Lessons from The World of Work circa 1942

My First Job in 1942

Now when I think back I suspect at age 15, I was going through a bout with depression. I was losing weight and my mother was very worried about me. She took me to The Woman’s Hospital for a check up. After a few tests I was told there was nothing wrong with me but I should try to eat food that was easy to digest. They put me on a special diet because I suffered with indigestion!!!

My cousin Esther’s mother-in-law Lottie worked in Hustler’s department store, down town. Lottie told my mother Hustlers was hiring young girls to work in their luncheon tearoom, part time. She said I needed an interest and I could earn some money. The tearoom was named The Quixie, meaning quick little restaurant. When I saw where I was going to work, I was delighted. It was a very attractive room with indirect lighting in the ceiling. The chairs were very colorful in pale yellow and green. Each customer had their own small table grouped for two, four and six people. The waitresses wore striped jumpers with a peasant blouse. It looked very elegant to me. Hustlers held classes for their employees to be trained. They were very strict about giving good service. This was a new concept for a lunchroom. The customer would pay ninety cents before entering and there was no tipping. This was a higher cost then it would be to eat in the Fountain Shop, in the basement.

There was a choice of four salads chicken, seafood, vegetable and fruit. The salads would come with two hot rolls freshly baked in their kitchen, a beverage and desert. The deserts were chosen from one of the two desert carts covering the room. I was impressed with the deserts. They decorated their deserts with real whip cream. I quickly enjoyed food I had never eaten before. I also gained back the weight I had lost. I really enjoyed my job and was as happy as I could be. The customers were very polite and a pleasure to serve. Even though they weren’t supposed to tip they would often do so anyway. Tips were to be turned in. There were two hostesses to seat the people.

These two young women came from upper class families and I always believed their families wanted them to work to get some experience. One of them seemed very spoiled to me. I once heard a rumor that the head supervisor said she would never make a Quixie girl a hostess. So I could see there wasn’t any future in that job. I became very fond of the girls I worked with. On payday we would go to some restaurant down town to eat dinner and then to a movie. I still hear from one of them. After sixty years we still send Christmas cards with a letter.

My job made a big difference in my life. I received praise for my work and I was earning money. There were shoppers working for the store who would come to eat and they would rate the service they received. I always got a good report. Sometimes someone from the Hustler family would visit. Before I left to work elsewhere, my sister Gloria and my cousin Esther obtained a job there also, so we have a lot of memories to talk about.

I have learned from this experience if you become depressed and unhappy, you should seek until you find what will help change things for you. It can be a very simple thing!

To: Ian and Great Grandson Jonah

Written Sept. 28, 2000 and edited in 2008

To: Ian and Great Grandson Jonah

Ian Edward was our first-born grandchild

To say we were happy is putting it mild,

Now he has become a man at last

Pop and I think the time went too fast,

When he was a child he brought much joy

My how we loved this little boy,

He was warm and loveable in a nice way

This part of him will always stay,

Pop and I wish him much success

Someone like him deserves no less,

Love,

Grandmom and Pop

Our Memoir Writing Class

Our Memoir Writing Class My story: April 16, 2003

Each time we received a newsletter from the Senior Center, the memoir class was listed. I always enjoyed writing letters, so I thought this may be something similar and worth trying. I’ll never forget the first day I went to class in, October 1999.

As I entered the building, a tall gentleman carrying a brief case was entering also. My first thought was, I bet he is going to be the instructor. The ladies at the reception desk were very friendly and were giving him a lot of attention. When it came to my turn they simply directed me to join the class upstairs. I entered a large room with and a group of people sitting around an oblong table. Thinking the instructor would sit at the head of the table I choose a seat on the side of the table. There was an empty chair next to a man named Fred. I asked if the seat was taken and Fred answered,” No”. He was too polite to tell me that was where the instructor usually sat. Here I am, getting off to bad start. When the instructor, Al Morey arrived with his brief case, he had to look for another seat. If this had been any other class, my simple mistake would have caused a stir, but the mistake had no affect on in this class.

