“ Another day, another dollar.” I don’t know who first uttered those words or in what context they came. Couldn’t find the answer on the Internet. I suspect they came in a time when a dollar a day was the going pay for a day’s labor. Imagine that!
Well, I don’t have to imagine $5.00 as being a day’s wages because that’s what my father was paid working for the Water Department in Laguna Beach back in 1938. It was hard work too, like digging ditches for water lines, repairing broken water lines, and that sort of thing.
Daddy did it without complaint because he was trying to fulfill Mother’s desire to live in sunny California rather than the state of Minnesota where she had always lived before. One visit to her mother, my Grandmother Darling, had hooked her.
Mother was not well, had been given up by the doctors at Mayo Clinic. She was not expected to live long. I’ve always said Daddy would have moved to Timbuktu for her. But instead he leased the Standard Oil gas station he owned, packed up our old Buick, left our home near the little town of Preston with Mother, my two brothers and me, and moved us kit ‘n caboodle (another old expression) to California a week or so before the Christmas of 1937. Grandmother lived in Laguna Beach with her Uncle Chet and they had rented a cottage for us only two blocks from the ocean.
Things began to look up when Daddy got work. I remember the off and on times he worked for the Water Department because of his pay, $5.00 a day. I remember his smiles when he'd say to Mother, "They hired me again at the Water Department, Faithie!" Now my father was no stranger to hard work. He had built the country gas station in Minnesota on a five acre tract of land which was a part of the family homestead. He’d planted trees there, dug a well there, set up a “wind electric” there, and struggled to build up his business selling gasoline and oil to farmers with tractors, neighbors, travelers on the two main highways, 52 and 16 that intersected at that corner. But in California, as all across the nation, we were still in the throes of the Great Depression. Times were hard.
I don’t remember a word of complaint about the jobs Daddy took wherever he could find them. One was with Bert, the Roofer. He was not familiar with the composition materials used on that roof and accidentally poured hot tar over his hands. This not only put him out of work but served to cause my father to yell out in pain as he soaked his hands in Epsom salts. His one complaint, without words. After two years he and Mother decided it was time to go back to the station and our Minnesota home. That winter Mother died at the age of 35.
“Another day, another dollar,” reminds me of those hard times. When I hear about couples that quarrel in front of their children I think of my parents and how I seldom heard them quarrel. If they did, they were careful not to do it in front of my brothers and me. Money was precious but our wants were few. A lollypop or bottle of root beer was a real treat for us kids. Even a coloring book or pad of paper were precious possessions. Now? Now children enjoy an overload of toys. They are carried off to entertainment parks and swimming pools and restaurants. And when they are older and discover money a dollar is a relatively small sum to have in the pocket. Seldom is it earned by them.
When I was a child back in the old days I didn’t know much about money but I did know that Daddy’s $5. a day job was enough to pay our rent of $25. a month and buy us food and clothing. The job was only when they needed him though so it was not steady. No unemployment pay then. My brothers and I spent happy carefree days at Divers’ Cove in the summer. In winter we walked to school and I could enjoy a class in singing chorus, take ballet lessons after school, play marbles during recess. I carried a lunch bag because we couldn't afford to buy lunch at the school cafeteria. That only bothered me a little. I never had, or needed, money to carry in my pocket. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a crisp dollar bill!
How times do change!
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