So... when you were raised, what did your father do for a living? (depression, gift)
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My father farmed his whole life except for one enlistment in the Air Force right after high school. He also had some seasonal jobs, including summer work at a Green Giant canning plant, and in the winter he worked for a neighbor that had a machinery repair shop. He did most of the maintenance of his own tractors and other equipment as well.
Later in life he and my mother had a daily courier route, carrying deposits and documents between several local community banks. At times they had pretty large sums of cash in their car, which never seemed like a good thing to me. No issues, but that was 25 years ago in a rural part of the Midwest.
Our Father was a Senior Tool Designer for North American Aviation/Rockwell /Boeing in El Segundo, CA from 1948 until retirement in 1988. Worked on the Apollo - B-1 among others... He did some work for Douglas Aircraft as well.
He spent some time up in Washington state at the Boeing plant - did some work for them.
All of us grew up loving Aviation - Jets etc. In the 60's our Dad would park so we could watch the planes land at LAX. It was a huge deal for many families who worked in Aviation back in those days at the El Segundo plant. We were raised in Torrance, CA where my father was able to buy a new home on the GI Bill in 1955 when I was 2 yrs old. We moved from Santa Monica...
Dad only got to the 8th grade in South Bend, Indiana - ended up working at Studebaker along with his dad and brothers before getting drafted into the service. He did however go back to school in Torrance (night school) got his GED. What he had going for him was that he was a fantastic artist and could draw hence ""Tool Designer" It was a specialty... He was able to raise 5 kids on one salary. We never went without. :-)
My dad's family moved to Malibu, CA in the late 40's after WWII. My grandmother actually worked for Burt Lancaster. Our father met our mom who was born in Los Angeles, CA and they got married in 1948...I will always respect my father for going back to get his GED.
Last edited by CaliforniaGal; 01-24-2022 at 10:54 PM..
I wonder if the number of engineer-type jobs in that generation of men was due to the GI Bill, and engineering being a concrete kind of job, maybe the men were the first in their family to have higher education?
That was the case in mine. My father was an electrician before the war, working as an apprentice. After he lost his legs, he used the GI bill to get his degree in electrical engineering. Since he was considered 100% disabled, he collected his monthly benefit and married my mother in 1949 before he finished his degree a year or two later.
His parents met working in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ. His mother had an eighth grade education. Not sure if my grandfather finished high school or not, but after the mills went under during the Depression, he worked as a station master on the local commuter rail line. A college education probably was not on my dad's radar before the war.
Last year we cleaned out my parents' house and sold it. His old textbooks were still in the attic.
My father was a tugboat captain.
His father was a battalion chief with FDNY.
His father, best I can tell from research, was an accountant or bookkeeper of some sort.
My husband is a Tug Boat Operator here on the West Coast...He actually assists the Chevron Oil Tanker ships. He is also the Crew Chief. :-)
Dad went to college on the gi bill and taught English at a community college. It was a good fit, he liked his job and his colleagues.
He was in WWII for just over a year. His side story is that his unit was demobilized when dad had only 9 months of service. It was full of 18-year-olds like my father who were just old enough to be drafted or to enlist in the last few months of the war. Dad was a good typist and so he was ordered to stay on for several more months, in order to type up the demobilization paperwork. He was pretty aggravated about it at the time, but it turned out to be a lucky break. Apparently when the Korean War came along, World War II vets were not drafted. But that was only World War II vets who had served a full year or more. A good many of the young men in Dad’s unit got called back up, but he was exempt because his typing had kept him there longer.
My father always worked 2 jobs to provide for us. His primary job was working for the major east coast railroad at that time, working in the railyard. It was a good union job with a pension and he always called it his "ace in the hole", meaning it was the long term job he would depend on, every other gig: driving a truck, jewelry salesman, watch repair, etc.. was supplementary.
At some point he bought a saloon & opened it up at noon M-F, then handed it over to a bartender when he went to work evenings at the railyard. He came back to the bar right from that job after midnight to check up on everything & close it down by 1-2am Mon-Thu. But Fridays was a busy night & he would close around 4am, then get breakfast at the diner, sleep and bartend Saturday 7pm-4am & Sunday was 7p-1am.
7 days a week, I hardly saw the guy & then he was usually tired. After a couple of years he got an early retirement due to an injury & ran the bar for several more years, quite successfully, and then sold it making a decent profit.
He was a high school dropout with a fierce determination to succeed & see his kids go to college (although after my first semester I mostly paid my own way by working).
In his early adult years he was a car nut. His tinkering made the cars go even faster so they could outrun the revenuers.
He was too old for the military so during WW2 he worked at Glen L Martin. They were testing a plane when it crashed. He was in bad shape but recovered. Then he was an automobile mechanic. He also wrote dime novels. But his taste for John Barleycorn ruled his life.
My father was a roughneck out on oil rigs. Dangerous work requiring him to be gone weeks at a time. He finally worked his way up to supervisor (could stay on shore mainly), then a desk job in a big city (Associate VP or something) He hated the desk job and went back to his supervisor job, where he stayed until retirement.
My father was an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia. He owned several restaurants in the northern Ohio area and even tailored for a few years. He probably didn’t even have a fourth grade education because his family needed his help on the farm. However he was the smartest person I ever knew. My mother also helped him along side his restaurant businesses.
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