CHAPTER 11, Part 3, I offer a glimpse into some personal issues. I ponder giving Transamerica two weeks’ notice.

 I'd been with Transamerica less than a year.      The insurance agency, S & E, was a very small, four person office- five counting me if I decide to take the job.  The thought of making more money and getting off measly government food stamps felt right; I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was a catch to making such a move.

 

Back then, one’s food stamp allotment was not mailed to you, or, like today- loaded on to a debit card.  You had to go down to the AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) office to pick it up. The building housing the office was in the Tenderloin, a grimy neighborhood of SRO hotels and greasy spoon restaurants, where prostitutes, the poor, the alcoholics, addicts, and unemployed hung out on the sidewalks,  in front of grocery and liquor stores, and all-night cafeterias. 

People standing in line for AFDC allotment check.

Bureaucrats who ran the program kept changing the location from one cramped space in one Tenderloin building to another.  A uniformed person acted as a monitor whose job it was to rail at us and keep us lined up.  They cued you up single file in a long, long line that ran for a half-block in front of the building then snaked around the side into a narrow, dark passageway between buildings.  You could barely form two lines but didn’t want to because you’d brush against the seeping wet, brick walls on either side, taking care not to step in oily puddles.   People jostled one another; those that came late tried to cut in. Invariably, from in front, a monitor would shout out information- like, who was to go inside next- but those of us standing in the back often couldn’t hear because of the traffic noise and people talking, shouting, and laughing.  You were ignored if you asked that they repeat what was said.  Would they ever deign to walk down the line to deliver the message?   Never.  Once inside the office, an hour later, you’d line up according to your last name.  There were some folding chairs along the back wall for the infirm.  People brought their tired, bored preschoolers who, once inside, either endlessly cried and whined, or ran around yelling unless their mother kept them tightly reined in.   Still, we were relieved to be out of that narrow alley.  I usually brought the SF Chronicle with me to pass the time, about the only time I read it. 

I made up my mind to quit Transamerica so gave two weeks’ notice; I left on a Friday, started working for S & E the following Monday.  I couldn’t simply call AFDC to get off assistance, I had to go down to the government office and show my first paycheck stub and sign a bunch a papers.  Now, I no longer had to suffer the demoralizing, demeaning treatment meted out by self-important losers.    Mostly it was the monitors.     There were armed guards with badges on white shirts, wearing black ties and pants, who behaved toward us as though it were a crime for being poor and un- or underemployed.  Granted, there were some very warm, kind-hearted, caring case-workers at AFDC.  Still, Mr. E’s- Dave’s,-  secretary,  I’ll call her Irene, with her steely stare through her upswept, black framed glasses, came close to emulating the worst of them. She wore her coal-black hair in an extreme bee-hive.  Never a hair out of place.

The S & E agency was a few floors above TA’s.  My desk faced windows that looked out over a gorgeous view of the Northwestern section of San Francisco Bay.  Mr. S.’s office and his secretary were on my left; Dave and Irene on my right.   As I said, it was a small office, in fact, claustrophobic.   My boss was easy to work for.  He was funny; we often bantered and joked.  I glanced over at Irene once and you know that saying: if looks could kill . . .    Mr. S’s secretary, a woman in her fifties, came off totally out of it most of the time.  She wore thick-lensed, cat-eye glasses that magnified her watery grey eyes, her hair a poof of brown cloud.  She appeared to not care whether I was or was not there.  Where Dave was small and wiry, Mr. S. was shaped like a baked potato and wore his pants under his armpits.  He was soft-spoken and dour where Dave was witty and fast.  Each man had his own clients.  I never saw them get together in each other’s offices.  The place was eerily quiet except for the ringing phones, subdued conversations, and the clicking of our typewriters.

