Interview with my mother (slight return)

One summer when I was in business school, I worked in the pineapple cannery.

I must have been tiny. They gave me the job of going table to table. At the first table, the pineapples would come down the chute after they were skinned, and people would trim the eyes and edges off them. At the next table, they were sliced, and at the last table, the slices were sorted by size. In 1942, the pay was 41 and a half cents an hour. I think the sorters were paid a penny or so higher.

It was noisy! There'd be tin cans rattling overhead, and supervisors on the catwalk. Everybody was talking, but their hands were as busy as their mouths. You had to shout! It was interesting, if only for a summer. I enjoyed the company.