I decided to write about my connections to fiber.
My earliest experiances was with COTTON,
then NYLON,
now at age 78 I mostly deal in Raisin Bran or Honey Bunches of Oats if you get my drift.
I have written mostly about my childhood expriences with all the ups and downs of life in the poor lane while living and loving every minute of it.
I'm moving into the years of my forced adulting.
1959..........
A year filled with things like Prom, senior trip to Washington, DC, final exams and graduation night when W. S. Neal Principal T.G. Price handed me my diploma as those days of childhood came crumblng down in the wee hours of that night. I sweated bullets thinking about how I could possibly gather my nerve to hit the pavement to ask.........beg for a job.
Mama and Daddy never once told me I needed to get a job because the unspoken expectation was,
GET A JOB EARLINE.
Since 1957 The Silhouettes kept that song knocking in my head.
" Sha na na na Sha na na na Sha na na na
Yip yip yip yip Yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum Mum mum mum
Get a Job" .
There was much more Sha naing and Yip yiping and Mum muming, but you get my drift here
Anyway, it was worrisome.
I got dressed to make my way to apply for work at THE CHEMSTRAND CORPORATION in Pensacola.
My best friend since first grade, Dot Lisenby, rode with me to this seeking. She smiled as I filled out the application. She was bent double with plans to marry her sweetheart Rex White our classmate. Who needed a job when one has the "I do" locked down?
Dot was glowing, I was a mess of nerves.
So I gave up every question with fear that I sounded like a cotton patch kid.
I marked my social security number in blocks of red.
I gave my job history as null and void.
Child labor laws for " cotton picker" along with fear of jail time for Mama and Daddy kept that off my application.
Naw, just messing with y'all. Jail time for child labor was not even thought about in my world. That was long before political correctness and all that reared it's ugly head.
Question: REASON FOR APPLICATION for employment was written in my own handwriting as,
TO MAKE SOME MONEY.
Hand to heart, that was exactly what I marked down.
I did not lie.
" Are you willing to work on Sunday"?
" Please let me".
Front desk employment office diva, Mary Alta Nobles dressed me down with a withering look as she advised,
" You will hear from us".
Stumbling outside I had a feeling she was rushing me away.
Stopping back in Atmore to stroll the streets, I went into the Economy Store to ask for work. That was on the day after graduation.
I went to work as a bookkeeper for vacation fill in.
I know with all my ability to reason I left that temp job with at least several weeks of correction work waiting for the bookkeeping vacationer.
Two weeks pay was a start on my money making career, right?
Next job was for Ma Bell in Atmore as a telephone operator. Four hours on, four hours off for training.
I had what seemed like the Lily Tomlon syndrome,
"One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy".
" Snork"!
I loved that job, but my head hurt really bad.
That headset gave me the most horrific headaches, the doctor advised I stop doing the job because I had a pressure point behind my ear that could cause future mental problems.
I didn't share the idea of mental problems information with Mama and Daddy.
Mental problems were never discussed in our family.
" Keep that mess hidden".
I filled out a job application with Vanity Fair and prayed really hard I didn't get hired.
I hated to sew.
God didn't listen to my whining.
I went to work on a Monday morning in the training room where I spent one solid minute sewing a seam and then ripping out those stitches at the suggestion of the training room Diva until the whistle blowed at four.
I cried at night for the next three nights.
On Thursday afternoon as I walked into the house Mama met me at the front door with an envelope in her hands.
Her words told me, " You may want to open this ASAP".
Mama knew how bad I needed to get away from ripping stitches.
Like those signs at US Post offices showing Uncle Sam pointing and saying, " I Want You", the Chemstrand letter called me to come help make nylon yarn.
Lawdhammercy!
Next day I went back to Vanity Fair to collect my four days pay and graciously fired myself.
This was August, my third failed job, having Daddy advising me with saying, " Shug, you won't last".
I hired in to Chemstrand on 8/17/1959, exited on 3/17/1970 to await the birth of my first child.
I will always be connected to fiber. I traded up from picking cotton in the hot sun to spinning nylon inside an airconditioned building.
From picking cotton for 3 cents a lbs. to being paid $1.10 an hour for helping make nylon yarn.
Tell me there is no God.
I have no picture of myself in the cotton patches of my childhood, but this picture was taken of me for some reason concerning the making of nylon. Someone in charge of the project gave me this picture showing the working clothes and gear we had to wear for getting the job done. Safety was very important at Chemstrand and having ones hair covered with hairnets to save on ripped off scalps caused by rolling machine parts encouraged female employees to dispise having fresh styled hairdo's squashed.
Trust me when I tell you this industrial look beat the look of raggedy clothes and those tar bottomed drag sacks we used in those,
" Old Cotton Fields Back Home".
