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Interviewee: Phyllis Beaulieu (follow up interview)
Interviewer: Amy Stevens
July 24th, 2006
Eastern Fine Paper Oral History Project
[Begin Interview, Begin Side A]
Amy Stevens: This is Amy Stevens. It’s July 24th, 2006 and I am at the home of Phyllis Beaulieu in Dedham, Maine and I’m going to ask Phyllis some follow-up questions. We did an interview back in winter and now we’re working on our woman’s history project for the mill so a little bit different set of questions this time. I noticed when I was going through the transcript that there were a couple things I hadn’t asked you, specific things like did you graduate from Brewer High School?
Phyllis Beaulieu: Yes.
AS: You did.
PB: In 1946.
AS: 46’ ok, a fellow witch.
PB: 60 years.
AS: Wow, did you go to a reunion recently?
PB: I’m going next month. We’re having and we’re going to be honored the 60 years.
AS: That’s wonderful.
PB: Yes.
AS: Wonderful. Now you grew up in Brewer is that correct?
PB: Yes I was born and brought up in Brewer.
AS: Now where about in Brewer?
PB: Green Point Road in Brewer.
AS: Ok. Green Point Road. [006]
PB: You know where Donna’s is, you go up that hill. I still have the land there
AS: You do.
PB: well the farmers, I took everything down, the house and the barn and everything but I still have the land. I’ve got it up for sale.
AS: Oh ok, ok, so when you worked at the mill did you have to drive there or take the bus?
PB: Well I started walking from the Green Point Road down when I first went to work and believe me it wasn’t easy. I would get rides with different people that would work and then that was in 49’ I started working there and then 52 or 3, I bought my first car.
AS: Excellent.
PB: So I had transportation after that but boy that first few years was rough.
AS: I was going to say that’s a long walk.
PB: Yes it is. It’s about, I would say it’s about 3-4 miles at least.
AS: Wow and you would do that everyday there and back.
PB: Yes, walked down and walked, usually I was very lucky. There was different people that worked and lived in Holden, something like that and if they were going home they’d pick me up. A lot of times they had errands to do, in the morning I’d have to leave pretty early to give myself time and I’d have quite a ways before they’d come along so I’d have to give myself quite a bit of time.
AS: Oh my goodness.
PB: Get there and they had to be to work at 7.
AS: Wow. So when you got your first car was that before you were married or after?
PB: After. [019]
AS: After
PB: Well I got it, well I was married before and I was married not quite a year.
AS: Right.
PB: It didn’t work out and so when I divorced him I bought a car. That’s the first time I had a car.
AS: Good for you. That must have made it a lot easier.
PB: Oh yes it was, and of course it was so good because I was living with my parents and they didn’t have a car so I take them, do everything like that for them.
AS: Oh they must have been so happy.
PB: They were.
AS: Now you said that your husband Larry Beaulieu was a piper at Eastern.
PB: Yes.
AS: Now is that the same as what they would call a millwright?
PB: That’s what it is, a millwright. He really was a millwright. At first he, they bid on different jobs. A piper would come up and he’d bid on it but it was a millwright. It used to be separated, segregated, whatever they called them, a welder was a welder and that’s all they did. A tin smith was a tin smith, that’s all he did, black smith and the piper but then as years went by they changed it and it was a millwright.
AS: Oh ok.
PB: So he really was, yes
AS: That was kind of the umbrella over all of them. [030]
PB: Yes, they put it all together. Of course you didn’t, if a piper was doing a piping job, the electrician come in to do something, he did his job but he never touched the piper’s jobs. But then at the end of it there, they were all working like together. So the electrician was really kept by themselves really.
AS: Ok.
PB: Because they’re all together different.
AS: Ok and what was the year that you retired from Eastern?
PB: 88.
AS: 88.
PB: August of 88’
AS: Ok. Now I’ll move onto the women questions.
PB: Ok.
AS: I had just a couple of things I wanted to follow up on.
PB: Sure.
AS: So when you started at Eastern, what was your very first position there?
PB: It was and they called it the sample department or the bindery; where they used to put papers together and it was really called the bindery. We would just pick up paper, different colors. We had shelves, like eight shelves in front of us and we sat on a high stool. We’d pick up these papers and we’d put them, place them in a box in front of you and we’d get that box full. We’d take that to a woman that used to put them up on a rack and then she’d glue the ends and they were pads.
AS: That you would send out to the customers?
PB: Yes and then they, after they’d do that, it was a cutter, the fellow in there that used to cut and he’d cut them and then they’d print them. I can’t remember if they were printed first or what but they were printed and then we’d send them out to the customers. [44]
AS: So when you say printed, do you mean they would print the type of paper.
PB: No, what the paper was.
AS: Ok.
PB: Atlantic Bond, you know.
AS: So was the bindery part of the sample department or was the name changed?
PB: Yes, sample, no, no, sample. Well the sample was upstairs, yes it was different. It was a different department all together.
AS: Ok.
PB: And advertising, a bindery was combined with advertising and this is what really what it was. We were doing all these little pads of paper with the advertisement, what they were, what the size of the paper, the color, the name of the color and everything was on it. We had all different colors and everything that we picked up.
AS: So that was different than the sample department?
PB: That was different from the sample.
AS: And what would they do in the sample department?
PB: They sent out, they send out papers to customers would send in, they’d want different kinds of paper. We had shelves, we had a room bigger than that room there and it was just full of shelves on both sides. It had little boxes and the paper was 11 by 17. They were different colors and different kinds of papers. It was all labeled and if the customer wanted say Atlantic Bond, green, they’d go out and they’d get different colors and we used to put a lot of them together and send them out. It was a lot like the [055] bindery but we didn’t glue and do all that but they’d send it out just in an envelope and I had to make labels for them. I had to type labels.
AS: Ok. That’s right.
PB: They weren’t printed on. They weren’t printed.
AS: Ok, I was a little bit confused when I was reading the first transcript about the difference between a bindery and the sample department because they, like you said they sound similar.
PB: Yes, they are. They are a lot the same but you know the difference in the size and everything. The little pads were small and, I wish I had some to show you. I used to have quite a few of them but maybe I can find some around here. I’ve got a lot of this paper here.
AS: Do you?
PB: Yes, I have a lot of the paper.
AS: So the sample department was more where customers would ask for specific type that they wanted to see?
PB: Yes, and also the sample department had the samples to send down on the machines. Somebody would send in for a sample of paper or they’d send in a piece of paper and they’d want so much paper of that color and size or color mostly and they’d send it in and we’d have to try to match it. Then it would be matched in the lab which later on I did that out in the lab too. I mixed up the colors and made little swatches. That would be a recipe really of the paper of stuff that had to go in to the paper, the different talc and color and sizing and all that that went in. They’d have so much. That all had to be figured out. [068]
AS: Wow.
PB: On a little piece of paper. The sample department had the paper and then the lab would have to, if we didn’t have that paper on hand. If they send in a piece of paper that had to be matched, they’d send it out in the lab and we’d have to make it up.
AS: That’s interesting.
PB: Put in water and put in different colors. I used to like to do that.
AS: Did you.
PB: Had a little print press, you would press it and then it had to be, I made, when I worked out there I made, I’d liked to had the book. I really wish I had kept it. I made a great big notebook of all the different colors and everything and what went in it. All they’d have to do is send in a piece of paper and sample and I’d look that up and match it with the colors.
