After I wrote Ask AI: Describe Emily Auble's Life After the Death of Her Father In 1916, I realized that there was much more to be told about my grandmother. She had just experienced the death of her father, and decided to not return to school, and needed to work to help support herself and her mother.
Based on what I knew about her life (see ABC Biography of #7 Emily Kemp (Auble) Carringer (1899-1977) of Illinois and California ), I prompted my AI assistant Anthropic Claude to tell me stories about the next few years. Here is the first chapter:
(AI Google NotebookLM Infographic - Emily Auble goes to work)
Emily Auble's Story: She Goes
To Work
July 1916 - First Week at Marston's
Emily's first day at Marston's Department Store
in downtown San Diego was overwhelming. The building was enormous,
filled with displays of clothing, housewares, furniture, and
countless other goods. The noise was constant—customers talking,
cash registers ringing, employees calling out to each other. The air
smelled of perfume and new fabric and floor polish.
Mrs. Patterson, the floor manager, showed Emily
around the store. She was a stern-looking woman in her fifties with
iron-gray hair pulled back in a tight bun. "You'll be working in
ladies' accessories," she explained, leading Emily to a counter
displaying gloves, handkerchiefs, scarves, and jewelry. "Your
job is to help customers, keep the displays neat, and process sales.
Think you can handle that?"
"Yes, ma'am," Emily said, trying to
sound confident even though her stomach was churning with
nervousness.
"Good. You'll work six days a week, nine
to six, with a half hour for lunch. Wages are paid every Saturday. We
expect you to be punctual, courteous, and professional at all times.
Your appearance should be neat and modest. No jewelry except a simple
necklace or earrings. Hair should be pinned up. Understand?"
Emily nodded, acutely aware of how young and
inexperienced she must seem.
"Questions?"
Emily had a hundred questions, but she shook
her head. She needed this job. She couldn't afford to seem
incompetent or uncertain.
"All right then. Miss Weber over there
will show you how to work the register and wrap packages. Pay
attention—I don't like to repeat myself."
The first week was exhausting. Emily's feet
ached from standing all day on the hard floor. Her head spun from
trying to remember prices, procedures, and the names of the other
employees. She made mistakes constantly—giving the wrong change,
wrapping packages too loosely, forgetting to offer customers the
opportunity to open a store account.
Mrs. Patterson corrected her sharply each time,
and Emily felt her face burn with embarrassment. She'd been a good
student in school, used to praise and high marks. Now she felt stupid
and clumsy, always one step behind.
On her third day, she accidentally dropped an
entire tray of pearl buttons, and they scattered across the floor in
every direction. As Emily knelt to pick them up, tears of frustration
pricking at her eyes, she heard a kind voice above her.
"Here, let me help."
She looked up to see another employee—a young
woman with kind eyes and a gentle smile—kneeling beside her to
gather buttons.
"I'm Margaret," the woman said. "I
work in notions, just over there. Don't worry about the buttons.
Everyone drops something their first week. Mrs. Patterson is tough,
but she's fair. You'll get the hang of it."
"I hope so," Emily said, grateful for
the kindness. "I'm Emily."
"Nice to meet you, Emily. How old are you,
if you don't mind my asking?"
"Sixteen," Emily admitted.
"Ah, your first job then?"
"Yes. I had to leave school to help my
mother. My father passed away in March."
Margaret's expression softened. "I'm so
sorry. That must be very hard."
"It is," Emily said simply. There
didn't seem to be anything else to say.
That evening, when Emily dragged herself home
to the apartment, her feet throbbing and her back aching, Georgia
took one look at her daughter's exhausted face and immediately drew a
bath.
"Sit," Georgia commanded. "I'll
heat water for tea."
Emily sank into a chair, too tired to even
remove her shoes. "Mother, I don't know if I can do this. I made
so many mistakes today. Mrs. Patterson is always criticizing me. The
other girls seem to know everything, and I feel so stupid and slow."
Georgia knelt and began unlacing Emily's shoes.
"It's your first week. Of course you're making mistakes. Give
yourself time to learn."
"But what if I can't? What if I'm terrible
at this and they let me go?"
"You won't be terrible," Georgia said
firmly. "You're smart and capable and you learn quickly.
Remember when you first started piano lessons? You thought you'd
never get the fingering right, but within a month you were playing
simple pieces. This is the same. It just takes practice."
Emily wanted to believe her, but doubt gnawed
at her. School had always come easily to her. Work was
different—harder in ways she hadn't expected. The physical
exhaustion was one thing, but the mental pressure of constantly being
watched and judged, of knowing that mistakes could cost her this job
they desperately needed, was overwhelming.
Late July 1916
By the end of her third week, Emily was
beginning to find her rhythm. She learned to anticipate what
customers wanted before they asked, to wrap packages quickly and
neatly, to make small talk that encouraged sales without being pushy.
