h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My grandmother worked in a textile factory. I expect that her work involved making uniforms and army blankets, among other military-related items. The thing is, that factory probably had women workers anyway, whether the country was at war or not. An aunt also worked in a factory for a time, though I can't remember what she was making.

[In this next link, you will encounter Doris Day. You have been warned
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Xi_IyHYNc]

I had a great-aunt and grandmother who worked in what they called 'the shirt factory' in a small town in Tennessee during the Depression and after. It was common there for the farmers' wives to work like that to supplement the subsistence farming.

(Thanks for the warning. I'm not up to Doris today.)

My mother's only sister was smart as whip, but she made the mistake of marrying a gentleman farmer. It took a while for the farm to make a go of it, and that meant my aunt had to work a job to tide them over. She worked, first as a teacher and then as a school librarian. She even had a regular radio show in which she read children's books. This may not sound like a sad story, but she was also raising four children and probably doing quite a lot of farm work as well. She wore herself out and died much younger than anyone could have expected.

(I have some friends who can't stand Doris Day's singing, and others who think she's great. If there were other leading versions of her best songs I would feature them, but why would I do that for songs that she sang in movies? Normie Rowe sang "Que sera sera" in Australia, but why wouldn't I use Doris Day's version instead, as she introduced it in "The man who knew too much?" Let's just get on with life, okay?

That is a sad story.

Her husband remarried and lived into his late 90s.

My aunt had a genetic predisposition to breast cancer. She pass the gene on to her daughter, who passed it on to *her* daughters (there are five of them), and who knows how much farther down the line? With this knowledge of the genetic quirks, they have all taken appropriate steps to safeguard their health, and should live normal lives.

Glad to hear it.

I inherited a gene for hearing loss - from my dad, his mother, and back to a family named Dotson. There were legendary tales in the mountains of the rather bizarre behaviour of this clan, all of whom 'couldn't hear it thunder'. Whether the oddness was related to the fact that hearing loss isolates you, I dunno.

Both of my parents had significant hearing loss by the time they were seventy. Somehow I escaped that affliction. If I'm isolated, it's for different reasons