AS: Wow.
PB: The formula was right there.
AS: So before you had those written down was it a lot of guess work.
PB: You had to guess, you had to keep putting different colors in and color until you got it to match, yes.
AS: Was that frustrating sometimes?
PB: Sometimes it was very because you had to get it just, you had to get it right. Of course if you didn’t get the color the way they wanted it, they wouldn’t accept the paper.
AS: Wow.
PB: It was a lot of work but I liked it. I loved doing that so we had a lot to do with the colors and the paper. [079]
AS: So you worked a little bit of all those departments that dealt with the customers?
PB: Well yes I worked in the mill, the first five years I worked in the mill sorting paper, doing the reams, wrapping reams and putting the labels on and like the sample and out in the mill, sorting the paper. I liked that too. I didn’t mind that.
AS: Now what did that involve?
PB: Well you had a great big table and you sat at this table and they’d come up and they’d put a great big load of paper, great big sheets and you had a rubber tip, you had to wear like a white stocking on your arm because you turn the paper like this and you’d have to see if there was anything in it, marks or anything and you turned it all day. This is what you did, you just turned it like that and you watched [the runner]. He would have to pull the paper out and a fellow would come and take all the broke. They called it broke.
AS: Oh ok.
PB: He’d take it when, on the floor and you just, but where you pulled it out the paper would come across you sometimes and I used to get cuts from here up to here, paper cuts.
AS: Even with the stocking on your arm
PB: No.
AS: Only when you didn’t wear it.
PB: Yes, only if I didn’t wear it. We had to wear that, sometimes you wore gloves too, white gloves and they’d cut the fingers out but you always had to have that rubber tip to sort it. I liked that too. I liked all the work I did in the mill. I really liked, I’ve got a frog in my throat.
AS: Oh that’s fine. Do you want to stop and get a drink or anything?
PB: No I’m fine. I’ll be ok. [091]
AS: Did you ever get like repetitive motion sort of aches in your arm or anything from doing that?
PB: Well when I very first started you know of course you have to get used to something and it was the pulling the paper out. I used to, I used to, my wrist, one of my wrist see how the difference is in my wrist. That swelled way up and it stayed big, a lot bigger than this one.
AS: Because you used those muscles more.
PB: Yes, I pulled that. You have to pull that paper, some of the paper we set on the table and the paper wasn’t that big and you just turned it over and it go into another stall like and that wasn’t bad but when you, the great big table, it was as big as this only square and you would have to just, we’d have to pull that paper out. It’d be, fold it over like you would a magazine and you’d pull it out. Then you’d get so much they’d come and take it. They’d take it down to the cutters.
AS: Ok.
PB: Then the cutters cut it and then they take it up and it would be wrapped into reams.
AS: So they would be big sheets of paper, like several feet by several feet?
PB: Oh they’d be maybe four by five, something like that.
AS: Wow.
PB: And then the others would be like 11 by, what was it 11 by 17 isn’t really that big but the other paper was 20 something by 30 I can’t remember the exact measurements now but we had, that was not hard you just lift it over you know, you just watch. You’ve got to watch that paper because have to watch for wrinkles or dirt or anything, you had to pull that paper out. [104]
AS: Did you ever sort of find yourself blanking out because it got so repetitive?
PB: Well there was a bunch of us who worked together and we were always talking to something and we’d be talking you know and sometimes you get sleepy, especially in the afternoon. After you worked all morning, you go out and have lunch and then you’d come back in and sit down and work and you say ohh, what I wouldn’t give just to lay down. I still do that in the afternoon but sometimes, but I liked the mill. I liked it very, very much. It was an awful good part of my life. Yes and I met my, of course I knew my husband for years anyway before he was my second. First one was [gay]. I won’t say it. I didn’t know it.
AS: Yeah.
PB: It was a long time. It wasn’t like it is now, you know. That was 52, they kept it quiet, everything was kept so quiet.
AS: Yes, it’s a lot different.
PB: Awful way to find out though.
AS: Oh it must have been.
PB: Night and day, just like night and day. Go ahead.
AS: So now when you were sorting, I’m just going to back you up a little bit. Would you be sitting or standing?
PB: Oh no, sitting, sitting. Oh yeah, we had high, high chairs and it’s the same with picking up the samples out in the sample. We had high chairs, great big high chairs and you sit at these tables. The big table sorting we had low chairs. That wasn’t high but the table sorting when you sat up that was high chairs. [119]
AS: Ok. So were all of the sorters women at that time?
PB: Yes.
AS: Or were there any men.
PB: No, the men picked up the broke.
AS: Ok.
PB: But they, all women and when I went there, there was an awful lot of old women and I mean old ladies. They were now I consider, back then I thought they were ancient but here I am, I’m going to be 80 next month.
AS: You are.
PB: Yes and some of them I remember old [Myra Knowles] I think to God she was almost 100. She’d be in the morning, she’d sit at that table and she wouldn’t move off that table until she went out at night.
AS: Really.
PB: She’d eat her lunch there and I don’t know how she went to the bathroom but she never got up, never got up. Well I don’t think she could, she was a big fat woman. Then there was one there that was I can’t think of her name now but I can picture her. I always thought she’s not going to live today. She looked so old. Oh god she looked ancient but she was probably 70 or something but they could work as long as they wanted to back then. A lot of them worked right up until they were 80, 85 and then they passed the law they had to get through at 65 and oh some of the, boy they were so mad they had to get out of there at 65. [129]
AS: Really
PB: And then they changed it again that they could work as long. I think that law was only in for a very short time. It was discrimination see against your age so they passed that but they could work but not too many of them stayed after that, 65 was long enough.
AS: I would say so.
PB: It is.
AS: But I mean would they want to continue working because the retirement benefits weren’t very good or just to make extra money?
PB: Well they all worked for years and I know they all saved money and it was just a lot of them were widows and they were alone and wanted to work.
AS: Interesting. So do you remember any women ever being injured or being sick or anything or maybe you yourself that had anything to do with the work in the mill?
PB: No, not really. I mean we’d just, what any woman has, you know sometimes oh a lot of them had I know bursitis or something like that. They’d have it in their shoulders from working, you know they’d get that.
AS: From sorting?
PB: Yes and no, just the everyday sickness that most of us have today. You know you’d be out with the flu or something like that and of course every now and then somebody had to be operated on or they’d have a heart attack and be out. Some of them had a stroke or something like that but no, not too many. Most of them seemed to be the same. They’d go in every day and just always the same routine.
AS: When one of the ladies would get bursitis or something from sorting would they make her do a different job or would there be any alterations? [147]
PB: Well some, they’d put you on something different if it bothered you too much. They were good like that. They tried to make it as easy as they could for you but for bursitis you had to stop working. You had to go and of course you couldn’t move, one woman had it so bad she couldn’t move her arm. She had to go out and have all this therapy for so long before
AS: Oh really.
PB: Yes and things like that but they were very good, you know tried to help the person if they was sick but not too many of them seemed to have much wrong with them, seemed to be the same.
AS: Any of the women that you worked with over the years ever go out for having a baby?