Mrs. Patterson's criticisms became less frequent, though they never
disappeared entirely.
The other girls at the store began to warm to
her as well. Margaret checked on her regularly, offering tips and
encouragement. Even Miss Weber, who'd seemed cold and distant at
first, occasionally complimented Emily's work.
"You're learning fast," she said one
afternoon. "Faster than most of the girls we hire."
The compliment warmed Emily more than she
expected. Maybe she wasn't terrible at this after all.
Gladys came to visit her at the store one
Saturday afternoon, browsing the accessories counter until Emily's
lunch break. They walked to a small park nearby and sat on a bench to
eat the sandwiches Georgia had packed.
"How's it going?" Gladys asked.
"Really?"
"It's hard," Emily admitted. "My
feet hurt all the time. Mrs. Patterson is terrifying. And sometimes I
feel like I'm a thousand years older than I was three months ago."
She paused. "But it's getting easier. I'm getting better at it.
And the other girls are nice, mostly."
"Do you miss school?"
Emily considered the question honestly. "I
miss you. I miss learning new things. I miss feeling like I was good
at something." She looked down at her hands, which were starting
to develop calluses from handling packages and merchandise all day.
"But I don't know if I miss school itself. It feels like that
was a different life, a different Emily. Does that make sense?"
"I think so," Gladys said. "You've
been through so much. It's changed you."
"Sometimes I worry I've changed too much,"
Emily confessed. "That I'm becoming someone I don't recognize.
Someone hard and practical and boring."
"You're not boring," Gladys said
firmly. "You're surviving. There's nothing boring about that.
And you're still you, Emily. You're still the friend who makes me
laugh, who notices when I'm sad, who cares about people. Working at
Marston's doesn't change that."
Emily wanted to believe her. But when she
looked in the mirror lately, she saw a tired girl with shadows under
her eyes and a serious expression that seemed too old for her sixteen
years. The girl she'd been before her father's accident—the one who
worried about homework and dreamed about her future—felt like a
stranger now.
August 1916 - The Move
Georgia had made the decision to give up the
house on 14th Street. It was too big, too expensive, too full of
memories of Charles. She and Emily moved to the Marine View
Apartments at First and Hawthorn Streets—a small but respectable
two-bedroom apartment that they could afford on their combined
incomes.
The move was both a relief and a heartbreak.
Leaving the house meant leaving the last physical connection to
Charles, to the life they'd had before. Emily helped her mother pack
up her father's painting supplies, his clothes, the little things
that had made the house feel like home.
"What should we do with his paints?"
Emily asked, holding up a can of deep blue that her father had always
favored.
Georgia looked at it for a long moment. "Keep
a few," she said finally. "For remembering. The rest...
perhaps Uncle Franklin can give them to someone at the union who
needs them. Your father would want his supplies to be used, not just
sitting in storage."
Gladys came to help them unpack at the new
apartment on a Saturday afternoon. "This is nice," she
said, looking around the small parlor with its view of the street
below. "Cozy."
"It's what we can afford," Georgia
said pragmatically, though Emily heard the sadness underneath.
Later, when Gladys and Emily were alone in
Emily's tiny bedroom—barely big enough for a bed and a small
dresser—Gladys spoke more honestly.
"Your mother's being brave," she
said. "But I know it's hard for her. Giving up the house, giving
up so much of what she and your father built together."
"It's hard for both of us," Emily
admitted. "But Mother's right—we couldn't afford to keep it.
And honestly, I think being in that house was making it harder to
move forward. Every room reminded us of him. His studio in the
basement, the parlor where he used to tell stories, the stairs where
he..." She stopped, unable to finish.
"The stairs where he fell," Gladys
finished gently.
Emily nodded. "I could never walk past
them without thinking about that night. Without imagining it
happening. Now at least we don't have that constant reminder."
"And what about you?" Gladys asked.
"How are you doing? Really?"
Emily sat on her narrow bed and considered the
question. "I'm tired," she admitted. "I work all day,
come home, help Mother with dinner and housework, and then I'm too
exhausted to do anything but sleep. And sometimes I think about how
different my life would be if Father hadn't fallen. I'd still be in
school. I'd be worrying about homework and dances and what I want to
do after graduation. Instead, I'm worrying about whether we can
afford meat more than twice a week."
"That's not fair," Gladys said
fiercely. "None of this is fair."
"No," Emily agreed. "But it's
life. And complaining about it won't change anything." She
paused, then added more quietly, "Sometimes I'm angry at him. At
Father. For drinking too much that night, for being careless, for
dying and leaving us to deal with everything. Is that terrible?"
"It's human," Gladys said. "You're
allowed to be angry. You're allowed to feel however you feel."
"Mother never seems angry," Emily
said. "Just sad. And tired. And determined to keep going."
