Last Sunday, Easter, I merged my "in-town" family (Stephanie and Arn) with Rita's and we all went to dinner together and then back to her house for desert.
At her house we were treated to many old photographs and scrapbooks that Kelly had unearthed while cleaning his basement. The trunk that held these treasures had suffered water damage along the years and the items were musty and bordering on moldy. Rita is slowly going through all of it. She had to discard scrapbooks that she had compiled of all her school work and report cards. One from grade school and another from high school. The high school one had souvenirs from dances etc. But at least she got a chance to look through them first.
She has had to work intermittently, because the residue of musty makes her feel ill.
There were things in that trunk from many branches of the family and she is saving what she can for each of us.
Today she brought me something I thought I would never see again. It is a payroll record of mine dated October 18, 1952 from Johnnie's Sweet Shoppe. I worked 3 hours after school on Monday and Wednesday, 3 1/2 hours on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and 6 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. My net pay, was $12.35. I was rich.
9 comments:
That's just 43.4 cents an hour! I thought we made good money back then, compared to Theresa's on Gartner who paid Rita & I 12.5 cents an hour, but I cannot remember about Rita, but I know that I was not in highschool at the time, so maybe that's all we were worth back then? Monica
I guess the net pay was misleading. I started at Johnnie's right after my 15th birthday at 50 cents per hour. That pay period shows my raise to 55.
I can't say I'm jealous of your 50-55 cents per hour. I'll take what I'm making now (significantly more than that).
Of course that isn't much at today's rates, but, it was not much in those times either. We were raised on very little and were not expected to get more by anybody. We were all gratefull for what we did earn. Bernie and I started at Ford Trade School at .20 per hour but we always knew there was more to be had if we applied ourselves.
I understand completely how you feel. I too am grateful to get what I do, and I try to be very careful about spending it wisely. Like you, I look forward to finding all the extra money to be had out there in the future. Besides, you can only live with a grocery employee's wages for so long...
it's fun going through old stuff. It makes you appreciate what you have today. Hey Dad, why were you and Bernie getting paid if you were in Trade school? Sounds like a sweet deal to me getting paid for going to school Huh Sean?..
Cheryl
Whoops, that was my comment earlier and I messed up...
Yeah, getting paid to go to school sure beats paying to go to school.
We only went to classes every third week. Two weeks were spent doing shop work which produced income for Ford Motor Company. We did not get paid for the class work only for the shop work. Still, Ford did profit from running the School. A 2 cent per hour raise was given for an all A report card. Bernie never missed getting the raise. According to him that was the only reason he studied.
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