One morning my phone rang.  On the other end I heard the voice of an older woman. “Hello?  S & E.?” she asked.  I said yes and introduced myself.  She told me she called because of a change she wanted in her homeowner’s policy.  I asked her the name it was under and she said, “William and Polly Teas.”  The name rang a bell.  I said, “You wouldn’t happen to be a relative of the man who made that film, ‘The Immoral Mr. Teas,’ would you?”   “Yes,” she answered, “I’m his wife.  Do you know the film?”  I told her I knew of it having for years  seen the cartoon drawing of the ogling Mr. Teas depicted in the  poster outside an “Adult” movie house on Market Street.  But I'd never seen it.  In the film, Mr. Teas discovers that he can see women naked through their clothes.  He doesn’t want to; he can’t help it. (The picture at right does not represent the original poster I had seen on Market.)

Poster for "The Immoral Mr. Teas."

Polly lived in a tract home in north Sausalito.  We got to be friends over the phone and whenever I’d bike ride to Marin, I’d stop by to visit.  We’d sit at her dining room table, drink coffee and talk.  She told me that the filmmaker, Russ Meyers, who directed her husband’s film, had bought the rights to it in a bad deal where Mr. Teas (Bill) got only a small percentage of the initial sale with no royalties.  No royalties?  That blew my mind.  It seemed to me that the film played in San Francisco on Market Street for a long as I could remember.  It was made in 1959.  While I visited Polly, I’d see her husband in the hallway, just outside the dining room.  He never spoke and seemed really shy.  I told Polly that it seemed like they shared an autonomous life.   She opened up to me and explained that because of the deal with Meyers, he not only lost control of his film, but also his mind.  Polly said that he had been diagnosed with a mental illness bordering on schizophrenia.  “The Immoral Mr. Teas” ended up being Meyers’s first hit and laid the foundation for his nudie film enterprise.

It got to the point where I could no longer ignore the negative tension in the office.  I’d walk in smiling after a brisk bike ride, smile and say, “Hello!”   Neither of the women responded in any way.  They simply never spoke to me.  Also both were extremely protective and possessive of their accounts and their bosses.  I dreaded having to ask Irene anything about protocol or a client.  The atmosphere was stifling and I said as much to Dave.   He brushed it off.  “She’s just jealous,” he said, “because you’re young and pretty.  She’ll like you, give her a chance.” 

 

One morning, in the copy room, a cubicle outside of Mr. S’s office,  Dave came up behind me and put his arms around me.   I stepped forward quickly, out of his grasp, went to my desk and sat down.  I didn’t say a word.  I glanced at Irene; she grinned with the evil of a Cheshire cat.  I felt weird.  I didn’t know how to act around him after that.  I was all business.  He tried the same thing another time and when I resisted, he whispered, “I understand.  It’s Irene, the office.  Why don’t you come to my place when my wife is out.  I’ll let you know.”  That night I told CH.   He said, “Quit!  Don’t put up with that shit.”  So I did.  My excuse was that my kids were older and I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could before they went off on their own.  I didn’t tell Dave or Mr. S. that I was tired, tired of the whole business, the misogyny, the ol’ boy banter, Dave’s sexual behavior, and that I felt that their secretaries wanted me dead. 

 I stayed home- for a while- baking bread, sewing, writing, reading, biking all over.  I was back on unemployment again even though I’d quit.  I wasn’t laid off or fired.  I don’t remember what I told the caseworker, but he okayed my application.  He noted that I was a single mom with three children. 

Unemployment caseworkers interviewing clients

 Still, after a few months of trying to ignore that feeling of being dependent on someone else, I went out looking for work and landed a junior underwriter position at Fireman’s Fund on Laurel Hill, west of Pacific Heights.  My ride to work would take longer, though.  About that time, we moved from the Western Addition to stucco house on a steep hill in Bernal Heights, way across town in the mid-Mission, bordering Potrero Hill.  The house had  a foyer, a garage, a backyard with a lawn (I could garden!), a utility/slash downstairs bedroom, and two bedrooms upstairs; two tile bathrooms, and gold, w-2- w, shag carpeting, which I hated. 

