CHAPTER 8, Part One: Nancy and Sanguinetti Bail, "Little Dickie Duncan;" I Am Axed By a Friend.

The Mills Building at 220 Montgomery.

St. Paul Insurance was on the second floor. Rather than take an elevator, we would walk through the incredibly gorgeous lobby and up the curving staircase, seen below.

Pacific Indemnity (later, Chubb Insurance ) was in the Adam Grant Building.

Nancy did not come in the next day, but swept in the following morning, all aglow as she elaborated on her date - and something else: After more than a decade at Pacific Indemnity, she was quitting. She’d signed on with IBM in LA as a business systems analyst. The news brought Evelyn to tears. Marilyn sat at her desk with her mouth open. Who would replace her?

The Mills Building lobby and curving marble staircase.

I had gotten to like Nancy, loved her librarian look, her brashness, her bad mouth, and her openness about sex; impressed that she could get away with elaborating about her lovers and one-night stands in probably the most conservative of the corporate industries: commercial insurance. Yet were I to mention that I was living with a man (Lynn) - "shacking up" was the slang for that arrangement back then - I'd be fired. Any action, dress or lifestyle not in keeping with the corporate "look" could cost you. For example: I wore my hair up in a quasi-beehive, or in a French knot (see photo in Chapter 7); wearing it loose could put me on notice; another: the company hired a young, blonde Monroe look-alike right out of high-school. One day, she came in wearing black, thigh-high, lace-up boots and a mini-skirt. She got the ax that afternoon.

Nancy took me to lunch, secretly, and told me that over Mr. Zinn’s objections she’d chosen me to succeed her. She would break the news later to Evelyn and Marilyn. I collected money for her going away gift. After work, I went to The Emporium and had them gift-wrap a one-piece, sleeveless, colorful pants outfit with flared bottoms (it was the late ‘60s). I could see her in LA, swanning around in it at pool parties she’d throw for all her new boyfriends. Everyone signed the prerequisite card which I gave her and the gift at her going away luncheon. Nancy thanked everyone, opened the box, lifted the outfit from the tissue paper and ooohhhed- and ahhhed; then beaming, held it up to her shoulders and swooped up and down the aisles.

Above right bears a close resemblance to her gift. Imagine it sans sleeves and hat.

Nancy’s recommendation that I replace her fell through. A week after she left, Mr. Zinn transferred a young, pear-shaped, and balding Casualty expert Ron Beam, into our department. He apologized, telling me Zinn only wanted him to assist me, which was fine. Though I finally mastered various liability coverages and the rating system, it didn’t hurt to have someone around with more experience. But a week later, Zinn hired twenty-year old Dick Duncan and created a position for him as a supervisor over me and Ron. Still, he had to report to Sanguinetti.

Duncan wore his slick black receding hair combed straight back. Big, clear-plastic framed glasses perched on a snub nose in the middle of his yellowish-grey face. His Robert Hall (rhymes with “cheap”) suits hung on his slight, round-shouldered, 5 foot physique. He did not look well and was either very shy or just plain weird. He would creep up noiselessly to my desk; I’d look up and there he’d be, as sudden as a heart attack. Instead of telling me directly what he wanted done, he’d hand me a memo. Ron and I called him “Little Dickie Duncan.” Soon, we started planning to quit. (Planning to quit involved checking the want-ads, going on interviews during your lunch hour and lining up a job before giving notice.) Decades later, after having once caught a glimpse of Duncan looking in worse shape as he stood on a street corner, I learned he’d died of cancer.

The Adam Grant Building at 114 Sansome at Bush, and lobby.

TWO RESIGNATIONS* PHYLLIS REAPPEARS* A SCANDAL* I QUIT * MY FIRST AXING.

