You're Fired

You’re Fired!

Most of my adult life, I have been a housewife and mother. The jobs that I have done have mostly been non-paying jobs at church and at home. I did have a few jobs over the years. I worked as a waitress at different restaurants. I was a car-hop waitress one time. I would go out to the parked cars, take the orders from the people in the cars and then bring their food back out. That was a pretty big thing for fast-food places to do in the 60’s. When I was staying in Ohio with my in-laws while David was away for military duty, I worked with my mother-in-law at a small hospital as a nurse’s aide. The hospital was for babies and children that were brain damaged. They were so messed up physically and mentally that they would never be normal. Some of the babies had huge heads filled with water. They were hard to care for. The condition is called, hydrocephalic. There were many other birth defects and some of the babies and children had been messed up because of physical abuse by people after they were born. Working there was a real challenge for me, since these children had no hope. All we could do was to try to keep them fed and as comfortable as possible. My mother-in-law was the head nurse there for years.
I was reading Dad’s memories and found a time that he was fired from his job. Below is that story. Judy

One Saturday while I was working overtime, I got a call at noon. I was told that my Uncle Melton in Modesto was in the hospital and that he wasn’t expected to live much longer. I went looking for my boss, but I couldn’t find him. I was told that he had gone out to lunch. I asked one of the men to tell the boss that I had left to go to the hospital to see my dying uncle.

I rushed home, picked up Wanda and the children and we all headed for the hospital in Modesto. When we returned home, there was a telegram waiting for me. The message on the telegram informed me that I was fired. I went back to my workplace on Monday to pick up my toolbox. My boss told me that Mr. Linch, the owner of the machine shop wanted to see me, to put me back to work. The owner had gotten upset that day because two other men had also taken off at noon the same time that I had. When the owner tried to rehire me, I told him “No, thank you, I’ll just leave and go find another place to work.”

I found a job at a company that made pear machines for canneries. “No, the machines didn’t make the pears. The pears must grow on trees first.”