Throwback Thursday - The Notebooks

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church
East Boston

To clear up some confusion, the Notebook passages posted on Throwback Thursday were written by my father and found by me after he passed away. They were his attempt to tell the family history. He was in his late 80s or early 90s when he wrote them. Today's chapter:

We kept in touch and he [ed: Charlie Arnold] and he told me that he would have a job for me. I told him that Ruth Rainey had asked me to do work that summer at the play school as I was still active at the Center. He told me that he would talk to her and ask her to let me out of the agreement, verbal contract. She agreed and that was one step closer for me to start a permanent work career.

Also around 1932 at the Central Square Center, I met the young girl that I knew at a function. This was the first time she attended and I asked her who she was with and she said she came with a girl friend and I said if she wanted I would walk home with her since we lived close by. She agreed. And whenever she came I walked her home and stopped for an ice cream cone.

During this time things were moving close to graduation and the school scholarship committee was in session. At some time in May, my accounting teacher, Sullivan, asked me if he got me a scholarship to college would I accept it.

I told him that I had been promised a job and would start the day after the Fourth of July. So that gave me a little time between graduation and July about a week and a half vacation.

I was also pegged in the first 10% of the graduates.

On July 5th, I arrived at Charlie's home in Waltham. Doris or Mrs. Arnold as I called her was at the farm with the children.

He explained what my duties were that in the morning I would do the janitorial work and in the afternoon I would be on the floor to teach games.

Also in the winter, I would shovel coal to heat the building which included the offices at the front of the building and the apartments above the office.

He also said that he would do one thing. That when I went home to visit which would start my weekend on Saturday night when the Club closed which would give me Sundand and Monday and return on Monday night. What my father did about whether or not I attended church that was his business]

However, he [ed: Charlie] were strangers in Waltham and we would be watched because the residents felt that they should have the jobs we had. This was during the Depression. And since he was a Protestant he and his wife did not have to attend services every Sunday, etc. Since I was a Catholic, I had to attend on Sunday and days of obligation. He wanted to make sure I went to Mass. That if I did not go the community would look upon him as an evangelist and that would not be good for him. Also since he and Doris liked fish Fridays and holy days of obligation, they would also have fish on these days.

He also doubled up his boys who each had his own room and I would have a room of my own.

So I got my start and began earning money. The salary was $15.00 per week which was the average national salary.