Ron Beam gave two week’s notice, then left to become a VP for a small insurance agency. I struggled on, dealing with “LDD.” Then Dick Sanguinetti resigned; he'd been hired by Wells Fargo as head of their insurance department. I was left with no backers in my corner. Strangely, another Dick, Dick M___*, replaced Sanguinetti. Zinn had moved him from Casualty. For the year or two I was with Pacific Indemnity, I had worked for three Dicks; only one of whom was a true dick ^_ albeit a sick dick. M_____ introduced himself to Marilyn, Evelyn and me, hunching his shoulders, combing his fingers through his dandruffy, thinning hair, a sheepish grin spreading over his Cherubic, apple-cheek face. One morning, just after I arrived, I got a call from Personnel: “Someone you used to work with is here. Her name’s Phyllis. Please come up and show her around. She’s replacing Ron Beam in Casualty.”

Phyllis looked the same: willowy, blond and beautiful; her child was now two; she and Bob had moved to San Francisco. Bob, she told me, couldn’t find a job in LA, so he figured he’s do better here. I had not heard from her since I left LA. She wasn’t the least surprised to see me. Personnel had told her of someone else who’d worked for St. Paul and was now at Pacific Indemnity. I walked her down to the main floor and over to Casualty. Before long, she was spending more time at M______’s desk than her own. M_____, I knew, was married and had a couple of kids.

Ron called and offered me a job at his agency for lots more money. One of his staff was taking a pregnancy leave. He interviewed me in his small office in a narrow, brick building, with windows overlooking Market Street. As he explained my job - small accounts manager, I watched men in shorts, tank tops, and Converse running around and around on the gravel and tar roof of a building across the way that housed a sports facility. It struck me as funny and I laughed. Ron stopped talking and said, “I hope you’re not laughing at me!” I told him to turn around and look. “Oh, those. I know. Guys on lunch break. Very distracting at first, but I got used to it. I’m just getting used to this title of V.P,” he confessed, “I’m still a little insecure, so any, you know . . . ” He offered me the job: I would talk to clients who called about changes to their policies; fill out forms and send them to the company they had coverage with, or simply give the underwriter a buzz. Ron said that most of his clients had personal lines coverage, but a few had both commercial and personal. Commercial was across the hall. He showed me my "office" a cubicle, really, right next to another of his account managers, a woman, he explained, who always came in late. I gave two week’s notice at Pacific Indemnity and on a Monday morning, started at Ron’s agency.

In those two weeks, Phyllis continued working her magic on M_____. She came over to my desk one day and told me Dick was leaving his wife of ten years,

"Bob and I separated. We never got married," she explained, "Y'know, honey, he never had a job. I'm tired of supporting that deadbeat."

"Who else knows?"

"Well, just you, hon, please don't tell anyone. We could get fired!"

Watching Phyllis and Dick together, it was pretty obvious. The word got out, but not by me. Women were in an uproar about it. First, me, the Jezebel, breaking up Lynn's marriage and now my friend, Phyllis. Phyllis was axed; I figured she'd have no trouble getting another job; but M_____ was too important to the company to lose. Now, I was certain that Nancy and Sanguinetti had spoken up for me: I'd been with the company more than a year; Lynn, a few months.

Things seemed simple working for Ron, the name of whose agency I can’t remember; and happy to get away from the soap operas at PI. My next door neighbor, Rose, turned out to be a huge, Beatniky red-head. She would blow into the office about ten, munching on a croissant or a messy cheeseburger, juggling it, her oversize purse, and files she’d taken home. Meanwhile, I answered her phone - which rang constantly, and mine, and took her messages, as well. I wasn’t pleased. Ron had told me time and again that he was going to talk to her about coming in late and eating at her desk. He was tired of finding mustard and ketchup on the files. “I really like her,” he said, “she helped me a lot when I got here. She knows more about the agency than I do right now.”

Ron called me into his office a few days later saying that a client complained that I didn’t transfer him to Commercial, but had hung up on him. “He has a huge commercial account with us. He’s in the construction business. God, I hope we don’t lose him.”

