Some of the ways that I'm writing about had all but disappeared 20 years after the war.

But when I was growing up, most 10- or 11-year-old boys still apprenticed themselves to a master to learn a craft. They learned from their fathers or uncles, or attached themselves to a cabinetmaker, blacksmith, mason or tailor to learn a trade. My father and his brother had undergone the long training process, and then in their turn had trained others. A few girls learned a craft as well, dressmaking and hairstyling being the only things done for money. The weaving and embroidering, the sewing of the linens and trousseau they did for themselves and their sisters.

At the same age, the lucky few of us whose families could afford to send to school began to discipline ourselves for the road ahead, which was like an obstacle course, longer for the university-bound, but arduous for all. The competition was fierce, and we were all aware of the process, the weeding out every few years through written and public oral examinations. If we lacked intelligence, stamina or emotional maturity, we would not succeed.

No distractions were allowed. Italian students, even today, have no extracurricular activities; no social life to speak of compared with American students. They're supposed to defer until later many things that American parents think are a normal part of a young life or essential to their development as good people and responsible citizens. As if learning in other areas -- relationships, earning and managing money, balancing a host of responsibilities -- were not as important or could be learned quickly when one had to. As if one could pick up the same life at 25 that one was offered at 15.

Once you embarked on that journey, you not only put on hold parts of your personal life, you also remained dependent on your family longer than many of your contemporaries, who might be bringing home wages in their teens, or contributing labor to the farm or the family business.

Being a student became your personal and social identity -- an immediate difference between you and your former classmates who were working or learning a trade, and between you and your parents if they were not college-educated. Studying was your occupation. Work, the kind most students do in this country, not only would take time away from your studies, it would lower your social standing. Middle-class aspirations precluded any kind of job you could get without a degree, all the jobs available to students being viewed as menial.

I knew this very well when I came to the States, but I forgot it completely when I wrote home all excited about my first job.

I HAD grown up with the expectation of going to college. My parents, denied this supreme good, passing on their longing to my brother and me. But they died before they could see us on our way, let alone through. We were sent to Pittsburgh to join family on my mother's side.

In America, things were both tougher and easier.

Higher education was not practically free, as it was in Italy, but the system was flexible, and students could, if they wanted, work at their own pace. In addition, there were jobs for students and no biases against working. Since my relatives did not consider sending me to college their responsibility, working my way through was my only way. I was bent on getting an education, and I would have gone back to Italy if this thing that I wanted so much became unattainable.

Having or not having enough money was a worry for several years. I was certainly not earning very much. Even so I remember being thrilled to be joining the working world, and to acquire a freedom that involved a greater range of motion, of experience, and the chance to meet people from a wider segment of the American population.

I was thrilled to come and go anonymously from one end of town to the other. To be free to look and see and do. To be both small and independent, and part of the greater world. To board a streetcar full of tired working people in the evening, myself weary after a day of classes and of work, was to be in the thick of things, moving as the world moved, the streetcar rattling down Forbes or Fifth Avenue an island of light that held us in silent communion, closed in our own thoughts, or blissfully blank, resting our backs, feet, voices, but always together, the knowledge we shared binding us, the darkness keeping us from flying in all directions.

We scattered eventually, a few at a time, but only to gather again in the early morning hours. I was a different person then; I was a schoolgirl hugging a load of books held together by a wide rubber strap, and the other people were different, too. They had a freshly scrubbed look, a spring in their step. And the trolley was different. In the morning the line was thinner between us and the outside world, plainly visible through the windows. We looked out more than we looked in, and only felt close, a community, when something unusual happened: a snow storm, a passenger getting sick, the streetcar getting stuck on Forbes Avenue because of a parked car. Then we turned to each other and talked, as if we were neighbors, as if we knew each other's names.

Some of the boys got good jobs during the summer, working in construction or in the mills. Jobs that paid very well. That work was not available to us girls even if we could do it. At 16, I was given a work permit that did not allow heavy work, and it wasn't until I turned 18 that I was allowed to work late in the evening.