I dug up half the lawn for a vegetable garden and the landlord flipped.  And he didn’t like that we parked our bikes in the foyer, leaning them against a cheap, balsa wood, cherry-wood stained cabinet they had left there.   We lasted less than a year.  CH and I split up.  One day I walked up the hill and found a vacant, A-frame house.  I called the number on the For Rent sign, met the owners who ran a plumbing shop on 30^th and Church Sts, paid first and last months’ rent.  The kids and I moved up the hill; CH stayed in the other place until he went to live with his son on Valencia. 

I took the attic room in our new place and let my kids- the youngest, now 17, who joined the army with my permission; 18, recently graduated from high school and working for the CCC in Calaveras County; and the oldest, 20, ready to be on his own, now at San Francisco State-  have the main floor bedrooms.  To reach mine, I went out the back door and climbed a flight of steps, built into the side of the house, up to my door.  It was fun, especially in the rain.

Coming up: CHAPTER 12, Part One:  Fireman’s Fund; female bosses: Helen, hit by a car, breaking both legs;  and Nazi Norma keeping track of our time to the second, stopping only when I embarrased her in front of our whole department.  I meet unforgettable Wes Schultz, who I’d later end up working for from 1984 until he contracted AIDS in 1986.

GLUE, Chapter 11, Part 2: My "Robes"; A Warning; Sexual Harassment in the mid-1970s, and the spy from the 11th floor.

“Ah-hem,” my boss, Mr._________, began.   (I don’t remember his name.)

“Yes, what is it?”I asked, sitting in the hot seat in front of  his desk.

“That outfit you wore the other day-“

“What?  What ‘outfit’?”  I struggled to recall what I wore to work in the past few days and came up with nothing.  I couldn’t remember what I’d worn yesterday, let alone a couple of days ago.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh, those, those, uh – ROBES.”

“I’m sorry but I have no idea what you mean.”   Then it dawned on me.   “You mean the striped dress?-“

“-Yes,” he said, leaning forward, fluorescent lights glinting off his rimless glasses, “those ROBES.”

I almost burst out laughing.   Not long after the Big Pantsuit Brouhaha, I had come down with a cold, stayed home for a couple of days, then went back to work.  I still felt a chill so dressed warm:  lavender knit-cotton turtleneck and purple, cotton-knit pants underneath a long-sleeve, calf-length dress I had made from a lavender, purple, and white striped Indian cotton bedspread: surplice bodice, and self-belt.  A couple of days later, I’d been at my desk for an hour or so when my boss phoned me from about 20 feet away.  “I want to talk to you,” he said.  My “uh-oh” response kicked in.  I walked over to his desk wondering what in the hell was so important.  But he’s the boss.  When he told me, I was flummoxed.  So it was okay, I repeat, for us to traipse around in miniskirts. He and other male bosses never complained about them, not even when underwear or more showed if we bent over to open a file drawer.  But it was not okay to cover ourselves completely from ankle to chin.

 “Don’t ever wear those ROBES again, understand?”

I went to the bathroom and released my suppressed, hysterical laughter.   Linda (I think was her name) walked in,"What's so funny?"  When I told her, she said, “Did you ask him what would happen if you did wear those ROBES again?”

“No, I was afraid if I opened my mouth I’d laugh in his face."  
I needed this job.  I didn’t want to get fired.   But I came close- again.  Someone spied on me during my lunch break.  



1976 Bicentennial poster

Meanwhile, reports stated that by the end of 1975, 44% of married women were employed.  By 1976, Bicentennial celebrations were planned and, throughout the year, went on all over the country; Jimmy Carter was elected president. 

Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn

At TA, Filipinas did the grunt work: filing, the mail; some were in the typing pool; they assembled policies and forms and stapled them, put them in folders to deliver to us, and generally ran errands.  They seemed always to be cheerful.  I'd had noticed a stocky, heavy-set woman underwriter in Inland Marin who looked like a girls’ PE instructor, following- stalking, in today's parlance- and teasing a petite, gamin-faced Filipina I’ll call Perla.  She had short, wiry brown hair, always wore white and spoke with a German accent.    One day, I was in a stall in the bathroom and heard giggling and a voice that sounded like Perla's saying, “Stop, stop, that tickles, stop,” and more giggling and more pleas to stop.  I heard a noise I knew came from an obese person sitting down hard on a toilet (which literally makes the commode in the adjoining stalls jump, which is weird); a door banged open, then the bathroom door opened and closed.  I left the stall and went to the sink to wash my hands.  In the mirror,  I could see looming up behind me Perla's tormentor; her face was flushed.  I got out of there fast.  I was appalled at what I felt sure was going on.  In those days, you didn't report what is now known as "sexual harassment." 

So, a little more than a month after the “Robe” warning, my boss again called me to his desk.   What th’ hell? I asked myself.  My work was caught up, I’d been getting to work on time, abiding by the  limits set for lunch and coffee breaks, I was dressing appropriately, was clean and neat; no hippie clothes, psychedelic colors,  or jewelry; beads, leathers, feathers and fringe.  What now?  

In the late sixties,  I had begun meditating and practicing yoga which I kept up pretty regularly.  Redwood Park is a beautiful little park right next to the Pyramid building; the landscaping includes a small grove of towering redwoods over sculpted lawns and fountains; little niches where you could be alone.

Redwood Park

Sometimes,  during lunch break, like on that particular day, I’d sit on the grass in a half-lotus and meditate.  I hung up the phone , ambled over to his desk, and sat down.  He leaned forward and whispered,

“What were you doing out there?”

“When?"  I looked around, "Out where?”  Again, flummoxed.

“In the park.  Yesterday.”

 I tried to think.   Could it be?-  “Oh, you mean meditating?”

“If that’s what you call it.”

“Uh, I'm sorry, but that's what it is" you jerk, I wanted to add,- "My understanding is, Mr._____,  lunch break is our own time.  Not the company’s.”

“Well, what you were doing”-

-“Meditating”-

-“doesn’t reflect well on the company.”  (Oh, f- - - , I didn't want to discuss it any further.)

“How would anyone know I worked for Transamerica?”

“That’s not the point.  One of our employees saw you from the window and complained.   Others saw you too.   It was disruptive.  They were, uh, laughing.”

“I’m sorry,  my time’s my own during lunch and I can do with it what I please.”

“Listen, dear, you’re one of our best underwriters, I wouldn’t want to lose you,” he subtly warned me.  He looked sad.   I found another area in the park out of range of the 11th floor windows.    Later, Perla told me she’d seen me at my boss’s desk, guessed what it was about and said that it was her stalker who'd ratted on me.  "She bothers my friends, too," she said.  So, the spy turned out to be this warped woman.  I figured she had to get something on me because I'd heard what went on in the bathroom and had seen her.  She wants me gone.  "Try to stay away from her, Perla."

Of the many rules in the handbook was no fraternizing.  I rarely make friends with co-workers, but Linda, in the casualty department, and I had similar likes and dislikes.  She was tall, willowy, with jet-black hair worn in a chignon.  She reminded me of Geraldine Chaplin: a thin face with great cheekbones.  She wore glasses with thick black rims which only added to her mystique; fitted jackets and pencil-thin skirts, and medium, high-heels.  I had planned a party for Hallowe’en and to introduce my friends to CH, my new man  (Seems every time I changed jobs, I changed men), and invited Linda.  She surprised me by showing up with a guy from work.  I knew nothing about this though I saw them every day.  They were totally discreet.  No one knew.   I don’t recall his name.  I didn’t like him much.  I could see him in profile over a bank of waist-high file cabinets.  He looked like a thin Drew Cary, chewed gum constantly with his mouth hanging open, and seemed always to be on the phone.  I never asked Linda what she saw in him.   That night she asked me not to tell a soul about their relationship.  I told her I felt bad that she didn’t trust me.  She said, “You can’t be too careful.” In any case, they appeared to have a great time and I liked him more when I saw him in a new light- dancing in his hippie denim outfit with Linda in her spot-on Pocahontas costume.

