Chapter 6, Part Three: A Nuclear Threat Too Close to Home, Yet Some Freak Out Over Little Stuff.

In mid-October, 1962, a month or so after I started working at St. Paul, whose offices took over the entire second floor above a vacuum cleaner sales and repair store in a nondescript two-storey building on some side street, a US U-2 spy plane had discovered nuclear missile sites in Cuba, ninety miles off the Florida coast - - missiles capable of reaching that state and most likely others. President Kennedy had been in office just under two years. One afternoon, I had just returned from lunch when someone hurried into the office in a panic: he’d heard on the radio that Soviet warships carrying nuclear missiles were headed for the US. He held up a newspaper confirming the report and lay it on a desk and we all crowded around to read it. The report also speculated that if the US military took out the missile sites, Khrushchev would order a missile attack on us. This would not only be the start of WWIII, but the end of civilization as we knew it. Ever since I'd witnessed what my own parents, relatives, and their friends experienced during WWII, I pointedly avoided anything having to do with war: news, radio, discussions. I vowed I would never become involved with anyone having anything to do with the military or the defense industry, much less become romantically involved, marry or live with anyone who did. I had three boys, I would do anything to keep them out of the military. I did not want to hear, read or think about it.

Stunned, we sat at our desks; some up and left everything, hung up in the middle of a phone call, and walked out. The phones were ringing wildly. Branch Manager, Vice-President Trevor White, let us all go home. Women panicked, worried about their kids; anguishing over stores running out of food and supplies before they could stock up. Now that the possibility of war was figuratively at our doorstep, I honestly did not know what to do. I sat there thinking: If I went out and bought a lot of food and water to last a week or . . . ? how would I get it home? Besides, I had only enough money to get us through till next payday, almost a week away. I called Russ; he wasn't home.

I left and hurried to the kids’ school. When I arrived, the children were sitting quietly. They picked up that something wasn't right by the way we parents and the teachers acted. As I walked home with my young sons to our little bungalow, I reassured them that things were going to be fine. Everything seemed hushed as though the country were holding its collective breath, waiting for the big blast. I had no phone. Russ dropped by and we debated whether or not we should go over to his place so we’d all be nuked together. Eventually, between the two of us, somehow, we felt confident that nothing would happen; that the leaders of both countries were intelligent enough to realize the devastating impact the nuclear attacks would have on the entire world and would back off. People went back to work; days passed; threats lobbed back and forth between the leader of both countries. (We discovered years later, the military of both Russia and the US were pushing Khrushchev and Kennedy to go for it.) A week or so later what became known as the Cuban Missile Crises was over. Two years later, we’d be stunned again and devastated at the news of Kennedy’s assassination.

The Ambassador Hotel, aerial view.

The company moved into a brand new building a few blocks away from the old office, across the street and a half-block down from the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Blvd, so I could still walk to work after dropping my kids off at school. Never one to take breaks in a stale-smelling, airless room, I went out walking in the fresh air to explore the neighborhood. One of my finds was the famous Brown Derby restaurant, also on Wilshire; the hang-out for people in the entertainment business. Shaped like a derby, it sat back from the sidewalk - - a patch of lawn and tropical flowers in front. An awning covered the walkway. It probably looked groovy all lit up at night, but in the daytime? shabby - - brown paint flaking from the crown, yellow patches in the grass. I couldn’t imagine bejeweled celebrities dressed to the nines on the arms of tuxedoed escorts coming to this wreck. (A decade later, when the San Francisco branchof the Los Angeles Mutual Insurance Company sent me to LA for a training session, I had lunch with my boss and a couple of underwriters at the Derby, and treated myself to breakfast the next day - - alone - - at the Ambassador Hotel, on the company’s dime.)

The world-famous Brown Derby

Carol, who met her boyfriend for lunch but took coffee breaks with the women, told me they thought I hated them; they said I was a snob for not sitting with them, I didn’t and wasn’t - - I just liked time alone. Besides, like I said, the atmosphere in the break room stank. Dynamo Florence, short and stocky, let nothing get in the way of her coffee break. She’d be on the phone with an agent, but soon as the bell rang for break, she’d say, “Gotta go,” slam down the receiver in mid-sentence, and race off. I could only guess how much business St. Paul lost because of her. When it rained - - which was rare - - I’d take breaks either by myself so I could read or join Ruth and Bunker. Ruth lived with a woman thirty miles outside of LA. She showed me a picture of her house which sat surrounded by a lovely garden at the foot of some mountains in a remote area. Took her hours to drive in every day, she said, but it was worth it.