Being under 5 feet 2 and 100 pounds, I was well aware of my limitations. The biggest, though, was always the language. Some jobs, like waiting on tables, required much talking in addition to muscle and stamina. My student jobs were modest, traditional women's work, and did not make me very much money. If there was a minimum wage then, I knew nothing about it.

I learned quickly, though, that what you made was not what you brought home. My eager multiplications and additions before my first paycheck had neglected fundamental subtractions. I might be a resident alien without the right to vote, but from the very beginning I was invested with the right to pay taxes.

MY FIRST job was at the Fashion Hosiery Shop on Forbes Avenue, in the block between Atwood and Oakland. I could walk to work right after my classes in the afternoon, but, being a day-hop, on Saturday I had to take two trolleys to get there.

The store sold stockings, purses and gloves, panties and negligees, bras, girdles and garter belts. We sold more stockings than anything else. At this time, pantyhose did not exist, and seamless stockings were just becoming popular. They did not have elastic at the top. You had to wear some garment with fasteners to hold them up. We were instructed to try to make another sale by offering girdles and garter belts to go with stockings, gloves with purses, panties with bras.

When someone came to buy stockings, we tried to sell at least a box of three of any shade. "This way," we told our customers, "you can make several other pairs with the ones that don't have runs."

We talked about denier, which had to do with the gauge and weight of the nylon: sturdy for work, fine for dress. We showed beige, nude and taupe to the white ladies; cinnamon and paprika to the colored ladies. I had no idea what paprika was, but I loved its prickly sounds. We showed black, white and flesh-colored lingerie to everyone alike. I don't know that anyone took flesh-colored literally. Whose flesh was it, anyway? It wasn't mine, which is creamy white, and one of the other girls was a rosy blond; another, a redhead. Her skin was like bluish-white milk.

We never thought of flesh, just as we never thought of mole when we said taupe. Flesh-colored stood for shades of beige, different with each manufacturer. But some shades, some words had definite connotations. Taupe was an elegant gray-brown. Flesh tones and black were elegant and sexy. Red was risqué and flashy.

I learned a lot of new words at this job, but I could've used more.

Language was more important than I would have liked. I was hard-working and reliable, but I held back because of my English. I had had less than a year of formal instruction; I had been in this country less than a year. Someone saying "So long" could throw me off. So long as what?

One day a lady asked me if we had any "totes," and that was enough to shake what self-confidence I had acquired. I found myself again in a pitch-dark room. A tote? I had no clue. I looked at the counter I was standing behind and named in my head the words I knew -- purse, bag, pocketbook, clutch -- had I forgotten something? I had never heard of totes. As it turned out, one of the other girls came to the rescue and confirmed that we didn't have any. That kind of bag was just becoming fashionable.

I DIDN'T have to worry about the language with my second job, which I got within that same school year.

With a lead from Frank, my friend from St. Justin's who worked in the Periodicals Room, I applied for and got a job as a page at the Carnegie Public Library in Oakland. I couldn't believe my good luck. I who had lived in a house with very few books and in a town without a library was now a vestal of the temple. I had access to thousands of volumes with my free library card, being allowed to take a pile home every week; and, as an insider, I had first pick. Browsing was a perk of being a page.

If there was an Eldorado in America, this was it. A free public library. What more could anyone want?

I worked at the library through my junior year, and for two years my boss was Larry, a Pitt student. When he found out that I was in college, he recommended me for a check-out clerk job, which paid a little more. Until I became clerk, all my co-workers had been students saving money for college. Now I knew that some of my fellow workers worked full time at these minimum-wage jobs.

But there must have been reasons besides economics for students to work, because Larry did not fit the usual pattern. I didn't see how he could've needed the money. While most of us wore inexpensive tops in cotton or acrylic, he had a dazzling wardrobe of sweaters, in every shade that wool could be dyed, soft lively colors, crewnecks worn over oxford shirts with button-down collars.

Still, he worked. He must have felt a sense of responsibility to himself and his family, and his family must have believed in work as a discipline, the experience of work as an education, a social leveler.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.