Work. New client. Stories.

I worked with a ninety-four years old woman last weekend and got an ear full of the way things were. She told me of how her grandfather was killed by some white men. He worked hard for his family. He bought his groceries on credit and paid at the end of the week. One week he paid his bill then when he went to get food for the next week the store owner told him he had to pay right then. That night he broke into the store to get a ham to feed his family and was killed. For a ham. So they say.

When her mother passed away there were three other girls in the house and her father had to pay a woman to stay in the house with them because at time men couldn't get custody of their daughters unless there was an adult woman in the house to make sure the father wasn't raping the girls.

When she first got married her father told her that if other men sexually harassed her then she should find a way to deal with it on her own and not involve her husband because some men couldn't handle their anger and they might do something dangerous.

When she was only nineteen years old she and her father owned a beauty / barber shop. Her father wouldn't cut a woman's hair unless he had the husband's permission because "a woman's hair is her glory."

And then this, a woman couldn't have bills in her name. All bills had to be in her husband's name. The day the law changed she called the phone company and got her bill in her own name and was proud to do it.

Times, they have a changed. Sorta.