[lit-ideas] Re: liver and lives

  • From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 10:28:38 -0800

I have no time for liver. It's offal, and offal is awful until made into sausage or haggis or otherwise disguised. Onions are an insufficient distraction from the fact that these organs had work to do, and they probably contain residues from their tasks.


Speaking of tasks:

Yes there are interesting names on today's obituary page, but what strikes me particularly is how they mark a world of jobs that were quite simply defined. Nary an "associate vice president of advancement" among them. Homer Withers, after serving in the army in the Pacific, was a mail carrier for Safeway for 35 years. Donald Throp, after serving in the navy in Hawaii during W.W. II, was a civil service engine overhaul supervisor. Virginia Maybelle Irwin married Orville Ward Swarner Sr. and took up homemaking. Ella Schnabel, born in Wurz, Germany, was a "domestic worker" in Alabama until she married Henry Born and became Born for the first time in her life. Edna Allenbach worked in the Birdseye cannery and later in the Oregon Department of revenue for 25 years. Helen Courtney worked as a bookkeeper in Portland's W.W. II shipyards and then also took up homemaking. Floyd Hendren was a tug boat captain. Lilyan Keene, nee Siefken, was a nurse. Samuel Waites was a fireman and electrician, working for the railroad. Leslie McCluskey was a conductor, in or on the same line of work. Jack Peterson was a truck driver. Elizabeth Hanecak got the exotic job; with a degree in political science and a minor in languages, a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, she joined Pan Am and worked as a stewardess for them and then United, spending forty years in both friendly and unfriendly skies--she was "involved," says the blurb, "in the evacuation of Cuba, Iran and Vietnam." History, live from the obits.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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