On Father’s Day, of course, I think of my father. And in the summertime, I think of summers long ago. This year, a random memory of my father popped into my head—I remembered going to see my father work as a butcher while he was in graduate school.
I’ve mentioned before that we lived in Corvallis, Oregon, while my father took courses for his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Oregon State University. We moved there around Labor Day in 1959, when I was not quite three and a half, and we lived there until November 1961 when I was five and a half and in the first grade. I can remember these dates pretty clearly because we moved to Corvallis about the time of my brother’s second birthday, and we returned to Richland, Washington, around Thanksgiving of my first-grade year. Holiday art projects loom large in a primary grade schooler’s mind, and I did Halloween in Corvallis and Christmas in Richland. (That was the year I saw Santa at Lloyd’s Center in Portland. And here’s the picture to prove it.)
While my dad was in graduate school, he worked several jobs that he could fit in around his classes. Many of the graduate students’ wives worked, but my dad never wanted his wife working. They had two small children at the time, so I suppose it made sense for my mother to stay home with us. They had saved so that Dad could take the time to finish his Ph.D., and he supplemented the savings by working these odd jobs.
For a while, Dad worked in Albany, Oregon, not far from Corvallis. I don’t know what exactly he did, but my recollection is that his job had something to do with mining. There were mines in the area, but I don’t know what work was required of a graduate engineering student at the mines around 1960.
Dad’s job in those years that I remember best was when he worked at a grocery store as a butcher. I can remember going to see him with my mother and brother in the meat department. He wore a white apron that had bloodstains on it. That tends to stick in a kid’s mind—seeing her father with blood on his clothes.
I don’t remember which grocery store he worked at. There was a store around the corner from where we lived. Mother often walked there to get groceries because my parents only had one car, and Dad usually took it with him. My little brother and I would either walk with her or ride our tricycles.
This was in the days when we knew we couldn’t step on sidewalk cracks (“step on a crack, break your mother’s back”). When we walked, we had to be very careful. But if we rode our trikes, it was okay to roll over the cracks—because, honestly, how else were we pedal to the store? My brother and I assured ourselves that Mother would be just fine as long as we didn’t take our feet off the pedals.
I had the bigger trike because I was bigger. But my brother had a little cart he could pull behind his smaller trike (which was a hand-me-down from me—I think he got the cart so he would have something new). The cart did not go with us to the store, because Mother thought it was too much trouble. Besides, it would only have been useful if my brother could pull groceries home in the cart, and he wasn’t strong enough at age three to do that. And no one else fit on the little trike.
But I don’t think this neighborhood store was where my dad cut meat. I seem to recall Mother driving us to the grocery store where he worked one time because she needed to talk to my father about something. So we drove to the store and found the meat department. Dad was in the back room and came out to see us—in that apron covered with blood. He acted a little disgusted to see us, but then, he never liked to mix family and work, something I came to realize later in my childhood. Work was work, and when work was done, then he had time for family.
His job as a butcher produced long-lasting benefits. Throughout his life, he could always pick out the best cuts of meat. And if he didn’t see what he liked already cut, he would ask the butcher to slice him what he wanted. Dad loved to cook, and he often said he could do a better job grilling meat than most restaurants for half the price. We ate a lot of great steaks over the years, many of them sliced to his specifications.
What do you remember about your parents’ jobs?
