Salt Lake City- the "Beehive House"- a boarding house (breakfast and dinner but no lunch) subsidized by the LDS church for Mormon girls (mostly from out of town who had come to Salt Lake to go to the LDS high school or to work). It was cheap and "safe"- $21.00 a month and live in "house mothers" who kept a strict eye on the girls. Any dates were limited to the parlor to either wait for or talk to the girls.
I moved there because it was all I could afford and it was only 1/2 block from the Salt Lake Clinic where I had just been given a job.
After going into every shop, store, office, and place of business for 6 days a week, all day long, from the end of May to October, in the entire downtown area of Salt Lake, I was very discouraged. It was 1933, the depths of the "Great Depression". I was told by everyone that they had no jobs to give but if they did they would hire a man with a family. There were well-dressed men standing on street corners selling apples at 5 cents each to make even a little money. After those 4 months of job hunting I heard that the young woman who had charge of the X-ray dept. for the Salt Lake Clinic had a nervous breakdown after being there for a year. The one who had the job before her had also had a nervous breakdown after a year in the job. I figured I was tough enough to handle it but I had never seen an X-ray machine. I was young, nervy (= desperate) enough and had nothing to lose so I applied for the job. The clinic was composed of 13 of the most prominent doctors in Salt Lake. After 2 interviews I was told the job was mine. Then I told them they'd have to train me. Dr. Snow, who had charge of personnel said, "What do you mean we'll have to train you?" . I told him I'd never seen an X-ray machine. He stared at me a minute and then, angrily, demanded to know why I had wasted his time with the interviews. He was on the Board of Regents at the university so I told him he could look up my record there, that I was a fast learner, a hard worker and would made them the best X-ray technician they had ever had. (Fortunately, I was 19 yrs. old, slim and had a reputation for being attractive to the opposite sex). After a few minutes of staring at me he said they wouldn't pay me while they trained me. I told him they would have to because the cheapest place I could find board and room was the Beehive House at $21.00 a month and no lunch. He said they would only pay me $25.00 a month. He thought I'd refuse it but I didn't. In 2 months they raised it. In the next year they gave me 4 raises.
My office was a very large room containing my desk (in the middle of the room), illuminated viewing cases along 2 sides of the room, a stereoscopic viewer on the 3rd wall, and files and a door to the storage vault on the 4th wall. The vault was a large room with reinforced concrete walls, no windows and a heavy steel door- X-ray film is inflammable and could be explosive. Non-current X-ray were filed there. I also had 2 large X-ray rooms- 1 with machines for soft tissue (G.I.) and fluoroscoping and 1 for chest X-rays and bone tissue. A third room had kidney machines (dyes were used and time sequences. I had a large dark room for changing and loading film in the cassettes, developing and "fifing" the exposed films (I had to make up the solutions of both the Developer and the Fifer) and preliminary vieiwing, as well as drying the finished X-rays. There was a lead lined control booth with a huge open switch-board with copper switches, a rheostat, and a pendulum timer. I also had 4 individual dressing rooms with a coat, chair and window in each room. Connecting all this was a very wide corridor lined with chairs for patients to be taken care of.
As I look back on it- it was almost unbelievable that they were willing to train a 19 yr. old girl and then, within 2 months, put her in charge of the department with 2 nurses I could call on to help when things got really busy.
The clinic was considered the best in the area and we had patients sent to us from all over Utah and the surrounding states.
Before I left to get married, I had talked them into all new X-ray machines which would "up" the quality because the machines they had were getting out-dated. I never got to use the beautiful new machines.
During the first 2 mos. on the job (on the $25.00 a month salary and no lunch) I discovered that, at lunchtime, if I drank as much water as I could, then ate 6 single soda crackers (from a large box of them I kept in my desk drawer), went for a walk, and then drank as much more water as possible that I could "hang on" till dinner. I weighed 120 lbs. when I started working there and lost 6 lbs. during those first 2 mos.- it would have been more except that my boy friends took me out to lunch once in awhile.
Fortunately for me, there was a Radiological society in Salt Lake which the clinic suggested I join. The president was a 35 yr. old bachelor, Elmer Luke, who had charge of the X-ray dept. for the huge new Veteran's Hospital. He volunteered to help me learn. Several times a week for the first 4-5 months I was at the clinic he would pick me up after work, take me to dinner (as his guest), and then take me back to the clinic for teaching sessions. ("Young Dr. Snow" loaned me his key. His father, "the Dr. Snow" questioned this at first but soon approved). Luke would teach me techniques- exact body positions for various bone and soft tissue X-rays and ideal machine settings on my machines and ideal timings for my equipment. He also taught me the finer points of film developing and "fifing" and darkroom management. He was expert, patient, and generous with his time and teaching. Because of him I was able to keep my promise to be a "quick learner". I proved a little less than grateful enough, however, when he asked me to marry him. He was an appreciated teacher but not a potential husband. That was the end of the teachings. By then I had learned a great deal and knew where to find other sources of information.
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