Viewing page 54 of 96

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

 -54-

their way through college. Why shouldn't I? Surely, I could be a waitress in a restaurant or, with luck, a maid for a rich family. My parents, however, had a different plan.

Having been school teachers themselves, they pointed out that a teacher's certificate was a useful thing for any woman to have. "It's an anchor to windward," they said. "Then, no matter what may happen to you, you can always support yourself by teaching." I think that is still good advice for a young woman. They had decided that I should study for a certificate in San Jose Normal School. (Why were teacher-training schools in California called "normal" schools?) They had found a boarding house, two blocks from the campus, where I would live. The proprietress was a stern-faced widow who could have served as a model for Grant Wood. No doubt her craggy features were reassuring to my mother and father. She looked like a disciplinarian and she was. She filled me with awe and more than that, with a revulsion to food. Evidently she believed thatsalads were the ideal diet for aspiring schoolteachers and she concocted some thoroughly anappetizing