PB: Well yes, oh yes. When I was working in the sample of course they were all young girls and yes they would come to work and they had to leave because they had babies. Oh yes, Betty Matthews, I worked with her and God, she was out to here and then there was another one I can’t remember, she was too. She worked right up until she had her baby and I think she got through. They didn’t come back.
AS: Oh really.
PB: No.
AS: They stayed home with the babies.
PB: Yes, of course they had other kids and no, they didn’t come back. There was a Charlotte something, she got through. Yes, that happened a lot in later too in years in the mill of women that worked in the mill getting pregnant and they got through or they’d come back after they had the baby or something like that, yes. [161]
AS: Do you remember if the mill provided like paid maternity leave or anything like that?
PB: They paid, we had a very good insurance and they paid you know a lot of the bills. I know when I first went there, I didn’t know you know, we were insured and I’d go to the doctor and they had our own mill doctor, came right there. It used to be Dr. Todd when I first, and he was a very, very good surgeon. He was one of the best at Eastern Maine and he was the mill doctor for awhile and then they had another doctor, Wood, Dr. Wood or something like that. He wasn’t that good. They were very good about paying. I don’t think we all had to pay too much. It was a good insurance.
AS: So if a woman went out with an injury or to have a baby, she wouldn’t lose her job.
PB: No.
AS: It would be there waiting for her if she wanted to come back.
PB: Oh yes, yes oh yes.
AS: Would they replace her temporarily?
PB: Yes, yes that’s what I did when I first went in to work at the mill five years I just worked filling in vacations. I was always laid off like in October until the following well they started taking their vacations in the spring, probably the last of April, first of May, first five years and then I bid on a job and that’s when I went in the sample department.
AS: Ok.
PB: I went in the bindery and then the mill, the first five years I worked.
AS: Wow. [173]
PB: I worked just part time. [I was waiting for that box. I ordered something for my niece for her birthday. I’ll show, I’ll open that up and show you what I did for her.]
AS: Oh great, great. Let’s see what else do I have. So when you worked in the sample department and sorting and things like that was that considered in the mill or was that an office job?
PB: No, mill.
AS: Mill, ok.
PB: Let’s see I was in the union.
AS: Oh ok.
PB: Yes but the office wasn’t in union until Standard Packaging took over. Then they voted for union because they were terrible to work for.
AS: Really.
PB: Oh my Ggod.
AS: How so?
PB: Oh they just treated the people like we were nothing, like we were dirt. I mean somebody would bump you, the first time I was bumped I was in the sample. I got bumped, I was bumped out of the sample department. I went from there out to stores. I was bumped there, later I went out to purchasing and I was bumped and I went up in engineering in the office and from there I went back to purchasing and this was within five years and then Standard Packaging closed the mill to get the money. It was the, that was terrible when they were there. That was horrible and then Frank Knight and Bruce Hamilton and well there was five, four or five men that got together and got enough money and called everybody that did work in the mill if we could put some money in to get it opened. Am I sounding awful? [194]
AS: Oh no, you’re fine but you let me know if you need to stop and get a drink.
PB: I will.
AS: Ok.
PB: Ok
AS: There you go, great. So you said that, we were talking about Standard Packaging and they were, were they a New York company?
PB: Yes, they were and they just doubled the people up. They used us like well I say when we were there, they used us like animals. We were nothing. People were nothing. They just, and they filled that mill so full of people in the offices. They had people in hall ways, see the more people you have working in a place when they close it, the more money they get.
AS: Really.
PB: So they had that and I said one day to my boss, I said what’s going on anyway? At first they closed the pulp mill the year before. I said my God, they closed the pulp mill. I said what’s going on? He said well we can get our stuff you know from Lincoln and he covered it up like that. He didn’t know. And I said you know I have an awful feeling. I said that they are going to close this mill. He said no, no they’ll never do that. They’ve gone down for like two or three days at a time but oh no he said they’ll never close it. Well things kept looking terrible, more terrible, all the time and I kept saying to my husband, I said I don’t know what’s going on. I said that main office is so full of people and they’re bringing more and more in and you’d ask these new people what do you do. I don’t know, they just gave us some IBM paper and we just go through them. They didn’t know what they were doing and I saw it with my own eyes. I don’t know if anybody else will say this but everybody knew that it wasn’t good. You know and they, all of a sudden they just announced it. I heard it when I was going to work one noon because I was working on payroll then, that was my fifth job that I had bumped and got, and I had to work from 4 until like 11 because for the cards, checking the time cards. [213]
AS: Oh ok.
PB: And we had to do the ones in Lincoln to. We had all of Lincolns to do and there was a lot, well 6 or 7 hundred.
AS: Wow.
PB: Well I really don’t count the office because we didn’t have time cards but oh I’d say probably 600 cards or approximately like that. I had to check every, you know they all had to be checked and I was going to work one noon and on the radio they said Standard Packaging has closed Eastern Fine Paper.
AS: They didn’t even tell you. You heard it on the radio.
PB: No. It was on the radio.
AS: Wow.
PB: I had an awful feeling though and I kept saying, I don’t care I was saying to Larry you know I’m going to close off my account over to [Freezes]. I’m paying it up and I said I’m going to buy, start buying some, all I had was a little freezer and I said I’m going to start buying stuff and putting it in the freezer while we’re working and he said I think everything, well I said there’s something going on, I don’t care. I said there’s something going on, had a terrible feeling and it was true. When it happened this fellow I talked to this man he came in and talked to all of the people, he broke right down and cried. [226]
AS: Really.
PB: He said I never dreamed I would see this day, never and he felt so bad and I said I don’t think to say I told you so and I said remember back along. I said I thought something was funny. Yes he said I never thought though they’d ever close it. It was a terrible blow, terrible shock to everybody. I mean we were only there, I was there then 19 years.
AS: Wow.
PB: My husband was there a couple of years more than me, about 21 years. I know we lined up and we had to tell how long we were there and when we went in and everything. Then they’d give us a card to go over to unemployment and we both got 47.50 a week.
AS: For unemployment?
PB: For unemployment and we paid, we had the house paid for. Thank God we had it paid for. See though we had only been married ten years but we had paid for this house in six years because we had tried to make double payments.
AS: Wonderful.
PB: Well it was so run down we bought it, we bought it in 58’ and it was really fallen down. It was a terrible mess. The floors were gone. See my husband did all this work, pine and everything and I refinished all the antiques but there was nothing in here but filth, filth, filth and weeks that we cleaned and cleaned it. But we had the house paid for but there were so many down there that didn’t have their homes paid for and a lot of people were just about out of their mind. [244]
AS: I bet.
PB: You know because there was no work. Hydro went on strike that year and they were out so you take them two big places, Eastern with over 400 people out of work, drawing unemployment, stand in line. It was like a bread line, sign up to get our 47.50.
AS: Now how did that compare to your weekly salary?
PB: Well when I got through work when I got laid off in 68’ I was making back then though, this doesn’t sound like much but I was making 130 dollars a week which was a lot of money to me and my husband wasn’t making much more than that and to go down to 47.50. When I went back to work when they opened up in six months I went back for 80 dollars a week so I took a 50 dollar cut but it was a job and our unemployment run out. We were out six months and our unemployment run out and the mill opened up in six months. He went back a month before me and then they called me to work part time in the sample. I went in to work just part time and part time I never had another day off. I worked right through until I got through in 88’.
