the state fell 70 percent between 1974 and 1992.

The 2004 federal buyout ended the old quota system for good, and the warehouse markets at Mullins and Lake City mostly shut down.

2. Pumping Your Gas

Pull into a gas station in 1972, and a teenager came running before you cut the engine.

He pumped your gas, checked your oil, wiped the windshield, and eyed the tire pressure, all for the price on the sign.

“Fill it up” was a full-body job.

Then self-service spread through the decade, and by 1978 more than half the gas sold in the country came from a pump the driver worked alone.

By the mid-1980s roughly three-quarters of it did.

Now you pump it yourself.

Only New Jersey still bans self-service outright, and Oregon dropped its ban back in 2023.

3. Grading Peaches on the Ridge

Peach season on the Ridge ran a teenager ragged from June into August.

The Ridge is the band of high ground around Edgefield, Johnston, and Ridge Spring where most of the crop grows, over near Gaffney’s giant peach-shaped water tower.

You picked into a bucket in the heat, then stood at the packing shed line sorting and boxing what came down the belt.

The fuzz got into your collar and itched all day.

South Carolina ranks second nationally for peaches and ships far more of them than Georgia does.

Georgia still gets the credit.

The picking never stopped being manual. But seasoned crews replaced the teenage summer help, so a kid rarely fills a bucket in those orchards anymore.

4. Behind the Soda Fountain

Every downtown drugstore kept a marble counter, and a teenager worked behind it all summer.

The soda jerk pulled the syrup levers, pumped the fizzy water, and mixed a cherry Coke to order.

A banana split, a lime rickey, a scoop float, a grilled pimento cheese at lunch: The counter did it all.

Fast food and prepackaged drinks pulled the crowd away by the 1960s, and the fountains came out one by one.

Nobody pulls the lever now.

A handful of old pharmacies keep a working counter as a keepsake, but the summer job that came with it disappeared.

5. Summer Shift at the Mill

A summer job at the mill was the easiest paycheck a teenager in the Upstate could find.

Cotton mills in Greenville, Spartanburg, and Rock Hill hired kids to sweep the spinning room, doff full bobbins, and haul cloth while the regular hands took vacation.

The machines roared, and cotton lint hung in the air like a fine snow.

The lint never fully settled.

At the mid-1970s peak, 437 mills employed about 143,000 people across the state.

Then imports gutted the industry, mill after mill went dark, and employment sank toward 18,000.

Developers carved the surviving brick shells into loft apartments, and the summer shift went with the looms.

6. Caddying at the Club

Golf clubs handed a teenager a heavy canvas bag and a long walk for the whole summer.

A good caddie hauled the clubs, read the greens, tracked every wayward drive, and pocketed the tip at the turn.

Aiken’s Palmetto Golf Club and the courses filling up along the Grand Strand ran on that teenage labor.

Then clubs did the math on golf carts, which brought in rental money and needed no supervising.

The cart won that one.

Carts became standard by the 1970s, and the caddie job faded away to a few elite private clubs and high-end resorts.

7. Working the Drive-In

Warm nights put a teenager to work at the drive-in, and the shift began at dusk.

You waved cars up the gravel ramps, sold popcorn and corn dogs during the flashing intermission clock, and swept the lot when the last taillights left.

The country had more than 4,000 drive-ins at the 1958 peak, and around 300 hang on today.

Color television, the home videocassette recorder, and rising land values shut the rest.

Then the screen went dark.

The state that once had dozens is down to three: The Big Mo in Monetta, the Highway 21 in Beaufort, and the 25 Drive-In up in Greenwood still run.

8. Running Rides at the Pavilion

On the Grand Strand, the Myrtle Beach Pavilion ran on teenage muscle every summer.

Teenagers buckled riders into the coaster, ran the Ferris wheel, and made change at the arcade until midnight.

The amusement park's carousel dated to 1912, and a hand-built German band organ pumped out music beside it.

The park closed for good in 2006, and crews tore it down soon after.

The lot still sits empty.

A whole summer's worth of jobs vanished the day the gates locked, and no replacement park has filled that block since.

9. Minding the Switchboard

Before you could dial every call yourself, a teenager might spend the summer on a switchboard.

She plugged a cord into a jack, said "Number, please," and patched you through to the party you wanted.

The phone company was one of the largest employers of young women in the country, and small-town exchanges still needed a hand on the board into the 1970s.

Direct dialing erased the need, one converted exchange at a time.

The cords are all gone.

A few thousand operators still work in the whole country, mostly at hospitals and answering services, and none of them plug a cord into anything.

10. Ushering by Flashlight

Downtown movie houses put a teenager in the aisle with a flashlight.

You tore tickets, walked latecomers to open seats in the dark, and hushed the rowdy kids up in the balcony.

A single grand screen with a thousand seats needed a crew in matching vests to run it.

The multiplex ended that.

Small auditoriums, assigned seats, and self-serve everything left no work for a kid with a flashlight, and the old picture palaces downtown mostly closed.

Find your own seat now.

11. Curb Service on Skates

The local drive-in restaurant lived on curb service, and a teenager on skates carried it out.

A carhop took your order at the car window, rolled back with a tray of burgers and shakes, and clipped it to your door.

Tips came in loose change through the window.

Then the drive-thru lane made all of it faster and cheaper, and the trays came down.

Almost nobody skates now.

Sonic still calls its workers carhops, but the summer job at a hometown drive-in with a tray and a set of skates all but ended.

12. Copy Boy at the Paper

At the town newspaper, a teenager usually started as the copy boy.

You sprinted typed stories from the newsroom to the composing room in the back.

There, printers set the day's news in hot lead on a Linotype, a keyboard as big as a piano that cast each line of type in molten metal.

The room smelled of machine oil and melting lead.

The lead went cold.

Computers and offset presses made the whole hot-metal back shop useless within a few years.