Normally, I'm not one to give advice here, but this time I'll make an exception. Call them words to our recent high school and college graduates.
In your endeavors when you're in the public eye, always strive to look, speak and do your best. You never know who may be watching you, and a good impression may bring many benefits later on.
Anne and Ruth Rose would agree, especially with what took place for them in the summer of 1947.
The sisters were working in the hay field one afternoon at their family farm on Roses Brook Road in Hobart. The phone rang, and their mother called out to them that a representative of the Borden Company wanted to speak with one of the sisters. Anne took the call, and seemingly out of the blue, they were offered an attractive four-week summer job.
Borden's had several creameries in our region at the time. Back in 1939, Borden's had introduced Elsie the Borden Cow as a cartoon logo for their products, as well as a friendly live cow at the New York World's Fair. Borden's needed two girls to accompany Elsie on a traveling public relations tour in the summer of '47, as previous summer tours had been very popular.
Today, Ruth Many, who still resides in Hobart, said she was puzzled how she and Anne had gotten the call. They hadn't applied nor inquired about the job. It seems Borden's had asked at Cornell University if they knew two girls who would be willing to travel with Elsie the Cow. A professor at Cornell knew Ruth and Anne from judging the family's Brown Swiss cattle at the Delaware County Fair. It had to have been a great presentation, as the professor suggested the Rose sisters for the job.
Ruth and Anne were ecstatic about this great opportunity. Their mother wasn't as excited, what with two young country girls going to New York City and then Toronto. Borden's assured Mrs. Rose that the girls would be well-chaperoned.
Off they went to New York as Borden's newest "Herdsgirls." Ruth said they got $50 a week for their work, which she and Anne thought was a lot of money at the time. Borden's paid all expenses.
For two weeks, Elsie was at Macy's Department Store at Herald Square, on the fifth floor in the toy department. The Rose sisters' jobs were to groom, milk and keep Elsie comfortable. The display was a giant boudoir, which attracted a lot of attention. It was "femininely bovine" in appearance, as Elsie was in her four-poster bed with frills at the top and bottom. Bovine relative pictures covered the wall. There was a playpen with a 65-lb. calf named "Junior," and all décor had clever bovine references. Elsie even had a pink telephone, with a phone number: MOO-2694.
Ruth noted how most of the people she spoke with in Macy's had never seen a cow, being from New York City, so she and Anne got plenty of amusing questions and comments, such as:
"You know what? You get Jersey milk from that kind of a cow." "Is that gum that she's chewing?" "I guess she doesn't bathe; you must have to take her down to the beach."
Ruth recalled how each afternoon, they'd take Elsie out of the boudoir for some exercise around the fifth floor at Macy's. Elsie would be just fine until she came near the toy boats, and for some reason would balk. Not long ago, Ruth and her husband, Floyd, went back to Macy's and found that the fifth floor is now all shoes.
"They treated us like royalty," Ruth Many said of Borden's. "They held up traffic at Times Square so they could take pictures of us in the middle of the street walking Elsie."
After a day at Macy's, it wasn't uncommon to walk Elsie to a nearby auditorium for a live radio show with a studio audience. A trio of Borden's singers would open the show with the words, "Say you, can you moo, can you moo in a rhythm too?"
After Macy's, the Rose sisters and Borden's traveled by train to Toronto for a two-week stay at the Canadian National Exhibition.
When the exhibition closed on Sept. 6, 1947, a memorable summer job came to a close, and the Rose sisters went back to their fall semesters in college, armed with some incredible stories to share of what they did over summer vacation.
Next Monday, a new furniture factory opened in Walton.
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City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com.
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