....go down into the “work areas”, rather expected to spend my time where the handful of “other employees” spent their days. But the offices never had the din, the smells, the dark corners to draw me in like the factory areas where the workers toiled. My forays were usually exposed when I would arrive home with the smudges and grime from the floors on my face or dress, but after a while father knew it was useless to try and dissuade me, so he simply turned a somewhat tolerant, although bemused blind eye to my industrial adventures. Little did we know where that wanderlust would lead!
Our workers would take blanks of materials like ivory, or pearl (much of which came from another mysterious place called Arkansas) and cut them into workable bits, then grind and polish them into what became our rounded corporate currency…..buttons! The dust was always flying and was sometimes thick in the air, coating the skin, eyes, noses and hair of our workers.
They would cut and grind and polish during the day and then when the whistle blew, file out of the shops and head home to their own private worlds and neighborhoods, as we did to ours.
By the by, to go back to the beginning and catch up to all of Astoria's adventures go to:
http://buttonbroadmemoirs.blogspot.com/2012/02/on-this-my-100th-birthday.html
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