She's been going through her filing cabinet, and came across this interesting story...
Regular readers know that we enjoy matching up the photos that my father took during two different trips to Europe back in the 1950's.
The first of those two long trips started in January of 1954. He had spent the previous two years working as a radio operator at a remote location on Sandspit Island off the coast of British Columbia. I don't know the details of the backstory, but in late 1952 he had entered a newspaper contest that had to do with naming locations of places in British Columbia. And he was one of the big winners!
My father, on the far right.
$25,000 in cash was distributed among the winners. This was a large some of money at the time, when you consider that twenty five grand could buy a very large house back then.
My father's share was $1,918.75.
Using various online calculators, this would be the inflation adjusted equivalent of $22,500 today... a big chunk of money for a 23 year old.
And, he had been working remotely (ha... that term sure has a different meaning today!) and so he had nothing to spend his employment income on.
I said earlier that I didn't know the backstory. Because it brings up questions like, how did he know about this newspaper contest when he was working somewhere where there wouldn't be any newspapers??
Anyhow, he saved his money and then took a year off and went to Europe in 1954. Then when he came back in 1955, he got another remote job working as a radio operator on the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line up in the arctic. He also did some time at Goose Bay, Labrador. Apparently there was nothing to spend your money on but smoking and gambling. My father wasn't a smoker, but he was a pretty good poker player.
He made the second trip to Europe in 1957, paying for his mother and younger brother to go with him.
Then in 1958, he married my mother, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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Tons of record low deals during Prime Day in the USA today!
And of course the same thing in Canada...
If you are in the market for just about anything, today is probably the cheapest day to buy it!
All of these things add up to why and where you are. Good things to pass on. Some of us don't have much to go on when your parents and grandparents fled Europe and left everything behind. Hang on to it!
ReplyDeleteWe always regret not asking a lot of these questions when we were younger and when our parents were younger and the answers were still quite fresh in their minds. Often though you don't take as much interest in these things until you are older and so are your parents and sometimes it is too late then to ask these question because either they are no longer around or they just don't remember.
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