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I'm Just A Gal' In A Cashier's Cage

Creator: Lillian K. Donovan (author)
Date: November 1933
Publication: The Polio Chronicle
Source: Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation Archives


Page 1:

1  

Thanks much for your nice letter and about me writing the column. I'll give you the horrible details; you can supply the rest.

2  

I am walking all over on my crutches. . .take a taxi every morning to work, and by a special pass given me by the Custodian's Department, of the United States Post Office Department, of the United States Post Office Building (the Internal Revenue Office is located in this building), I go through the tunnel used by the mail trucks. In that way I avoid fifteen steps to get into the building. They leave a place every morning for the taxi to drive alongside the platform. I just slide out onto my crutches and walk about twenty feet to an elevator and go to the fifth floor to my desk.

3  

I am assistant cashier of the Internal Revenue Service of Chicago. This office is the largest office outside of Washington, D. C., and takes in thirty counties in the State of Illinois. The office employs around three hundred employees. The collector is the honorable Carter H. Harrison, one of the most outstanding Democratic leaders, and Mayor of Chicago five different terms.

4  

We have an employees' cafeteria on the same floor. My hours are from nine o'clock until four-thirty, half an hour for lunch, half a day on Saturdays.

5  

The day I took the oath of office, September 20, I had to have the taxi driver carry me up the steps so I could take the elevator; that of course was before they gave me the special pass.

6  

It surely is swell working for Uncle Sam and you surely experience a wonderful thrill and sense of loyalty that you have never known, it seems. To be a working "gal" is all so swell. I just love it.

7  

Say, too, never let steps stop a polio. The floors in the lobby are marble and not being used to marble halls, I was scared to death for a few days, of slipping, but who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

8  

I am going to a tea party today at five, given by none other than our Lucile Daniels and Elizabeth Ann Lowe.

9  

Love to everyone.

10  

Cheerio En Heigh Ho!

11  

Donny

[END]