"The Shop" was where my dad went to work every day. And it was always called "The Shop." It was a machine shop, and it was not until many years later that I realized that "shop" meant a store of some kind to most people.
But not us!! "The Shop" also included "The Pots" as in in "The boys are going with Dad to "The Shop" to clean "The Pots!!" (If you haven't figured it out, "The Pots" were the toilets that were dispersed throughout the whole complex of industrial shop spaces where "The Shop" was!)
The boys got paid for this work, and over the years, we girls lobbied for the chance to make this good money the boys seemed to make. My dad would never even consider letting us do the work. In the years since, I've seen some other bathrooms in industrial facilities, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let my daughters - or sons for that matter - work in them - or even use them maybe!!
The Pontiac station wagon also shows in this photo. We all fit in this car - not legally the way you need to today - seat belts were a twinkle in someone's eye at that point in time - but when we drove out to visit Grandma and Grandpa Stevens or Grandpa Clayton or Grandma Clayton's grave in Inglewood, this was the car we went in - and we mostly all fit in!
When we stopped at stoplights, we often saw people counting the number of kid's faces they would see. Once my brother Lyn held up a paper that said "12."
That story has been told over and over again in our family. I was there - it did happen!!
In case you thought it was apocryphal!
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