Author Archives: By Mary Jo Clark as told to Jack Clark

All the years at Sears I was happy enough. But when I left I was on cloud nine. At Spiegel’s I was a junior executive. The first Christmas I got a bonus of $125. That was the first bonus I ever got. No–I got $50 from Sears for their 50th anniversary. Anyway, the $125 bonus […]

Marge and I wanted roller skates for Christmas, but we got dolls. My mother said Santa Claus thought we were too young for roller skates. We were probably five and six. That same year, Aunt Anna gave us little rosary beads–silver rosary beads in a little silver case with a chain on it. You put […]

Vince’s mother died a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. She had a stroke. She’d been sick for a while. She had high blood pressure, and she was desperate because she couldn’t get a job. She was all of 49 years old, but she was too old to work. She’d always had these really good jobs. […]

We were downtown at the library studying on Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941. Vince went out to Washington Street to have a smoke, and he came back with the extra–PEARL HARBOR BOMBED. I remember that we picked up our books and got on the el, and I cried all the way home. And then the […]

About six months after he left Sears, Chuck Hanna called me up and asked me if I’d come work with him at Spiegel’s. He said, “Look, you get $37.50 a week to start.” I was making $23. He said, “It won’t be long before you’re making more than that.” So I went over there to […]

When I first met Vince he was working in this solder factory, somewhere around 22nd and Indiana. I used to meet him on the corner by the Lexington Hotel at 22nd and Michigan. Is that still there? He used to like to tell the story of how he got this job. One day he saw […]

Going to work at Sears, I would walk through Columbus Park to get the Harrison streetcar at Central, which was the end of the line. Rosemarie, who was also working at Sears, would leave the house at the same time. But she would take the Madison streetcar to Central and take the Central bus to […]

In 1936 I got $50 from Sears as a bonus for their 50th year in business. I wanted to buy a used dining-room set for the family, but my mother wouldn’t let me. She said I had to spend it on myself, and I wanted something that would last. So I decided I’d use it […]

One day in 1937, after we were all working or in high school, ma’s friend, Mrs. Powers, went for a ride on the Jackson Boulevard bus. It was a Sunday, and it was pouring rain. She saw a For Rent sign, and she got off the bus and went to a phone and called ma. […]

I don’t know where Aunt Anna met Uncle Percy. Probably down along Printers Row. The bookbindery where she worked as a forelady was on Plymouth Court near Harrison. And he was a printer. She went with him for 17 years. He used to write her postcards. You know, you’d put ’em in the box in […]

We were living on Arthington Street when the Depression came. My mother would go to the bank and get money to pay the rent. The bank was on the corner of Kedzie and 12th Street. Liberty Savings. My parents always bragged about the fact that they didn’t lose a penny during the collapse. They only […]

My father, Jack Ryan, had worked since he was very young. He only went to third grade. Then his mother died, and he stayed home to take care of his younger sisters. Eventually he followed his father into the marble business. Around the turn of the century he left Chicago and went to the west […]

Let me tell you how my brother Eddie got his first dog. It’s one of the stories I tell my grandchildren. One Saturday while we were living on Polk Street in 1925 or so, my mother called Ed, who was about ten, and said, “Eddie, get your little wagon and go to the bakery shop. […]

In October of 1929, at the beginning of my second year at Providence High School, I went to Straus & Shram on 35th Street, and I was offered a job at $8 a week. I would have to go to continuation school one day a week, but first I had to go to the Board […]

My mother could see the Depression coming for our family before the Depression actually hit, because of all the strikes and stuff that my father was on. In 1927, when Marge was ready to go to high school, my mother said, “You’ve got to take a two-year commercial course so you can learn something that […]