It started pouring rain one morning just as I reached the building.  Not wanting to lock my bike outside, I wheeled it into the spacious lobby and secured it to a brass railing in an area no one used.  When I left work that night, it was gone.  I’d had several bikes stolen over the years, so I wasn’t as angry and upset as I had been in the past.   Still, my heart sank.  I’d just have to save up to buy another.  I was a regular customer at Paul’s Valencia Cyclery shop and whenever I’d walk in sans a bike, he’d say, “What?  Not another one ripped off.”  The next morning, an older, balding man with a Poirot mustache, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a clipboard, approached me in the lobby as I entered the building.

“Miss, I know where your bike is,” he said, “It’s in the utility room in the basement.”

“What?  How did it get there?  Who?-“

 -“The security guard cut the lock and took it down there-“

-“He stole my bike!  This is bizarre.”  I was pissed.  “Why?”

“Look,” he said, “I know you’re angry.  I’m the building manager, here’s my card.”  I looked at it, he had a Spanish or Latin American name.  “The guard,” he went on, “removed it because it was a safety hazard.”

“But it wasn’t in anyone’s way,"  I protested.  "How the hell was I supposed to know where it was if you hadn’t told me!  He could have talked to me, told me not to ever lock it up inside again.”  The more I thought about the audacity of that guy to just take my bike, the madder I got.  It was just too much.

“Meet me by the service elevator when you get off work.  What time?”

“Four forty-five.”

“Okay.  Meet me and  I’ll take you down there and you can get it.”

That evening, he was waiting for me by the service elevator.  I’d never been in the lower depths of the Pyramid.  We got off the elevator at the lowest basement level and he lead me down a labyrinth of corridors bordered by windowless, unmarked steel doors.  He stopped at one, took a ring of about a thousand keys from his belt, unlocked, and opened the door on mops, buckets, containers, and drums marked with the Hazardous sign.   There was my precious bike, leaning against a pile of ropes.  One wall was snaked with wires, and lights blinked on steel cabinets,  He carefully wheeled out my bike  and we rode up to main floor.  He said a few words to the guard at the podium, then held the heavy glass door for me as I pushed my bike through.  I thanked him again, and pedaled off, not before he asked me if he could take me to dinner sometime.

Brokers and agents walked in with new and old business, talked to the bosses about clients, and problems.  One broker in particular would pass my desk a couple of times a month, say hello and smile.  He was a small, wiry man, not much taller than me,  with wavy grey/blond hair.    Sometimes he’d stop and chat; we’d end up laughing.  He had an appealing, witty, black sense of humor;    One day he asked me if I’d ever worked in an agency.  I told him I had.  His name was D. E.  He was the E in the S&E agency, a small firm that handled mostly personal insurance and a few small commercial risks, in a building up the street from TA.  The next time D_______ came in, he asked if I’d like to work for them and he’d pay me a hundred bucks more than I made at TA.  I did a swift, mental calculation.  

"Look, I'm on food stamps.  If I take your offer, I’d make too much to qualify, but not enough to cover our monthly food bill."  Without missing a beat, he quickly named a figure a couple hundred dollars more than his original offer. 

                “Will that take care of it?” he said.

                “Yes.”

                “When can you start?”

Chapter 11, Part 3:   I ponder giving two weeks’ notice.  I'd been with TA less than a year.  S & E, was a very small, four person office- 5, counting me if I decide to take the job. 

Chapter 11, Part One: At the New Transamerica Pyramid-Freezing, almost passing out, and the Great Pantsuit Conspiracy

The controversial (at the time) Transamerica Pyramid

I walked down Kearney to Montgomery and Washington Streets to the brand new Transamerica Pyramid building which was completed in 1972, replacing a parking lot on the site of the old Montgomery Block, which had been demolished, not without protest.  Monkey Block, as it was affectionately called, was once the tallest structure in San Francisco at four stories- and earthquake proof.  It offered space for writers, artists, and bohemians, as well as  restaurants and cheap housing, boasting famous tenants such as  Mark Twain and Dr. Sun Yat-sen, since its opening its 1853. 