“How am I supposed to know who has both personal and commercial accounts? He didn't say-”

-“You have to read their files!”

I’d been doing fine till then: I get a call, go over to the personal accounts files, pull the file, process the request, and that- as they say- was that. It never occurred to me to cross the hall to see if the clients had commercial accounts. I apologized to Ron. He did damage control and things went along smoothly. Rose kept coming in late or not at all and I had to cover for her. One day, she bustled in at noon, juggling a dripping hamburger, her bag, and files, told Ron she could stay only till three. I could hear her talking and laughing on her phone through the partition and it didn’t sound like work. A few days later, and things with Rose unchanged, Ron stopped by my cubicle first thing in the morning and said, “Come into my office.” I sat in front of his desk, watching the men jogging around on the roof: they looked so earnest, so silly.

“You know,” he began, tenuously, “it’s really hard having to let someone go who you really like and feel is a friend.”

“ I know,” I said, thinking of Rose, “Yeah, that’s got to be hard.”

“So, hon, sorry, I told personnel to have your check ready -” he looked at his watch, “You can pick it up when you leave. Good luck, let me know if you need a recommendation letter . . .” I heard his voice trail off as I closed his door behind me. In the hall, I bumped into Rose on her way in with her half-eaten chili dog.

Next Up: CHAPTER 8, Part Two: Another job; another buyout; "secret" affairs; the Bear and the Weasel; closet gays in management; marijuana in the “Dish;” a war protest warning turns ugly . . . read on.

* Name omitted as he may still be among the living.

Chapter 7, Part Three: "D. H. Lawrence," The Women, I'm a Rape Target.

Chinatown Grant Street.

True to my need for time alone during lunch break and to find an atmosphere as far removed from the office as possible, I walked from Montgomery Street up to St. Mary's Square, between Kearney and Grant in Chinatown, every day. I sat on an empty bench, ate my brown bag lunch, and read while mahjong tiles clicked, Chinese people chatted, and children played. One day, a man in a business suit sat next to me and unfolded his Wall Street Journal. As I got up to leave for work, he said, "I guess I'll see you tomorrow; you're here every day." I'd never seen him before.

St. Mary's Square Park.

Laurence worked for Charles Schwab, a stock brokerage on The Street. He had light brown hair which fell across his forehead and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He also had a beard, something unheard of in the early, pre-hippie sixties - - only Beatnicks grew beards. We started meeting for lunch where we talked about literature, movies and jazz. On our first date, he showed up in a Porsche. I asked him once what he thought of the possibility of the US getting involved in Vietnam. He said, "Whatever our government decides to do, I'll go along. It knows a lot more about what's going on over there than I do." I never mentioned it again. I was surprised by his answer; it seemed out of character. He told me that he'd lied about his age to join the navy and had been in Korea. He pulled up his sleeve and showed me a strange tattoo in the inside of his wrist, hinting that he'd been a prisoner, but refused to go into detail. One afternoon Harry saw us together outside the building. Back at work, he asked me who he was. “Laurence,” I said.

Laurence Fontes on Sansome St. 1964

"What? He looks exactly like D. H. Lawrence!” He showed me the author's picture on the back of his copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

"You're right, he does! But he spells his name with a 'u'."

On a break, Harry gestured to the women sitting at a nearby table and asked me why I never had coffee with them.

“They’re not very friendly,” I said.

“I know why,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

"They’re jealous.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m the invisible man to the women in my department,” he explained, “They talk about me as though I weren’t there. I hear them talk about you, too.”

“What do they say?"

“They can’t understand how a divorcée with three kids can be as happy as you seem to be all the time.” The one time I did take a break with Jane and the other women, Jane asked me about Laurence; how long I’d been seeing him. Before I could answer, she said,

“I won’t date until my daughter is on her own.”

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Nine - - I don’t trust men,” she said.

