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1958 |
MikePattiJulieMackenzieMikeyStandishCassidyJones FamilyKenNellActivitiesAudio ClipsCoin CollectionFavorite LinksHeart SmartPicture TrailsQuicktime SnipsRecipesRock CollectionStamp CollectionUnknown Student Art |
A few days after the Pretty Boy incident I was called to work at a substation on North Main Street. School was out and Jimmy had to sleep so I had to carry both of them and keep them with me. They were so active, and stayed hungry when they learned they could go to the corner drug store and get a toasted cheese sandwich! I had taken cookies and snacks for them but they craved toasted cheese the way they made them at the drug store. In the early afternoon they had a race around the shop. The clothes were on long iron rods with a cross piece between the rows. They chased around and turned the whole rack over! There was a bubble gum machine on my counter. A large glass bowl made to put a penny in and get a gumball. The end of one of the iron rods hit the glass bowl. It just made a round hole so I bought scotch tape to fix that. Those long clear plastic bags to put the dry cleaning in were new. Sans Souci was the only cleaners that offered free plastic covers for having your winter clothes cleaned and stored. The rack that had all those special bundles on it was a disaster! I called the plant and told them to send me six of the bags. I told them I had sold them and the customer would pick them up that afternoon. I got the bags and changed the dry cleaning into the new bags. After buying six at 25¢ each, 29¢ for scotch tape, toasted cheese sandwiches, and comic books it took more than I made that day. I only made 50¢ an hour. That was $5.00 for ten hours of work. If I worked only twenty-five hours a week you can figure how little I made. Our main income was from Jimmy he worked at a textile mill and made a good living. We paid all the bills and put a little in the bank from his salary. The money I made was just to get extra things that we wanted without taking from our savings. Jimmy would come and get us at the laundry after I got off work but I had to ride the bus to get there in the morning. I was glad when they hired someone else to work there. I could walk to the Airport shop but when I was needed at another place I rode the bus. I only worked part time when someone got sick. Most of the time it was only a few hours or very few days. At the Airport shop I worked every other Saturday and in the summer I worked on Wednesday afternoon. It worked out pretty good. I would get $2.00 for Wednesday afternoon and we would always have steak, fresh cheese and hot biscuits for supper. Nell White always left my $2.00 in the drawer and on Saturday I got $5.00. That was big money! One week Nell White was sick and I had to stay in the shop all week. Michael had not started to school so Jimmy would bring him to the shop when he got home from work at about 8:30 AM. I had to open the shop at 7:30 AM and Kenneth had to go to school so Michael stayed home alone and watched television until Jimmy got home. One day I carried a lunch for us and milk for Michael. It was all in a bag on a small table Nell had in the bathroom. She kept a mirror, comb, brush and other items for her personal use in there. Michael was in a hurry to go home at the end of the day. He ran to the bathroom and pulled the bag off the table. All of Nell's things came with it! The mirror was an antique! It was broken into bits. The frame would have lasted another lifetime but the glass was shattered. We went by Wilson's on our way home and got a new one made as near like the other one as possible. I carried it back to the shop the next day. When Nell came back I told her I bought her a new mirror, but I didn't tell her why. She said the other one belonged to her grandfather and it was real old anyway. I went and put in an application at Woolworth's when they opened the store at Pleasantburg. I made $1.25 an hour. I asked to work only part time 4:00 to 8:00 PM on Friday and 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturday. That way Jimmy would be there with the boys. They began staying open Monday, Thursday, and Friday until 8:00 PM. So, the part time help was forced to work 4:00 to 8:00 PM Monday, Thursday, and Friday. It still worked out because I would have supper cooked and Jimmy would sleep till time for me to leave for work. One Saturday, Mike came in the store about closing time. They knew they were not to be around my area when they came to pick me up. This day Mike walked up and around my counter. I was getting everything straightened before closing time. He made very sure I would see that he had a big bandage on his hand. I couldn't get a chance to find out what was wrong until we got outside. He had climbed up the anchor fence and got his hand caught on the spiked wire on top of the fence. It was cut pretty bad. He had been told many times not to be climbing that fence to get into the apple tree in the Spearman's yard! Of course, I had a fit and called Dr. Freeman. He was at the emergency room and we carried Mike over there. It didn't need stitches, but it took all the aids and orderlies to hold him down to get a tetanus shot. He got under a table, held on and had to be pulled loose. Oh, how he kicked and yelled! He thought that they were going to sew his hand up and he was afraid of that. There is still a little black spot in the palm of his hand where we did not get all of the dirt out. Copyright ©1990 by Piedmont Endeavors, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of these stories may be reproduced by any means electronic or otherwise without the prior approval of the author. |
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Copyright © 2003 |