Montgomer Block 1930s (w/early 1940s parked Chev or Pontiac coupe. )

Montgomery Block (far right) after 1906 EQ and Fire.

Transamerica Insurance had opened an office on the 10^th floor and were hiring.  I was glad to be working for a large, well-known company with lots of employees, again.  I could just do my work, keep my head down and not make waves.

 The bugs had not been fixed in heating system and our hands froze until the problem was resolved. Some of us wore mittens or gloves.  My desk was in the front row where fellow workers and bosses passed by, as well as visitors, and agents bringing old and new business to us.  Beyond it was a bank of file cabinets over which I could see people working in another department.  Telephones rang constantly, and conversations and raucous laughter traveled unobstructed.  It was hard to concentrate.

A corporate rest area

My boss, an owlish, old man with thinning grey hair and thick glasses, always wore his proverbial baggy, shiny brown suit.  His desk (he didn’t rate an office), was perpendicular to mine, three desks away.   What was neat about a big company is that it had an in-house medical facility a few floors up from mine, with  a recovery room with comfortable cots and warm blankets.  After a few months, I found that I was literally falling asleep at my desk.  I’d make myself stay awake until break, then drag myself up to the recovery room, check in with the nurse on duty.  I just had to say, “I’m not feeling well” and she’d direct me to a bed, saying, “I’ll wake you in 15 minutes.”  No one seemed to notice I was gone.  I’d read that an outbreak of mononucleosis was affecting college students, so I felt maybe that’s what I had, but was never formally diagnosed and no one else in the office had symptoms.   I was still riding my bike to work, seeing the kids off to school after breakfast .  The sleepiness just hit me on the job, after lunch I was okay.  But this went on for weeks.  Then I had a realistic dream:  I saw myself sitting down to my usual breakfast of coffee, a piece of raison toast, and a slice of orange.  That was it.  I figured the dream was telling me that I needed to start the day with something more substantial.  I could never stand eggs in any style, so I ended up eating a bowl of oatmeal with the kids after I'd whipped up an omelet for Robert before he went off to the docks.  It seemed to work; but even so, I'd sneak upstairs to crash every so often at breaktime.

More and more white collar companies were allowing their female employees to wear pant-suits.  I didn’t care one way or another, but it seemed a lot of women at TA started to complain about our dress-code which strictly forbade pants.  Still, we could wear miniskirts that barely covered our butts and that was fine. 

  Women started whining to the personnel department and their bosses, like, “Gee, why can’t we wear pantsuits.  The women at (insert name ) are wearing them.”  “Yes, but they’re a brokerage house (or law firm ), not an insurance company,” was the excuse.    The bosses got so sick of the whining, they allowed women to wear pantsuits for a two-week trial period.  The rules were that the top and bottoms had to match in color, style and fabric, worn with white blouses, and high heels. No boots.

The file clerks, mostly Filipinas, started coming to work in what looked to me like silk or rayon pajamas: sheer, glittery fabrics with colorful patterns, flowing, loose jackets and flared pants; but hey, the tops and bottoms matched.  Yet some women didn’t get it and began showing up in all kinds of mismatched outfits,

Various examples of pantsuit styles

 so after two weeks, the trial period ended and the formal dress code restored.  Women basically went on an unplanned, unformed strike.  They spent so much time sitting around complaining and whining about the injustice done to them, hardly any work got done.  I needed  risks rated that I had underwritten; I needed policies and endorsements typed, files filed, and mail “girls” to pick up and distribute mail.  Something had to be done.  I started a petition.  Women who wouldn’t sign told me they were afraid they’d lose their jobs; still, I got more than half the women’s signatures and we were once again allowed to wear pantsuits.

One day, I showed up in a form-fitting, one-piece, tailored, scoop neck, dark brown sleeveless jumpsuit with calf-length flared pants (oh, yeah, boots), with a rust colored long-sleeve blouse underneath.  Mid-morning, the head of personnel- a nice-looking man with thick silvery hair combed straight back-  leaned my on desk, his face inches from mine, and whispered, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go home and change.”  I was stunned.  “Why?” 

