Writing Boots

One day it was about 98 degrees, and a trap door opened above my head. It was the lady of the house.

"It must be hot down there," she says. "Wouldn't you like some nice cold lemonade?"

I say I would. I stand up through the trap door but don't climb into the kitchen because I'm all covered with sweat, dust and cobwebs. She pours me out a nice big glass from a pitcher from the icebox. Then she calls her little boy into the room.

"Junior," she says, "you take a good look at that man. If you don't study hard and go to college, that's what will happen to you."

U.S. Dental Co.
Triangular building at the
intersection of North Ave., Damen and Milwuakee
June to Sept. 1946
This company sold false teeth by mail. I worked as a sales correspondent. There is no other way to put it: I was dumb.
    What blindness prevents us from avoiding such dumb decisions? Was there nobody to tell me that surely, int he post-war booming year of 1946, there were better jobs to be had, better companies to work for? Evidently not.
    The company had about 50 employees. It was owned by a lawyer whom we never met, and was run by a formidable woman of middle years who herself would not come in more than three times a week.
    Most of the employees worked in the laboratory, making the teeth. I was among a handful of clerks who selected form letters to respond to inquiries or selected different letters to respond to complaints.
    The company advertised its money-back guaranteed teeth in pulp magazines that I had no idea existed. A small one-column ad would invite inquiries and requests for the molds that we would send with specific instructions as to how to take an impression. The customer would return the impression and our laboratory would make the teeth. The price was vastly less than a dentist would charge. Amazingly, we'd occasionally get testimonial letters.
    The company reflected what may have been routine practices of the depression. We began work precisely at 9:00 a.m. with the ringing of a bell. It was my job to pull the chord that clanged the bell. At 10:15, I'd ring the bell for a 15-minute coffee break, then ring it to signal that the break was over. And so on throughout the day.
    It took me only a few months to realize that this work was not for me, so I gave a few weeks notice that fall. The general manager asked me to write her a memo making any suggestions for improvements in operations. I did so, though I have no idea what I said. I'm sure it must have been embarrassingly naive. She never said a word after I gave it to her.
    But a few months later, when I was already working for Gaylord Products Co., I learned that she responded to Gaylord's employment inquiry that she wouldn't rehire me because I didn't agree with the company's policies. So it goes.