Allen Countian recalls working in the ’40s
Hollywood, for decades, has tried to recreate the romance of the 1940s. The trials and tribulations of the war and what it took to make ends meet. Thora May Shinn remembers it like it was yesterday.
In 1944, after graduating from Bronson High School, Thora, at age 17, boarded a train, known as the Katy, from Moran to Kansas City, Mo. There she began working at Fred Harvey’s restaurant at Union Station.
Thora, 86, is part of a rare group of women known as the “Harvey Girls.” The girls were known for being single, well-mannered and educated, with a strict 10 p.m. curfew, as coined by the 1942 movie “The Harvey Girls,” starring Judy Garland.
By the time Thora became a Harvey Girl the rules were a little more relaxed and the black dress with white apron uniform had been replaced with new uniforms.
She worked the 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift and made 50 cents an hour plus tips.
“A dime tip was great. A quarter was fantastic,” Thora said.
When homesick, she would hop on the Katy after her shift to go back home; her parents would pick her up at 2 a.m.
The new uniforms, which were laundered for the girls, consisted of a white wrap-around skirt, white button-up shirt with a collar, pantyhose and white oxford shoes.
If Thora was lucky, she might be able to buy some nylon pantyhose from the gift store in the train station. During the time of the war a lot of everyday items were rationed.
“At the restaurant we could eat anything we wanted, except the exotic seafood, and I gained 20 pounds eating cantaloupe and ice cream,” Thora said.
At the gift shop she would buy her father and uncle cigarettes for a nickel a carton.
Thora remembers when rationing restrictions were lifted as being “absolutely wonderful.”
While in Kansas City Thora would spend most of her time with girlfriends watching a new movie or writing letters to Jim, her high school sweetheart stationed in the South Pacific.
“I wrote to Jim about every day. I would send him records,” Thora said.
At the restaurant she began at the horseshoe counter then moved to tables. Thora recalls a gentleman she used to wait on often who would order alcoholic drinks. Because she was under age she would have to get an older waitress to get him his drinks.
The Harvey restaurant is the basis for a few memorable moments in Thora’s life. When she began working parties she helped serve Margaret Truman and her sorority sisters.
“She was starting her singing career at the time and the critics were being unkind. President Truman was furious about the comments that were being written about his daughter,” Thora recalls in her memoirs she wrote.
She was at work the day “the nation was asked to observe a moment of silent prayer during the funeral services for President Roosevelt,” she wrote.
She worked for two years at the Harvey restaurant and remembers the day she quit as being the most wonderful and shocking day of her life.
She was getting ready for work when she heard a knock at her door; it was Jim standing in the hall.
“I never made it to work that day or any other day,” Thora wrote.
Jim, while overseas, contracted malaria and was transferred off his ship for medical treatment at Johnson Island. He was then flown over to Hawaii where he was shipped back to the United States where he received his discharge.
She had known something was going on because she hadn’t heard from Jim in a while. Nonetheless, she was shocked the day he came home.
The following Monday, they went to buy rings and flowers for the wedding they were planning to have the next day. There was a three-day waiting period in Missouri so they took a streetcar to Kansas City, Kan. and tried their hand at marriage there.
Jim had to be 21 to get married but was only 20 and needed his mother’s official permission. They took a train home, got his mother’s approval and married at Thora’s parent’s home.
For a while after the war Jim tried to find a job but found that jobs were extremely hard to come by.
Thora remembers Jim trying to get a job at the Chevrolet plant but was turned away because he wasn’t old enough.
“He wasn’t old enough to work, but he had just come back from the war,” she said.
After settling in Iola Jim attended a barber school in Wichita and barbered in Iola, Uniontown and Piqua before retiring in 1999.
Jim and Thora had three sons, Alan, Mark and Jack. Other than a short stint in Montana working with family, Jim and Thora lived in Iola.
Thora worked as a phlebotomist for over 20 years. In October of 2011 Jim passed away. She lived in Iola for a while before making the decision, in the past year, to move to Uniontown to live near her son Alan.
Thora’s life hobby has been genealogy and is considered an amateur genealogist. She has a row of books that she has completed with her and Jim’s family’s history, a lot of which she found pouring over microfilm at the Bronson library.
Some of her fondest memories come from the time she and Jim spent bowling.
“When I was moving I went through my old checkbooks and you really don’t realize how much money you spend on bowling trips and eating out,” she said.
It has been some time since Thora’s last visit to Union Station, but today visitors can see the station’s museum and even eat at the newer Harvey restaurant in the center of the station.
