Chapter Four, Part 3. Betrayed by a Plagiarist.

(c.) Shirley, Ann, and me, Christmas 1954 . (top.) "I know my rights." (bottom) "Who are all those others?" From "The Lonely Ones" © William Steig, 1942




One day a year was designated “Meet Henry North Day.” He was the President of Met Life. Each department was allotted a quarter of an hour to say "hello" and shake hands with the big guy. At nine-forty five, Katie gathered us together. All I could think of was I’d miss coffee break and a smoke. We trooped on to the elevators and rode down to Mr. North’s suite. A slender man in the requisite dark, three-piece suit officiously ushered us into Mr. North's thickly carpeted office, furnished in heavy mahogany, upholstered chairs, and drapes. Katie lined us up in a curve, just inside the door.


Henry North, in a blue-black, pin-striped suit, maroon and navy striped tie, and white shirt, heaved himself up from behind a desk the size of the deck of an aircraft carrier, and shuffled towards us in shiny, black wing-tips. He resembled all the caricatures I had ever seen depicting corporate “fat cats": literally fat, and bald, with white hair, a pink face, rimless glasses on a little pug nose. Starting at the door, he moved along the line, exuding an aura of the incredibly rich; he shook everyone’s hand with a big, pink, fleshy one. Speaking softly, almost shyly, he surprised me by greeting me and the rest of us by name. (Since then, I have been aware that a company's topmost men and women have the ability to know the names of every employee from file clerk on up - - an ability not shared by middle-management.) As we filed out the door, on the way back to our department, another group waited outside. This would go on all day. Though it meant doubling up with another department, Katie let us have our break anyway, which put the cafeteria workers in a tiff.


Katie palled around with Anita, a fluffy-haired brunette, about the same height as she, but thinner. Anita looked like Ida Lupino, though not as worldly. She wore form-fitting suits with peplum jackets. Her husband drove a bread truck. She was very upset when the teamsters went on strike. We were too because stores ran out of bread and other kinds of food. We liked Anita, she was friendly and seemed to sympathize with us about our jobs where Katie came off as remote. Or, maybe we liked Anita because she wasn't our boss. One lunch break, Katie deigned to eat with us. Somehow the conversation turned to opera. I mentioned that my Dad could sing all the tenor arias. “My mother and father’s favorite singers,” I bragged, “are Jan Peerce (I pronounced “Jan” with the “J” like jam) and Lili Pons.” She threw back her bleached-blond head , looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Oh, yes, Jan Peerce.” She pronounced “Jan” like “yawn.” Everyone at the table shot me side-ways looks. “Oh,” I said, “that’s how you pronounce it. I didn’t know. My parents always pronounced it ‘Jan’.” Then she launched into the story of how she met her husband: She was coming off a boat from Sweden, knew no English. He was standing on the dock, waiting for an arrival from the same ship. Their eyes met and that was that. Two weeks later they eloped. “How romantic,” one of us said. We all lapsed into silence and bent to our veal paprika. Katie dabbed her lips, excused herself, pushed back her chair, and left. I swore I saw tears behind her glasses.


To increase my job skills (and prove to myself I could better my high school score of -6wpm), I signed up for a typing class at night and, to create a balance, one on still-life drawing. Harry started complaining that I wasn't paying him enough attention when I was doing art homework in the evenings and weekends, so he began an affair with a woman from his office. I left him and went to live temporarily with Shirley who shared an apartment on Pine Street with her friend Ann, until Harry and I could sort things out. A few months later, Harry’s paramour dumped him and we got back together. We moved to a small, studio apartment on Fulton near 24th Avenue, across from Golden Gate Park (a made-over garage, really, with blue windows; you can still see it from the bus). Then he volunteered for the army. He wanted to join, he said, to avoid being drafted in case there was another war. While he was at boot camp, I discovered two things: One - - that a hand-written paragraph in a notebook that he said was his - - which I thought was incredible - - he had plagiarized from a Ray Bradbury short story. Two - -I didn’t love him anymore, I pitied him; when love turns to pity, it’s over. On a visit to my Mom's in Portland, I met another man, Ed, who was from the Bay area, too. We met up when we returned and I left Met Life. Seven years would pass before I would work a full-time job, except for that of wife and mother.



Chapter Five: Harry’s parents arrange to have our marriage annulled. As a mother of two - an infant and a toddler - - with Ed, I work evenings at movie theatres. At one, my boss - -a dead ringer for the bad witch in “The Wizard of Oz” - - fires me for waltzing in the lobby with the carpet sweeper to a film score.

Chapter Four, Part 2: Still Bored . . . Still Compensating. . . .

Shirley's boyfriend, Dan, me and Harry. Christmas 1954 at our Castro Street apartment.



To psych ourselves up before coming to work, Donna, who lived on Russian Hill, and I, in my Castro Street apartment, would listen to Red Blanchard, an out-there, early-morning DJ. As part of his shtick, he sang this song about a worm who made a sound, “the weirdest sound around. . .” and he’d imitate the noise: a nasal, guttural “Ree raaa,” which sounded to us like “green rec (green requisition).” So whenever we wanted a file drawer that was missing, or cards from file drawers, we’d ask Rhonda in the voice of Red Blanchard’s worm, for a “ree raaa,” look at each other and laugh. Was Rhonda rolling her eyes? We couldn’t tell - - their being so tiny behind her thick lenses.

