Sounds like we all got our stuff the same way.
I shot gophers with my uncles Browning .22 and he would give me .03 for each tail and I hauled square bales for .10 each and that meant picked up in the field, hauled back to the yard and stacked and just for extra fun we would do about 300 square bales of alfalfa that had to be stacked in the haymow. Always about 100 degrees when it was time to do that. After two summers I had saved enough for a Marlin .22 of my own and a used Yamaha 100cc dirt bike.