April 25, 2024 |
Gwen's Furniture Manufacturing Enterprise
The lessons of the Great Depression were well learned by Gwen and her mother.
In 1947, when she built the San Gabriel house, teachers made less than $2,000 annually. So lots of corners were cut from the budget.
Gwen then worked as district librarian for South Santa Anita Schools (later Temple City School District), a one-horse district east of Los Angeles whose Longden Avenue school served the entire community from kindergarten through sixth grade. In that capacity, every Summer she opened scores of crates of books (in those days, books came in pallet-sized wooden crates, made of 1x10x4ft planks).
One late-forties summer, around 1947 or '48, we got some new furniture.
We now had an easy chair whose frame was really, really sturdy. Covered with lots of cotton batting and a green remnant of cloth best described as coarse, it was big and soft, and it became just the place for a boy to listen to the radio. Many an episode of The Lone Ranger and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon passed though its upholstery.
Across the room from the chair stood our bookcase. It was four feet wide, with one inch shelves made of ten inch planks.
An amazing coincidence, you're probably thinking.
By the mid-fifties times were better, and the chair was replaced by something more elegant, its cover becoming a book bag, among other things.
In 1996, when I sold Mom's house I left the bookcase behind, its underside stealthily labeled "California State Superintendent of Public Instruction."
In 1947, when she built the San Gabriel house, teachers made less than $2,000 annually. So lots of corners were cut from the budget.
Gwen then worked as district librarian for South Santa Anita Schools (later Temple City School District), a one-horse district east of Los Angeles whose Longden Avenue school served the entire community from kindergarten through sixth grade. In that capacity, every Summer she opened scores of crates of books (in those days, books came in pallet-sized wooden crates, made of 1x10x4ft planks).
One late-forties summer, around 1947 or '48, we got some new furniture.
We now had an easy chair whose frame was really, really sturdy. Covered with lots of cotton batting and a green remnant of cloth best described as coarse, it was big and soft, and it became just the place for a boy to listen to the radio. Many an episode of The Lone Ranger and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon passed though its upholstery.
Across the room from the chair stood our bookcase. It was four feet wide, with one inch shelves made of ten inch planks.
An amazing coincidence, you're probably thinking.
By the mid-fifties times were better, and the chair was replaced by something more elegant, its cover becoming a book bag, among other things.
In 1996, when I sold Mom's house I left the bookcase behind, its underside stealthily labeled "California State Superintendent of Public Instruction."