Today I Celebrate my 70th Birthday

I’ve been around for 7 decades. Today I celebrate my 70th birthday.

I have seen a lot, traveled around the world and enjoyed a lovely family.

As I look back there are certain highlights that stick at the edge of my consciousness.

I Love Work

I have always worked at something. Growing up on a farm northeast of Greeley, Colorado it was a given that you get up every day and do something. By high school I begged my parents to “let” me get a job in town. I remember walking around the block downtown then going in every shop asking for a job. Of course I had no skills, but was full of hope and confidence that they would want and need me. I would walk up the narrow staircase of a law office and offer my service to the receptionist/paralegal who looked at me like I was nuts to ever apply as she had the job firmly in her grasp. I was not taught outright the gift of networking to use that as a method to obtain a job. I stopped by Long’s Cafe. the restaurant where my parents and grandparents ate every Sunday dinner after church. They gave me a chance and I was delighted.

I used those restaurant skills to waitress at a Tender Steer cafe in Ft Collins. I would ride my bike from college classes to the cafe, serve a bunch of people and hurry back to classes that afternoon. It was quick, good money and helped with the college costs. When I graduated from college I wanted an office job – God knows why. I worked for a new department store that I think was called ‘The Classic” downtown Ft. Collins as the personnel office (my college major) with a sign on the door and everything for a whopping $1.60 per hour, minimum wage at the time. All glam and glitter don’t make it a top notch job. I spent most of my meager pay check on clothes that I got at a discount. Keep in mind you could buy gas for 39 cents a gallon and hamburger meat was about 33 cents a pound.

Moved to Louisiana, took that college placement catalog, called and walked into every business listed in the book. No internet or cell phones so this was a tedious process. I happened across the department manager of Penny’s who was best friends with the department manager of Sears. He gave me his friend’s name and told me stop by Sears and ask for his buddy. Well the personnel department sure took notice when I dropped that name and gave me extra consideration landing me a job in the personnel department to shovel records about and work on the training program.

I learned a lot about discrimination from that job. First of all this about 1969 what the civil rights act had just been passed and blacks were integrated into society. No more separate lunchrooms, bathrooms or water fountains. It was my job to schedule the flying squad of workers who went from department to department filling in. I had to place people of color into these departments in the same percent as the population of the city, which was over 50%. This was a difficult task at the time as we would always run out of qualified, educated people. When we found a person, we would work them as many hours as they could handle.

On the other side of the fence, from my point of view, life was great and people were a friendly lot. At breaks I would plop down with some of my friends from the flying squad in the cafeteria. After break my older supervisor would call me aside and ask me what I was doing sitting with “those” folks? Not to make a fuse, I learned to take my break at my desk to keep my nose clean and appease those old time racial concerns.

For my career I learned from reviewing the many records I had to file that I was clearly being discriminated against as a women. My college education, test scores and experience were the same or better than the department managers making twice the pay. Yikes.!. I had to do something about that. I met with my supervisor, her boss and then the assistant store manager. He was a big old guy who knows the ropes from the inside. He was not going to budge on a promotion or opportunity. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “unless you are planning on getting a hysterectomy we wouldn’t take a chance on me as they needed someone with a lot of available hours and no other commitments.” Really? This is what the working world is about? Well, that experience laid the ground work for a view of life that took away the rosy outlook.

I moved back to Colorado worked for a while at Noble foods where I met Irene Szeluga who introduced me to her brother, Stan, now my husband of 43 years. Best place to work I could have selected with that long term opportunity.

I worked at Mountain Bell for a while as a service rep with a bunch of other college graduates who didn’t want to be teachers. Learned the “get a head solution” there was to sleep with the boss, something not to my liking. I still thought skills and education were key to promotion. There was also more civil rights legislation that promoted blacks to any management job as long as they had the education ticket. It was a difficult time to move up the ladder when there was always someone in line ahead of you for a variety of reasons.

We moved to Brownsville, Texas. I worked for a while at Southwestern Bell. Being on the border, you really needed to be fluent in Spanish to work directly with the public. They put me on the final bill desk, where I investigated unpaid bills. Boy that was a thankless job. Chasing people. Lying to people to obtain information. Yuk. Stan was on top of his game as the chief engineer of the utility. He was good buddies with my new boss at the phone company. I finally quit to be a stay at home mom. Much more fun.

It was hot and humid in Texas. John was 18 months old and Jamie was about eight. The school systems were so – so and still everything was in Spanish in the late 1970’s. Jamie was one of the few kids in 1st and 2nd grade who could read English. So we moved back to Colorado picking Jefferson County where the education would be one of the best for our kids.

Deciding to move and getting the job done took awhile in a slow housing market in south Texas. Stan lived in Seattle while I kept the house showroom ready for potential people to view it. Stan would send me the house payment and being the industrious sort that I am, I would invest this money in macramé cord and beads, invite all my friends over for lessons and turn that house payment into extra cash from sale of supplies and giving free lessons.

Macramé was my part time job for the next 20 years. When we moved back to Colorado, I would make macramé every day and sell it on the weekend at craft fairs. I met a guy named Joe Ghetto who asked this simple question, “Do you have any extra plant hangers that I could sell him by the dozen for the local King Sooper’s grocery store.” That sounded good. I could continue being a stay at home mom, make some extra money and keep my hands busy. He had sold plant hangers to the store for about 8 years since macramé was a big trend of the 1970’s and 1980’s. He liked to dye the jute and spin it dry in a centrifuge. I wasn’t much for dying, so I bleached it in the washer and spun it dry. That gave it that nice eggshell rustic color.

Joe told me after 5 months or so that he didn’t want this job any more. I was disappointed at first, and then realized that I did want this job so I asked to buy his business for $1,000. His business was named Strange Designs. His wife was an artist. She took the logo and changed the Strange to Divine and a new business was born. This was long before computers made it easy to develop a logo. Everything was designed by hand. Joe took me along to a couple stores and introduced me to the produce manager. Joe had serviced 24 stores. I found out quickly that he barely serviced those and the racks were bare. I got busy and asked everyone I knew to make plant hangers for me. The business came with one employee, Sharon. She lived downtown and did meticulous work on one pattern. She didn’t have a car so I had to drop off her work every week and pick it up a week later with another load for her to work on. My sister, cousin Mike, Uncle Don, nephew’s wife Renee, daughter Jamie and her friend Lynn pitched in to help. I delivered finished plant hangers all over the metro area so I could arrange to pick-up and drop off work all over town. I could tell pretty early if a person would like this type of job. They either did the work quickly or just didn’t quite get into the swing of it. During the 20 years I sold plant hangers to the large chain I continuously employed 7 to 10 people from all walks of life every week.

I learned pretty early that Joe had not really done job to service the large grocery chain. Stan was my rack maker. He designed a rack that took up minimum floor space with tilted dowels so the plant hangers would not fall off the rack. I found supplies in the Denver area at a wholesale craft supplier and a bag company that also sold large quantities of jute. I would add a store here and there during stiff competition with imported products by always keeping my quality up and prices down. I went from the first 24 stores that were barely serviced to over 80 stores from Pueblo to Fort Collins. My Friday part time job turned into pretty much full time work.