Oh, Those Jobs!

In a family with four kids, living on an Air Force salary, there was not a great deal of leftover money in our family as I was growing up, and at an early age, I learned the importance of saving money and being frugal. Herb and I discovered money-making projects we did from six years old on. In the early years fund-raising involved such ambitious projects as collecting bouquets of violets and lilies of the valley and selling them door to door to all of the neighborhood. This worked quite well until our parents and grandparents found out, so we then tried other things. Believe it or not, the butcher shop would actually pay us money for bacon grease, which we collected religiously in an old Crisco can before hauling our load up the street to the corner market area. However, it does take quite a while to wait for all of the grease to collect, so we gave that up. By the time I was eleven and Dad was already in the Philippines, it occurred to us that selling Christmas cards and stationery was a sure-fire winner, and we peddled those in our other grandparents' neighborhood. That was a huge success, and we had spending money for ourselves and Christmas presents.

Overseas, there was little we could do, but at least I became proficient in baby-sitting, as the youngest was ten younger than I. So by the time we reached Mississippi, baby-sitting became the money-maker. By Illinois, I was old enough to have a real job and obtained my first Social Security card, which means I have been paying into the system for 50 years. The local dime store hired me to do cashier work and to work behind the candy counter, which is why to this day I do not eat as much chocolate. I got sick of even the smell of it, especially those milk chocolate stars. That summer I worked at the local swimming pool as a cashier.

In Albuquerque, my work experience became even more diversified as I began working in the lingerie and hosiery department of a local department store. I found I definitely enjoyed the business of selling and was half-way good at it, so I continued to do that through college, first with Hubbard's, then with Fedway, which became Dillard's. Dillard's had me trained and working at the cosmetics counter, which was great fun! Since selling was only a parttime job, I also worked first at the soda fountain, and then in the accounting department of Valley Gold Dairies, totalling their recap sheets, which gave me some background for a later job. They also sponsored me as the state's Dairy Princess, which was fun, and then I began demonstrating dairy products for them all over the city, which also continued throughout college. As a high school senior, my mom had decided to enroll me in a modeling class, so soon I was modeling clothes for stores and making television commercials. I even was an Easter Bunny at a shopping center one year, and that was awful! The kids kept pulling my tail. A man who saw me there then hired me to be the sole human being for his puppet show, which was kind of like Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. We filmed about eight shows for a pilot, but, alas, no one apparently wanted to see the Adventures of Wilbur Worm and Missy Mary, although it was quite fun to do it. I was even hired as a census taker in 1960, collecting data door to door all summer.

During the college summers I began to work in the Administration Department of UNM, primarily in the transcript department, analyzing the high school applicants' folders and allocating points for grades, activities, etc. and making sure they had taken all of the necessary courses for admittance. One summer they hired me to actually complete the President's Cost Study, using class sizes, number of classes, number of professors, etc. to figure out how much each student was costing per professor and grad assistant per class. It was rather complicated, but somehow it was finished on time, and the results were fascinating. So by the time I graduated and began teaching, I already had years in the work force.

Even while teaching I continued to do several other things, including supplement the meager income by working summers at Penneys in Kansas City. In Oklahoma City when the girls were little I did modeling and fashion show commentating, which kept me clothed for three years, even as I did in Albuquerque when we first moved back there.

Before long, however, teaching and raising two girls became quite enough to keep me busy, until when 1HW and I were married, and we discovered the joys of antiquing. As I look back, many of those jobs provided me with all kinds of skills and enabled me to meet fascinating people who otherwise would have remained unknown. That is a blessing!