AS: Did you?
PB: Yes.
AS: Wow.
PB: I worked in the sample and then from the sample I went in the lab about 19, see the mill opened in 68’, in 1970 or 71 I went in the lab. They taught me in there. They had, the lab needed desperately needed somebody that would work and so this fellow asked me and I said I don’t know anything about lab work and he said you can learn. I said well I’d love to because all I did was type and I hated it.
AS: Really. [266]
PB: I hated it, all day long. I hated it but anyway it was a job and I said oh I’d love to and I did a lot of different testing, a lot of stuff so I liked that very much.
AS: Were there many women in the lab at that time?
PB: Nobody, I was the only one.
AS: Really.
PB: But they hired this girl at the last three years I was there. The last three years was the worst years of my life in that mill.
AS: Really. She was the one that gave you a hard time.
PB: Can’t describe it.
AS: That’s awful.
PB: It was too bad because I loved the mill and a friend of mine just died. He knew what I went through. I went to his wake [Hue Flynn] the other night. I just went to his wake and he used to come up in the lab a lot. He was the OSHA man.
AS: Oh really.
PB: He took care of you know things that were happening in the mill but he worked there. He was awful, awful nice. Everybody liked Hue and I used to talk to him. He had lung cancer, never stopped smoking. I just talked to him about a month ago, I called up and his girlfriend living with him said, I said don’t tell me and she said oh yeah. My God, I read it two days later in the paper and I almost cried. Felt so bad, he was such a nice man. I just loved him. Anyway
AS: Did the other men in the lab treat you pretty well?
PB: They were all good to me. They were all good to me. There’s a few things I wouldn’t say over this but when we unclip this I’ll tell you. That’s between you and me. [265]
AS: Sure, off the record.
PB: Off the record
AS: Ok.
PB: I wouldn’t want to put it in but I’ll tell you a few things
AS: Now when you worked in payroll was that an office job?
PB: Yes it was. It was union.
AS: Did you sense any difference in the types of employees in office jobs versus mill jobs?
PB: No, of course I got along pretty good, I don’t care what kind of a job they had. I look down my nose at people because I started from the ground up. When I had no, I didn’t have any good education just high school and they were good enough to teach me in any department I went into. They were very good because I had an awful time first when I had to type purchase orders which I had stacks of them a day to type and they were awful good. Any other office would have fired me. I was so slow getting going. But it was just, the bosses and everything were always very good. It was some of the people you work with. That’s what it was. It was just, there’s always one, always one.
AS: Whether you’re in the office or in the mill?
PB: Oh yes, in the mill but in the office especially, awful. That’s one thing I had to get so much down there, but just had to do it. I mean it’s my job and you had to take it. I had to take this stuff. It was hard at times. Many, many times I used to say to Larry I don’t think I can stay but he said well hang in there. You know try to hang in, well I did. [307]
AS: And I’m sure there are a lot more good people than people that give you a problem.
PB: Oh my God, I could count on my one hand the people from all those years, on one hand that were mean ones. All the rest were all friends. I could walk through the mill and everybody would speak to me and was very nice to me. I never did anything to anybody so why wouldn’t they be.
AS: Right.
PB: I never hurt anybody in that mill or tried to make trouble for somebody or anything like that, but it’s different. Jealousy too, is a terrible thing in a place like that. Every place you work, hospitals, shoe factories, any place you get that. It’s jealousy.
AS: Was that mostly among the women or among all the workers?
PB: Women, yes.
AS: Why do you think that is?
PB: I don’t know. I don’t know why. I can not to this day I have never been able to figure it out why. You work with somebody and try to help them and do for them and the first thing you know they’re trying to do something to you.
AS: Would that tend to be younger women coming in or older women?
PB: Well a few of them were younger yes… but the last of it, they’re younger.
AS: Younger.
PB: Yes and of course I’m so short I used to get a lot of stack from that.
AS: Oh really. [326]
PB: Oh yes.
AS: Like good fun loving teasing or mean?
PB: Most of them mean.
AS: Mean.
PB: Yes.
AS: Well that’s too bad.
PB: At the last of it. Well it was just the last three years that happened, making fun of me because I was so short.
AS: And you said that was mostly younger girls coming in.
PB: Yes, younger.
AS: Because I’ve talked to some other ladies from the Old Town mill actually and they say that when they first started some of the older ladies that had been there for a long time would kind of be set in their ways and give the new girls some grief.
PB: Oh that’s true, when I first went in there in the sorting room and everything that was true.
AS: Really.
PB: Yes, yes the young people. One woman oh she was terrible. She’d say everything young brats and call us names and everything and she’d swear and oh gosh she was a character, just young brats. I can, I know her name and I can picture her too. She was a character if there ever was one.
AS: Did she warm up to you after awhile or was she always like that?
PB: Well we’d have to take her place you know when she’d go on vacation, she was so afraid when she come back she wouldn’t have a job and she hated to leave and everything and younger people trying to take our place and God, anybody that come in though she’d have something to say, always they had something to say about the young people [344]
AS: Oh yeah.
PB: They just didn’t like the young people. I’m just the opposite. I love the young people. I think it’s wonderful, my father was like that. He lived to be 104 years old but he loved to be around young people, made him feel young not to be around old people so I said God, I don’t know why. We all were young once and we have to grow, we have to get old. We’re all going to die that’s for sure. We’re not going to get out of it no matter who we are.
AS: That’s true.
PB: There’s only one that got out of it, he lived. Anymore questions?
AS: In the different jobs that you worked in did you work in jobs other than the lab that were primarily women or you know for instance in payroll would there be men working there as well?
PB: Oh yes.
AS: There were men in the offices?
PB: Yes, there were. Oh yes there was men and women. In the office I worked with men and women, always men and women, yes.
AS: Were there more of men or women?
PB: No, I’d say probably more women but the men were much easier to work with.
AS: Really.
PB: Oh yes. [360]
AS: How so?
PB: They were better to you, you know they were much better to you than women.
AS: Because they were less competitive or less jealous?
PB: I think a lot of it was like I said before, I think a lot of it was jealousy. If you did something you know they just looked down their nose at you. It was jealously most of it. All the problems I had with the women were jealousy and I just ignored it. I had to but I worked with some awful, awful nice women and I still have some wonderful friends that I worked with.
AS: Really.
PB: Oh yes, yes. Nancy Lorette, she worked in there in the purchasing. She came in there, she wasn’t married and we worked together and she got married and when she got pregnant, I gave her a baby shower. When she come out one night and I was refinishing furniture then and she came out and she says, oh she was buying her furniture down in Pittsfield and she was telling me about all this furniture she was buying. I said oh I said well I just get old stuff and refinish it. She couldn’t figure out, what do you mean and I said well come out some evening and I’ll show you, come out and have supper. So she came out and of course she fell in love with this stuff. I was doing a cradle, I have it upstairs now and I was refinishing that and she said how do you do it. Oh my god well I wish you could see her house.
AS: Really.