I soon learned this was a very special group of people and things like this didn’t bother them. Once in a craft class, on my first day I sat in an empty seat and learned very quickly I had to move, because someone had a claim on it. The memoir writing class was friendly and polite. Each one read or told an interesting story. It was fascinating. When it came to me I was asked to introduce myself and if I had any stories to tell. I explained I wasn’t ready, but I would work on it. Now it was time to use my memory. The class likes to hear about travel and personal experiences. Some read beautiful poetry. Writing about the past has been good for me. There have been many happy times and a few sad ones to remember and they are all very important. At first I was concerned that my sisters and other relatives would disagree with my description of the past. I scuffed that off because your memoirs are the way you remember things not the way someone else remembers them. I learned that wasn’t a problem.

I remembered the questions our children and grandchildren have asked about the past. There were many things to write about. Many of my stories were about the depression. After getting to know the group better and enjoying their sense humor we often had a good laugh. On time I announced to the class, today my story wasn’t going to be about the depression. I could hear someone say softly, “Thank God”.

I have learned a lot from trying to write. It’s like self-teaching. After writing something and then reading it, I can tell I have been speaking incorrectly for a long time. I don’t know how much I’ll improve on that, but when it’s written, it can be improved. Even some of my spelling is getting better. The dictionary has become a great friend. It’s a pleasure to get something right and has become a very personal thing.

The members of our class have become close friends. I have told them that we have revealed more about our life in our stories in our class then probably anywhere else. Sometimes we go out to lunch after class and continue to enjoy each other’s company. Some of our members have passed away and this has saddened us. We know we will never see them again. But there is something wonderful about having known them. In a way, it is as if one of us deceases, the others can still celebrate their life. Maybe that’s what memoir writing is all about? It instills memories within us because of the stories they wrote and the conversations we had. It’s difficult to morn a form of immortality!

Audrey Kaminski

Remembering my Life With an Engineer

September 24, 05

Remembering my Life With an Engineer

After meeting a few engineer’s wives, I learned that many of them had the same complaints as myself. Most of them had met their husbands in college. I met mine in a roller rink before he became an engineer.

The common complaints were they couldn’t get their husbands to understand what wives and mothers had to deal with. The wives often wanted their husbands to listen and give them comfort. An engineer’s mind is trained to approach a problem, find a solution and move on. Engineers don’t approach a problem psychologically; their approach is more scientific.

Through the years the Westinghouse engineers found solutions to problems that were once thought almost impossible. Also the wives complained that when they talked to their husbands, instead of listening they would take over and decide how to find the answers. Obviously that wasn’t what they wanted. They blamed their husband’s education and training.

I strongly disagree with them. I told them that my husband was that way before he ever became an engineer. I thought he was born that way. He wants to understand what makes things work and why they work. I have to listen to why the ocean has waves and the earth rotates. He’s curious about outer space and the speed of light. He likes to talk about the oil deposits around the world and the great need for oil and how China is going to put a drain on the supplies. Then there is the problem in the Chesapeake Bay. Why the bay is losing it’s once large supply of oysters and crabs and how that could be corrected. He has unlimited interests in everything.

So when I tell him that my cake just fell. It didn’t bother him as much as it did me. He said, “Don’t worry about it, I will eat it later”. I was hopping not to get a long explanation to why the cake fell.

I once asked him what he thought was the greatest invention of the 20th century and his answer was the microchip. I said that I thought it was the microwave.

Engineers were once voted as bad fathers. That’s not because they aren’t loving and caring. They are. They have a very strict attitude. I decided a long time ago that whenever Ed didn’t understand the problem that’s when I would take over.

When my young brother-in-law, Richard, was a vacuum cleaner salesman many years ago, he told me that the salesmen hated to try to sell to engineers. They asked too many questions and expected more information than what was available. I’ll never forget the story about a Westinghouse engineer who went home one day and learned that his wife wanted a divorce. This came as a surprise because he didn’t know they were having marital problems. It’s a good thing she didn’t die because it may have taken a while before he discovered it.

Later he married someone he had met in high school many years ago. They have been very happy together, playing golf.

