JUST A HIPPIE GYPSY

GIRL FOR HIRE

It has been quite a while since I have been on the hunt for a job. Seven years if the truth be known. It is something I am looking forward to, new challenges, new landscape, rewards, learning something, in a sense reinventing myself. I am happy to be leaving this job, I am bored, uninspired, and operating on auto pilot and have been for some time. A change is welcome. I have to put the job search on hold for the time being. I have found that it is near impossible to achieve the objective, secure a job, when you are 300 miles away. It is too stressful. I made the decision to wait. Until mid-August! I feel like a huge burden was lifted from my shoulders. I am free for the summer! I have some major plans on how to spend my time. It is going to be wonderful.

I think I have been depressed as of late. I do not feel like writing which is a major indication that something is very wrong. I have been sleeping a lot, a second indication that something is not right. I feel like I am losing my chops here!

And so here goes....my summer series "GIRL FOR HIRE"

First Job Job description: will babysit for room and board. Age requirement: none.

I was the oldest of six children. My two youngest sisters were born in the mid to late 1960's, so they were almost like another generation to my three brothers and myself.

Since I was the oldest, I was responsible to keep an eye on my younger siblings when necessary. My mother was the head Librarian at the County Library. She did most everything from home, but on Saturdays she workded the entire day at the downtown building. This was the late 1950's early '60's. We were a one car family.

My father would leave the house to make the five minute journey to downtown to retrieve my mother and return her home. My Nana usually would spend the day with us and prepare the evening meal. It was always the same, year after year. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, some green vegetable from a can and then the cherry or apple turnovers!

When we were very young, I was in second grand, N. in 1st, T. was in line waiting to go into school and P. was a toddler...we all had chicken pox. Dad left me in charge while he went to bring my Mother home. In the spirit of a child's world, minutes seem like an eternity. My little spots were bothering the heck out of me, and since I was in charge I requested my bro N. climb up on top of the stove and open the cabinet above and grab the bottle of calamine lotion.

Naturally, he fell. He was crying, but that was nothing new, N. was a cry baby back then. When Dad arrived home N. was taken into the bedroom and his arm examined. I will never forget, one of those moments burned into your memory, my father holding his arm and trying to straighten it out and N.'s blood curdling screams.

He had a broken arm. But not just any old type of broken arm, his required surgery. And he had a case of chicken pox. Could it get any worse? Yes, we all got measles right in the middle of N's recuperation.

Did this stop my Mother from putting me in charge of the kids? No! Never!

I then went on to actually baby sit for money at the age of 12. 50 cents an hour! Actually it was not that bad, a 16 magazine was 25 cents, a 45 record was around 79 cents to 99 cents. A pack of cigarettes was 25 cents out of the machine at Wilson's Drugs. (How did I know that?)

Babysitting was the first a very long string of occupations, jobs, hard labor and professions.