PB: She’s got more than I’ve got. It’s beautiful, beautiful stuff and everything. She’s got an old slate sink, the old wood stove in the kitchen, great big kitchen, all old, old cupboards, nothing that’s new and he did a lot of it over. If he did anything, he’d get it early like take old lumber and everything. They’ve got a lovely home. I remind her so many times, she’s a very good friend of mine. Even yet we talk, she lives in Orland and I’ll say remember when you said and I know what you’re going to say she’d say, when you need an antique you can buy all my furniture. She’s so funny. Yes, she’s got two kids all grown up. She’s a grandmother now. [392]
AS: Wonderful.
PB: I love her kids. They’re wonderful.
AS: So was that pretty common that women would through each other showers and things like that at the mill?
PB: Yes, always parties and things like that. A lot of times, especially showers or we’d buy something in the mill and give it to them in the mill, have like at noontime have a cake, somebody’s birthday. In the office a lot of times we had birthday cakes.
AS: Oh really.
PB: Yes somebody had a birthday we’d have, especially when I worked upstairs, we had up in the lab and everything in that whole, not just the lab but there was a lot of offices all around. It was a big U-shape upstairs, beautiful spot, overlooked the river.
AS: Oh is that what they used to call the reading room?
PB: No they had a reading room there. That was where the cafeteria was. They had a big reading room and the guys used to go up there at noon and play cards and everything. I don’t know there was one in the main office, they had something as you go in you could go in and look at all the photographs and everything but that was after I got through they made that but years ago they had a beautiful cafeteria. It was all stainless steel and Standard Packaging closed that. [411]
AS: Oh really.
PB: Yes.
AS: And it didn’t open up the way it was.
PB: Never opened up again. They made offices out there. They took out all the kitchen stuff and made offices. It was a beautiful cafeteria. It was a big, big room out, they had big round tables and the men used to go out there at noon and play cards.
AS: So now where is the spot that you said you would have your little get-togethers?
PB: Well sometimes in the office, who ever had the party, who ever had a birthday or something or somebody leaving or showers or something we’d go in that office where ever it was.
AS: Ok.
PB: Where ever, yes. There was a lot of offices and we had lovely big Christmas parties. Always had Christmas, oh yes, yes always had a nice Christmas party and Bruce Hamilton’s wife used to take all the women that worked in the office, she’d take them out to Pilots Grill at Christmas, get anything we wanted on the menu.
AS: Wonderful. Did she work at the mill too?
PB: No.
AS: No.
PB: No, she was a president’s wife.
AS: Oh ok.
PB: I worked with her son though at the end.
AS: Oh really. Now would you women at the mill would you share recipes or get together [431]
PB: Oh sure
AS: Any thing like, any special recipes that you would always make for certain occasions?
PB: Well at the parties that they’d make, always bake something nice and everybody would say I’d like to know how that’s made and they’d pass the recipes around. Things like that but you never did the cooking there or anything.
AS: Right.
PB: But we always were bringing in something for somebody’s party and you know it was nice that way.
AS: Was there a special recipe that people would ask you to bring in?
PB: Well I used to make a banana thing with graham crackers and everything. It used to be awful good with cream cheese. I used to make that big pan of it, haven’t made it for years come to think of it. I ought to make it because my niece loved it and every time she’d come, I have just myself now and I don’t make so much you know sweets. I cook a good meal but I don’t eat that much sweets, a cookie or something and she was always saying, never have any homemade desserts anymore. I usually make pies and things in the winter time but I said well it’s just myself, I don’t but I should do something like that. She loved that.
AS: It sounds good.
PB: It’s an awful good recipe, easy too. Cream cheese and you mix it with milk, vanilla pudding and cream cheese, you mix together with milk and you get that vanilla pudding and you spread that all over the graham cracker and then the bananas. Then you spread that over the top, then you put like a can of cherries, you know the big cherries with the sauce in it. You didn’t have to cook it. [457]
AS: That sounds yummy.
PB: You know you just press the graham cracker in the bottom and you don’t have to cook it.
AS: That sounds wonderful.
PB: It is. It’s a wonderful recipe. I’ll have to make that next time Barbara comes.
AS: So were there any sewing circles or quilting groups or anything?
PB: Oh yes. I was in the sewing circle with this girl and it was up in the lab. She worked up there. She was a secretary and there was, well some of the girls had their sisters and everything. It was probably about ten of us and we got together, this was before I got married and then right after I got married, we did that and this one girl was a beautiful seamstress and she taught us a lot. Although I took sewing up in school but if you had a pattern no matter what kind she could help you figure it out with material and how to cut it and everything. Yes, we had a sewing club and we’d go out once a week and did it after I was married too for quite awhile. I still have the sewing machine I bought in god it’s over 50, 60 years old and I’m still using it.
AS: Oh that’s great.
PB: Yes it was a portable sewing machine. I still use it.
AS: I’m going to stop just a second and flip the tape over here.
[End Side A, Begin Side B]
AS: Ok so we were talking a little bit about sewing circles and quilting. Were there any other clubs, bridge clubs or maybe bowling teams or anything like that?
PB: They had bowling teams, yes but I never belonged to them because after I got married I didn’t like going out at night to going in town. I’d go to a shower once in awhile. If somebody’s getting married or having a baby we’d have a shower and we’d have it at night. I had the shower out here for Nancy, people came out here. But back then you know driving way in town at night and the road wasn’t like it is now. It’s the old, old road and yes we used to, there used to be a lot of that. But I never went to the bridge parties or anything, I never played bridge, never had time.
AS: Did other ladies at the mill do that?
PB: Some of them did. Some of them you know there was different groups and they’d get-together. The main office there was a few women that used to go out once oh probably once a month or so and play bridge at each other’s house but I never did. I’m not too much on cards.
AS: No, I’m not either actually.
PB: I can play solitaire.
AS: Now when you, you worked in the lab for what was it 18 years?
PB: Well I worked there, I’d say about that.
AS: Ok so over time were there more women that began working there?
PB: No I was the only woman until the last three years.
AS: Really.
PB: Yes.
AS: Ok.
PB: Just like I said I’ll tell after [off the cuff] [035]
AS: Do you think that that was a purposeful decision that they didn’t want other women working there or was it just sort of luck that it happened?
PB: Can’t say it right now, I’ll tell you.
AS: Ok. Let’s see what else do I have here.
PB: They always had men in the lab, always. There was never any women. I was the first woman I think that ever went in there to work.
AS: Did Lois work in the lab for a short time?
PB: Short time, yes she did.
AS: But she didn’t stay.
PB: No, she was a secretary. She was very well needed out front in the main office, very, very smart girl.
AS: So was that strange being the only woman in a lab full of men for that many years?
PB: There wasn’t that many men.
AS: How many all together.
PB: Well there was like Tom Andrews, he worked in there and Luis Reggie, he was the boss and worked at the other end. He was the one that taught me everything in the lab. There was Stanley [Ploude] and he worked a little bit in the lab but not too much. There’d be salesmen that would come in and they would do things for downstairs in the mill and they’d develop new procedures on paper or starch or something and they’d write it up and they’d come up there and they’d work. You know but never no other women. No, I was the only woman that worked there.
AS: So the full time staff was only about half a dozen people up there? [047]
PB: That’s all. Not really that usually, only about three of us that worked in the lab.
AS: Ok, so as you bid on all of these different jobs I know you said when you came back in 1968, you took a pay cut but other than that as you bid would you get to you know higher salary or better benefits each time?
