Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Hughes: Do you recall how much you were earning at the P-I?
Dimmick: Well, I started at 60 cents an hour.
Hughes: And when you left what had you moved up to?
Dimmick: I don’t remember, not very much.
Hughes: Sixty cents an hour. Well, that 60 cents an hour probably went quite a ways, if
you were paying $47 a semester to go to law school.
Dimmick: And I wasn’t even paying that; my folks were paying that.
Hughes: Were books a big expense in those days?
Dimmick: Not as bad as they are now.
Hughes: It’s incredible, isn’t it?
Dimmick: It’s terrible. And we used to turn them in, you know, and get money back again.
I don’t remember any great expense for anything in those days. I was able to always have
money.
Hughes: What was the most rigorous, fascinating thing in law school for you?
Dimmick: Surviving the tests. (laughs) You know they gave us those tests by number. And
they’d post the grades.
Hughes: There was never a name attached to the test. You were just a number so the
grading was all blind?
Dimmick: Theoretically. …Those professors knew what they were doing.
Hughes: Did you type your tests?
Dimmick: No, we did the long-handed blue books.
Hughes: Charlie Smith said that he typed his.
Dimmick: Yes, he was able to do that. There was a special room you could type some tests
in, but none of us did it in my class.
Hughes: Charlie was a champion typist.
Dimmick: Oh, I know.
Hughes: Charlie Smith is a man of parts, isn’t he? He takes shorthand like a champ. He
types like a champ. He’s a pianist.
Dimmick: I know. It’s just amazing.
21