Wow! Look at those prices: Lime Ade, 5 cents; Sliced Ham Sandwich, 10 cents. I can't read the rest of the prices, but they were in line with what I could see. Look at those stools? You don't see any like them anymore. There were fountain cokes, homemade pies and cakes, and glazed doughnuts. I know about the doughnuts. I made them.

World War II was in full swing, the men were off to war, their women working in the defense plants and help hard to find for low paying jobs. I know. I was only fifteen, working with a county work permit and living on my own. I look back now and wonder how I did it.

Whenever I see the commercial on TV about the man who made the doughnuts, I think about Woolworth's. That was my job. When I arrived at work in the morning, I went straight up to the kitchen. A big pan of yeast dough would be waiting for me in one of the refrigerators, usually in the one with the big dent in the door. That dent was made by the body of a woman slamming into it after she waited too long to light the gas burners under the deep dryer. It was a warning for me to be careful. I respected that dent and heeded the warning.

I would roll out the dough, place the cut dough on trays and allow it to rise. By the time I had finished rolling and cutting the doughnuts they would be ready to fry. I carefully lit the gas burners under the fryer and waited for them to heat. While waiting, I stirred up a powdered sugar and water glaze. I was ready to begin. After frying all the doughnuts, I glazed them and placed them back on the trays to dry. Then I placed the trays on the dumb waiter and sent them down to the lunch counter. A few stayed there, but the rest went to another part of the store to be sold by the dozen. So much for the doughnuts.

By then it was lunch time. I worked the lunch counter during the lunch rush. My job there didn't last long. I made a fatal error. I was to refill the Coca Cola and root beer fountain drink containers with their syrups. Sounds simple enough, but, somehow, I switched the syrups. There was now root beer in the Coca Cola fountain and Coca Cola in the root beer one.

Who do you think my next customer was to be? Yup! The store manager. He asked for a Coke. Filling the glass with ice, I careful drew a soda from the machine. The machine added soda water and made a nice fizz. He took one sip and screamed, “What have you done?” I stood there and bawled. Both machines had to be drained and cleaned. I had wasted two gallons of syrup. I ran to the restroom and continued crying. That hadn't helped my situation at all. Eventually, I returned to the lunch counter and finished out the day.

The manager had his eye on me after that. I worried how long I would last until he fired me. It wouldn't be long, I was sure of that. I was also the laughing stock of the rest of the lunch counter girls. That was hard to take, too.

I didn't have to look far for another job. I was to become a long distance telephone operator at the tender age of sixteen. That's another story. I quit Woolworth's and moved on.