CREEPY CARL

If the men she knew were anything like Carl, an engineering inspector, I couldn’t blame her. Carl was an obese, middle-age Italian, who, rumor had it, was married to a much younger woman and had a twelve year old daughter whom he doted on. He stared at me all the time with big, lugubrious eyes. I came to work one day wearing a brown velvet tailored mini dress and a beige picture hat a la Audrey Hepburn. As I passed the engineering department, I thought Carl's eyes would fall out of his head. He waylaid me later between banks of file cabinets. I tried to ignore him and turn around but he took my arm. I couldn't look at him. As he held me, he blurted that he wanted to rape me when he saw me come in. I felt saliva rush to my mouth. I wanted to spit in his face. Jerking my arm free, I hurried to the bathroom and washed my face, hands, and my sleeve, blotting if dry with paper towels and lifting the velvet nap that Carl's sweaty, fat fingers had mashed down. In those days, you tried to put these incidents out of your mind, sluffing them off with: Oh, well, men are like that. I wanted to tell someone. Instinctively, I knew if I told Jane or Sam, they would look me up and down and say, "Well?" So I told Harry, and whenever he saw Carl headed my way, he'd phone and give me a heads up. I'd hide in the bathroom till I was sure he was out of range.

Carl didn't show up for a few weeks. He came back noticably slimmer. I'd let my guard down and he stopped me again in the files. When I pushed past, not looking at him, he blurted out: "Wait, I have to tell you something." I stepped back and waited. Near tears, he told me he'd had a heart attack. He was a changed man, he said. His doctor told him if he didn't lose weight, he'd never see his daughter graduate from high school. So his wife put him on a crash diet and he lost fifty pounds. I said nothing. He moved aside, let me pass, but never apologized. Still, I began to see him as a vulnerable human being - - but kept my distance.

BOURBON & CHEESECAKE

Kjeld Storm - - groovy name for a guy who looked like Ichabod Crane - - and Frances sat in front of me. Frances was tall and stately; heavily made-up and perfumed. She always wore black; and piled her dyed, coal-black hair on her head. She never left her desk for coffee, but would announce in a rich baritone that she was taking her break. She would then mime closing a door and pulling curtains around her desk; she'd open a thermos of "coffee," and a heady fragrance of bourbon wafted over us. Everyone, including Dick and Jim, went along. Kjeld, who wore powder-blue business suits and wide ties, besides being darkly witty, shared with us an incredible cheesecake made from his Norwegian grandmother's recipe. He gave me the recipe and I made his cheesecake at home for dessert. Roark, my oldest son, got ahold of it and at age nine, became our chief cheesecake baker.

After a year at the SF branch, I asked for a raise on the basis that the cost of living was higher in the City than in LA. Jim and the department head turned me down, insisting that there was no difference. The strategy for a woman to make more money and get a better position, if she had a least a year’s experience, was to quit and go work for another company. So I did.

Chapter 7, Part Four: Four Major Changes

First: I land a job in the commercial package department at Pacific Indemnity- cum-Chubb Group, then . . ? at a hundred dollars more than I'd been making. Second: I could afford to move. I bought a Sunday Examiner on Saturday night and scanned the ads: "No pets," "No children, infant okay." (What happens when the infant becomes a toddler?) "No divorcées." "Pets okay, no children." I found a flat on 20th Street, between Collingwood & Diamond in Eureka Valley (now "The Castro," although "Eureka Valley" is making a comeback). David Folb, the landlord, who looked like Rod Serling, rented me the place without too many questions. Heading him off, I told him my status and that I had kids. I also told him how much trouble I had finding rentals that allowed children and divorced women. He explained that his sister was in my position, so he knew what I was up against.
"But what's the deal about divorced women?" I asked him.
"Landlords say they cause problems when their exes and boyfriends get into fights. But I wouldn't know."

