I was friends with another glue girl by the name of Kathy. She was married to Bob Welles one of the box shifters and no relation to my Welles half relatives, thank God! They were both good people but so young.
Kathy got pregnant. I don't know if it was before they were married or afterwards but she was married when she was in the hospital. She had to go in suddenly because the baby was coming way too early. I went in to see her the next day.
I think the baby was already gone by then cause she was all upset and you sure couldn't blame her. It was a little girl and because she was born so early, she only lived a few hours. Her lungs were not developed enough they said.
I think they went on to have a couple of boys but its in my mind that they eventually got a divorce. They both still remained friends with me.
I know it was a real bad time for both of them. There wasn't anything I could do, of course but hug her while she cried.
The Monroe girls came to work here. They had moved back to New York from Florida. At first both were on the glue line. I may have taught Lois but I don't think so. Her sister was Alice.
Alice was a brunette and younger than Lois. She was sort of engaged to a guy that I think she would later marry. She had funny eyes. It almost looked like she had yellow zigzag lines around the iris. It was unusual. Alice and I didn't have much in common. I don't think she really liked me but it didn't matter much. There was a whole factory of women I could talk to.
Lois was totally different. She was outgoing and noisy and fun. We became really good friends for some time. She was always cracking jokes and getting me to go places and do things I'd never done before.
I met them while we were living in Kingsbury when I'd been working here awhile. They were related to Rukat's and I never did like the Rukat family but I liked Lois.
I've told some of the stories of my adventures with Lois before so I'll try not to repeat them.
Once, shortly after meeting them, Lois took me to her home to meet her parents. They treated me ok. I wouldn't know if liked me or not because it also didn't matter. I think her mom was in the back yard.
She'd been clearing out some storage shelves in the basement. Piled up around her were thirty or more canning jars filled with who knows what. They were so old you couldn't tell.
Lois and I helped her to open them up and dump the contents into a compost mound, I think. Her mom was going to wash the jars and reuse them. I think she was smart enough not to use the tops that came with them though. They were the older ones that looked like zinc or lead and I'm sure they were bad stuff.
Now that I'm looking backward, I think if it were me I would have just hauled them all to the town dump and let them deal with them. Even our penny pinching Mom would not have used these.
Lois encouraged me to go out and do things when I otherwise would have stayed home and read a book or did chores. I think Mom resented her a bit because she thought and rightly so, that Lois was "taking" me out into the world and she probably knew I'd never be the same stay at home person again. I still wasn't really out going but I would grow to tolerate social occasion's even if I wasn't a hundred percent comfortable in them. Lois taught me to take chances.
Eventually, I was moved on to other jobs at the factory. I glued different tubes on other lines. Lois made friends easily and I have more tales to tell about her and I will get to them.
I was doing my usual gluing one day when I suddenly got an idea I could make it faster. I messed with the whole paint brush and needle thing. I think I bent the needle a tiny bit. I taped on a broken off chunk of the brush to the needle. Then I stuck the needle under the cuff of the balloon and twirled it while injecting my bead of glue. at the same time there was enough glue oozing out from under the cuff for the brush to move it around and seal it at the same time. I did a few that way.
I think maybe the second in command of the glue ladies was named Jean. She came along and caught me doing this needle and brush thing. At first she told me to stop doing it. She took the tubes and my rack they were drying on away from me and sent me to another glue line to do something else. I thought I was in big trouble.
On the other line I was gluing balloons onto long tubes that were somehow used to give women vacuum abortions. I knew next to nothing about abortions at the time. I'd only read of those back door butcher ones in books.
The new girl assigned to this task refused to do it. She said it was against her religion to work on anything to do with abortions. I thought she'd get fired for it but they just stuck her on another line, probably over on my former station. There were enough of them to keep me busy all day. I did finish the order.
The next day I was sent back to my own station where I found Dave the big boss sitting in my chair. they had tested what I'd done the day before and they had passed. Dave wanted me show him exactly what I'd done so I did. He told me he wanted to work on it a bit. He took my makeshift one with him and I went back to gluing the normal way. The other girls on the line were looking at me like I had two heads.
Half way through the shift, Dave was back. He'd modified the needle/brush and wanted me to try it. It was working fine and now it wasn't just a taped on section of the brush but a much neater looking one. He had me do a whole coffin of them and took them away when I was done. He told me I could keep doing it that way. The other girls were astonished. Before the week was out, I was teaching them how to use the "New" tool.
You might have thought they would give me a raise for this but they didn't. I was still just a glue girl doing my job.
An order came in for Pitt Speaking Tubes.
Again, this is not my photo.
This is a newer model but similar to what it looked like. Notice that white flap like thing in the upper right corner of the image? My job was at that time to use a short piece of cotton, thread it between those holes on the end and tie it together. It was supposed to be to hold it together in the package and as a way the nurse fix it around the patients neck I think. I'm not sure on that.
I sat there and did it a few hour. It was so annoying tying all those little bows. My fingers were cramping up. There was a short piece of a plastic tube laying there beside me on the counter. It was probably from some other project. I don't even know why I did it. I think I was just bored.
I picked it and threaded one end through one hole in the flap, bent it and the flap and stuck the other end in the other side. It looked so much neater. I left it on the counter like that while I went to lunch.
Back from lunch and there sits Dave holding it. He wanted to know all about how I came up with it and why. I didn't know the answer to either of those questions except for boredom and crampy fingers. I had to show him exactly what I did it.
He took it away with him and work was halted for a bit on the project. I was sent to glue for a time. A couple hours passed and he was back and hauled my sorry and confused butt back over to the counter where the pitt tubes were still laying as I'd left them.
I sat down and he watched me do it a few more times. I now had cut pieces to use that fit exactly. I think I did about a hundred and he took those away and left me to continue filling the order. Later, I would hear that from now on they would do it my way. Still, I got no raise, no nothing except the thanks of Dave for making a hard job easier and cleaner. The cotton straps had fibers in them and fibers were iffy.
I was really beginning to feel cheated, maybe. I knew it was just a job but I somehow suspected Jean or Margaret of claiming the glory for my inventions. I know it was stupid to think that because Dave was right there and he knew it was me that came up with these ideas. They had to have told him or he would never even have known I was doing it in the first place.