"Your mother's amazing," Gladys
agreed. "But she's also had more time to process everything. And
she loved your father for a long time. That's different from being
sixteen and losing your father and having to give up school and your
future all at once."
Emily felt tears prick at her eyes, as they so
often did these days. "Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning. Like
the grief and the responsibility and the exhaustion are going to pull
me under and I'll never come up for air."
Happy Birthday To
Emily
On Emily's 17th birthday on August 19th, Gladys came to visit for dinner, bearing gifts for the working girl. She presented a fine cotton handkerchief and a beautiful manicure set to Emily. The former was an essential accessory -- A shopgirl was expected to be impeccably groomed. The latter gift was a small kit with a bone-handled cuticle pusher, a file, and a tin of buffing paste allowed her to maintain the "professional" look demanded by her floor manager.
Georgia gave Emily two pair of Lisle stockings, since standing all day on her feet was brutal on footwear. After their meal, there was a birthday cake, and Gladys and Georgia sang "Happy Birthday To Emily" and they forgot their sadness for a time that night.
September 1916
As summer faded into fall, Emily settled into a routine. Work,
home, sleep, repeat. Six days a week at Marston's, Sundays spent
helping Georgia with laundry and housework and preparing for the week
ahead. It wasn't the life she'd imagined, but it was her life now,
and she was learning to accept it.
She'd gotten better at her job—faster at wrapping packages,
smoother with customers, more confident in her sales technique. Mrs.
Patterson had even given her a small raise, which felt like a major
victory.
The other employees had become familiar faces, if not exactly
friends. Margaret still checked on her regularly. Miss Weber
occasionally shared gossip during slow periods. There was a whole
ecosystem at Marston's—hierarchies and rivalries and alliances that
Emily was slowly learning to navigate.
And then there were the people who worked in other departments,
whom Emily only saw in passing. The delivery men who brought stock to
the floor. The window dressers who created the elaborate displays.
The office workers who handled accounts and paperwork.
One of them was a trim young man with dark brown hair and kind blue
eyes. Emily had noticed him walking past her counter several times,
always with a polite nod and smile. He worked in the accounting
office, she'd learned from Margaret, and his name was Lyle Carringer.
"Lyle's a good sort," Margaret had said when Emily asked
about him. "Been here for years. Very professional, very proper.
Comes from a good family—his parents own several properties in the
area."
Emily hadn't thought much about it at the time. She was too busy
surviving to think about young men, no matter how kind their smiles
were.
December 1916 - One Year
A year had passed since the accident. Emily marked the anniversary
quietly, saying nothing about it at work, not wanting to invite
questions or sympathy. But when she got home that evening, she found
her mother sitting in the dark parlor, holding one of Charles's old
paintbrushes.
"Mother?" Emily said softly.
Georgia looked up, and in the dim light, Emily could see tears on
her face. "I miss him," Georgia said simply. "I know
he had his faults. I know he drank too much, that he lied about his
age, that he wasn't perfect. But he was my husband, and I loved him,
and sometimes the missing him is so strong I can barely breathe."
Emily sat beside her mother and took her hand. "I miss him
too. I miss how he used to tell stories about his painting jobs,
making them sound like grand adventures. I miss his laugh. I miss..."
She paused, her own tears falling now. "I miss the life we were
supposed to have. The one where he didn't fall, where I finished
school, where everything turned out differently."
They sat together in the darkness, two women bound by loss and
love, holding each other up through the weight of their grief.
After a while, Georgia squeezed Emily's hand. "But we're
surviving, aren't we? We're making it work."
"We are," Emily agreed.
"Your father would be proud of you," Georgia said. "Of
how you've stepped up, how you've helped carry this family through
the hardest time. You gave up your education, your dreams of
finishing school, to help me. That's a sacrifice I'll never forget."
"You would have done the same for me," Emily said.
"Still," Georgia continued, "I want you to know
that this isn't forever. Someday, when things are more stable, maybe
you can go back to school. Or maybe you'll find other opportunities,
other dreams. You're only seventeen, Emily. Your life isn't over.
This is just one chapter."
Emily wanted to believe her, but it was hard to imagine a future
different from her present reality of work and bills and
responsibility. The girl who'd had dreams and plans seemed like
someone from another lifetime.
Still, she appreciated her mother's optimism. "Thank you,
Mother. For being strong. For keeping us going."
"We keep each other going," Georgia corrected. "That's
what we do."
==============================
3) Here is the Video Overview of this post by Google NotebookLM:
4) This is historical fiction based on the facts that are available for the life and family of my maternal grandmother, EmilyAuble. It is historical fiction based on social history and society norms at the time and place, and it is likely realistic. It might have happened this way.
5) I had to tell this story -- it leads up to her marriage and motherhood and her life beyond Marston's.
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