My father was a foreman of a sugar-cane plantation in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. My first job was to drive the oxen that ploughed the cane fields. I would walk behind an ox, guiding him with a broomstick. For $ 1 a day, I worked eight hours straight, with no food breaks. It was very _ work, but it prepared me for life and taught me many lasting lessons. Because the plantation owners were always watching us, I had to be on time every day and work as hard as I could. I've never been late for any job since. I also learned about being respectful and faithful to the people you work for. More important, I earned my pay; it never entered my mind to say I was sick just because I didn't want to work. I was only six years old, but I was doing a man's job. Our family needed every dollar we could make because my father never earned more than $ 18 a week. Our home was a three-room wood shack with a dirty floor and no toilet. Nothing made me prouder than bringing home money to help my mother, father, two brothers and three sisters. This gave me self-esteem , one of the most important things a person can have. When I was seven, I got work at a golf course near our house. My job was to stand down the fairway and spot the balls as they landed, so the golfers could find them. Losing a ball meant you were fired, so I never missed one. Some nights I would lie in bed and dreamt of making thousands of dollars by playing golf and being able to buy a bicycle. The more I dreamed, the more I thought. Why not? I made my first golf club out of guava limb  and a piece of pipe. Then I hammered an empty tin can into the shape of a ball. And finally I dug two small holes in the ground and hit the ball back and forth. I practiced with the same devotion  and intensity . I learned working in the field -- except now I was driving golf balls with club, not oxen with a broomstick . The writer's first job was   _  .
to stand down the fairway at a golf course to watch over the sugar-cane plantation to drive the oxen that ploughed the cane fields to spot the balls as they landed so the golfers could find them