The flat had a refrigerator, but no stove. I had Sears deliver an apartment- size gas stove which Laurence installed, but didn't bother testing before he took off. The first time I lit a match to the stove, flames leaped from all the pipe joints and burners. I turned off the valve behind it to shut off the gas flow and called PG&E. A good-natured red-head came out and told me that PG&E didn't install appliances, but took pity on me when I asked him how was I supposed to cook for my kids unless I had a working stove? I watched him detach all the pipes, slather pipe-dope on them, and screw them back on. I gave him a cup of coffee while he waited for the dope to set; he then struck a spark, turned on the gas, saw that everything was okay, and left.

A WOMAN BEFORE HER TIME

My prospective boss, Nancy Rakestraw (yes, I know!), interviewed me at lunch at an upscale Chinese restaurant near Sansome. The waiter asked if we'd like to order drinks. I said no thanks. Nancy smiled at me. She was in her late 30s, never married; smart and funny. We walked back to her office and she told me I had the job. She confessed that she wouldn't have hired me if I'd ordered a drink; I found out later that she often joined the men at three martini lunches. The branch manager, Chet Zinn, was an old, smallish man who wore owlish glasses. Walking past the PBX (old telephone technology) operator's desk on my way to lunch one day, I heard her say, "Mr. Zinnzout." I cracked up. She asked me what was funny and I told her. From then on, she said she had to suppress a laugh whenever she said it.

Nancy was tall and willowy, and dressed expensively. She looked like a librarian - -receding chin, glasses with upswept plastic glitter frames, wispy, light brown hair, a large domed forehead, and pouty lips to which she constantly applied lipstick. Nancy was the first woman I ever heard say “fuck” on the phone to an agent (or to anyone, in fact) and no one batted an eye. She tutored me, appeared to know everything about coverages, made rate calculations in her head while I still clunked away on a massive calculator (See picture.), and was a mathematical wiz. My very East Coast co-workers fawned over her. They were young, blonde Harvard grads who spent all their money on clothes and lived in high rent Marina near the Palace of Fine Arts. Recently-married Evelyn had an under-slung jaw and wet blue eyes; Marilyn was overweight and engaged.

Co-worker Warren Killion leans on my huge calculator at my messy desk as we crack up over some inanity.

I could never get to work on time, but was never more than ten minutes late. Bosses hate that. If your work day begins at 8:30, you're to be at your desk and working at 8:30. Most employees are just coming in through the door at 8:30. I got up at six, got my kids - -10, 8 and 6 - - out of bed, made breakfast, got them dressed. If the least thing went wrong, I’d be late. If one of my kids couldn't find his shoe, or threw a tantrum, I’d be late. We took the bus to Chinatown to Commodore Stockton on Clay between Powell and Stockton, where they went to school and day-care. And I walked about eight blocks down the hills to the Financial District in my high-heel shoes. Nancy wasn’t pleased. She’d say, "If I let you get away with it, everyone else will come in late." But after a while, she resorted to giving me dirty looks instead of a verbal trouncing or threaten to fire me.

"LITTLE YELLOW NOTES"
We typed out memos and letters to agents; she eschewed handwritten anything. She checked all my work and was fast - - do her own stuff and check everyone else’s, too. Her way of telling you about your mistakes was to type out “Little Yellow Notes” and staple them on the files after hours (before Post-its). I’d come in and see my files stacked on my desk bristling with “Little Yellow Notes.” Being the newest hire, of course I got the most “Little Yellow Notes.” When Evelyn got them, she’d cry, softly so you’d hardly know. She’d pick up the file, plop herself down next to Nancy and whine. I was sick of seeing the notes so did my damndest to avoid them. I'd check and recheck my work. Soon the day came when I found my files clear of the pesky notes, while my co-workers' were papered with them.

