A Brighter Future

Our past, every bit of it good and bad, makes us who we are today. It makes us appreciate where we are now.

I was driving home from work one-day last month when I saw something that made me stop and turn my car around. It was a lemonade stand with three little girls seated at a table and a big pitcher of lemonade, paper cups, and the cutest crayoned sign. I recognized them as a neighbor’s granddaughters.

My thoughts turned to a memory when I was a third-grade Catholic school kid and went door-to-door selling rosary beads and fabric scapulars to our neighbors, many of whom were Jewish. It was my first experience in the frightening world of salesmanship.

I did not understand religious differences at that time, but over the years as I grew up those buyers razzed me about my innocence. Then there were Christmas cards to sell, candy, wrapping paper, and magazines. I was always selling something to those same dear folks!

These lemonade-hustling young’uns were all under eight years old and their winning smiles and optimism as I approached touched my heart.

“We are new businesswomen. Do you want some lemonade”?

“I sure do. Who made it,” I asked as I dug twenty-five cents out of my wallet.

“Our grandmother did. She also gave us some gum to sell. It’s ten cents a stick or the whole pack for twenty-five cents!”

“I’ll take the entire pack! Now that’s a deal.”

Of course, I had to giggle since I’d have been a fool to settle for one stick at ten cents. But the girls were thrilled.

Then just as I was ready to take my goods and drive home the youngest of the girls said she just saw my daddy walking my dog down the street a few minutes before I arrived. It was the best compliment I had in ages hearing her refer to my husband as my daddy!

Now that’s a great business model: A smile, a sale, and a huge compliment!

As I pulled into my driveway, I sat for a moment thinking how far women in business have come. In 1970 I applied for a weekend job while I was in college as a boat salesperson. I knew very little about boats as I admitted to the owner during the interview, but I assured him I could learn.

The owner laughed and said, he preferred a man in this position but would put me on commission if I wanted to try it. However, I insisted on a salary because I needed to know exactly how much money was coming in each week in order to pay the bills.

He low-balled the offer, but I needed the job and took it. Yet, I soon realized I was very good at this and the commission would have been a much better bet. On my one-year anniversary, I asked to be put on commission, but when the boss refused, I quit. He was shocked.

A week later, he begged me to return and offered the commission deal, but I enjoyed telling him that I had found another job writing for a magazine that suited me better.

In 1971, I was named the first woman Santa Claus in the USA as described by the Associated Press. They picked up the local story as a Women’s Lib feature when it surely was not.

It was simply that Santa had shown up drunk to the department store where I was working, and I volunteered to handle the job that day. I was so good at it that I completed the season and was offered the job the next year as well. Who says it takes a man to be a great Santa?

In 1973 a television station manager in Florence told me that women did not belong in television and he refused to hire me to host his talk show. He agreed to let me do all the telethons that paid nothing, and soon clients in the area requested me as a spokesperson for their commercials and so he was forced to back down. Then I had to fight to get paid what they were paying the men who were doing the same job.

Years later in 1976 as I applied to buy a house, a bank mortgage officer asked me where my husband worked and how much money he made, while never asking about my own financials.

Well, I could go on all day, and if you are over forty, so can you. We’ve come a long way baby. I thank all the women of yesteryear who trudged the path forward for the rest of us. I’m proud to have a full-time career in television and President of a video company too.

But I would not change the past employment challenges for anything.

Our past, every bit of it good and bad, makes us who we are today.

It makes us appreciate where we are now. And isn’t it great to know that the future will be even brighter for my lemonade-selling girlfriends and all the women of tomorrow?