"I started working when I was thirteen years old to help my father and I continued to work. I liked going to work a lot. I used to work in the houses. I worked and they paid me fifty cents per hour. I ironed, I washed, and I cleaned the houses. From one house, I would go to another. That is how I helped my mother after my father, well before my father died. After my father died, I always went to work, even if I went with holes in my shoes and everything. The Italian women helped me a lot. They gave me clothes. They gave me shoes and everything. They helped us also with used clothes. I guess they liked the work that I did for them. I do not know but they helped a lot. Yes, [it was during the Depression]. I do not remember [the names of the women I worked for]. The other day I saw in the paper that one of them whose mother I had worked for had died. The wife of Romulo Mariette [was one I worked with].

I worked with doctors, two or three doctors. They liked the way that I ironed their shirts. Then later the Merinos started working also and they asked for twenty-five cents. Then they wanted to pay me twenty-five cents. It was no longer fifty cents because they came in and asked for twenty-five cents. They wanted to lower me but one of the doctors told me not to. [They wanted me] to work with them while I could because they liked the work that I did. Later they found me a job to take care of twins and to clean a house in Stargo with Dr. Terrell. He was the first who helped me with my first baby. I worked with him for about three years. Afterward, he found me a job with an Americano who had twins. I took care of them and I helped the lady to clean the house.

He [husband] would go to work and when my youngest child started school, I started to work in the restaurants. He would take me in the morning. Before he left work, I would make his lunch and we left the children with my mother. I gave them breakfast and we got them ready for school and we left them with my mother so she could send them to school when it was time. My husband took me and left me at work. I worked at the Copper Kettle and then later I went to the Longfellow Inn. There they paid me more. I still have a bunch of pay stubs of when they paid me. They let me leave at one o’clock and then I had to come back by three o’clock in the afternoon. At one, I took food from there. I bought it and they discounted it. He was very good, the one who had the Longfellow Inn. There were many banquets there of people who met there."