Jobs

Jobs

I have just launched a new group called, “It’s a Living”. I looked through the list of groups and saw nothing specific about tales of how people make their livelihood. I think there are potentially some very good stories out there. Reading about someone else’s work experience could be entertaining and helpful to someone else. That’s enough of a plug for my group. Let me tell you some of my work experiences.

I grew up on a farm, almost three miles from town, with no playmates, and a horse as my best friend. When I was 11, a Jewish family bought a small farm down the hill from us, and I became a summer friend of their daughter Hilda. They were an orthodox Jewish family, and I was confused when I was politely shooed away at mealtime.

Hilda played the violin and was a budding prodigy. She had to practice six hours a day. I played a ukulele, and a harmonica, and had already reached the ‘peak’ of my skill.  I could sing and play 27 verses of “Little Joe the Wrangler.”  Sometimes Hilda would re-tune her violin and use it as a fiddle, and we would have a little hoedown.

One summer her family had a visitor with a toddler. During the first few days the woman was there, I happened to be playing with Hilda, and the lady saw that I was a nice kid, and decided that when Hilda was practicing on her violin, she would hire me to look after her three-year-old baby girl. She had no idea there could be an 11-year-old child who had never, I mean NEVER, been around babies or young children. Of course that didn’t worry me a bit, because I loved all baby animals and had been around them a lot.

So, I followed the baby girl around like a shadow, not having any idea about how to amuse her. I tried reading to her, but she was restless. She wanted to go outside, but her mother had said to stay inside. In the process of closing the door, I shut the poor tot’s fingers in the hinge-end of the door. When the pitiful howls lifted the roof, and the mother came running, I was fired on the spot. My hopes for earning money to go to the movies were bashed.

Lesson one – Stay away from babies.

My second job was right after I graduated from high school. I was to enter St. Luke’s Hospital in NYC for a three-year course in nurses training. I wanted to earn and save some money for my tuition and other expenses. I found an advertisement in the Danbury News for a job as an upstairs maid for an upper crust New York family who were summering at Candlewood Lake. I read a lot, including Wodehouse, and I knew what was expected of an upstairs maid – you made beds and cleaned rooms. I could do that.

I did the job quite successfully. One catch was that there was a son of 14 years, going on 25, who came sneaking into my room one night. I was a strong, fully developed girl of 5’8” and he’s just lucky I didn’t give him a black eye! I told his mother I would quit if that happened again.

My employer’s husband usually stayed in New York, and his wife spent her time writing mystery novels. She had several tables set up in her living room where she would stack pages from her work-in-progress. One day the wind came whipping through the opened French doors, and blew her nicely sorted pages all over the room. She was so MAD she took it out on both the cook and me. She came from a French family and swore eloquently in French. Unfortunately, the cook was from Quebec, and understood every word that she called us. Cook said something bad in French right back at the angry woman. I had taken two years of French in high school, but the talking was so loud and fast, that the only word I caught was ‘dog’.

Anyhow, the cook quit and the lady of the house asked me if I wanted the job. I had spent a good 14 years of my life avoiding cooking! My sister was the one who shone at that. But, I wanted the money, and I finally said that I would cook for her, if she would buy me a cookbook. I could read really well.

You would have been surprised how well I did, if I say so myself. Of course sometimes I had such an unorganized mess in that small kitchen, that I had to set pots on the floor. My lady didn’t seem to mind as long as she didn’t have to do the cooking.

One thing that offended me was that when there was ‘company’, they brought gifts for the servants. Someone gave me a purse about 18 inches wide made of pink leather. It was the first time I thought of myself as a servant. It was my first confrontation with the fact there were classes of people in America. I had read stories about that being expected in England, but never here in the land of the free!

The only people close to my own age that I met there, were the two garbage boys. One, Frankie, was a year younger than I, and other fellow, Dennis, was a couple years older. The older guy was local., but the younger was from Queens, New York. He was a summer person, and a very nice boy. The other had his eye on the girl next door. She was a young German woman who worked as a nanny. I became acquainted with her, and one day she asked me to go with her to a nightclub. Eighteen was the legal age ito drink in pubs in Connecticut.  She took me to the Little Haufbrau, also on Candlewood Lake. I could see at a glance it was a den of would-be Nazis. This was 1940 and I followed the news enough to know it was an enemy camp.

I avoided the German girl, but not before the two garbage boys invited us for a ride in a motorboat. Somehow the Son of my employer was along, and he tried to paw me the whole time. Frankie tried to come to my rescue, but wasn’t very effective. Finally I jumped overboard to swim the considerable distance back to shore. They followed me in the motorboat, and finally Frankie made the Son behave himself and I climbed back in.

One other adventure I have to tell you, because I will never forget it. The boys talked the German girl and me into climbing up the water tower with them. It was the regular kind you see on the skyline of small towns on the plains. There is a little ladder and when you reach the top, you have to maneuver over the round edge of the tank to sit up there and view the world. Going up wasn’t hard, but when we got ready to come down, I froze. I couldn’t see how I was going to ease over that round part to the narrow ladder. I was absolutely terrified! But good old Frankie talked me through it and we all made it safely to the bottom.

Just a few nights after that, the Son came sneaking back in my bedroom, and I blew up. I quit! No amount of promises or pleading on the part of the mother would change my mind. I went home to my mamma and daddy, where I was safe!

Lesson 2 - Avoid boys and men!