“Because your outfit does not meet the dress code.”   I had promised myself I would not make waves.

“Mr_____, I am completely covered. I’m wearing a conservative, dark outfit, while the majority of women look like they’re ready for bed.”

“Keep your voice down.  Please.”  Co-workers were staring.

“Look,” I went on, “I’m right in the middle of a renewal that has to go to typing immediately so the policy can be mailed out tomorrow before it expires (I took a chance he didn't know about binders).   It’ll take me over an hour to get home and back, not counting how long it will take me to change.  You really want me to leave?”

“Well, okay, but I’m putting you on notice.  Do not wear that outfit here again, is that clear?”

This would not be the first time at TA I would be called on the carpet for what I wore to work.

Still to come:  Part Two:  The above, and spied and reported on by an obese female employee who watched me in the Redwood Park during lunch break.
.
Strange noise in the bathroom emanating from same obese female's activities with tiny Filipinas.

My locked bike disappears from the building's lobby.  I'm tipped off by the building manager.

I'm offered a job with a small agency, for much, much more money.  Do I take it? Stay tuned . . .

CHAPTER 10, Part Four: Los Angeles Mutual Insurance Co. Werner flips out-again. The office Christmas party. Bonuses, and more . . .

Every commercial property insurance company employs either an engineer or inspector, or contracts out for one.  Los Angeles Mutual had under contract an older, grey-haired man, near retirement.  I’ll call him Henry.  He was tall but stooped, lanky, arthritic, and somewhat hard-of-hearing.  He would shuffle into the office every now and then in his shapeless tweed overcoat and brown wingtips, carrying a worn, leather briefcase containing either updated reports or new ones on properties our agents wanted us to insure, and blank forms.  Linda and I questioned his ability to clamber around buildings, inspect stairways, elevators, roofs, utility rooms, etc., carrying his tape measure, strut locators,  and other devices as well as a magnifying glass to check out window frames (outside and inside).  How could he do it?   He had no assistant as far as we knew.

The Olema Inn today

One morning, Werner threw a new application on my desk for a building I knew all too well:  The old Olema Hotel on Hwy 1 between Olema and Bolinas.  It had been vacant for as long as I could remember, having ridden my 10-speed past it countless times on trips from West Marin to Point Reyes.  I asked him why we were going to insure this old wooden, building in the middle of a grassy field, on an embankment bordering on the St. Andreas fault line.  Werner grunted:

            “We need the business.  I’m sending Henry out to look at it.”

            “Don’t waste his time,” I said. “It’s a firetrap.  A really bad risk if there’s a fire.  The whole thing will go-”

            -“I’ll see what Henry says.  Now, get back work.”

            “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” I said.  I found out later that the new owner was going to remodel it and turn it into a bed and breakfast.  After all, it was a historic building dating back before the ’06 earthquake.

            It was 1973, and Nixon declared the Vietnam War over and the last troops were sent home.  There was no parade, no welcomes at airports.  The war was an embarrassment, a shame and the poor draftees bore the brunt of it and, except for a small population in a  few sections of the country, were treated abominably by the public and given shoddy care in VA hospitals, as in Oliver Stone’s 1989 film, “Born on the Fourth of July.” 

Uncredited illustration from "Cherries- A Vietnam War Novel” by John Podlaski.

“We were treated like outcasts, blamed for a war we didn’t start, accused of killing innocent women and children, called dope heads, spit at and ridiculed by citizens most of the way to Michigan.  Don’t get me wrong, I did meet some very generous and friendly people on the way, but they were solely the minority and far and few in between.  Some uniformed soldiers with missing limbs were jeered at and told that they deserved their fate…” From Cherries- A Vietnam War Novel” by John Podlaski.

 

Wounded Knee

 Native Americans seized Wounded Knee, holding it for 90 days in protest of violations to American Indian treaties over the past centuries.

