Rosie the Riveter

   

Jess soon went to work, with Mike Hunt, at Commercial Iron Works, which was just a mile or so down the road and on the River. They taught Jess how to weld. They remodeled ships to make them air craft carriers. I went to welding school, and bought welding gear and a helmet. I became proficient at vertical welding and passed all the tests, to become a certified welder. I was hired by Kaiser ship building plant. I had a long bus ride to get to work but pay was the same for both of us, $71.76 a week. We both worked the graveyard shift so we only worked seven hours but got paid for eight . The plant ran twenty-four hours a day.

Jess and I decided we could not keep saving $20.00 bills, we would now be making big money and we would need to open a checking account. The first check I wrote was to the grocery store near our home. Instead of signing it Mrs. Jesse L. Sutton, I just wrote Mrs. Sutton. The grocer ask if I had signed the check correctly. I told him I thought so. When I ask Jess, he told me the correct way to sign the check so the next day I went back to the store and told the grocer the mistake I had made. He said he had held the check knowing I would be back. We were living on $5.00 a week, that included gas and groceries, so you know I was buying only the bare necessities. We had brought potatoes, carrots, bottled fruit and meat from Idaho. Usually when Potato harvest was over I was very very thin and looked like I was starving. The grocer told me he had just sort the fruit bins and wanted to know if I wanted what he had pulled. That started my business of getting over ripe things from the store. The grocer continued to save things to give me.