Bunker lived in the city. Besides being the company’s chief engineer and go-to guy for information, he also had a proprietary attitude towards the department’s huge, leather bound, map books. They were half-foot thick, eighteen by twenty-four inches and felt like they weighed a ton. Their linen pages were treated the way blank canvases are for oil paintings and were amazingly and beautifully hand-detailed in color with every structure on every block in Los Angeles and neighboring counties. The first time I had to consult one for rating information, I tried to slide it out of the shelf it was stored in, underneath the broad, waist high, flat surface, and lift it up. An underwriter who watched me struggle with the massive thing, wrestled it from me and dropped it on top. When I came back to my desk, Ruth told me that if I needed help next time, if a man is "too busy," she could do it. Sadly, because documents, manuals, forms, and maps were being micro-fiched and computerized, the company started tossing out these beautifully rendered map books. Outraged, Bunker told me and Ruth one day on break that he was rescuing the books from ending up in the dump. He carted them to his car on a dolly and hauled them home.

“Well, what the hell for?” Ruth asked, crinkling her eyes behind her cigarette smoke, and taking another drag.

"I rip out the pages and soak them in the bathtub for weeks to remove the glue-like sizing," Bunker explained, smoothing his breast pocket hanky. "The linen is the best quality," he went on, "Those books had to last decades. Once I soak all the glue off them, I dye them all these colors, cut them up, fringe the edges, and use them for table napkins.” Ruth choked, doubled over, cracking up, smoke coming out of her mouth in spurts.

“If that isn’t the damndest thing I ever heard of. I got better things to do with my time.”

“Yes, like driving two hours to and from work,” Bunker jabbed. I said I thought it was ingenious.

“You would,” Ruth scoffed. Bunker looked at me and winked.

The company sent Bunker out to size up new risks and slap safety recommendations on them. Ruth told me she'd seen him strut around a site in his finest clothes with property owners who argued with him, trying to get around having to comply with fire safety regulations. “Bunker may not look it,” she told me, “but he can be tough.” If I had to compare him with anyone, it would be David Suchet as Inspector Poirot.

Trevor White, probably in his early forties, had prematurely white-hair. I loved the name, hated the man. He threatened to fire me a couple of times because I had to take a day or two off when my kids got sick or had doctors' appointments. Ruth stood up for me; I get my work done. The agents who send us business liked me. "So back off," she told Trevor, echoing my exact take on the situation. One summer, he announced that we were way behind on getting renewal policies out, so had to work mandated overtime on Saturdays or risk being laid off. I couldn't afford to lose my job. I hired a sitter and came in a couple of times. It wasn't good. One morning, Ruth saw me sitting staring into space, trying to figure out what to do.

"What's wrong, doll?" she asked.

"I can't work Saturdays. School isn't open. I had to hire a baby-sitter and her fee ate up my overtime pay. It's not worth it, Ruth."

"Don't worry. I'll tell Trevor," she assured me, "I'll soften him up." Whatever she said to him worked.

Jo, an older woman near retirement, was Ruth’s buddy. She wore long skirts, loose blouses, and tied her stringy, dark hair in a knot at the back of her head, like Raskolnikov's pawnbroker. Jo sat way in the back of the offece. She had been with the company the longest so still had an oak desk. After the move, the company had replaced most of the wooden desks with modern Steelcase ones. One day, I heard Jo gasp and moan like she was having an orgasm. What the hell was going on? She came sweeping into our department ooohhhhing and aahhhhing. “Oh, everyone please come and see my new desk!” She’d been lying in wait for the furniture movers to wheel in her very own Steelcase on a carpeted dolly. Women, including Ruth, rushed over to Jo’s new desk, ran their hands over it, opened and closed the drawers. I was one of a few - - mostly men - - who stayed put. The whole scene was weird - - beyond me. Another time she came swanning into our department, “When you’re as old as me, your teeth just fall out!” she exclaimed, chuckling, holding high a bloody molar she’d just plucked from her jaw, a trickle of blood dripping from a corner of her mouth.

