Author: Phyllis Jean Green

In September, 1950, I entered Park College in Parkville, Missouri. The school had a great liberal arts program, but I was there for one reason. C-h-e-a-p. Student labor kept tuition down to around $400 a semester. No student was exempt, so elitism never reared its head. Besides, I was used to working. By age l2, I had baby-sitting, dog-walking and cleaning the odd apartment in my vita. (Walking Buster, a mastiff nearly as tall as I, had earned me a bright, shiny quarter.)

Slightly before the legal age, I had begun clerking at a small Thrifty Drug in Springfield, Illinois. Can’t say I enjoyed every minute, but I liked working. True, a brief stint on Park’s breakfast crew proved disastrous. Do not ask me to do anything at 5:00 in the morning, let alone chase runny oatmeal. Fortunately, I and scores of breakfast eaters were saved by an opening in the English Department. 

Pay rolled into tuition. Fair enough. But gosh, Thrifty Drug had been paying me a whopping 30 cents an hour!  “Plus commissions,” I was quick to add. “Er, on some items.” “Get a discount!” I was less forthcoming about expenditures. Working Cosmetics tempted me with lipstick two-for-ones. Every girl had to have Maybelline mascara. Cologne smelled soooo good. The pouting models on posters convinced me to buy wrinkle cream! Still, I managed to buy a couple skirts and blouses at Lerner’s and treat myself to greasy spoon spaghetti every couple months in lieu of ‘baloney’ on Holsum.

My mother was constantly putting off collectors. My father had a new business and a new family. Money was not just tight. It was non-existent. My roommate and I solved one of our problems by smoking what we called “O-P’s.” For those of you who don’t know, stands for Other People’s cigarettes.

Sometime during our sophomore year, a well-meaning student gave us a cigarette-rolling machine. By machine, I mean four or five pieces of bent tin. By cigarette, I mean, a mashed and wrinkled, more-than-half-empty paper tube with tobacco spewing from it at both ends.

Suffice it to say, Roomie and I did not abandon O.P.’s. Books could be traded for ‘new’ ones at the beginning of each semester. Solved that. A lot of people would say at this point that  “Those were the happiest days of my life.” For a variety of reasons,  they were not.   But I will always be grateful to people who make it possible for poor students to get a good education. Bit of nostalgia nudges when I remember the days when an O.P. tasted like manna. aven’t smoked for years, and no longer miss it, but it is amazing how fantastic a small, flat fountain Coke and a stale, mashed cigarette can taste.

To borrow a term from the future: a w e s o m e !!