We were poor growing up although we didnt realize it until we were a little older. We knew we didn;t have money for a lot of things we wanted but we lived in a house, ate three meals a day and luckily for our parents we had to wear uniforms to school, ugly blue jumpers and white blouses, the most stunning part of the ensemble was the blue and white saddle shoes!
Due to our financial situation, and encouragment from our mother, we desperately brainstormed ways to make money. This went on until we were able to legally get jobs. I learned to bake early in life, i wanted to learn how and our mother was happy to teach me, When I was 10 I decided to sell my baked goods, at that time i thought I had expertise in cookie making. We delegated one of my younger sisters, 8 at the time, to go to neighbors taking orders, followed by making the delivery of the cookies and collection of payment, A week later she would go back for more orders and listen to the compliments or complaints. Sugar cookies were the starters, one neighbor bought them for her dog Camilla, she loved my sugar cookies, other neighbors bought them to be nice i think. Fifty cents a dozen was the going rate, how could you go wrong? It must have been around the Holidays, I decided to try something different, a spicy sweedish cookie sounded great to me, so my sister went out telling our customers how good they were and she came home with some orders. I baked the cookies and they were delivered and paid for. A week later my sister went back to get more orders, those visits did not go too well! Camilla got very sick and another neighbor told her they were HORRIBLE , and told her not to come back! Needless to say that business did not succeed nor did it do anything for my sister’s self esteem, confidence etc. She quit the job and never worked again! Me, I still bake but I have not had a sales rep since I was ten!
My mother even started making headbands for girls , they were hugely popular in the early sixties, but that also went belly up after a while.
The next big thing was the year my oldest sister decided she was going to make our EASTER COATS. Step one, find the best material our money could buy, which turned out to be flannel. Rather than buying bolts of different colors or patterns it was decided that flannel blankets were the way to go, less material meant less money! NOW WE WERE REALLY COOKING! THAT SEWING MACHINE WAS ON FIRE, every spare minute was used to ensure those coats were ready for Easter. Four flannel coats were finished when the big day arrived and my three sisters and I walked down the aisle of that church as though on the red carpet. Our youngest sister, 8 at the time, did not don one of the designer coats, we can’t remember why. I was 13 that Easter and a couple of months later I procured what I thought of as a dream job, a babysitting job at the beach for the entire summer! The day came to leave for the beach. I had packed everything I thought I would need, including of course my NEW COAT for going to church on Sundays. The first weekend came and I got ready to go to church and walked downstairs in my COAT and my boss looked at me and said “OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL BATHROBE” I told her thank you and that my sister had made it, all the while wanting to be invisible. The job turned out to SUCK, the term babysitter was a euphemism for child slavery, the kids were awful and l Ieft after a couple of weeks. We live and we learn.
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