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Nothing much to say. My mom was 17 when was born. She talked her way onto a sewing machine at Janzen Swimwear then Columbia Sportswear and then various other piecework shops of various quality. I jokingly call them sweatshops and they may have been miserable but just seemed normal to me at the time.
As a white woman doing piece work in these places she was kind of an oddity. Vietnamese boat women were a large portion of the workforce. When she worked at smaller places it wasn't uncommon for her to put in long hours and then me and my sisters would frequently come along. So that was my exposure to Vietnamese food when young. And it was also great to play sword fights using the ten foot long tubes that are at the center of industrial fabric rolls.
It also means that home sewing machines look awfully pissant to me since even at home she used cast off industrial machines.
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