Marjory
(Correspondence school and a job at the Farmers' Equity)
Top: Marjory doing homework (circa 1931) for Humboldt College correspondence school business course (they supplied typewriter) after Amelia terminated Marjory's public education upon graduation from 8th grade to reduce "wordly" influences. A "six-week" finishing up session in Minneapolis to complete the course actually took about eight months. Marjory won a Venus Velvet national shorthand penmanship contest and got her picture taken for use in their advertising campaign. Marjory still has the typewriter -- a rebuilt Woodstock.
Middle: Humboldt College building, Minneapolis, and streetcar. The school promised "a position or your money back," which was an overly strong boast during the Depression, but Marjory found her own jobs. One of the students who finished the same course demanded a job or her money back, but the school's owners said it was only if you completed ALL the courses they taught, and there were several different courses. Then they would guarantee a job!
Bottom: Marjory, Donald, 1927 Chevrolet Coupe. About 1939 the "mint" condition body was used to fill a washout; the running gear became a wagon.
Excerpt from Donald B. Johnson manuscript:
"When it was time for [Marjory] to come home [from Humboldt College] in the spring (1931, I think), I had been promised that I could go down with the 1927 Chevrolet coupe and get her. Just a day or two before I went, all the banks in the state closed and the only money anyone had was what they had in their pockets. Pa happened to have $25 and some cents ... more than he usually had in cash then. He gave me all of it to go to the cities." [21.163-5]
"Before we got [back] to Anoka, the Chevrolet's motor started to make a terrible noise. We kept going anyway until we got to the Chevrolet garage in Anoka. They diagnosed a broken piston. Saturday hadn't been made into a holiday then, yet, and the shop foreman said, 'I'll put two men on it and get it out today.'
"Two good mechanics went to work.... I still had enough money to pay for that job, but it took almost all of it. We made it home by about 11 p.m. Pa's $25 was all gone, but nobody else had any money then, either. It was the peak of the Depression." [21.164-5]
"We were planning a trip to Wisconsin with the Essex, just before Marj started working, when she got a letter from Humboldt College asking if she could be in Minneapolis on a certain day. They wanted to have her picture taken [as one of three winners of a national shorthand penmanship contest] for their next set of advertising propaganda. It just happened to be at the exact time we would be in Minneapolis, on our way to Wisconsin.
"They never dreamed she would come and were going to have someone else in the picture and say it was her, but she called them and told them she was coming." [21.165-1]
"Carl Iverson needed a bookkeeper in the Equity and he had heard about Marj taking a business course, so he sent word for her to come and see him. The next day Marj was mowing hay with Bird and Polly, in by town on Emma Melby's field between where the Ashby Apartments are and the cemetery, so she tied her team to a tree and walked up to the Equity and got the job. She was almost 16 years old and she had the job for 3-1/2 years." [21.164-7 ]
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