2 GOOD LʘʘKING 2B TRU

The third change happened when I'd been at PI a little over a month. I came to work late to find all the women abuzz about a new guy that had just been hired; he was in his supervisor's office. I envisioned him looking like all the other men in shlubby brown suits and bad haircuts who ended up in insurance. I walked past his desk to the break room and thought: Oh, no! They must have made a mistake. This guy is just too good-looking and put together - - he had on an expensive, silk/wool black pintripe suit - - for an insurance company; he won't last. And, because of me, he didn't.

It was rumored he'd just gotten married; his father-in-law owned an agency and arranged to get him this job. Lynn English (even his name was too cool for insurance) took me to lunch. We walked up to North Beach to the Bohemian Café and came back two hours later. Over a glass of red and a shared roast beef on sourdough, he told me he wrote poetry and worked as a printer at the Chronicle, elevating him a couple more notches on my scale. His wife talked him into taking a leave of absence for this job. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the Marina and she'd set up the walk-in closet as his study and expected him to go in there every night and write, instead, he hit the bars. He told me that when they first met he'd asked her name and laughed, then repeated it: He showed me - - raised his eyebrows, leared, and said, "Ann Howe!" Needless to say, she got very angry, he said. We laughed, talked about writers, poets, ourselves and other things. A few days later the mail-guy dropped a hand written envelope in my "In box." I took it out and read it: "You look ravishing today, may I ravish you?" I glanced over at Lynn; my face felt red and hot; he looked at me and we both looked away fast. Somehow, when a great-looking guy with black hair and blue eyes uses a clever play on words to state his intentions towards me compared to being grabbed between file cabinets by fat, sweaty Carl blurting out a crudity, caused me to consider the possibility more favorably.

Some time later, Lynn and I went to lunch and he told me he and his wife had separated and he'd taken a room at the Press Club. He also said that the gossip around the office was that I'd broken up his marriage and that the women called me a Jezebel. They avoided me more than usual. Thing was, Lynn and I had never dated. His supervisor called him into his office one morning and fired him for "immoral behavior"! He went back to the Chronicle. Why they didn't fire me as well I have no idea.

Around that time, Laurence took me to the No-Name, a jazz bar in Sausalito. On the way home,he told me he'd found someone else, but we "could still be friends." The top was down in his Porsche and I sang, "Friends, lovers no more; friends, same as before," to the stars. I dated other men; Lynn's wife filed for divorce and he moved to a houseboat at Gate 5 in Sausalito and wrote in a little aerie on its roof. A few months later, he ended up renting a flat a couple blocks from our place. He was the only one I went out with who could tell my boys apart and remember their names.

Lynn and I, in front of my flat on 20th St. on our way to my father's funeral, 1968 (Dig that hat!).

DEATH AND SEX
Nancy reported to Dick Sanguinetti, a swarthy Italian; he was a Marine Underwriter who trusted her and never interfered. He was as sharp as she insurance-wise; an easygoing, nice guy. I took some time off work when my father died - - the fourth major change - - and Dick came to the service to pay his respects. When Nancy handed me my bi-monthly check, I discovered I'd been docked for the time I took off. Shocked, I broke down crying at my desk. “How can they be so cruel to dock me for taking time off because my father died?" Raising three kids on my own was hard enough on full pay. I didn’t see how I was going to make it with this paycheck. Sanguinetti assured me he'd take care of it. Within a half-hour, he had accounting issue me a check for the difference.

Nancy bragged openly about her many lovers to anyone who’d listen and let it be known that she thought sex was incredible. She loved it. The more the better. Her eyes literally sparkled when she talked about it. To any one. Even the old grey-haired guys, old enough to be her father; they'd laugh and walk away, shaking their head. One day, she announced that her latest lover was coming to town. He was taking her to dinner and they'd end up at his hotel. He owned a car dealership; his hobby was sailing and he was quite good at it, Nancy not only told us, but also passed around a sailing magazine containing an article about him with his picture in it. I felt embarrassed for her. He called while she was out so I answered her phone. He had a very sexy voice.
Next up: Chapter 8, Part One: Both Nancy and Dick leave, replaced by Little Dickie Duncan; fear of firing keeps me mum, Phyllis from LA St. Paul shows up, whiplash and more.

