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   My first full time job was in the summer vacation of 1919 when I worked as a gardener for the Calthrop sisters, Bessie and Ann. They were the maiden daughters of our old minister at May Memorial Unitarian Church, Dr. Samuel R. Calthrop, whom I have mentioned previously and who had passed on by this time. However, Bessie and Ann Calthrop still lived at "Primrose Hill", the family home which stood on a wooded hill out on South Salina Street near the city line. Dr. Calthrop had been an Englishman and Primrose Hill was like an English estate on a modest scale. I suppose the property covered several acres and you reached the big, old red-brick house by a winding road which wound up the hill through the trees. The property backed up on the Lackawanna line running south to Binghamton, which ran a hundred yards behind the house, and this area was used for a large vegetable garden and berry patch including a few fruit trees. In front of the house on the hillside in a clearing in the trees, there was another smaller vegetable garden. Moreover, there were many flower beds scattered around the place as well as some lawn. There was a third Calthrop daughter, Edith, who had married Burton N. Bump, a Solvay Process Co. engineer with a good job and they lived up on University Hill and had two children, Elizabeth, who was my age, and Calthrop, who was a couple of years younger. Of course, I knew these kids very well since we'd gone to Sunday School together as long as I could remember. However, I have a feeling that Bessie and Ann were not overly affluent and keeping up the old homestead was a bit of a strain, so they supplemented their income by making and selling a line of jams, jellies and canned vegetables which I think they called the Primrose Hill brand and I believe the products were highly thought of and mayhap a bit expensive. I was hired as gardener at 20¢ per hour for the summer of 1919 to assist with the various chores but mainly weeding, cultivating, picking berries and vegetables, and cutting the grass. The Calthrops lived a good five miles from us and I made the round trip on my bike every day, putting in usually six or seven hours of work. They paid me daily and when I'd come home with say $1.20 when ice cream sodas cost 5¢, I felt like a plutocrat. I carried my lunch and used to eat it while sitting under a huge elm behind the house and looking down over the garden to the railroad tracks. One of the high spots of the day was watching the noon express for Binghamton (the same one Mother and I took to Newark in 1915) go by, with the Camelback steamer working hard accelerating the train up the grade, while I sat beneath my tree eating my sandwiches. You could set your watch by this train and I don't recall it's ever being late the entire summer although it originated in Oswego. Also, I enjoyed watching the long limestone train from the Solvay Jamesville quarries to the plant west of the city, which would drift down the grade the middle of each afternoon, a big Consolidation at the head end just coasting along. Another infrequent treat was to have a switcher come up from downtown with a coal car