Sunday, August 1, 2010

Sunday Memories - And What Was Your First Job?


Her's was when she was 12.

It was the depression, they were all stuffed into that tenement on Henry Street, and school was a thing of the past because only her brothers, my father and my uncle, got to go on to the next grade.

So a relative who had some connections nobody talked about (and maybe still shouldn't) got her a job taking bets at the Armstrong News which was a racing sheet.

She got fired because she talked too much.

At her next job, age 13, she got a job at one of the Settlement Houses and went on to changed the world.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There has to be at least one false start to every grand ending.
My first job was an absolute horror. I was 15. My dad came home and advised me that I was going to be a waitress for the summer. It was at least 4 miles down the highway. Most days I walked there and back. I was hideously shy at the time and being thrust into a service job didn't do anything to help the matter (or so I thought at the time) After a few days I quit. Dad was mad. The next year I got myself a job in an honest to goodness general store and never looked back. That first job is an invaluable lesson on many levels.

bucko said...

I wanted to help change the world, so I got a job walking door to door to get people to donate money for an environmental cause. Pay was shit and frankly, I sucked at asking people for money, not having then, as now, a gene that can deal with rejection. One woman gave me lots of money tho, just s I had given up on the job. There's a lesson there somewhere....

masister said...

Look how beautiful she was there. Ive been missing her. And you. Thanks for this. Love you.

Alana said...

I can only imagine what a 12 year old would witness in a racing sheet..sounds like my grandfather when he was the only kid in the neighborhood who had the guts to deliver the daily paper in the part of town that was a mob hangout and would have the balls to go back to the gambling houses to collect the money that was due to him for a whole week's worth of deliveries.