The Rest of High School

In the middle of my sophomore year we moved to Rantoul, Illinois, a small farm town just north of Champagne-Urbana with a large Air Force base. Herb and I joined the Methodist Youth Group and immediately met a fun bunch of wonderful local kids, breaking me out of the geek pattern. That spring, for the very first time, I had a boyfriend named Bill, a good looking academic student, all round outstanding athlete with an incredibly funny sense of humor. He was also the high school principal's son, and had a sister in Herb's class. Life suddenly bacame much brighter! There were group dates and outings, the Junior-Senior Prom, and my first formal. What fun! However, shortly after I began wearing Bill's state gold First Place Track Medals on a chain around my neck, my father began to dislike him immensely, and by the end of summer I was forbidden to date him any longer. We tried to sneak some dates, with friends picking me up, but I just couldn't stand being sneaky and afraid of being caught, even though Herb helped cover for me. So, my dating life came to a screeching halt, as I was totally disinterested in the base guys. Somehow I was selected as a Valentine Princess at the Winter Ball, but right after that, we left in March and moved to Albuquerque, right at the end of my junior year. Losing a couple of weeks of school was hazardous to my chemistry and Algebra II grades, and for the first time ever, I ended up with C's, although French, English, and history stayed on top.

You cannot imagine the pain upon beginning a new school at that point in high school, in a new place that seemed to be all dirt and dust, with little green anywhere, although the mountains were beautiful. Fortunately, we moved to an area with the brand new Sandia High School which had just opened earlier that same year, combining students from three other areas, so Herb and I were not the only newcomers. It was quite different to be in a such a large school of about 1800 students, but we both joined a bunch of activities: French Club, student government, choirs, student service clubs, and Tri-Hi-Y, kind of mini-sororities (me), and the First Presbyterian Youth Group. We made many friends quickly and began to feel more at home, and we found summer jobs. By the time school opened my senior year, I had begun to feel at home there and was caught up in the excitement as Student Council prepared for the school's first homecoming celebration. You cannot imagine my surprise to be chosen as Sandia's very first Homecoming Queen, for I cannot begin to tell you what a big honor it was. Even 35 years later, people would come up to me saying they remembered it. My parents bought me a fairy princess dress that would have been one of my favorite designs, had I thought of it! I still treasure the memories of Sandia, that magical year, and of some of the dear friends I still have today from then, especially dear Pat Renken. For all of the lonely times before then, that wonderful year made up for it and began to prepare me for the experience of college to follow.

Academic Success and Troubles

I was truly one of those geeky girls in eighth and ninth grade, the kind of look one would associate with The Princess Diaries as the "before" picture, at least that is how I viewed myself. I absolutely loved school and learning, but all too often found it boring and too easy. That was when I discovered I could hide a great piece of fiction behind a text book during class. I had always read the assignment, so re-reading it out loud in class was a bore, and fortunately, I seldom got caught mixing science and dinosaurs with King Arthur in class. My English classes were another story, however, as Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Owens at East Junior High School in Gulfport were amazing teachers! I loved their classes and never sneaked a book when in there! Civics, however, was another subject altogether. The teacher was a total nightmare, scraped from the bottom of Mississippi's ugly barrel. He was truly pond scum. The worst part was, not only was he awful looking and a horrible teacher, he thought he was terrific and quite funny. One day he amused himself by telling us how he went fishing over the weekend, blowing up the lake with dynamite, a fine example of citizenship for him to be boasting about. The class did not agree with his humor, and discipline was non-existent in his room. One day in a fit of anger, he screamed, "Well, let's see if you all have any suggestions on I should run my class better!" He then went around the room, asking each individual kid for suggestions. Like I mentioned, I was a geek, and I did love my English teachers, so when he arrived at me, in all of the greatest sincerity only a nerd could offer, I suggested, " Well, Mr. Nichols, maybe you should ask Mrs. Bradford for some ideas. She never has any trouble in her class." Uh-oh. BOY! You cannot even imagine how fast a striaght-A student could be tossed out of class and end up in the principal's office, awaiting my father for a conference. Once he arrived and I explained exactly what happened to both of them, I was pretty much off the hook. The poor principal in private admitted to my dad that Nichols was a disaster, and that he was the last person left on the list to teach, so he had to take him. I agreed to be quiet in class and not cause any more trouble. Dad said later that they both thought the whole story was quite funny and had a hard time not laughing about it in front of me.

