I didn’t really work during the school year except for babysitting. I think I made 50 cents an hour. I made head scarves during high school and tried to sell them at my father’s grocery store. I sold maybe 5 of them. The summer after I graduated from high school, I lived with my Grandma Ober in Banks, Oregon, and worked with her in the strawberry cannery. It was a pretty boring job picking the stems off of the strawberries and throwing the bad ones away for 8 hours a day standing along the conveyor belt. I worked alongside my cousin, Gary’s wife, Patty some of the time. It was good to get to know her. She was deaf but could read lips really well. She was a little hard to understand when she talked but we managed to understand each other. I made a dress for my Mom for her birthday when I was at my grandma’s house to help fill the time. I think the job at the strawberry cannery lasted about 6 weeks.
When I was a freshman in college I was in the work-study program and I worked in the college dining room clearing the tables. In the summer after my freshman year I worked as a motel maid and once in a while a waitress at The Inn at Otter Crest overlooking the ocean near Otter Rock, Oregon. A bonus of the job was its beautiful location. The beach below it is called the Marine Gardens and it is full of marine life.
The summer after my sophomore year of college I worked as a cashier at Snyder’s Market, my Dad’s grocery store. The next summer I was married and preparing to have a baby!
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 