This first picture is my favorite picture of Mickey. It was taken about 5 years before her passing away.
This picture is grandma during WW-2 riding her Indian motor cycle. That was how she and her girlfriends got around during the war because gasoline was rationed and cars used too much gasoline.
This post came from our conversation yesterday. Grandma Mickey (Joyce's mother) was an educated woman for her time and finished her education in the middle of the great depression when there were no jobs to be had. A neighbor called Mickey's mother and said there was a job opening at a local box factory, but with Mickey's education she might not want to work there. Grandma Mickey took the job because no one else in the family had jobs due to the depression. They were using cardboard to fill the holes in their shoe soles. During the depression families survived by borrowing their equity from life insurance policies they held.
Once at the box factory grandma heard the owner was going to fire a woman there because they all worked on piecework and the woman was not very fast with prepping the line with the preliminary steps to make the boxes. Grandma went to the owner and asked why he was firing the woman? The owner said no one wanted to work with her. Grandma said,"no one asked me." Grandma saved the woman's job by taking her on to feed the line grandma worked. That gesture cut into the roughly 32 cents an hour grandma was making.
The workplace at the factory was oppressive. Grandma decided they needed a union there. Her male counterparts did not have the stomach to initiate talks with the owner and his cronies, so Mickey stepped up to do the duty. She stood up and faced the owner a second time to form a union there. In negotiations the male workers sat quietly while grandma faced down the owner. The owner told grandma she was the stubbornest person he ever saw. Grandma's reply was, "did you ever look in the mirror?"
Grandma won and the union was formed. That first year with the union the owner gave out his first ever bonus to every employee. It was a Christmas ham.
Years later at a funeral for one of the workers, the woman that grandma had saved her job for her was there. She walked up to grandma and thanked her for saving her job and added that she had saved the wrapper from that first Christmas ham all those years and was going to have that wrapper buried in her coffin with her.
Grandma Mickey was a special woman that I learned to love after a rough start between us when Joyce and I were first married. For those of you from Litton who appreciated Maintenance Man's different superhero capes, grandma Mickey made those for him. After meeting him at Joyce's birthday in 2001 she told Joyce that if she was 40 years younger he wouldn't have a chance to resist her. This is pure conjecture on my part, but it's anyone's guess how that might have worked out.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
Once at the box factory grandma heard the owner was going to fire a woman there because they all worked on piecework and the woman was not very fast with prepping the line with the preliminary steps to make the boxes. Grandma went to the owner and asked why he was firing the woman? The owner said no one wanted to work with her. Grandma said,"no one asked me." Grandma saved the woman's job by taking her on to feed the line grandma worked. That gesture cut into the roughly 32 cents an hour grandma was making.
The workplace at the factory was oppressive. Grandma decided they needed a union there. Her male counterparts did not have the stomach to initiate talks with the owner and his cronies, so Mickey stepped up to do the duty. She stood up and faced the owner a second time to form a union there. In negotiations the male workers sat quietly while grandma faced down the owner. The owner told grandma she was the stubbornest person he ever saw. Grandma's reply was, "did you ever look in the mirror?"
Grandma won and the union was formed. That first year with the union the owner gave out his first ever bonus to every employee. It was a Christmas ham.
Years later at a funeral for one of the workers, the woman that grandma had saved her job for her was there. She walked up to grandma and thanked her for saving her job and added that she had saved the wrapper from that first Christmas ham all those years and was going to have that wrapper buried in her coffin with her.
Grandma Mickey was a special woman that I learned to love after a rough start between us when Joyce and I were first married. For those of you from Litton who appreciated Maintenance Man's different superhero capes, grandma Mickey made those for him. After meeting him at Joyce's birthday in 2001 she told Joyce that if she was 40 years younger he wouldn't have a chance to resist her. This is pure conjecture on my part, but it's anyone's guess how that might have worked out.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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