My next bout with trouble came with the terrible old maid of a librarian at East. She was the worst stereotype of a librarian that one could conjure up to vision. You can picture her... tight little cork screw curls all over her head; glasses on the end of a thin, pinched nose; a mouth which never smiled and lips always pinched together in a look of displeasure, like she had recently eaten a rotten lemon. Combine that with 1930's style black dresses and oxford lace-up shoes with rolled down stockings, and you have the picture. No one was allowed to make a sound in her library, not a peep. Unfortunately, we were all forced to spend a whole class period of study hall with her, and mine was the last hour of the day. Now, everyone pretty much knew I got good grades, and so other kids would frequently ask me for help with something, and I was glad to interrupt my reading of Longfellow or Poe poems to help during study hall. We never made much noise, but that librarian got mad at me anyhow. One day she called me up to her desk, looked at me across the desk over her glasses, and snipped, "Young lady, you KNOW there is to be NO talking in study hall. I have told you that, and I am tired of this. And I am tired of you and your false eyelashes, too." At this point, she actually reached over and pulled on my eyelashes, which were all mine. This was not too pleasant, I might add. Instead of apologizing, she added, "So, missy, you will report for after school detention for all of your talking." This meant I would miss the bus, so I called my mom, explaining that I was being held for detention. This absolutely astonished Mom, so she asked me on the phone what happened, and I explained. At the point I got to the eye lashes, she said, "Hang up and stay right there. I will be over immediately." OOOOOOH! Boy , was she mad, and she got even madder on the way over. May I say she did quite a good job of leveling down said librarian, and I did not stay for detention. After that, I was quite determined to get even with the librarian, not with anything too bad, mind you. One day, my chance came while she ripping apart some other poor kid. I put just a teeny amount of ink in her fish bowl, and then I carefully balanced a pencil with a string around it ending in a great paperclip fish hook, right into the fish bowl. It was quite funny, especially as all of the kids saw it before she did, but no one knew who had done it. I did feel a bit sorry for the fish, but he survived quite well.

That was the end of my pranks, I'm happy to report. For the rest of my high school and college days, I pretty much remained the same geeky student as before. At the end of freshman year at the awards ceremony, I received the Outstanding Girl Student award, which I cherished, since it redeemed my time in the principal's office! And the rest of my days in Gulfport remained pretty uneventful! Thank goodness!

Developing Interests

It seems to me that most kids growing up with as many moves as we made either become quite introverted or quite extroverted in order to survive the constant uprootings and not really having a place to call "home." As a true Gemini, I found myself pulled in two directions, outgoing at school but more withdrawn out of it. In the Philippines we had many friends, but in Okinawa we traveled across the island for school, and there were no girls my age in the neighborhood. In seventh grade, I found friends in books, music, and art, spending hours by myself, oblivious to everything else. School work was easy for me, but my parents refused an offer by the school to have me skip a grade, because they had watched my brother do that and be so far behind his classmates in age and maturity.

I was at that awkward ugly duckling stage, wanting desparately to grow up faster, and books simply took me away! Oh, the romance and travels with the historical novels by Thomas Costain, Samuel Shellabarger, Kenneth Roberts, Mary Stewart, Daphne Du Maurier, Margaret Mitchell, and then into the Bronte sisters. We had no television, but the Armed Forces Radio Network was wonderful. I memorized all of the lyrics to the top hits of the day ("Your Lucky Strike Hit Parade") and fell in love with Broadway musicals, as well as classical music. My other passion was designing clothes, absolutely gorgeous and glamorous creations that Hollywood would surely have loved! I cut up butcher paper to make lavish, thick books with my elaborate designs, complete with make up, hair dos, and accessories, of course! It was a wonderful world of make-believe, totally insulating me from the outside ugliness of Okinawa.

It did set patterns which would continue throughout my life. In high school the reading would continue and expand, and my love for literature and history would continue to develop into a future career. The love of music would stay forever, as well, in many different forms. The fashion designing went by the wayside, replaced by the reading of magazines and following all of the trends of the day, trying to piece together a look for me without spending much money. And of course, they are still the interests I hold today, in many different forms. How thankful I am to have discovered these at so young an age!