Doctors think about illnesses, judges, lawyers and police think about law. Educators think about education and military people think about war. I will always remember the statement that our former classmate, Jackie Cagwin, made at a party. Jackie was the widow of General Leland Cagwin. She said that when she married her husband, who was an army lieutenant at the time, she knew the army would always come first. She learned to live with that and they stayed married over sixty years.

In all the years that Ed and I have been married we find that our greatest understanding has come in our senior years. Ed has learned to listen to our grandchildren’s problems and help them in many ways. They love him dearly. I have tried to do the same thing. They ask one thing of Pop. Make his explanations shorter! If we try to live and learn, it can be a great life.

Audrey Teal Kaminski

My Husband Ed and his work Life

My Husband Ed and his work Life

Story was written in the year 2000 :

My husband was a wonderful man who worked hard his entire life. Ed dropped out of Poly Tech High School after the 10th grade. During that summer he worked for a furrier. He was promised that he would be taught to make fur coats if he dropped out of school. In December of that year, the furrier fired him because of lack of work. But this did not stop him.

Ed then worked for the Victory Race Horse Shoe Co. bending, grinding and polishing aluminum racehorse shoes. On Saturdays he stuffed Sunday papers at the Sun Newspaper Co. to make extra money. Every Saturday he would walk from his home on Port Street in Baltimore’s Patterson Park neighborhood to the Sun Office downtown to save carfare.

Later a friend of his mother was able to get him a job with the B&O Railroad sweeping the floor. He tried to get a machinist apprentice job. The only thing that was available at the time was a boilermaker apprentice. So he changed jobs. While he was an apprentice, he started night school taking drafting. Perhaps because of the night school, he was generally moved in places in the shop that required more mental than physical ability. During the apprentice period, Ed went and returned from World War II. After the war and during a meeting at the shop, Ed learned the new about boilermakers. This work was not good for your health. A shop speaker mentioned that the life expectancy of a boilermaker was 55 years. Ed took a cut in pay for a job in the drafting department.

We were married in 1946. Ed went back to the B&O after the war. He took his GED but decided that a more formal high school diploma would be better. He was able to get the diploma by taking 2 courses, 4th year English and U.S. History. He continued drafting school for total of 6 years and also took a course in Radio & Television Servicing. After working in the B&O drafting for a period of time Ed decided that it had no real future so he took a job with Westinghouse in the drafting department.

By that time Diana was born. After 10 years of marriage we were able to move to Glen Burnie in a new split level home. We started to think about the future of our children. We wanted them to go to college. When the 3rd child came along, it was a rough delivery and Ed promised to help me in every way.

One day as I was lying in bed, still recovering, Ed came home, sat on the edge of my bed, and told me that Westinghouse was giving him and other draftsman an opportunity to go to Johns Hopkins for an engineering degree. Westinghouse would pay for the tuition as long as he got good grades. Ed said that he would not go unless I said it would be OK. He also said that he wanted the certificate in engineering which would take less time than the full degree. The certificate would help elevate him in drafting. If this would help elevate him in drafting, it affected our future; I knew that I couldn’t interfere with this opportunity. I told him that he should do it. I knew that if he started going, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he got the degree.

After 11 years at Johns Hopkins he got his degree. Ed is a born engineer. By the time he was about 41 and had his certificate, Westinghouse moved him into engineering without the degree. While at Westinghouse most of everything that Ed did was classified. After a short period in engineering Ed was given Aerospace jobs to design. Before Ed retired he was promoted to a fellow engineer and had his own parking space with his name on it.

I told him that he was a star and he was going to retire. His answer was that he wanted to enjoy his wife and family the rest of his life. At the age of 63, and after 33 years with Westinghouse, Ed retired.

At the retirement party, a manager stated that one of the projects Ed worked on was given a 5% success chance. That project outperformed and was a complete success. That group of men had a close relationship to each other and for years after Ed’s retirement we are still invited to many parties.

