Author Archives: Mary Jo Clark as told to Jack Clark

Happy 90th, Mary Jo!

Ma went to the doctor and found out she had high blood pressure. The doctor gave her medicine. She finished the bottle, and she felt good, so she never got any more. She just quit. She figured that what she took made her better, so she didn’t need any more. Then one day she went […]

It was a Sunday. We called a cab, and we were riding to the hospital. I said to Vince, “Wouldn’t it be a beautiful day to go on a picnic?” The driver turned around and looked at me like I was out of my mind. She was born in two and a half hours. In […]

Right after we came home from Florida in 1945, my father got sick. He coughed, he coughed, and he coughed. He was sure that he’d gotten tuberculosis from his brother-in-law, who had just died. Pa still smoked. He rolled his own. So eventually he went to the doctor to find out about his TB. It […]

Ma’s first cousin, Nora, got married on Christmas Day. She was a Catholic, but she married Jim, who was not. My mother was horrified. It was bad enough that she got married in a Protestant church, but on Christmas Day–how could you do that? My mother lamented that forever, but it didn’t break their friendship. […]

One day during the war an old lady came into the ration board. Her ration book was all torn up. She would send the kids on the block to the store for her, and she’d tear out the coupons to give to them–and the book was all messed up. Virginia, who worked with me, was […]

In Orlando I got a job at the ration board. I used to work late sometimes. There was a janitor, a black janitor, and he would be sweeping the floors. One night he said to me, “You’re from a northern state aren’t you?” I said, “Yes, Chicago.” He said, “A world of difference. A world […]

Uncle Jim, now that’s quite a story. He never married. I think he had a live-in lady at one time. But anyway, he was an elevator installer. He worked for Otis Elevator. He was living in a rooming house by himself, and he would keep in touch with Aunt Anna, call her up occasionally. Anyway, […]

In October of ’43, Vince wrote from Florida and said he had permission to live off base, so I could come down. Well, I knew it would be easier to get away from the family if I said I was taking a three-month leave instead of saying I was quitting my job and going down […]

Now Tom McLaughlin, he was almost ready to get out of the army when the war came. He’d been drafted four years before, with the idea that this war was going on in Europe and we were going to be ready. So then he was in for the duration of the war. Rosemarie’s friend Bill […]

In 1930, when I first worked at Sears, one of my friends got married on a Saturday–Nancy. She lived in Oak Park. She was 18 years old. She didn’t have a big wedding or anything like that, and she came in on Monday to go to work. They called her into the main office and […]

At Sears I started as a messenger girl in the collection department, but pretty soon they recognized my talents. I got a promotion. I became a typist. My friend Catherine became a typist too. But she typed “you owe us’s.” That was when somebody owed less than a dollar. She would type like 100 of […]