‘I put my chickens in with the frozen rivets.’

Mary Dacher has worked at a variety of jobs since she started putting tricycles together in her father’s store. At 80, she travels to London, Rome and Dodgers Stadium as volunteer tour director for the Tom McNett Retirement Group at Lockheed. She lives in North Hollywood.

I was born in New York City, on 11th Street, right near the East River. My father always had stores. He bought the first store in Brooklyn when I was 3 years old. By the time I was 6, I could put anything together with my hands--roller skates, tricycles.

When I was 13, my father bought a general store in upper New York State in a small town called East Nassau. We were the only Jewish family there. I was brought up very religiously on both the Old and New Testament. My father made me go to the Episcopal Church every Sunday. He said, “Learn whatever you can.” As a matter of fact, I knew so much about the Old Testament plus the New Testament that I taught the Episcopal children in Sunday School for four solid years when I was a teen-ager. It didn’t do me any harm whatsoever.

My father had eight people working for him in the store in East Nassau, and, when I was a teen-ager, I ran the store for him. When it came to ordering things and keeping the books, I learned by myself. If you learn by yourself, you learn very well. I never had trouble getting a job, even though I’m as short as I am. I never touched five feet.

During the Depression I made tassels for window shades in New York City, and I got 40 cents a gross. I could make three gross a day from six in the morning till midnight. I made a dollar twenty cents a day. By the end of the week, that was pretty good.

I started working at Lockheed in Burbank in 1941. I was lead woman in blueprint control. I bet I trained over 2,000 young girls who came in. I had suggested putting boxes out in the plant for dropping off and picking up blueprints. I had messenger girls on bicycles who would make the rounds.

In the ‘50s we had a chicken ranch in Canoga Park. We had to sell out, and a buyer offered 10 cents apiece for the 5,000 chickens we had left. I told him to get off my property. I started running ads and sold the laying hens to a chicken ranch for two dollars each. At Lockheed, I put up little cards saying I had fryers and stewing hens for sale. I would stay up until 2 in the morning cleaning chickens, then take six or a dozen or two dozen chickens to work with me in the morning. I’d sell some to people leaving from the night shift, and the others I’d take into the plant. At Lockheed there was a place where I could keep them because there were certain rivets that had to be frozen. I put my chickens in with the frozen rivets. It took a long time, but I finally sold all those chickens, and it brought in about $10,000.

I retired in 1967, and, in 1972, just after my husband and I returned from the Far East, the retirement group at Lockheed asked me to be the tour director. I’d never led a tour. I decided I had to have a driver who keeps his eyes straight in front of him. I always sit in back of the driver to see if he is doing something that he shouldn’t do.

The best thing about tour directing is getting a full bus. When I don’t get a full bus, that means canceling out or making up the difference myself. Once you start canceling out, you’re licked, so I make up the difference. So it will be a few dollars more that I won’t pay the IRS.

I get a letter from the Dodgers telling me when they’re having the opening game. We have to send in the full amount for those tickets in December. Some of the people in the club wait until April, a week before we’re going, to pay. I have to pay out $750 in December because I like the best seats in the house. If you’re going, you might as well go first class.

After 14 years I’ve been all over. Santa Barbara to Las Vegas and New Zealand, Alaska, the Nordic countries, Europe, Mexico, and I’ve done 16 cruises. It’s beautiful, because everyone is so eager to go and have a wonderful time. You just can’t imagine. I’ve got a lovely group of people.