Ed doesn’t recognize many of the new engineers. Westinghouse has been sold but our memories are still there. I often remind my husband that he can grow old knowing that he lived life to the fullest. Often he missed our children’s childhood. Our children didn’t feel that way because he was there to help them with their homework. I have to remind him that because of him our children got the opportunity of college and school help. Now he enjoys our grandchildren’s childhood

Audrey Kaminski

My Story About Laura November 3rd, 2001

Laura was born on August 8th, 1988. I can’t forget a date like that one, 8/8/88. She was over due and we were all waiting anxiously. One that morning Pop and I were having breakfast and we heard on the T.V. that a little princess was born in England. I thought to myself this would be a good day for our grandchild to be born.

I had a lot in common with Queen Elizabeth, we were close in age, our children were close in age and now our grandchildren are close in age. That was where the similarity ended.

Then our phone rang and I was disappointed to hear Nancy’s voice, thinking nothing has happened yet. Nancy announced she had just delivered a baby girl. What a shock! I had never received a call like that before. The father usually calls. My first question was “ What is our son Allan doing?” Her answer was he is holding his daughter. On our way to the hospital we decided to stop and buy some pretty little dresses. As we stood in the cashier’s line we looked a little conspicuous. Two senior citizens buying baby clothes seemed a little unusual.

We were asked if this was our first granddaughter and our answer was no, she was our third. The excitement was just as great. Laura has always been very close to us. Her parents lived in Eldersburg and later moved to Bel Air near us, in Brentwood Park. She was a pretty little girl with a head full of blonde curls. When she was 21 months old we took her to a family reunion. Her parents were at the hospital for the birth of her brother Michael. Laura made a big hit at the reunion.

My cousin’s husband said they would give anything to have a granddaughter like her because all their grandchildren turned out to be boys. On her second birthday I was recovering from a broken ankle. The party was held outside on the lawn. I tried to sit out of the way with my crouches. At this age Laura was very selective about whom she trusted. After she opened her gifts she brought the gifts to me to watch over them. I felt very honored she trusted me with all those great gifts. As she grew up there were the tonsil operation and the time she broke her wrist. It was a bad break, but she didn’t let it hold her down. Laura and her brothers often come to visit us. We have baked, sewed and did many crafts together.

Yeqr 2001:

A few years ago when she was younger she told me her favorite grandmother Mary was coming for a visit. I thought I would have some fun with her, so I told her I thought I was her favorite grandmother. Her answer to that was she had two favorite grandmothers. At Easter time to see Laura in her first pair of high heels on an egg hunt was a sight to see. She was determined to find her share of eggs. We are use to having her around; she pops in once in a while.

She often spends a night on the weekends and likes to sleeps with stuffed animals and an eye mask we got from British Airways for sleeping. She takes care of her breakfast and lunch and is an ideal guest. When she’s ready to go home it can be a sudden decision. She is now taking up acting and singing. Being a shy girl I think that is good for her. She works hard to succeed and wants to go to college to become a veterinarian. She and her family love pets and have a house full of them. Because I have allergies I told her I’m not comfortable in their house. Laura said in her sweet way “ Grandmother that is the way this house is. “Instead of being a vet I would like to see her become a teacher. She loves children and gets along very well with them. I intend to mind my own business and say nothing. Maybe she’ll read this story some day.

I’ll end Laura’s story on the note that there is no end. We will always hope she will pop in from time to time and that we will always be her other favorite grandparents.

Audrey Kaminski

Alyssa’s Arrival January 07, 1990

Memoir Story written by Audrey Kaminski

Nov. 15th, 2001

Our oldest son Eddie was living in San Diego, California with his wife Carole and their son Christopher. Carole was expecting another child. The delivery was scheduled for about January 14th by Caesarean section. Knowing this I arranged my flight schedule for that date and a three week stay. Thinking everything was under control we went on with our life. We offered our younger son some help to get his home painted inside for the house to be sold His wife was pregnant also.

Then we heard our son Eddie had become very ill with pneumonia and had to be placed in a hospital. We were assured he was being well cared for. After that we heard Christopher was ill with the flu and his mother was taking care of him. Carole had family and friends in California so I thought I would stick to my original plans and leave in one week because I thought Carole’s surgery was going to be the biggest problem.

