Mom and Mr. Tupper

I wanna say this is Mom's college picture

circa late 1950's

Back in the day before marriage and kids, Mom worked for the United States Patent Office. It's no surprise that Mom excelled at what she did. Mom's job was to review the paperwork/artwork of people who were applying for a patent in the category of containers and closures. Mom would research similar patents to see if a person's idea was truly original or not. Through Mom's drive for efficiency, she was able to review two times the amount of patent paperwork than her coworkers. Mom didn't play, even back in the day.

At this time, Mom was renting at an apartment house in a not-so-great neighborhood in Sliver Spring. Mom found a place near Hyattsville, but the landlord wouldn't rent to her because she was not married. She looked at a couple other places around that area but was turned down with the same excuse. Dad saw a new apartment complex that was being built next to the Department of Agriculture's farmland in Beltsville and encouraged Mom to look into it. Mom spoke to the manger, letting him know her difficulties in finding a place to rent due to her marriage status. The manager told Mom he didn't care if she was married or not and for her to pick whichever unit she wanted to rent once the building was complete. Mom chose an end unit on street level that had a patio off the back. Dad recalled the time just after they were married when two of Mom's sisters, he believes it was Katherine and Beatty,  came to visit. The apartment was small, so Katherine and Beatty ended up sleeping in lawn chairs in the living room. Days were simpler, and much more uncomfortable, back then.

One of the patents in which Mom reviewed was for Tupperware. Click HERE to find out more about the Tupperware of today. Actually, this morning CBS Sunday Morning aired a segment on the history of Tupperware and spoke of Mr. Tupper himself, the inventor of the famous food storage containers.

Well. Mom knew Mr. Tupper very well since she was the reviewer of his patents. At that time, the invention/prototype had to be hand delivered to the patent office in order to be properly reviewed. As Dad tells it, Mr. Tupper would personally come to the patent office to deliver samples and check on the progress of his various patents. He was sweet on Mom and would always bring a bag of samples of his products for her to take home. I can remember having Tupperware around the kitchen growing up but never thought anything of it. Dad's final comment in telling the tale of the Mr. Tupper episode of Mom's life was, chuckling lightly, "Ha! We had a hell of a lot of Tupperware." As reported this evening, there are still pieces of the original sample Tupperware at Dad's today...perhaps they are museum worthy.

Hey hey. I just googled Mr. Tupper. You can read for yourself HERE what Wikipedia has to say about the inventor of Tupperware. Looks like Mr. Tupper sold his Tupperware company and bought an island off the coast of Costa Rica. Now THAT is a hell of a lot of Tupperware, my friends.