THE COASTAL CRONE | Tales, Trails & Connections to Almost Anything
Nicole Farmer Poetry
Description: Older women don't disappear. They branch out.
Older women don't disappear. They branch out.
I grew up in a union household. My father was a union member and civil servant, running the motor pool at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. He instilled in me the understanding that when people band together for the good of all, the results include reasonable hours of work, holidays, health insurance, a life outside of work that stands free of those for whom one works. He talked about what it was like before labor unions existed – exploitation of people, including children, fear, poverty in spite of hard work. I
My mother, too, believed in unions. She lost her job as a young woman after her boss learned she got married. Married women were not supposed to take jobs away from men who needed them to support their families. She talked about the woman who ratted her out, as she put it, after my mom had been keeping her marriage a secret because she needed the wages. I always wondered who my mom was angrier with: that woman who tattled or the boss who fired her. And, if you’re wondering, that was in 1935 when my then 18-
THE COASTAL CRONE | Tales, Trails & Connections to Almost Anything
Nicole Farmer Poetry