It all began when my finger turned blue at work and stayed blue. I had been working two seasonal jobs. I worked at a greenhouse in town planting flowers in the early Spring and then selling flowers and vegetable plants in April and May. In the fall I worked for a printing company. I had worked at both places for six years. It was going on my seventh year when the boss asked me to go full time. Our daughter was in school full time so I said yes. We gathered up printed sheets and “married” them into folios that became books or brochures. Both businesses were in town and so it was handy. It was 1981. I ended up in the hospital for 6 days. I don’t remember what all they did. A surgeon asked if I had my hands in any chemical and I told him I had. I had to ask the boss what it was. The surgeon told me I should have been wearing gloves. I had asked if I could but OSHA rules forbid gloves. They were afraid the gloves would get caught in the rollers of the machine I was running and wiping down with this chemical on a pad. I remember lots of tests where they plunged my hands in ice water to see my hands reaction. I found out I had Reynauds, a sensitivity to cold and heat. I tried going back to work but they kept the temperature at 65 degrees and it was too cold for me. The chemical I had my hands in also caused a cold sensation. I had also become allergic to the smell of ink or petroleum distillates. It ended my jobs. I didn’t know what we would do. We were remodeling our small house and using the money I earned to help out.
Clown College and Clown Around was born
The answer came when we saw an ad for Clown College at Metro Community College. My sister Linda and I thought it might be fun, so we signed up. It had benefits for me because I could wear my street clothes under my clown suit and clowns wear gloves and wigs, All that would keep me warm. Linda and I bought patterns for clown suits and hired a lady to sew our clown suits. We decided to do Ballonie Tunes and do a song and dance and deliver balloons. Bill was a sales manager for a company that sold helium so we had a source for helium and bought a balloon filler. We found sources for balloons and ribbon. We set up a filling station in our garage. We put spools of ribbon on a dowel and hung the dowels and ribbon from the garage rafters. We were in business! We bought our clown make up and ballooms from Mangelsen’s. They also had many clown props: rubber ducks, noise makers. We had our clown names. Linda was Pinky and had a pink clown suit. We wanted something that rhymed with Pinky, so my clown name was “Stinky”. To have a reason for my name I carried a Skunk puppet. We had collected so much clown paraphernalia we needed bags to carry to the birthday parties. Linda had a pig bag and I made a cow bag. We carried them when we did a parade or birthday party. Linda wrote and made up the little song we’d sing. She even choreographed the dance. We didn’t want to buy expensive clown shoes so we found some large size Nike tennis shoes I think they were size 12! We w stuffed them with cotton balls to make them fit better. We painted polka dots on the rubber toes. I had red to match my clown suit and Linda had pink. The shoes were so large they helped develop our clown walk! At the end of the class Linda and I received the highly prized Joey Award. Our instructor Jan gave it to us because we had actually started a business and did something with what we learned in the class. We had a lot of fun. We even had our kids wearing clown outfits and clown faces. My daughter was known as Spunky.We visited a hospital once but it was sad seeing all the sick children. We were afraid we would take home some flu bug to our own kids
After awhile of doing Balloonie Tunes and kids birthday parties we got tired of it taking a half hour to put our white faces and clown make up on and another half hour to take the make up off. Our travel time to the jobs was another disadvantage.
One big advantage from taking the Clown College course was it got me into the college. I came from a small school and just the college building was intimidating. After getting in the door at Metro I went on to get a Commercial Art degree.
My next adventure was Country Sisters. My husband and I bought an RBI scroll saw and I designed wood cut outs to paint. I outfitted a wood shop with a drill press, belt sander, palm sanders, small drill press. We took up painting crafts and selling are crafts. We tried the Buyers Market but eventually went to selling at Craft Shows and the Haymarket in Lincoln. My two sisters helped out. Julie and I joined forces and Country Sisters was active at the Haymarket and Craft Shows. Our business did well and we hired help to do piece work. I had trouble with my hands getting infections. I was constantly wearing bandaids. My mom would ask me what was wrong with my fingers and I would tell her. My mom had Alzheimers. She always knew who we were but would pick a bad time and in front of others would always ask me what was wrong with my fingers. It was embarrassing as I would answer her multiple times. I kept trying to get my fingers to heal. I didn’t want people to see what looked like a witches finger. My finger was mummifying. I don’t like looking back at pictures or thinking about it even now..
More to come……