PB: No.
AS: Not necessarily.
PB: No just seniority, just seniority. See I had the seniority over a lot of these people or I’d bid, they’d have to bump somebody and I had those five jobs in a matter of five years. It was hard. We just get used to a job and like it and doing good on it and then all of a sudden somebody would bump you. Then when the mill reopened we never had a union again.
AS: Oh really.
PB: No.
AS: In the office.
PB: Yes, in the office but they had one out in the mill, a good one too.
AS: And when you worked in the lab were you part of the union?
PB: No.
AS: No, ok.
PB: Always salary.
AS: Ok, were many women paid the same salary?
PB: No.
AS: No. [058]
PB: Men got more money than the women. Some women got, we didn’t know what they got see, but some women got more but I never you know I’d get a raise now and then. But no, when I worked in the main office the men always made more money than the women.
AS: For the same job?
PB: No, I mean we did more work. A lot of times we did a lot more work than some of the men and we all used to say you know it isn’t fair, it isn’t right. That’s the way it is today. It still is that way in a lot of jobs, men get, women are doing better I think now than they used to. Of course a lot of it is discrimination you know and they go by that.
AS: Did that get better over the years as you were there?
PB: Well you know I’d get a raise every year or so, I’d get a raise, a little raise but it seemed like they got it too the ones that were way behind me. A lot of that wasn’t fair, I know that. It wasn’t although I can’t complain about my money. I made good money while I was there. When I left there I was making over 400 a week; that was good money in 88.
AS: Wow.
PB: But somebody else would come in, [they all] came in worked up there, never worked in a lab or anything like that in their life and she got the same money I got.
AS: Really.
PB: Isn’t fair.
AS: No.
PB: No, things like that was not fair.[072]
AS: I know that still happens a lot in jobs though. They’ll raise the starting pay to a point where people who have been working there for years are making the same as somebody that’s brand new.
PB: Oh yes. That’s what happened to me with that last one there that come up.
AS: Did you, in the lab did you make less money than the men?
PB: No.
AS: No, you made the same?
PB: I don’t know what they made. See we never discussed our pay, never knew. See everybody got, they’d come tell you that you got a raise, you never knew what they got, nobody knew. Everybody’s pay was different. I never knew what the men made. I never knew what anybody, I did know it, she got the same as me because she said that one day what she was getting and I thought oh that’s nice.
AS: You said that they taught you quite a lot of things.
PB: Yes.
AS: as you moved from job to job.
PB: They did. They’d break you in on all these new jobs.
AS: Do you feel like men and women were offered the same types of training and the same career advancement opportunities?
PB: I think men are offered better.
AS: You think.
PB: more, yes I do. They look to the men I think in a lot of these jobs and they did there. If a man could do it, they’d rather have a man.
AS: Really. [083]
PB: Yes.
AS: Was that in the mill or also in the office?
PB: Office, sure. They had a lot, I think they had a lot more women in the office than they had in the mill than the men.
AS: Were there any women in management positions while you were there?
PB: Management, let me see
AS: Or a supervisor or anything like that?
PB: Can’t think of any off hand. It was always a man that was a super that was a head of everything. I can’t think of, there may be but I can’t think of anybody.
AS: Another interesting thing that you told me in the first interview was that when you first started at the mill it was in the 40s when men were coming back from
PB: From the service
AS: Right and would they take over a lot of the jobs that women had been doing?
PB: Well they had to have their jobs back.
AS: Ok.
PB: That was the law and they’d come to work in the mill, of course in the mill part, well we all worked you know as long as there was work. If they come back and there was no work, we’d be laid off, the younger ones would be laid off and they’d say we’ll call you back when we need you. And like I said for five years off and on I was called in and out until I bid on the sample and got that job and worked there.
AS: Did that happen to young men too or were there more young women that took those jobs when the men went over sea’s? [096]
PB: A lot of women took over during the war but a lot of them stayed right on their jobs too, on the cutters and things. There were women working on the cutters which always were men’s jobs.
AS: Really, that’s interesting.
PB: Yes there was women on there. I know there was a lady there I couldn’t believe how she could cut those great big reams of paper and had pulled them sharp knives down.
AS: Wow.
PB: Yes, oh yes the women worked hard in the mill but they never worked in the machines. But the end of it they’d do broke hustling when I was there. The women would come in, they’d have these young girls and they’d do broke, just picking the broke up and putting it in racks and taking it down to the beaters.
AS: Oh wow and that used to be just a man’s job?
PB: Well it’s a man and woman really. Women did it too. Yes, not at first, not when I first went there. It was all men but then they started hiring women to do that some of them. I know there were several women did that during, not the war but after the war.
AS: Like during the 50s?
PB: No run up in the 80s they were doing it. They were working in the beater room, and yeah driving trucks, those trucks that lift up the racks there to dump the beaters, yes oh yes. A lot of women worked down in there and they were paid the same as a man. They were paid, they got like Larry and all the men they got the same pay. They knew what they were getting.
AS: But those types of jobs wouldn’t usually be done by women in the 40s and 50s and not until the 80s you said. [110]
PB: Well during the war I’m sure they had women doing that. I didn’t work there until 49’ and then like I said there was women, I didn’t see any women down in the beater room at all but before I got through the women weren’t working hustling broke. They take, they called it hustling broke, take the broke. It was a hard job. It was in the machines and the machines are hot and they’re dangerous. It’s hard work, awful hard work even for a man. Larry used to do it. He’d be exhausted at night, lifting that heavy paper and putting it in the thing and taking it out to the beaters and taking it out, yes, hard work, very hard work. If a machine would break down they had paper coming out and they had to hurry and get that paper, run, they’d run, get that paper off of those reels and put it in the broke rack. Well it had just the floor full until they could get caught up, until they got that paper running right. They’d have to take that paper that wasn’t running right.
AS: Wow so they were literally hustling.
PB: That’s right. They called it hustling broke and it was hustling too. They really did. Yes oh yes it was hard work, very, very hard work in that beater room. The beater room was very hard. Larry worked in there, when the mill reopened Larry worked in there and it was wicked. I said well several times I said look and he was working shift work and I said if you don’t get something any better than what you’re doing I said just get through and try to find a job outside the mill, get out of there. I said it’s killing you. It was, he was young in his 30s. I said just find something else so he kept bidding and bidding until he finally did you know.
AS: That’s good.
PB: Yes it was because he did work awful hard. That beater room was the worst of all. [126]
AS: Really.
PB: Yes oh yes awful hard on the men and in mill right a lot of them jobs are very, very hard and hot and dangerous and everything. He did that for, well until he retired in, he retired in 85.’
AS: Ok. Wow.
PB: I worked three years after he did.
AS: Do you remember any women getting hurt either in the jobs that you worked or in other parts of the mill while you were there?
PB: No, I know one fellow committed suicide while he was there.
AS: Really.
PB: Yes, Palmer, Plummer was his name. He went out one noon when the trains were coming in and he laid on the tracks.
AS: No kidding.
PB: Cut him right in two.
AS: Oh my goodness.
PB: Little Nicky Plummer, I remember it so well going back to work and the ambulance coming in. I said what’s going on, they said Nicky Plummer. I said oh my god isn’t that awful. He was the nicest little guy. He just lived in that mill though. He stayed right there. He never left. His life wasn’t good. They said you know he wasn’t right at the end of it.
