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Working at home
I had to quit school
after grade 8 to stay at home to help. I used to
stand at the window and watch the other kids going
to school and cry because I wanted to go to school
to become a nurse. I stayed at home until I was 15
or 16 and then went out to work. When I was living
at home, I worked outside with Dad. Viola was just
the opposite, working inside most of the time. She
did not even know how to milk a cow. One time Mom put grease on the stove to make donuts and asked me to let her know when it was hot. I thought, how am I going to know that, so I asked Viola to put her finger in the oil to see. Thank goodness it wasn’t too hot at that point. Picking potatoes with Viola |
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I used to go out in the
mornings and help Dad milk and do the chores. One
time I went out ahead of Dad and when I opened the
barn door, I saw that a cow was having a calf. I
slammed the door real quick because girls were not
supposed to see anything like that. I went into the
hen house and watched through a crack until I saw
Dad go into the barn, then I came back out. He
quickly came out of the barn and told me I did not
have to come to the barn and I could go back in the
house. He did not say why, but I knew of course.
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First Paying Jobs Around 16, I started going out to work. The first place was in Eganville at Byers. Mrs. Byers was sick in bed. I worked for $10 a month and had to give mother half of it. It was amazing what you could buy for $5 in those days. One time I bought a dress, but mostly I saved my money. I worked there for just the one winter. In the summers, I had to quit to work on the farm, getting in the hay and grain, working in the garden, and pickling and preserving.
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My new dress
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The next winter I did
housework for a sergeant in the army in Pembroke. Then,
the following year, I went to Ottawa and did not have to
quit in the summer, as Viola and Garnet were now old
enough to work at home. I worked at 2 different places
in Ottawa, one
With Edna Sell |
of
which was on Somerset Street. I went there by train with
Edna Sell, who worked in Ottawa too. We would get one
afternoon off a week. Her older sister, Elizabeth,
warned us not to go out by ourselves, as she was afraid
we would get lost. She had already taken us downtown a
couple of times and we thought we could do it by
ourselves. We went into a store and then back out and up
the street and were lost. We walked around but finally
had to phone Elizabeth who came and got us. Did she give
us a good talking to! We found out later that the store
had two doors on different streets and we had gone out
the wrong one. We never got lost again after that.