Slacks and calluses our summer in a bomber factory

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Reid, Constance
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, Ã1999.
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Description
Review:"In 1943 two spirited young teachers decided to do their part for the war effort by spending their summer vacation working the swing shift on a B-24 production line at a San Diego bomber plant. Entering a male-dominated realm of welding torches and bomb bays, they learned to use tools that they had never seen before, live with aluminum shavings in their hair, and get along with supervisors and coworkers from all walks of life. And they learned that wearing their factory slacks on the street caused men to treat them in a way for which their "dignified schoolteacher-hood" hadn't prepared them." "First published in 1944 and illustrated with humorous drawings, Slacks and Calluses is an on-the-spot account of how two women assumed the wartime roles that would change society, coping with traditional attitudes they encountered along the way. Constance Bowman tells of foremen who struggled futilely to enforce a rule requiring all women to wear caps; of young coworkers who wistfully imagined earning their high school diplomas; and of the bruises and cut fingers that she and Clara Marie Allen endured in making final installations to the "Liberator" planes that rolled off the Consolidated Vultee production line." "Bowman and Allen evoke in vivid detail the ambiguities, drama, and comedy of life on the home front during World War II."--Jacket.
Item Description:Originally published: Slacks and callouses. 1st ed. New York : Toronto : Longmans, Green & Co., 1944.
Physical Description:xvi, 181 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm
ISBN:9781560983682
156098368X
Author Notes:Constance (Bowman) Reid is internationally acclaimed for her biographies of twentieth-century mathematicians. Clara Marie Allen became a full-time mother in 1948 but continued to create posters and program covers for community organizations, as well as annual Christmas cartoons of her family. Sandra M. Gilbert is a professor of English at the University of California at Davis and co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic, Shakespeare's Sisters, and No Man's Land.