Chapter 7, Part Two: A New Department. The Odd Couple; Racism; The Token Black Guy.

"The Street" - - Montgomery Street at Columbus Ave. with the Transamerica Pyramid (completed in 1972) in the background.

Evidently, I wasn't doing too well in "casualty," so after a month, because I had experience in property, my bosses elected me for a new department where I'd learn to process Special Multi-Peril policies. They were similar to the Homeowners’ I’d worked on in LA, the difference being they covered apartment buildings over two units.

BOSSES
My new boss, Sam, a wiry, high-strung woman near retirement with short, curly, natural auburn hair, had more patience with me than Jane. One morning, after walking me through some procedures, her phone rang. She reached for it and said, “Hello,” before picking up the receiver. She did this every time. I thought it was strange, but the more years I spent in the business, I found most insurance people strange.
The department head, I think his name was Dick, was a slight, wiry, freckled, red-haired man. Dick talked on the phone sitting sideways, all bent over with his head cradled in his hands like he was either terribly anguished over some catastrophe or had a massive migraine. He brought out the same mothering instincts in me that John at Ronson had. Where Dick dressed nattily in expensive three piece suits, Jim Monroe, our supervisor, an affable, easygoing man - - built like a fullback - - walked around with white shirttails flapping, tie askew, and sagging brown suit pants riding his hips. Behind their backs, we called them "Felix" and "Oscar" from "The Odd Couple," a popular play on Broadway (later a TV series).

The Russ Building entrance on Montgomery. The tallest building on the West Coast until the completion of the Transamerica Pyramid in 1972.

THE INSPECTORS AND THE TOKEN BLACK GUY

We underwriters had to liaison with the engineering department who inspected properties for us to write insurance policies on. If an inspector found something wrong, like stuff cluttering public areas, or flammable junk piled high in an attic creating a fire hazard, he would issue a recommendation that the problem be taken care of within thirty days. We would then go ahead and insure the place, but if the problem wasn't fixed, we'd issue a cancellation notice. Often time limits were extended. If the engineer was golfing or otherwise socializing, or was a friend of the properly owner or his or her agent, Jim would tell us to extend the recommendation for another month until the policy came up for renewal. The owner would then get yet another round of thirty day notices. I supposed that they either prayed the place wouldn't burn to the ground or were in major denial.

Once, I ran across an egregious, racist recommendation on a policy I hadn't initially worked on, but had to underwrite for renewal. The engineering report read that a white woman in one of the apartments was ironing. Sitting and playing on the floor were some toddlers the report described as white and "Negro." The woman explained to the inspector that she baby sat for friends and that the "Negro" kids were theirs. The recommendation? That the women either get rid of the Negro kids or move out or St. Paul wouldn't insure the property. Such were the early 1960s, although the Civil Rights act had passed, paving the way to desegregation. On the way to my desk one day, passing another department, I noticed women chatting amongst themselves while they worked, over and around Harry, the company's token black guy. He and I became friends when he told me the guy I had lunch with looked like D. H. Lawrence. We ended up having coffee every day with Harry's teammates on the company baseball team. As the only woman in this otherwise all-male coffee-klatsch, this incited rumors. Harry, being invisible (his words), often overheard what the women in his department said about me; he also told me to watch out for Carl, from the engineering department.

Next up:
Chapter 7, Part Three
"D. H. Lawrence;" What the Women Said; Harry's Warning; I'm a Rape Target; Leaving St. Paul.

CHAPTER 7, Part One: Back in SF; A "Cowboy and Indian" saloon; "The Street"; New Skills; Big Brother; Mistaken Identity.

