Saturday, May 11, 2013

1974


1974 was an interesting year. I started working at Sears. I had not worked outside of my home for many years. I enjoyed being a mom, but when they started school, there was only so much dusting to do.
I interviewed on the phone to be a switchboard operator. Soon there was this deep voice with a smile that told me they had no need for a switchboard operator, but they sure did need a female applicance technician.  He asked me if I had an aptitude for repairing things. I told him that once I had taken my vacuum apart and couldn't get it put back together again. He laughed and said, "Come on in and fill out your paperwork.!"
I knew nothing about the need to have some females in the traditional jobs that men did.
He was slick. He got me by sending me to Chicago for schooling for six weeks. So I apprenticed for about three months with supervision. Loved it!!
Along with learning something new, I got a discount on everything from gasoline, to appliances, to furniture. Gasoline was 74 cents a gallon that year.
In that year Sears started carrying microwaves. Oh, I wanted one so bad I could taste it.  I bought one, read the instruction book. I made a hamburger, when it was done it looked like a black hockey Puck,
completely unedible; short story made very long.
The other day I made some precooked sausage for breakfast  39 years later than the hamburger story. The sausages were slated to cook for 40 seconds. I put them in for 4 minutes. I put them in front of Fran, turned around to fix my eggs and sat down to a face that was not a happy one. He could not chew them.
Later he told me that he had given them to our big outside dog and he couldn't chew them either.
My pat excuse is, "But Fran. I have a condition!"  lol

Happy Mother's Day, ladies.