Labor Day 2022: A working retrospective

My paternal grandfather, Eric Ericson, came to this country from Sweden with his parents in the early 1900s, maybe to escape a herring famine or something. We’re not sure why they came, but we do know those Swedes love herring.

I know of two jobs my grandfather had. The first was as a teen in Spokane selling shoes in a store. He told me he was fired for telling a woman her feet were larger than the shoe size she insisted she had.

He said he walked down the street to the Old National Bank, where he asked for a job as an errand boy. The hiring fellow asked whether he was married. He said “no,” s...