Read me: Slacks and Calluses

A few months ago I attended a lecture at the local history museum about recent archaeological finds at the Kaiser Shipyard site. Vancouver Washington grew in the 40s due to the shipyard and it's workers. Every time I leave the house in slacks and a bandanna, everyone person over 50 remarks at how I look just like their mother, aunt, sister, or even how they looked back in the 40s, working in the shipyard. 
The lecture was very interesting, apparently the most recent dig site was on a small garbage dump area where everything from cold cream jars to scrap metal was found. I was on the edge of my seat when the archaeologist showed pictures of jewelry, workers made from metal scraps on slow days. Crude little metal horse heads and hearts with arrows through them that were rejects for brooches and bracelets. He said even though it was very much against every policy in the book, they would often sell their crafts, and some work was so beautiful the upper management would order pieces of jewelry for their wives! 
I will spend as long as it takes to find a little scrap brooch. 
At the end of the lecture I gathered up the courage to ask the speaker about any books he would recommend.  (Did I have enough to talk to the elderly woman sitting next to me who had actually worked in the Kaiser Shipyard? No. And I'll kick myself forever for that). 
I scribbled down a little list and received them for Christmas, and this being the shortest was the first to be read! 
Slacks and Calluses is the account of two schoolteachers who work a swing shift during the summer in a San Diego bomber factory. It's written by Constance Bowman Reid and Illustrated by Clara Marie Allen, and is as straightforward and honest an account as you could find. 
It's not exciting, or dramatic, it's really just about their experience in the few months they wanted to do their part. Constance is smart, witty, and there were times I laughed out loud at some account or another. Near the end an entire chapter is dedicated to the girls being forced to wear caps that cover all their hair and the displeasure of every female worker in the factory. 
It seems we always see two types of factory worker photos: Those gritty black and white ones where women were covered in metal dust and their hair was up in a bandanna, and those crisp colorful photos where the girls have perfect little curls peeking from their snood and clean slacks and sweaters. I always thought perhaps the latter was staged and the former was the real deal. Well according to Constance and Clara, both were reality. 
"Blondie and Phyllis were the old timers of the group. They were absolutely the cleanest girls on the line, and they amazed us, even before we got to know them, because they could arrive for work in spotless, creased slacks and leave work at one o'clock with their slacks still spotless and creased......They could keep their hair in intricate coiffures-up in beautiful curls one day and down in beautiful curls the next, with the whole thing topped by fresh or artificial flowers carefully chosen to match the costume jewelry they were wearing today."
"We in our striped t-shirts and dusty blue slacks did not see how they do it. We asked Babe of the bomb bay how some girls managed to keep clean, and she replied, snippily, that some girls had clean jobs and other girls made it their job to keep clean."
They also go into what a vast difference wearing slacks as oppose to skirts made when it came to how men treated them. 
"They called us 'Sister' in a most unbrotherly way, and 'Baby' in a most unfatherly way."
When wearing slacks they were refused service at an ice cream shop, as well as surprised when not a single man gave up their seat on the bus. They even conducted a little experiment and wore skirts and hats on the same bus only to find multiple men jumped up and offered their seats. 
Of course there's quite a bit of technical description, and they each go into depth about the jobs they did and what that involved. 
If you're interested in a personal account of what it was like to work in a bomber factory, I'd highly recommend this book.    I enjoyed both the writing style and clean illustrations, and accounts of other workers and how their lives varied so much from the teachers (many girls working never graduated high school). Must have been an amazing experience!