Los Angeles Mutual held their Christmas Party at the Home Office.   Linda and her husband flew down early that morning.  I took a later flight, seeing first that my kids were set up for the day.   I had a return ticket for the next morning.  As I discovered, the whole affair was so tawdry, I arranged to leave that night with a couple who agreed to drive me to the Burbank airport. 

            Jim had opened the office folding doors between two conference rooms.  Food-laden tables- along with a few upholstered chairs- lined the walls. I poured myself a glass of red wine and nibbled on a half baloney and cheese sandwich.  An employee played bartender, mixing drinks.  The big event was when Jim gave out of the bonuses; there was a drawing for joke gifts.  After a couple of hours, I didn’t see Linda or her husband.  I figured they’d left.  The only people I knew were Jim, Teddy, Werner, Al and Carla; and Jim’s secretary, Angie.    but no one talked to me.  People huddled in little groups.  I had once learned the art of small talk and that one of the ‘ins” for succeeding at this social "skill" is to approach a group, listen to the conversation for a minute or two, get the gist and just start talking.  I tried it, but still I was invisible.  Fine.  I went out on a balcony.  I was alone.  I smoked a joint Robert had given me that I’d stashed in my wallet,  and watched the sunset- beautiful through the smog.

LA Sunset through the smog

When I went back inside, Jim was handing out our bonus checks.  Angie whooped and hollered, read hers aloud: “1000 bucks!”  I opened my envelope, took a look:  $50.  Better than nothing.  Werner opened his: $1500!  Wait- there was a card, too.  “It’s me!” he guffawed and held it up

for all to see.   On the front was a cartoon, showing a bald fat man sitting on a low stool.  Straddling his head was a nude woman, her pubic hair, his toupee.  More whooping and hollering.  Werner passed it around so people could get a closer look.  When it came my turn, I just handed it to the next person.  The couple who volunteered to drive me to the airport told me they were ready to leave.  I called home, said I was on my way.  I was home by ten.  Robert and the kids were listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Sunshine of my Life,” and doing homework.   It was late.  Bedtime.

            “How’d it go?” Robert asked me.

            “I really hate company parties,” I said, pouring myself a glass of wine.

           
Werner fired me a week later.

We were behind in getting policies out and making changes by endorsement on existing ones.  He saw me typing one.

“You’re not supposed to type those.  They’re supposed to be handwritten.  You give ‘em to Linda to type.”

“But Werner, we’re so far behind, this is faster," I said, "Writing them out makes absolutely no sense at all."

“I don’t care!  It's office procedure!” he argued, sweat beading on his head, dripping down his forehead.  He wiped his head and face with a big white hanky, and drew it across the back of his neck.

“Werner,” I said, “we could do that if we had a typing pool, but we don’t.  We have Linda.  She's your secretary.  Sure, she types policies and endorsements, too, but since we were so far behind, why can’t I type them?  Why double the work?”
  What year was this?  Typewriters had been around since the 1860s.  I rolled one into my IBM Selectric and typed away while looking at the change request.   Werner huffed, flapping his arms, then shoved the hanky into his pocket.

The next morning, I hadn’t even taken off my coat when Werner called me into his office.

            “I’m letting you go,” he said, not looking at me.  He slid an envelope across his desk.  “It’s two weeks’ pay plus unused vacation pay.”

            “Why?”

            “You don’t meet our requirements.”

            “Oh, it’s because I typed those endorse”-  He didn't let me finish.

            -“Get out of my office; get your things and go!”

            I couldn’t stop myself, words just tumbled out of my mouth.

            “Werner.  You are running scared.  I can see and smell your flop sweat.   You’re terrified Jim and Teddy will can you-”  I was on a roll, yet calm, “but you'll probably die of a heart attack first.”

            I turned around, walked out and slammed the door.  Before I realized it, I was on the Banker’s Heart Plaza, my legs shaking.

Next:  Chapter 11, Part One.  The TransAmerica Pyramid.  Mononucleosis.  Lured away by better pay.