January 25, 2010 polished
When I was a teenager, back in Pleasant Hills PA, we lived in a 10 story apartment building where the average age of the tenant was something like 77 years old. It was a nice place, not like a tenement building, with a nice lobby and a club room where we once held a YM-YW Valentines party. Because the average apartment housed two people of considerable age, I found it a solid setting in which to practice my entrepreneurial skills. About every 6 months I posted a sign in the Laundry Room offering my services.
LET ME HELP YOU….
Capable 16 year-old girl willing to do laundry, polish and vacuum, cook meals and babysit.
Prices negotiable.
Call Cori 655-4547 apt. 102
Capable 16 year-old girl willing to do laundry, polish and vacuum, cook meals and babysit.
Prices negotiable.
Call Cori 655-4547 apt. 102
I sold Avon. I had a laundry service. My sisters and I babysat. I cooked meals. I cleaned and polished.
All those businesses had their pros and cons. The pro, most often, was the two dollars an hour I got for cleaning and polishing, and the 75 cents per hour we got for babysitting. The cons included the hours of conversation I was forced to endure with old ladies who insisted I sit in their living rooms and fold the underwear I had just laundered for them. Con, I believe, is a rather harsh word because in reality I didn’t mind. I knew they needed company and I could make good conversation and found their lives to be quite interesting. Sometimes the medicinal smells of their places got to me and I made sure to chew on a piece of spearmint gum when I worked, though more than once I was told it was unbecoming for a young lady to chew gum.
On Tuesdays, Thurdays and Saturday evenings I walked up two flights of stairs and down the carpeted hall to the Soboslay’s place. Mr. and Mrs. Soboslay were kind and gentle people. They were both so short I could look down on their snowy white heads while they were standing, though their bodies were a little bent and compressed at the shoulders and it appeared that they were bowing to me when I greeted them. Mrs. Soboslay always wore a crocheted shawl and thick hose that wrinkled around her ankles. And she always wore a dress, usually one with a dainty print, and there was always a belt cinched around her tiny waist. Their place smelled of medicine, too, until I started to cook. I cannot even recall what I cooked for their dinners. I would be so much better cooking for them now. But the aroma always improved when I was there cooking. And so did my mood. I loved the Soboslays, and they loved me. At least I perceived it that way, in the shallow teenage way of feeling things. They smiled when they saw me and it made me feel good when they opened the door, shook my hand, showed me to the kitchen then moved to their recliners and watched Wheel of Fortune while I cooked. Made me feel like…I don’t know…like they felt safe around me.
One day a woman called from one of the 7th floor apartments. She wanted me to come polish her furniture. I tapped on her door, stepping back far enough for her to see me through the peephole. She opened it to reveal large antique furniture lining the walls. Tall wooden pieces with lots of history sunk into the wood. Thick, heavy curtains covered the windows. It reminded me of the old black and white movie The Haunting, though I suspect memory intensifies the reality of it. She hardly said hello, just told me to go ahead and polish away. “Stuff’s under the sink” she said, as she made her way back to the bedroom. I scrunched down and searched under the kitchen sink, finding a stack of soft cloth and a small can of Endust. I had worked a good half hour when she came out to inspect my work. I knelt there a little nervous and she looked over the hutch I had just finished. I promptly stood erect when she shrieked “This will simply not do!” I asked if there was something I had missed.
She took the dry cloth from my hand and skimmed it over the surface of the hutch. “This…” she whined, “is dusting.” She turned to face me eye to eye. “I am paying you to polish!” She took the can of Endust and headed for the kitchen, bending over and twisting her head, the way pigeons do, as she dug into the cupboard. She mumbled something I could not understand, though I have a pretty good idea what she meant.
“This,” she said matter-of-factly, “is wax. You use this to polish wood.” She proceeded to show me how to dig the cloth into the wax and scrape it out with the fingertips. She ran the wax across the wood. “Always go with the grain, never against it. And use some muscle. The more you move the softer the wax gets. When it’s worked into the wood nice and evenly give it a rest. At least twenty minutes. When it’s cool and set go back over it with a soft cloth. Again, use some muscle, though a little less than you did with the wax. Buff it, always with the grain. Fast. Fast. Buff it till it shines, till it’s polished.”
She handed me the small tin can and a pile of the soft cloths from under the sink.
I was sweating by the time I finished.
Ms. Whatshername shocked me into training that afternoon, and I needed a tall glass of water and a ½ hour of I Dream of Jeanie re-run to recover. But I have never forgotten the lesson. I know how to care for wood. Not that I do it well. But I know how. That’s worth a whole lot more than $2 an hour.
She took the dry cloth from my hand and skimmed it over the surface of the hutch. “This…” she whined, “is dusting.” She turned to face me eye to eye. “I am paying you to polish!” She took the can of Endust and headed for the kitchen, bending over and twisting her head, the way pigeons do, as she dug into the cupboard. She mumbled something I could not understand, though I have a pretty good idea what she meant.
“This,” she said matter-of-factly, “is wax. You use this to polish wood.” She proceeded to show me how to dig the cloth into the wax and scrape it out with the fingertips. She ran the wax across the wood. “Always go with the grain, never against it. And use some muscle. The more you move the softer the wax gets. When it’s worked into the wood nice and evenly give it a rest. At least twenty minutes. When it’s cool and set go back over it with a soft cloth. Again, use some muscle, though a little less than you did with the wax. Buff it, always with the grain. Fast. Fast. Buff it till it shines, till it’s polished.”
She handed me the small tin can and a pile of the soft cloths from under the sink.
I was sweating by the time I finished.
Ms. Whatshername shocked me into training that afternoon, and I needed a tall glass of water and a ½ hour of I Dream of Jeanie re-run to recover. But I have never forgotten the lesson. I know how to care for wood. Not that I do it well. But I know how. That’s worth a whole lot more than $2 an hour.
I still have my blue-green Avon bag. I actually gave it to Kate last year to use as a temple bag. It’s now rather hip and vintage. For years, when Kate was just a baby, I used that bag as my own temple bag. You could tell, walking through the temple parking lot as people made their way to and from the temple doors, who had once-upon-a-time succumbed to the entrepreneurial echoes of “AVON CALLING”. I think of the Soboslays when I flip on the TV to cook dinner and Wheel of Fortune is on. And I think of the wax woman when I rub wax into my granite counter top…let the wax cool and dry for a handful of minutes, then buff it for all I’m worth. Granite looks great polished.
Good thing I wanted a pair of ski’s when I was 16. Good thing my mom could not afford them. I found a way to buy them myself, and in the process polished a bit of good useful experience into myself.