AS: That’s awful. [138]
PB: It was. It was a terrible thing. People got hurt, got cut and hurt on the cutters and down the mill they’d get, I know one guy got acid on him one time. I don’t know what it was, it was something from the dryers and they had to take him, pull him out and pour the water over him so he wouldn’t get burned. There was something oh yes, especially when they had the pulp mill there was men getting burned over there a lot.
AS: Anything ever happen in the lab? Was that a dangerous place to work?
PB: Yes it was. You had to be very careful of the chemicals, yes. I was told about the different chemicals and everything. Nitric acid was very dangerous. You opened the top of that and you had to, either have something on your face because the vapors would come right up and if you breathed them that was very bad on your lungs. I used to have to work with that.
AS: So you’d wear protective clothing and masks?
PB: No, I really didn’t. No, I was just very, very careful when I opened something up. They told me you know be very careful. Something’s I had to wear rubber gloves but no I was lucky that way.
AS: Nothing ever happened to you.
PB: Well I had a few burns with the acid and things, not bad, you know nothing I couldn’t live with. More happened when I was refinishing my furniture.
AS: Oh really.
PB: I got burnt with the paint remover and things like that.
AS: So you were never worried about breathing in the fumes?
PB: Well I was careful. I was very, very careful about when I opened up I would make sure I’d be back and be very careful of it. Of course you know I was just told that and I never smoked in my life so, I had a lot of second hand smoke because everybody smoked then in the mill. [155]
AS: Inside the mill?
PB: In the mill, oh yes you could smoke. When I worked in the office everybody had an ash tray on their desk. Everybody was smoking, all the women and men smoking.
AS: Really.
PB: I worked with all these people. My husband smoked, car full of smoke all the time.
AS: Wow when did that change, do you remember?
PB: It was long after we got through, both of us.
AS: Not until the 90s or so
PB: Too late, too late then, My husband had lung cancer. He died that way. Oh sure and the chemicals that he breathed down there in that, see they’re very careful now but when the mill reopened it was unbelievable breathing that stuff. Now they have to wear masks and goggles and ear things. They didn’t have any of that when the mill reopened in 68 and that’s where he worked.
AS: Wow.
PB: His brother died of emphysema, same thing just the lungs.
AS: From the smoke or the chemicals?
PB: Smoke and chemicals working there in the mill.
AS: What types of chemicals would they work around?
PB: You’ve got all kinds of talc dust. You’ve got the acid and the colors. Colors are you know you dump them in a big beater and they’d you know come up. You’d go through that machine room sometime you couldn’t see when they’d be dumping that talc in the great big beaters. It would be just white. It would be that walking through there. Then they used to, in the pulp mill they used to blow the digesters out every noon and you couldn’t even walk it was so bad with the acid. [169]
AS: Really
PB: Oh yes that was wicked. You’d walk out, you’d have to put your hands, you’d have to put something over your face when they’d blow those digesters. It was awful.
AS: Wow.
PB: And then another thing in the sample department their trucks used to come in one end downstairs and it was kind of open. There was an elevator and stairs, where the trucks would come in. Those trucks would leave their motors running all the time and that exhaust would come up and I would have to close the door. A lot of times I’d say [Terodd], the fellow, he was my boss I said I’ve got to close that door. I can’t stand that exhaust. It was terrible. It used to make me sick. That really would make me sick to my stomach, your head. He said well close it then everybody would say well your doors closed, you can’t get in there. They wouldn’t try to just open the door but oh god, then they rebuilt it and it was a lot better, had the trucks so they weren’t all coming up there, all the smoke and everything. It was awful.
AS: Was the ventilation in the mill any good? I mean would they let you open windows to get fresh air?
PB: Oh yes I had windows in every office I worked in. Oh yes in the lab I opened the windows because I had a nice little office too in the lab.
AS: Did you. [183]
PB Yes, very nice. Little small office and I fixed it all up nice. I had nice plants and everything and it was, yes I had it very nice. I had a lovely little office. I used to keep it clean myself. The janitor didn’t come in there. I said don’t come in, I’ll keep it clean.
AS: Oh great. They must have loved you.
PB: Well I’d rather do it myself anyway.
AS: I agree. Let’s see, you mentioned there was a cafeteria.
PB: Yes.
AS: When you first started at the mill did they have separate restrooms or lunch rooms or break areas for men and women?
PB: No we had our own, the women had their own toilets. We had our own. Every place you worked there was toilets for men and women but far as a place to eat, no, no, no. You’d go up to the cafeteria or you ate at your desk or you went out but no there was no special place for men and women. Cafeteria was nice though, nice tables and everything in there, nice and clean.
AS: Is that where you would usually go?
PB: No, when I worked in the, I couldn’t go up there to eat everyday because I just didn’t feel I could afford it so I always brought my lunch and ate right there. When we’d get paid on a Thursday we’d go out and we’d cash our checks out to the drug store at the end and I’d get an ice cream or something like that, eat our lunch first and then go out to cash our checks. Then go right back, we only had a half an hour so we’d walk out there and come right back but took my lunch. Yes, I took my lunch. I always made Larry’s lunch. He never went, ate either, always packed his lunch.
AS: Where would you get ice cream? Was there a shop right there? [201]
PB: There used to be, no there was a drugstore right there. I’ll tell you where Epstein’s used to be, there used to be a big drugstore in there. Of course he bought it and built it all over and we’d go out there and get an ice cream cone.
AS: Great. That must have been fun.
PB: It was.
AS: Good part of the week.
PB: It was about 15 cents I think then or 20, nice big ice cream.
AS: Wonderful, nice break from the mill.
PB: It was. It was and you’d walk back in and go back to work.
AS: Great. Did you have any type of dress code when you worked there?
PB: No. I know a lot of them that worked in the office, I remember before I got through some of the girls were wearing dungaree’s and the president said he’d like to have them dress a little better, being in the main office didn’t look good. I never wore dungaree’s to work anyway. I always wore slacks, pants, slacks. First when I went in I had dresses, always dresses. I worked in the main office I always wore heels and dresses. I made my dresses.
AS: Did you.
PB: Yes, I made my own dresses.
AS: And then when would you say that you started wearing slacks more often?
PB: Let me see, the mill opened in 68’, worked in the sample. I wore dresses all the time in there and then it must have been I think when I started working out in the lab. I wore slacks, pants.
AS: Was that because they were more comfortable or more practical? [218]
PB: Well I had to go up and down stairs all the time. I had to go down stairs and up these iron, you know these stairs you can see through, the iron stairs, that’s when I started wearing my slacks.
AS: Yes, that makes sense.
PB: Oh yes, it’s always down in the machine room and everything, I wouldn’t wear a dress. Oh no I wouldn’t go up those stairs with a dress on, no way. I wore slacks from then on. When I was in the office, it was sitting at a desk was different.
AS: Right.
PB: I always wore dresses then.
AS: Did you have to wear protective shoes or goggles or anything like that?
PB: Had to wear a hat. Every now and then OSHA would come through and they’d say anybody down in the machine room’s got to wear a hat and I wore that for awhile but then they forgot about that. Protective shoes, no I didn’t have to wear them. I always wore shoes.