Entrance to our flat on Rondell Alley, 1963

I couldn’t blame Dad for renting the flat for us on Rondell Alley which runs between Mission and Valencia and 16^th and 17^th Streets. He was in his mid-sixties and had to apartment-hunt on public transportation during the two hour break in his split-shift at the Bohemian Club on Taylor. He did his best. Arriving in San Francisco from Chico on Greyhound to 7th St, we took MUNI to Mission and 16th and walked up to Rondell. I took one look at our surroundings and knew I'd have to start putting money away immediately for a place in a safer part of the city. The spacious three bedroom flat was on the first floor of a huge apartment building facing 16^th Street with the entrance on Rondell, both managed by a tall,blowsy woman with a bed-ridden husband. On the corner was a shit-kickin', red-neck saloon across the alley from a Native American support center. Both frequented the bar and as the night wore on, the alley got noisy. Leaving for school and work in the morning, we often had to step over bodies and/or vomit - -or both. The area has changed radically since 1963, becoming over the years a trendy hot spot for restaurants and clubs.

Once inside the flat, it was quiet and I didn’t have to worry about the kids making noise. Weekends, we went to Golden Gate Park, Angel Island, Aquatic Park, or to the library when it rained. As before, we took buses to Commodore Stockton pre- and elementary school in Chinatown, where I dropped off the kids, then walked down the hills to the St. Paul Insurance Company in the Mills Building on “The Street” - - Montgomery Street, the heart of the financial district.

ST. PAUL

A bee-hived, red-headed, be-spectacled divorcée, Jane, showed me to a metal desk in the front of several rows of desks, facing the entrance and bathrooms where I could quash my ennui by watching people come and go. The only job available when I applied for a transfer to SF was in the commercial casualty department. I knew zip about casualty, especially the mysteries of rating the intangibles of liability and automobile coverage. Comprehensive I could understand because it dealt with real stuff - - fire, property damage, vandalism, and theft. Also, there was a lot more to Commercial than Personal underwriting. Jane tried her best to train me while I tried her patience. The bosses sat in the back row. Telephone receivers appeared permanently attached to their head. Phones rang constantly, calculators chugged, typewriter clacked and clanged, file drawers slammed, and it sounded as if everyone were trying to out shout everyone else while puffing cigarettes. If I had questions, I asked Jane who often knew no more than me; so she’d ask someone else.

TAG DREAD

Around this time, I was trying to quit smoking. But with The California Insurance Bureau (now known as ISO - - Insurance Services Office), which I called Big Brother, overseeing every transaction performed by everyone in the industry, sometimes the stress got too much and I'd have to light up. Besides being like something out of “1984”, The Bureau seemed Kafkaesque as well. It got copies of every policy so we issued three: One for the Insured, one for St. Paul, and one for the Bureau, which consisted of a bunch of bean-picking clerks. When a clerk found a mistake, the policy was “tagged” - - returned with a form attached. The error had to be corrected within an allotted time, otherwise the company was fined. Bosses kept count of every tag and we were not only warned, but also threatened with termination for outstanding tags which could follow you around for months, even when you were transferred to another department. I had the tough luck of inheriting several from people who had left the company so had to clean up their mess. Some of my days were fraught with "tag dread." I managed to quit smoking by sucking on mint Life Savers. Besides, I was making so little money - - still two-fifty a month - - that when I caught myself weighing whether to buy milk for the kids or a pack of smokes, there was no question.

One day, just after I started work at St. Paul, a honcho from the LA office, Mr. Miller, paid a visit. He stopped at my desk.

“Oh, you’re the transferee from the LA office, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Another girl transferred to this office too, just a week or so ago,” he added, “I think her name was - -" He said my name.

“I am she, Mr. Miller." His face turned fiery red.

“Ha, ha! I knew that!” he laughed, rushing off.

To be continued . . .

Next up: Chapter 7, Part Two: A new department. Dick and Jim: "The Odd Couple"; the sole black guy; D. H. Lawrence; jealousy; Creepy Carl wants to rape me, and I want a raise.