My dad was an autoworker, my mom was a clerk. Until I was thirty-five, I never made more than fifteen thousand dollars a year.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I used to work, part time, in a deli, in those days when your parents made you work just so you should know what work was like. And you'd make 4, 5, 6, ten dollars.
My mother, who graduated from high school at sixteen, had no hope of affording college, so she went to work in the local post office for a dollar a day. She was doing better than her father, who earned ten cents an hour working at a nearby grain elevator.
My dad worked all sorts of jobs when I was growing up and finally ended up as a surveyor; my mum delivers meals to old folk around where we live. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but I had a very happy childhood.
I wasn't really aware that my father was working for quite a while. I thought it was my mother who had all the money!
My dad didn't graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year. My mom sold real estate and did it part time.
Mom was a housewife; Dad was an accountant. They taught me a lot about the value of working hard.
My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.
We used to tie-dye T-shirts and sell them to classmates. We used to make egg rolls and sell them at street fairs. I worked at the mall. My parents probably spent more money on the gas driving me to different jobs than I made.
My parents didn't make a lot of money. My dad was not a high school graduate - he didn't have a career as such; he was a printing salesman essentially for most of his working life.
My mom was a working woman. She made more money than my dad. Both my parents worked. And this was in the '60s.