Job experience includes friends

Job experience includes friends

Each year, as Labor Day rolls around, memories of jobs I have had and people I have worked with begin to flit through my mind.

During the Vietnam War, I was living on the East Coast, where I eventually got a job in the office of a luggage manufacturer. I also worked for a time at a factory that had government contracts to make rubber parkas, and, later, canteen covers, for the troops.

Those parkas were nothing more than rubber pattern pieces glued together at the seams. They looked heavy and uncomfortable, and I wondered how long it took for them to fall apart. Maybe the parkas worked better than I thought they did, but I still felt angry that military personnel would have to wear something so cumbersome and held together with glue.

To make the parkas, the pieces were laid overlapping on a table, with just the seam allowance exposed. One swipe with a brush full of glue would cover several seams at once, then the whole mess had to be dusted with a white powder to dry the glue. The powder was in a tied bag, but dust would fill the air and settle everywhere, so the women who worked there would wear long-sleeved shirts and tie scarves around their hair to keep the powder off them as much as possible.

I can still see Genny, one of my best friends, a tiny young woman engulfed in a big shirt and her hair in a turban. She was a lot of fun, and I never knew what she would do next that would absolutely crack me up. One day, I recall, we were sitting in the break room, which had a low ceiling with pipes running across it. She climbed up on a table, grabbed a pipe with both hands and, with a Tarzan yell, swung herself to the floor.

Genny was the daughter of a Chippewa mother and a French-Canadian father and had grown up on a reservation in the Dakotas. She was married and had a 2-year-old son, but there were days when she said she wished she were back on the reservation with her sisters, just having fun the way they used to.

Millie was another good friend. Her real name was Milagros, and she was from the Philippines. She was married to an airman stationed at the nearby military base. His last name was Woods, and he was from Charlestown here in Indiana. She liked to crochet and made a beautiful green doily as a gift for me.

That reminds me of a friend I made when I was working at the luggage factory. I remember that for my birthday she gave me a sleeveless knit pullover, a pretty shade of yellow. Shirley was my first black friend. I think I was her first "white hick from Indiana" friend.

We were all so different, yet all so much the same, just young women trying to figure out life and how best to live it.

Eventually, we all moved on, but I still think about them from time to time.

I like to believe that, sometimes, they also think of me.
----
Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@tribtown.com.