Scarlet Stone

Summer has packed its saddle bags and is trotting out the door while fall’s Labor Day weekend is entering on a fast horse. As we honor those in the labor movement, I decided to reflect on some of my past jobs and how I contributed to the workforce experiencing very pleasant, creative jobs all the way to the demanding 9 to 5s. As a kid growing up in Hoyt Lakes, both of my parents worked as professionals and us three kids were not handed everything but were highly encouraged not to be sloth-like. I remember having to do household chores, including ironing dad’s handkerchiefs, doing dishes, and housekeeping...but we had lots of playtime too. 
At some point, my parents started giving us an allowance of 50 cents per week, but as I approached the teen years, I wanted more money, so I started working when I was around 12, advertising in the local shopper for babysitting jobs. Overall, I did not like trying to manage kids who acted up and did not listen, but persevered. In addition to babysitting, I had a Mesabi Daily paper route and rode my bike around town, and in winter had to walk. Paper routes were popular jobs for kids back then, and besides….newspapers didn’t talk back so I liked that source of income much better. Like lots of kids, I spent a few summers cleaning at my high school, scraping gum off desks, erasing pencil marks from books, and scouring cookware in the home-ec room. I also worked evenings at MaryAnn’s Restaurant in Aurora as a bus person and dishwasher.....hauling tubs down the narrow wood stairs to the steamy basement washing area. We hungry teens loved pulling prime rib remnants off the big carving pans and when we got over heated, we’d go and stand in the walk-in coolers for a bit. One summer in high school, after getting my driver’s license, I got a job at the Northwood’s Dairy Bar on Hwy. 53 in Cook, a 20-minute drive from our cabin on Lake Vermilion. When I wasn’t slinging burgers and twirling cones, I was tending the small adjacent convenience store, learning cashier and customer service skills. The owner was a plump and pleasant elderly woman with smooth white hair that she wore pinned up in a bun that resembled a vanilla soft serve cone. Our family always called her Myrtle after I nicknamed her that, because she kind of looked-like-a-Myrtle. We wore red polyester uniforms with white Peter-Pan-style collars that held that sweltering summer heat close to the skin. One busy day, I got so nervous rushing to put together a man’s food order that when he finally did receive it, he left me a big round metal washer instead of a coin for a tip. I still can hear the sound of him slapping it on the vinyl counter. 
After graduation, I worked shifts at Erie Mining Company as a general laborer, filling my days with such tasks as shoveling under the long conveyor belts in the concentrator, hosing sludge from the basement floor, sweeping, and other assorted monotonous tasks that dragged every minute into hours it seemed. I remember some of the creepy miners leering at me from around corners or trifling with my innocence in elevators. Many harbored animosity to women when they began working at the mines because they believed they were taking away jobs from men. Throughout my life, my guardian angel has no doubt “had my back,” as the expression goes. At one point, I successfully bid on the mobile crane operator trainee job and went from the lowest job class up to job class 17, receiving a huge hourly pay increase. I worked with several seasoned, entertaining crane operators across the vast property from the Dunka River near Babbitt to the shops on the west, learning to move switch houses and other heavy items. I often wonder if my dad, a mechanical engineer up in the main office, did not pull strings to get me that job, as I was the first woman to ever run the mobile cranes at Erie. He never did say, and was angered when I quit, got married, and took off for Alaskan adventures.
While living in Fairbanks in a cabin with a barrel stove for heat and no running water, I advertised and picked up several housekeeping jobs that paid $30 an hour....and that was in 1981! One of my favorite clients was the confident auburn-haired Phyllis Tate, an accomplished bush pilot who insisted I mop her walnut floors with vinegar water. There were the Burrells, a couple from England who had plenty of aprons, tea ware, and paintings of the late queen throughout their rambling home. When I left their employment, they gifted me with a large fancy glass serving plate I still have today.
After Alaskan adventures, my husband and I returned to “the lower-48” and rented a farmhouse in Iron Junction. My dad was still alive and reminded me I needed a skill or trade, so I took the Graphic Design course at the Eveleth Vo-Tech and transferred to Bemidji State where I received a BS degree. I eased away from marriage in this chapter of my life and, after college, I landed a fun paid internship at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm (then, Ironworld USA) and had a ball working with photography, advertising, and a very fun group of partying people. I remember Tiny Tim with his falsetto voice and ukulele performing in his red and white striped suit in the big amphitheater. Tanya Tucker and Pam Tillis also performed, and I sat at Pam’s table in her plush tour bus for a visit, but Tanya Tucker was much more aloof. After the internship ended I “did time” at Hibbing Electronics, building circuit boards with women crews and bossy female line leaders who exercised authority every chance they had, knowing when they went home... their husbands were the boss. I can hear them saying, “Let’s have less talk and more work girls.” That got old as I never have thrived with an overabundance of authority and rabid regulation. 
I then was hired by the Hibbing Technical College as a marketing/placement director and worked with a close friend who held the same position on the Eveleth campus. We had a great time planning events, attending conferences, and creating marketing materials. During the merging of the Tech Colleges and community colleges in the 1990s, my position, like so many.... was eliminated. Soon after, I had the pleasure of working at Windfall Art Studio in Eveleth with artist Gladys Holmes of Angora. She was a small woman with a big smile and plenty of joy and inspiration, who taught me much about the use of color, design, and the skill of cutting matt boards and building picture frames. A phrase she often used has helped me appreciate life and various tasks through the years, “Enjoy the process.” It was also in the early 90s I began my part-time screen printing business, operating from various basements, old schools, garages, and wherever I could until finally setting down my squeegee last fall. 
In 2000, a romance with a bib-overall-wearing carpenter I met took me south to live in the rural Hayward area of Wisconsin, where I had the unique opportunity to work for WOJB Public Radio as their director of underwriting on the Lac Courte Orielles reservation. I wrote on-air scripts for businesses sponsoring programs and learned the skill of live radio broadcasting. This was a very interesting job with musicians such as Bill Miller, Greg Brown, Keith Secola, Chris Smither, Lucinda Williams, and other artists who were friends of the station and performed concerts at intimate venues. I experienced Native American culture and great music in this chapter of my life. This ended when the carpenter decided to do a stint in Alaska, my younger brother died, and I returned to Ely to be closer to my mother. By this time, I had a young son to raise and it felt good to get back north of Lake Superior to the pine trees. I began a job at the International Wolf Center as admissions/retail assistant and soon jumped back into the graphic art field and started working part-time for an Ely publication before moving on in 2008 to be the graphic designer/sales person/writer at the Timberjay. In 2017, I moved to Soudan and continued working part-time for the TJ while I happily collect my well-earned Social Security. A good friend once told me, “You are like the unsinkable Molly Brown, always landing on your feet...” and looking back...I cannot disagree.