Chapter 6, Part Four: Demonized by a religious fanatic. Sign of the Cross displayed to ward off evil of unmarried pregnant new hire. Ruth changes her image, sort of. And the fate of the "breadwinner". Men - - married and single come on to me. A tragedy.

Chapter 6, Part Two: Los Angeles. A Job, A Cottage, My Children

My father, Ennis, and Russ in LA at Griffith Observatory, 1963

I slept on the couch in Russ's Hollywood apartment he shared with his wife, Gayle, and their one-year old daughter, Michelle. The next morning, he drove me to an employment agency. Because I had worked at Met Life Insurance and Springfield Life, I was sent to St. Paul Insurance Company. St. Paul was Property and Casualty, but insurance is insurance in the minds of employment agencies.

The head of Personnel was Mr. Loomis, who looked like Clifton Webb. He had white hair combed straight back, a big pointy nose, steel rimmed round glasses, pinched lips, and wore a double breasted grey suit. In the space on the application where it said “hobbies,” I wrote "touch-football on the beach," because the Kennedys played touch- football on the beach at Kennebunkport. I had a feeling it would get me hired. Laughing, Mr. Loomis read the application, then said, “So, you and the Kennedys, eh?” He called me later that day and told me to come in the following Monday.

I called the kids every evening to tell them I would come for them soon. With my first bi-monthly check, I rented a small cottage on Alvarado St., a couple of blocks from Echo Park, for fifty bucks a month. The first time I walked to work, I approached an overpass; crossing it, I thought the sound coming from beneath it was that of a rushing river. I looked over the parapet and was disappointed to see instead that the sound was caused by all kinds of vehicles roaring along on an eight-lane freeway. My walk led me past a day care and grammar school where I enrolled my boys. Then on a Friday evening, I took Greyhound to San Jose. Carl picked me up the next morning and that night, we took Greyhound back to LA, sleeping all the way. We were overjoyed at being together again, starting over in a new place. On Monday morning, the boys and I walked to their school. I watched them being welcomed by the teacher, ensuring that Roark, my oldest would be escorted to his 2nd grade class, and his brother, Terrence, to Kindergarten, while the youngest, Douglas, would stay in day care till I picked them up. They went off to play with the other kids and I went on to work.

Me, Roark, and Terrence while Douglas naps with his cousin, Michelle.

My job description was “Personal Lines Rater.” Ruth Conlon, my boss, a wound-up, wiry ash-blond woman, had shoulders like a half-back; she not only looked like she could chew nails - - with her jaws clenched tight - - she appeared to be doing just that. Because Ruth’s hair was wiry and her face was similar, except her features were spread out, she reminded me of Rhonda at Met Life; and Linda from the shipping department at Ronson thrown in, too, for her mannish swagger and gravelly voice. Ruth wore sleeveless, cotton blouses; straight, gabardine skirts that hit her just below the knee, and dirty white high heels, but no nylons (this was LA) on legs had never seen the sun. She smoked constantly and tromped around the department like a general in her high heels worn down to steel nubs.

I was where I never thought I’d be: at a property and casualty insurance company, not realizing at the time that I would spend the next three-plus decades in this industry. At St. Paul, I “wrote” homeowners’ and fire insurance policies for residences. Anything above a duplex went to the commercial insurance department. Behind me sat Carol, a precursor to the hippie with long blond hair, sandals, and no make up. In front, was Elaine, a sweet, Southern blond who wore pastel cottons. I was nervous, scared. I’d never been away from San Francisco by myself, let alone with three children. My brother was here but he had his own life, a wife and a toddler. I was a single mother with three kids under the age of seven and I was their sole support. I couldn’t afford to screw up on this job. I was finding out that all bosses are not as forgiving and fun as Ken Tilles.

I had mastered a cash register, now I had to master the beast of a calculator. The major part of rating had to do with rating risks. This meant taking the insured value of a house times a rate you looked up in a manual, according to where the house was in an area that included all of LA and San Bernardino Counties - - the beaches, the canyons, the valleys, Beverly Hills, Watts - - what the house was made of, what kind of roof it had, and apply (multiply) the rate times the value which resulted in the premium. Ta da! A calculator back in the day hunched on top of a large part of your desk like an ancient double-sized Royal typewriter on steroids. Once activated, it makes a deafening metallic ca-chunking clatter as its carriage literally jumps across its body, calculating rates that are displayed in little holes across the top. Imagine six or a dozen of these things ca-chunking away all day. You had to scream to be heard. To operate one required you to set the decimal point so that the premium would come out right when you keyed in the rate and the value. This seemed a thousand times worse to me than operating a cash register. e. g. If a premium showed up in the little holes as some outlandish figure for a fifteen-thousand dollar house, like $25,659.26, it had to be wrong. So I’d end up doing it manually, till I caught on.

