Blue Collar

When I was a kid, photos were important to mom.  Appearances were also important.

Dad was a blue collar worker.  Well, green was his preferred colour, a lot like this:

His standard work 'uniform' was a shirt and pants in a dark blue/green.  He never wore blue or black, just always the dark blue/green.  Always.  

In the entire 25 years that his life and mine overlapped, I never once saw him wear denim.  He wore shirts that buttoned.  Or snapped, but usually, buttons.  They were always long sleeved, too.  In the summer he would roll the sleeves of his shirt up, but until he got sick, I don't ever recall seeing him in anything but a long sleeved cotton shirt.

For 'good', he would wear sharkskin pants - a lighter weight cotton, like the ones in the top photo, and again a buttoned shirt.  He always wore a billed cap.  In the winter, to go to work, it would be wool and would have ear flaps he could pull down to keep his ears warm.  Because he worked on the highways, in the days when graders and snow ploughs didn't have heat.

In the winter he would begin with Stanfield's kroy (wool) long johns.  If it was really cold, he would sometimes put on two before putting on his shirt and pants.  Then he would put a padded coverall on top, two pairs of wool work socks - you know, the kind people now use to make sock monkeys?  His boots would have thick wool felt packs (liners) and his boots would be winter boots with insulation, thick wool insoles and water proof.  Leather boots would be conditioned with thick waxy polish and it would be worked into the seams to make sure if he stepped in a puddle his feet stayed dry.

In the summer he would wear the shirt and pants, and a lighter weight jacket, and thick leather work boots.  With steel toes, when they became required.

At leisure, he would frequently wear a clean work shirt and pants because if he was mowing lawns or digging gardens, he was working and he didn't want to wear his 'good' clothing.

In those days, workers for the department of highways didn't  make much money - no government workers did, really.  But it was steady work and he was happy driving the big machines.  Happy enough, given he had a family to support.

Mom worked at times because there were medical bills to pay - for me and my brother.  Mom had some health issues, too, and in those days, there wasn't universal medical - that didn't come in until 1966 in BC.  

Mom and Dad had both lived through the depression.  Dad grew up on a hard scrabble farm but his family had a bit extra because they lived on the Fraser River and could go panning for gold to top up their coffers when needed.  There were five boys in the family and they scraped enough money together to buy harvesting equipment and would then hire themselves out to take in hay and so on.  They also played dances on musical instruments they made themselves for the most part - they might not have gotten paid much, but the crowd would usually stand them a few rounds of beer.

As a child, we had little but mom made sure we had what we needed.  We might not have gotten what we wanted, but she made it clear that life wasn't fair, it didn't matter that someone else had more, we didn't, get over it.

Both of us kids had work to do in the household.  We didn't get paid for it.  We didn't get an allowance, either.  If we wanted money, we had to ask and hope that we had been 'good enough' to deserve the treat we wanted.  (I know now that usually not getting money for the movies had more to do with the fact there simply wasn't a spare quarter, not that I had been 'bad'.)

I learned to make stuff.  Since I couldn't afford to buy clothing, I learned how to knit and sew.  In those days you could still go to a fabric store, buy a pattern, thread, notions and the fabric and pay less than buying new in the store.

The other thing mom and dad taught us was to not waste money on cheap stuff, but to save up our money and buy good quality.  Like dad's work clothing.  It wasn't cheap, but he would wear it for years, with mom washing and drying loads of laundry to keep us clean and respectable.

These were lessons I took with me into adulthood.  Want little.  Be satisfied with what you have.  Don't look over the fence to see what the neighbours may have, because that really isn't any of your business.

My father would likely have been very uneasy about my choice to quit a very well paying job (for a woman) in 1975 in order to become a weaver, for goodness sake!  But I wasn't happy, had never been happy in any job I'd had.  Some were bearable, but as I got older, I was less inclined to put up with the kind of crap that some jobs just seemed to come with.  If I worked with men, there were the sly innuendos, the being talked down to, the disrespect.  (No, not all men - but plenty to make me wary of all men until I got to know them.)

Learning how to budget, scrimp and save, and want for little, meant I could manage to navigate my way through the lean times of being a production weaver.  I also knew how to work hard - my mother and father had certainly showed me how hard they worked - and I assumed that that was 'normal' and only to be expected.  So I knew that I could be a weaver with all the hard work entailed in doing the job.

So I did.  I worked hard.  Worked to deadlines.  Fulfilled contracts.  Scraped money together to buy materials and pay show fees.  Borrowed for major purchases, like looms.

Retirement means several things to me.  It means I am giving up the pressure of weaving for sales.  I won't have show fees.  I won't need to buy as much yarn.  Goodness knows I have a basement full!  

Income will be reduced, but since the bulk of that income was going to pay for things like show fees, purchase materials, travel to do the shows, the insurance on the business ($1650 for this year to cover show liability requirements, loss of product en route to and from shows, the separate work space, etc.), business license and telephone, business insurance on the van and so on, I'm hoping that the reduced income (primarily from book sales, consignment sales - because I still have way too much inventory - and teaching) will cover the much reduced expenses of my new hobby.

My father never did go to school and was functionally illiterate.  He was smart, just never had a chance to have any kind of education beyond what his older siblings could teach him.  My mother dropped out in grade 9 or 10 - it was war time, she was 15-16, looked older, and wanted some money of her own.  My brother and I managed grade 12 (him kicking and screaming), me a few college courses because I loved learning.  But when I finally discovered weaving, all my education became focused on becoming the best weaver I could be.

The journey has been hard at times.  It's been difficult at times.  It's been stressful and sometimes I didn't know how I would pay the bills.  In the end?  Not much different than my mother's life.

Mom and I would knock heads over things, but ultimately?  I am the person I am today because I was my mother's daughter.  And my father's...

I may not wear a 'blue' collar - my wardrobe (such as it is) tends towards cotton knits - but that is my background, my base.  I'm not ashamed of my roots, but neither am I proud.  My life was what it was, and I am the person I am because of it.