AS: Just anything that you wanted.
PB: Yes.
AS: Was there anything that you felt like you couldn’t do while you worked there because you were a woman either physically or just because you weren’t allowed to?
PB: I can’t think of anything. I mean I could do almost anything that the men could do except of course lift, anything heavy anything like that but otherwise no. I think I felt I could do almost anything. I did a lot of work there.
AS: You sure did. [234]
PB: Yes and I refinished a lot of furniture while I was working there too and that was nice stuff that was left. It was being destroyed and I told Bruce one day about the beautiful desks and everything that was down to the shipping room. I said there’s a beautiful desk down there, it’s a shame that isn’t fixed up. He said do you want to refinish it, we’ll pay you. So I went in evenings and I refinished quite a few things.
AS: That’s great.
PB: At night, yes. I did that, beautiful desks and they were being destroyed and chairs and quite a few things. We had a great big showcase too as you walked in, come up the elevator you’d come in there was this great big square hall and there were doors off from it and I said to Bruce one day, he was the president, I said you know in the Eastern Maine Medical you go up the stairs and they’ve got an old show case with all the old implements that they used to use for operations and everything. I said you know there are so many nice things in that back room I said that’s not being used and can’t use it. I mean it’s obsolete. I said it’s too bad you couldn’t have a nice showcase so he had the carpenter make a showcase.
AS: Great.
PB: I cleaned everything up and put it in there. I had charge of it.
AS: Oh wow.
PB: I don’t know whatever happened. There was a lot of nice beautiful antiques, weighing scales and lovely things.
AS: And where was that located in the mill? [250]
PB: Up, well the third floor had an elevator that went up to it. It was going to the lab, the sample department, offices, it was U-shaped and you’d get off the elevator and this right here was the sample. The next was offices and they did different testing and things in there. There was a big test room it had to be, the humidity had to be just right in there. You’d go in and work on the paper and it had, and then there was a long hall and then the lab was at the end of the hall and all the office secretaries were here and our boss was at the end and there was two other offices and then there was a men’s room and then the lab. So that’s what it was.
AS: That’s great.
PB: Yes it was. That was built on, when I first went to work there they were building that. The lab was way down in some end of the mill or corner of the mill and it was terrible so they built that on. It was a lovely lab but I often wondered what happened to all the stuff in that showcase. Those were antiques, old, old things. They were valuable. Bruce loved it. He thought, it added an awful lot to the upstairs too, going in, a salesman and everything coming in and seeing that and I often wondered what happened to it. I suppose like everything else, gone.
AS: I know. I’ll have to ask about that. Nobody else has mentioned that so
PB: No, I don’t know if you could ever find out. I’d like to know it. I suppose them birds that had it there probably they took the stuff who knows.
AS: Could be, I’m not sure.
PB: Sold it or something. The stuff was worth money. There’s some nice, I’ve got four scales that I bought when they were obsolete from the lab, I bought them up there, there’s three sets scale.
AS: That’s neat. [272]
PB: Bought from the mill. When they reopened, they unlocked them back rooms, that back room was just chocker block full two or three back rooms full of stuff.
AS: Really.
PB: And then they had a big sale and I bought those scales and a desk, a desk, a big roll top desk. I refinished that and I had a little shop and I sold that.
AS: Wow, great.
PB: I sold a lot of stuff. I bought chairs and things that they wanted to get out.
AS: So what would those scales have been used for, do you know?
PB: Weighing chemicals and the paper, yes and that’s what they were used for and then they came in with the digital. See I used all digital scales.
AS: Oh you did.
PB: Yes, there was a big closed in one with glass. You opened the door and you put the stuff in, closed the door and then you’d weigh it, little knobs here you waited up until it weighed. Yes, I did that everyday, samples. We’d cook them. Put them in an oven and cook them and then weigh them afterwards, see how much it lost when they were dried out.
AS: Interesting.
PB: It was. I liked it awfully well. I loved the work in the lab, made a lot of chemicals, all the ink they used downstairs in the paper testing. They had to use ink to test the paper, see if it feathered. Yes, I made all the ink for years.
AS: Oh wow.
PB: I made all the cleaning stuff for over to the power plant.
AS: No kidding. [290]
PB: Oh yes, all the solutions they used over there, made them up. Down in the coater, I made solutions for them.
AS: Wow.
PB: It wasn’t done when I left, no not a thing, not one thing.
AS: So what did they do after you left?
PB: They didn’t do it. It wasn’t done. It’s sad.
AS: Now I’ve seen quite a few retirement photos of you. We have some photo albums that they saved from the mill.
PB: Oh they had a lot of them.
AS: Yes, can you tell me a little bit about what the retirement parties would be like?
PB: Oh wonderful. They were wonderful retirement parties, beautiful banquets. We had a choice of like halibut, steak, you know rib eye or whatever and chicken. There was always a choice and you had your drinks and all kinds of hor'derves before and everybody got together and talked and then afterwards they’d have a dance.
AS: Really.
PB: They had that right up until the mill closed, until the mill closed, yes.
AS: Where would they hold these?
PB: Usually Jeff’s Catering. Let’s see where else was it, I don’t think we were ever up to Pilots, maybe we were. I know we used to go out Christmas but I think it was not always Jeff’s because before Jeff’s opened up, see we couldn’t go until after you retired so Larry retired in 85’ so I never went until Larry retired but I can’t remember where they had them before but Jeff’s Catering they had them mostly there.
AS: And then would you go every year after when new people retired? [312]
PB: Yes.
AS: That’s great.
PB: We had it even after the mill, right after, they had them right up until the mill closed. They’d always send us out a thing to fill out if we could go and what we would like to eat.
AS: That’s great and you would get to see people every year.
PB: Oh yes, it was wonderful. It was wonderful. I loved that. See everybody, see I’m going to my class reunion next month, the 24th I think. It’s 60 years now there’s going to be, we’re going to be honored this time because it’s 60 years and so we’ll see a lot of, I just see in the obituaries this morning a friend of mine, Betty Libby. I lived side of her when she was a little girl and I couldn’t believe that she’s gone. She was there last year for the 45. She graduated in 45 and they were honored last year. This year’s the 46, going to be honored, that’s the one I’m in and she was my neighbor, awful nice girl. What happened, god she was there last year seemed awful, lung cancer probably, who knows.
AS: That’s scary how fast that can happen sometimes.
PB: I know. There’s so many young people too. I read the obituaries in the morning I can’t believe there’s so many young people.
AS: That’s true.
PB: No wonder there’s so much going on today, breathing so much rotten air and everything.
AS: Oh I know it. Well I think that I’ve asked you everything. Is there anything else that you can think of that you sort of felt like made being a woman at Eastern special or different? [333]
PB: All I can say is that I was used very, very well the 40 years I worked there. I did have, like I told you there was always somebody that was trying to make trouble for you. That goes with any job you work at.
AS: Right.
PB: I don’t know if it’s with you but I’ll tell you there’s always someone that’s got something to say or making trouble, and you turn this off and I’ll tell you.
AS: Sure. Well thank you very much for talking with me.
PB: You’re very welcome indeed. I hope you do good in your little history. I hope when you’re all done and you show it, it’s going to be nice.
AS: It’s coming along well.
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