Droozy
went to work for JOHNNY THE GREEK. It was a restaurant bar where mostly men
would come to drink beer, whiskey and wine and eat a little food with it. Droozy
was fourteen years old then and earned ten cents an hour. Johnny wouldn’t let
her have the tips that customers left under their glasses for her, but she still
earned a few dollars a week working in the summer. She started the job a few
days before she graduated from the eighth grade. The night that the other
children graduated from the stage of Edgewood School Droozy was working. She was
to be honored by being the valedictorian of her class, together with a boy named
Nelson Smith. A tear fell down her cheek as she waited on customers thinking how
she missed her graduation. Her parents didn’t have money anyway to buy her a
white skirt and blouse, the outfit required to be on stage to receive her
diploma. Droozy thought about Mr. Endry, her teacher, who had written in her
autograph book: “You’re a grand student, keep it up.” She thought about
her classmates, especially Nelson Smith, who would present a little speech that
she too would have had the honor to give. She was sorry and sad that she
couldn’t be there with her head held high as she would have marched in the
procession and sat up front. She knew though that she needed some money to buy
what she needed and so she continued to look toward the future, and better days. It
wasn’t long before Droozy got a job washing dishes at the Weir Cove Dairy. It
wasn’t bad since she ate all the banana splits she wanted. She would fix
herself one of those big splits. A banana went on the bottom and three or four
large scoops of ice cream came next with a lot of fudge syrup and nuts on the
very top. Yumm, was that good! Sometimes she’d break a dish as she was washing
it in huge grey tubs in the kitchen. She would cut her hand on the broken glass
and her boss would yell at her for being so clumsy but the twenty-five cents an
hour that she earned, and that delicious ice cream that she could eat, made it
not so bad. |
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