Nana Biography

And I had, when I finally realized that things were sort of tight, I decided I had better get a job. And I got a job, I was not equipped to do anything, really, except train horses, and there wasn’t a job for somebody to do that. But I loved clothes, and there was a beautiful dress shop in our town, and I went in and I said, “don’t you need a sales girl? “And they hired me. I worked from 9 to 6 with a half hour offer for lunch, and I made, my starting salary was $12 a week, what I did was, I had my own car, and my father, because of the arrangement, I got my free gas, I took a lunch, and sometimes I would go across the street and get a bowl of soup, but I usually took a sandwich. I was allowed to buy clothes at 20% off in the store, so I always had clothes. And I saved, out of that I usually saved $10 of it. And then after I had been there a couple of months, I was raised to $14, $16, and finally got up to $24 a week which was really good.

That was big money in those days.

Yes, but I learned a lot of cuts. I learned not to buy chewing gum and Hershey bars and things in the store. I never even now go in and pick up things and buy them that are useless. I don’t buy junk food and I try to train the kids not to. The other things I do , my husband thinks I’m crazy, but when I’m using this cellophane, what do you call it? Saran wrap, and I take it off the bowl instead of throwing it away. I rinse it off and put it on the wall and I reuse it. I reuse everything. It became a problem because things that I have to learn to throw things away, but I’m a great person for going to a market without taking paper bags home, I take a satchel and I tried to train everybody. I think it’s stupid, you use trees, and the markets could give you a much better deal if they didn’t have to give you paper bags.

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