State

Miss Lula Belle Is Seeing Tilings According lo Miss l.ula Belle it jusl natural¬ ly isn't proper for women to drive trucks, read meters, or to run grocery stores. But they are doing it and doing a good job. MISS I.ULA BELLE comes un¬ der the classification of what at one time was known ns “a typically Southern Indy." She was horn in eastern North Carolina n few years after the Civil War. Her parents owned considerable land and Miss Lula Hello had plenty of servants to wait upon her. “Ladies,” in those days, weren’t supposed to work. Miss Lula Belle still recalls the raised eyebrows and whispered remarks which ensued when a prominent lawyer in her town engaged a woman as a stenographer. It just naturally wasn't considered proper in those days for a woman to stay in the same room with a man throughout tho entire day. But that was as nothing when com¬ pared with what Miss Lula Belle is seeing in Asheville these days. Take what happened a few days ago, as an illustration. Woman Truck Driver Miss Lula Belle and I were parked in front of a department store in Asheville. A large truck drove up in front of us. A woman got out, went around to the rear of the truck, took out a large package and carried it into the store. “My, my!" was all that Miss Lula Belle could say, as she reached hur¬ riedly for a camphor bottle. “What won't they be doing next!” The woman was Mrs . Charles Garrcn, tho lirst woman to be em¬ ployed as a truck driver in Asheville by the Southeastern Hailway Express Company. She manages to do her work alone and without any difficulty whatsoever on the lighter runs, but when there are heavy pieces of ex¬ press to bo handled, she is given a helper. Jn addition to her duties as a truck driver, Mrs. Garrcn works at the company's warehouse as a freight and express dispatcher, and also docs general fill-in work. A little while later, the same day, Miss Lula Belle gasped again. We drove into the tilling station that is operated by Mrs. O. A. Shillinglaw, the first woman in this section to take over the management of a station. She By THELMA VLB ALII cheeks tires, changes oil and does ev¬ erything else about servicing a car except greasing it. She admits that she doesn't know the required tech¬ nique for that as yet, so she leaves the job up to her Negro attendant to do. Her work, incidentally, reminds one of the cartoon that appeared in a magazine recently. One woman re¬ marks to her friend, while watching a woman attendant wiping off n cus¬ tomer's windshield: “Look at her showing off! Why at home, before she got this job, you could scarcely see through her windows!” Miss Lula Belle asked Mrs. Shill- inglaw a trifle reproachfully whether she wouldn't rather ho doing house¬ keeping than running a tilling sta¬ tion. “It boats housekeeping all to pieces because it isn’t such hard work," was the cheerful reply. "It is more inter¬ esting, too, because you meet so many different people. At home, you’ve got to be by yourself all day long, after the children go to school, and it gets mighty monotonous." In the Forestry Service Miss Lula Belle has also discov¬ ered that a woman is now being em¬ ployed by the State Forestry Service iu the Asheville district to "man” a forest-tire lookout tower. She is Mrs. С. M. Gaddy, tho mother of live chil¬ dren, and she is stationed on top of Spivey Mountain. During the fire season, she and her small son, Jimmy (aged 12) live in a cabin on top of the mountain. Mr. Gaddy brings them supplies. Mrs. Gaddy is familiar with the territory around her tower and is holding down the job in an extremely efficient manner, according to what her supervisor says. And my elderly friend was like¬ wise astounded when she was told re¬ cently that for the first time in the history of the North Carolina Fire College and Drill School, held not long ago in Charlotte, Miss Nancy Poteat, of Black Mountain, was one of the five hundred attending who were presented certificates. Her father is fire chief in her home town. On top of that, Miss Lula Belle has read in the papers that the Civil Aeronautics Board recently reported another “first" for women. Mi An- geline Harris, «if Rutherford County, has applied for authority to operate an airline. It covers proposed routes which would link 73 towns in North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, using helicopters and autogiros. as well as conventional airplanes. Mias Harris is a pilot in her own right and a member of the Civil Air Patrol. One morning, not long ago, this ad¬ vertisement appeared in the Asheville paper: “Wanted — two women lictween the ages of 18 and 35 for reading meters.” Then followed requirements and a re¬ quest that photograph ho enclosed with the application. Also Meter Readers Mi>s Lula Belle didn't wo the ad¬ vertisement, hut several days later, she answered the front doorbell, thinking that someone was com¬ ing to pay her a call. A smartly attired young woman was standing on the porch with a note-book and pencil in her hand. She asked : “Will your dog bite?" Miss Lula Belle replied in the negative. The young lady then announced that she had come to read tho meter — and she went downstairs to attend to the job. Miss Lula Belle shook her head in perplexity. She had boon accustomed, during the last year or so, to lean on n man to help her agonize over her ration coupons, but such is the ease no longer. The new manager of the Dixie Home store, where Miss Lula Belle trades, is Mrs. William Duncan. She has had several months of training in the chain-grocery-store bus in C" and is well qualified. When she summons a taxicab, Miss Lula Belle has learned not to be sur¬ prised when Miss Ollio Rosen, of the Alley Taxicab Company at the Union ( Continued on радо twenty-two)