NOW ITS LIKE LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW
by Mary Morgan
Chapter 2 - page 1
TEENAGE MADNESS
Following the death of the very best friend I'd had, in this fast
changing, seemingly complicated world I now found myself in, I must have
gone "off the rails" a bit! The "generation gap" between my mother and
myself reared its ugly head and sadly never disappeared again.
I was now 15 years of age. I had left school and Gladys Hancock, Megan
Owen and myself had been chosen to work for the then Mayor of
Wolverhampton, Councillor J. Lane, who's "proper" job at the time was as
Sales Manager for Fischer Bearings Co., Ltd..
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This picture, from an advert produced in the early
fifties. shows the sort of thing Fischer Bearings made. |
Miss Padfield, our headmistress, had put our names
forward as likely good workers and I suppose I should have felt
honoured. I had always wanted to go into nursing, but my mother was
having none of this. My sister was excelling in her chosen vocation -
secretarial work - and I was expected to do the same.
But oh dear! All those boring hours of filing and having to put up with
being nagged about not talking to the factory boys. An office girl in
those days got a bad reputation for doing this. But I had been used to
the friendliness of market folk and couldn't understand the double
standards that existed between occupations. I was like a fish out of
water!
| This photo is also from an early fifties advert. It
shows the balls being inspected. The company must have been proud of
this, to have used it as an advert. But my job felt just as bad as
this must have been and I couldn't stand it. |
 |
 |
This photo, from the same source, shows the "grinding
department" - part of the factory which was usually full of boys we
were not supposed to talk to! |
I stuck it there for almost six months but I was
suffocating. So without my mother's knowledge I gave in my notice.
On the day I finished at Fischer Bearings I knew I would be "in for
it", so on the way home from work I visited the hairdresser's shop too.
I had always wanted short hair - hairstyles and fashions were changing
rapidly after the war. I wanted the new "Bubble Cut" which was all the
rage on the American films. After all my sister had it! And here was I,
still with my long plaits! The only concession my mother had allowed me
up till then was to clip my plaits around the top of my head.
Well, talk about a recipe for World War Three when I got home!
My mother took one look, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me until
I thought my head would drop off, all the time screaming abuse at me. So
to get it all over with in one go, I broke the news about giving up my
job too. She just went crazy and began to belt me around the head,
shoulders and back; I thought she would never stop! Thank goodness a
couple of customers came into the shop right then and she was forced to
compose herself again.
As soon as she had served them she stormed off up the street to the
hairdressers to retrieve my long plaits. But by then the hairdresser had
possession of them and wasn't going to give them up that easily. Human
hair was very valuable in those days. I got the feeling that day that my
hair was more valuable to my mother than I was. This episode sparked a
streak of stubbornness in me that is still there today.
