After I graduated high school, I worked at various part-time jobs. The expectation was to either work or get married. White lace and promises didn’t interest me. I wanted adventure.

Mrs. Siegel was a grand lady who lived in Detroit, summered in Charlevoix, and couldn’t possibly exist without a maid. I applied for the job, and much to my surprise, was hired.

Labor Day approached, and Mrs. Siegel, in the tradition of all rich summer people, prepared to go home. She asked me to move to Detroit and work as her downstairs maid. It beat plucking chickens in Ellsworth or processing pickles twelve hours a day, for twenty-five cents an hour, at the Monarch Canning Factory. So I accepted.

When Mrs. Siegel’s chauffeur picked me up in her black limo, I tried to pretend limos were blase, but my dropped jaw gave me away. Eight hours later, we slid into Mrs. Siegel’s driveway. Her thirty-two room mansion included a ball room, heated bathroom floors, an elevator, and of all things, a goldfish pond. It took me a week to find my way around

We parked, the porch door flew open, and out wiggled “Mommy’s precious little darling.” This snorting, snot-spewing “darling” turned out to be Brooke–a thoroughbred bulldog. Brooke marked his territory by peeing on the drapes. As soon as the coast was clear of Mrs. Siegel, Brook hid around a corner and snarled out at me. I never quite figured out why Mrs. Siegel thought he was such a blue-ribbon prize, but my job was to serve lunch, not judge dog shows.

I worked less than a month when Mrs. Siegel told me she “must have” another maid, so I called my friend, Marie, and gushed about the perfect job. While Marie served Mrs. Siegel breakfast in bed, I polished silver. While I served lunch in the garden room, Marie ironed and took care of Mrs. Siegel’s personal belongings.

We giggled over the hand-painted blue porcelain dish Mrs. Siegel used to camouflage her false teeth. We both served dinner and tried to behave. Behaving was the hard part.

Mrs. Siegel took frequent buying trips to New York. As soon as the limo’s tail lights disappeared around the corner, Marie and I pranced around in Mrs. Siegel’s furs and high-heeled shoes, growled at Brooke, used the front door at our discretion, and did our best to annoy Anna, the German cook.

Anna knew her place in the upper-society pecking order and could never understand why two country bumpkins didn’t get it. But in our heads, we were gentile ladies. After all, we did get paid ten bucks–a week.