Edith the Company Recordkeeper

Here's another little piece in what is becoming a collection of "Pro Corporation" inspired writings. This one I wrote this morning as I read the obituaries and thought of the times that I saw "worked for x # of years at Pro Brush in Florence" listed among the other notable moments in the deceased person's life. While cleaning out the old Pro building I did find about a dozen or so scrapbooks with various articles spanning decades. (I donated them to the Northampton Historical Society, they have a whole Pro Brush collection.) I'm not sure whether I should be embarrassed by the fact that after I wrote this (and re-read it), it made me teary-eyed.

EDITH

In the days when it was her job, Edith may have complained about her domineering boss or the poor selection of lunch items in the cafeteria, but never did she feel anything but pleasure at scouring the newspapers for wedding announcement, baby births, news stories and even obituaries relating the company she worked for. She enjoyed that task so much that forty years later, no longer working, but still complaining about the inadequate lunch menu at her current residence; she still takes time to search the papers -- mostly the obituaries these days -- for any mention of her former employer and the hundreds of employees who worked there. The company itself had been sold off two or three times since she retired. Today, the impressive old brick mill sits abandoned with hardly anyone giving it much thought. But Edith still remembers, alone at the Nursing Home where her family never visits and all of her friends have already passed. She sits in the atrium with her stack of papers, running her finger down each line to keep her place with the magnifying glass. It's a good week when she can ask the staff to help her clip an article and then carefully glue it into her scrapbooks.