Blog about a Vintage Blog

Long before the invention of the word 'blog,' there were people willing to write a journal or diary, a place where the writer shared similar thoughts, memories and emotions only with themselves and the page. My father, John D. Chetelat, Sr., was born in 1920, he lived through the depression, WWII, the Korean war, the sixties, Vietnam, Watergate, through to the turn of the century. Can you just imagine what that was like to experience? Oh, and he also spent six years in a monastery studying to be priest. He did not become a priest, thus I am here to write this blog. Near the end of my father’s life, he started to write down his memories. I’ve been told over and over how lucky I am to have his life story, and I think the one thing that I can do that will please my father the most is to share his story. I often post excerpts from his journal on Facebook. I’d like to share a few of these excerpts with you now.

My father, John D. Chetelat, Sr., as a teenager shopping on Howard St.

As a teenager:

It was in November 1939 that I decided to take a temporary break from school to earn some Christmas money and to help pay tuition to the school as it was becoming financially burdensome on my mother and father. So, in mid-November I took a temporary job at Wards on Monroe St. The first three weeks weren’t too bad as I was working in the mail order tool department filling orders. But the last three weeks were a nightmare. In the actual mailing department there were these huge chutes that received orders from all over the mail order areas. During the day these orders were weighed and postage applied by women. State labor laws at that time said that women could not work more than 10 hours a day but there [were no limits] on how long men could be made to work. So when the women left, all the men in the mail order department took their places in weighing and stamping the packages. We worked until all the packages were taken care of – usually ten or eleven o’clock at night. Of course, we had to be back to work at eight the next morning. During the last two weeks before Christmas, I worked 14 days straight. All this for the magnificent sum of 30 cents an hour. This was the minimum in those days. My last pay check was for $32.60, which represented 40 hours regular time and 40 hours overtime. They wanted me to work Christmas Eve but I lied and told them I was going out of town that day. I was so tired I could have slept all day Christmas Eve, except that was the only time I had to do Christmas shopping. That was quite an experience.