At Met, we were not allowed out of the building (except on payday). Something having to do with our Workmens (now “Workers ”) Compensation classification. To make up for it, the company ran a subsidized cafeteria with a choice of entrée, desserts, soups, and salads (the dot-commers think they’re the ones who started this?) Our cost - - a dollar and change - - was deducted from our paychecks. Blacks- - Negroes, or colored people, as they were called back then - - made up the staff. They also ran the elevators. Eddie Alley, brother of the San Francisco jazz bassist, Vernon Alley, was one. Eddie played several instruments and often joined his brother on gigs.

Eisenhower in the White House affected our bi-weekly paycheck. Mine went up from something like $28.50 to $35.00. We got paid on Fridays, so the company extended our half-hour lunch period by fifteen minutes so we could tromp down California Street to the Bank of America on Kearney to deposit or cash our checks. Afterwards, a few girls in my department would head directly to the company store, which sold notions, stationary, Kleenex, lighter fluid, cigarettes, bath and beauty supplies, snacks, magazines, etc., and also gave credit. Some owed it an entire pay check.

In 1954, following Eisenhower's desegregation of schools as a result of the Supreme Court's decision on Brown vs. the Board of Education, Met Life integrated its personnel. Blacks who worked in the cafeteria were encouraged to apply for office positions. Several did, but many stayed behind the steam tables. I asked Katie if any of us could apply for cafeteria jobs when blacks were hired as clerks. She looked at me as though I were speaking a foreign language. I didn't press the issue. An older, black women Ella, was hired for our department. She was tall, taller than Katie, and graceful. She had graying brown hair - - straightened and curled at the ends - - and wore tailored shirt-dresses and low heels. She sat across the aisle from me. We became friends and I socialized with her and her husband, Willie, and some of their friends. Her daughter and I landed tickets to “Pajama Game” which were extremely hard to get, but we went on a Tuesday night when some popular TV show was on. I didn’t have a TV, so . . . . One Monday, Ella came to work with a sunburned nose. When I asked her about it, she laughed and said, “Hey, honey, we get sunburned, too. Didn’t you know that?” She explained that they had gone to a barbeque up near Sacramento over the weekend. Whenever I started to talk about things we did together outside of work, she hushed me up, fearing we both could lose our jobs.

Laura got married and left the company. Donna, who was single and about my age, just up and left. She was sort of like Barbara at the toy store in that you never knew if she was just getting to work after being out all night. She’d show up in a black cocktail dress - - a floral-print, silk sheath. She hung out with jazz musicians and dropped names: “Dizzy and me . . .,” and, “Oh, John - - you know, Coltrane? - - he told me what inspired him to sneak a riff from ‘Petrushka’ into his sax solo on ‘Roun’ Midnight’. ” I would lose track of her over the years, but somehow she always came back into my life. Laura, who now lives in Colorado, and I stayed friends.

After they left, I got to know Shirley, a tall (everyone seems tall to me; I'm 5'2"), gangly, mysterious girl. She was twenty - - older than me; the only person I knew who went weekly to a shrink for analysis on her "meaningless life." Her problem, she confessed, was that her father had wanted a boy and had the name "Stanley" picked out. When she was born, he insisted she be named "Stanley," anyway. Her mother wouldn’t go along; they fought and soon divorced. Shirley hated her name; it was so common, she said. “Not if you’re a man,” I countered (a male Met elevator operator was named Shirley). She felt responsible for her parents' breakup. She had tried to commit suicide once and said she’d try again if she didn’t make something of her life by her up-coming 21st birthday, mainly have a poem published in the New Yorker. When the day came, I wondered if she'd show up for work or had gone ahead and killed herself. Her desk was a few rows ahead of mine. The next morning, I was happy to see her there; her shrink had talked her out of it.

We loved New Yorker cartoonist William Steig’s depressing black humor; a very dark precursor to Schultz’s “Charlie Brown.” A favorite was a line-drawing of a figure crouching sadly in a box. The caption read: “Mother loved me, but she died.” We bought his book “The Lonely Ones” and read it during breaks. Steig created the character “Shrek of movie and Broadway musical fame. Another was the humorist Roger Price's self-illustrated books spoofing philosophy; he also legitimized the art of doodling. I once demonstrated his philosophy of “avoidance” by reclining on the floor outside the company store as co-workers stepped carefully around me. A department manager happened by, looked down, and actually smiled. I felt he knew I was acting out Roger Price. One of Shirley's friends told me that I reminded her of the comic Phyllis Diller, a headliner at the Hungry I and Purple Onion. I had not seen her perform, so didn’t know if it was a compliment. Later, when I did, I got that the resemblance had nothing to do with my wit, but the way we laughed. We discussed Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" and the works of Carl Jung (who had just been published in English). Deep.

Shirley started dating Dan, a big, healthy-looking Navy man. We became a foursome - - me, Harry, Shirley and Dan. Unfortunately, Dan was diagnosed with cancer and given five years. Shirely would go to the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital* in the Oakland Hills to visit him during his radiation treatments.

Next up: Chapter Four, Part 3: Henry North Day. Katie's sympathetic friend. A social faux pas. Katie reveals her soft side. Betrayed by a plagiarist. Harry joins the Army. I meet another man and say goodbye to Harry, Met Life, and boredom.

*Oak Knoll opened in 1942, serving wounded WWII, Korean, and Vietnam sailors, until it closed in 1996 with a military ceremony (L. Ron Hubbard had been a patient.) Lehman Brothers bought the property for $100 million, intending to develop it with Sun Cal. But after starting demolition in 2008, their plans were quashed when Lehman went under that fall. They abandoned the project, leaving the multi-acre site and its buildings in a mess of debris. Vandals, drug addicts, and homeless squatters took over, further decimating the property. Plans are afoot to clean it up and resume work.