My husband and I were busy painting in Allan’s house in Eldersburg. Then we got a call from Eddie from his hospital room. He wanted to tell us Carole had gone into labor and was rushed to the same hospital where he was staying. He had to wear an oxygen mask most of the time. He was worried about their 2 year old son who was staying with friends and would be missing his parents. So I told him I would be there as soon as possible. The next flight to San Diego was 7 a.m. the next morning. On our way home we stopped at a couple of grocery stores as they were closing, to pick up some TV meals and other things for my husband while I was away. He was going to fly to California later and visit our daughter before coming to San Diego. I was up late packing my bag and had to leave early for the airport.

When I arrived in San Diego one of Carole’s friends was standing in the airport with a sign that read,Grandmother Kaminski. I knew I was in the right place. She took me to the hospital to visit Carole, Baby Alyssa and Eddie.

Then we went home to Christopher. Carole’s mother had arrived before me. I was glad to see her. We were both needed. One could not have done it alone. Eddie had to be picked up from the hospital, groceries had to be bought and Christopher had to taken care of. Eddie asked me to drive him to the drug store for his medication. It was the first time I had ever drove a large van. It felt like a Mac truck. I asked him, how did I do. His answer was, not so good. After all it had been many years since I drove a gear shift vehicle and what’s a few jerks.

Every thing was starting to come together. Every one was on their way to recovery. Carole’s mother and I became very good friends. Carole arrived home with a beautiful granddaughter to go with our precious grandson. It couldn’t be better. Alyssa had a rough beginning but I’m happy to say things have been normal ever since. Now Alyssa is 11 years old. Thank goodness it will be a few years before she starts driving and dating.

Mark’s Bike Accident 2002

Mark’s Bike Accident 2002

On Monday October 14^th, after a visit with two of my remaining aunts, I felt sad to see how the years have taken its toll on their health. I remember these ladies as strong and robust. After a long drive home we were passing the Baptist Church on Vale Road near were we live. There were many lights blinking. Then we could see an ambulance, fire truck and police car leaving the parking lot. Thinking someone had become ill at the church we continued on. Little did we know that our nine-year-old grandson had just been put on a helicopter in route to John Hopkins Hospital?

After we arrived at home we learned Mark had collided with a small truck while riding his bike on Red Pump Road. As his parents were driving to the hospital Mark’s mother called us on her cell phone. She tried to reassure us that they thought he would be all right. Mark received a gash on his forehead that caused much bleeding. Later, his mother Nancy told us that when they reached him laying in the street his head was covered with blood. When the paramedics examined him they couldn’t tell how bad he was hurt. They said when a child receives a head injury the procedure is to send them to John Hopkins. At the hospital Mark received a few stitches in his forehead and was treated for scraps and bruises. His parents called to tell us that his head x-ray showed no serous injury and he could go home that night. Then, we were all able to have a peaceful sleep.

The next day when I saw him he was a mess. Mark looked like a truck had hit him. He was still wearing his hospital gown and his nose was swollen with a large sore across it. There were many scrapes and bruises and Mark looked exhausted. His parents thought it best to keep him home from school for a few days. I watched him on the two days his mom had to work. Mark has helped me to strongly believe in miracles. On Sunday, one day less then a week since his accident he was well enough to take on a short trip. Ed and I had promised to take him to Baltimore, to visit the Walters Art Museum to see the female mummy on display there. When we picked Mark up I couldn’t believe how good he looked. Many of the scabs on his face were gone and his nose was a normal size. When he returns to school his classmates will wonder if he did have an accident, except for the stitches in his forehead.

This same little boy at age eight years old in June 2001 was rushed to the hospital with a ruptured appendix. A condition that is very dangerous. I remember being in the hospital with the family when the surgeon told us he may have to remain there for five days. His parents were allowed to stay with him over night during this time. Mark recovered in three days and went home with a neat little incision. I hope he wears his battle scares well.

This story has a happy ending and this family is forever grateful. I hope in the future that the children and drivers will try to prevent as many accidents as they can. Our hearts go out to others living through such experiences. When a family pulls together it makes all the difference in the world.

Audrey Kaminski