Ruth sat beside me and walked me through the rating of a couple of new policies. Once you get the rates and the premiums, you write all the information on a form and send it with a blank policy to the typing department which types up the policy, then it comes back to you to check for errors; then you mail it out with an invoice for the premium and you keep a copy of the policy for the files. Accounting was responsible for seeing premiums get paid. The policy copies are called “dailies” “Why?" I asked Ruth. “Because they seldom stay in the files for more than a day.” People were always calling for changes to their coverage requiring endorsements which is too boring to explain.

In writing down some numbers on the blank form off an application, Ruth made a couple of mistakes. She ferociously wrote the correct numbers over them with a ball-point pen, over and over, almost tearing the paper. She made grunting noises and her face was all screwed up in a knot, like she was on the verge of hysteria. It struck me funny. I started laughing. Suddenly she looked up.
“What’re you laughting at?" she shot at me.
“Nervous,” I heard my voice quavering, “I always laugh when I’m nervous.”.
“Well, don’t be.” She grimaced in an attempt to smile, “This stuff’s a piece of cake.”

The créme de la créme homeowners policies were called something fancy like Gold Packages and had all kinds of broad coverages on them and included burglary, robbery, casualty and automobile coverage. Only very wealthy people like those in Beverly Hills could afford them. Underwriters (the ones who analyze the risks) drew the line at entertainers, I found out. I approved a Gold Package for Duane Eddy. Ruth hit the fan. I’d already called the agent and told him I’d accepted Eddy's application. I asked Ruth why Duane Eddy couldn’t insure his home under that type of coverage. He was a millionaire and lived in Topanga Canyon or some such ritzy place.
“Because of their lifestyle, you know, they smoke and drink and throw orgies. Entertainers are too great a risk.” Ruth called the agent, explaining that I was new and was still “wet behind the ears.”
This was my first lesson in the unfair and discriminatory practices of insurance.

Ruth took coffee breaks with an old fop named Bunker Hill, a suave character whose real name she told me was Cornelius. He was about five-five, balding; he had a John Waters mustache and freckles. What little hair he had was slicked back. He wore nave-blue blazers with gold buttons and grey slacks, pink shirts with green and pink ties and a pink and green hanky sticking out of his breast pocket. He talked with a built in sneer and sashayed when he walked. He was St. Paul's special agent who went around to solicitors and brokers at agencies to drum up business for the company. He knew everything about property insurance. Whenever I got stuck, I went to Ruth; whenever she got stuck, she went to Bunker.

Business was picking up and Ruth needed a senior personal-lines underwriter. Elaine, who’d been there at least a year before I was hired, was in line for the promotion. Carol was so flaky, she couldn’t care less, she was happy just to have a job. Ruth passed by my desk and spoke to me out of the corner of her mouth like a character out of a Scorsese film. “Take a walk with me.” (She didn't have an office. This was decades before cubicles. Desks were lined up in rows, like in school. Our department manager didn't have an office, either. He sat alone, in his own huge space, behind us, like a prison guard in a recreation area.) Ruth and I crossed back and forth between personal lines and claims. She folded her arms across her chest and held a burning cigarette between her fingers. The smoke trailed up into her eyes.
“Look, you catch on fast and I got the approval of the manager to promote you to the position of senior underwriter.”
“Elaine’ll hate me- -”
“- - She doesn’t use her head. Underwriting is all common sense. Do you want the job?”
“Well, yes.”
“I’ll talk to Elaine. Nothin’ll change. I mean, you’ll still be sitting in the same desk an’ all, but Elaine, Carol and the others’ll have to go through you to approve new business or significant changes on existing policies. Of course, you’ll get a raise.” She turned to me and blew smoke in my face.
“Thank you!” I said, trying not to cough. I went back to my desk and sat down. Elaine shot me a dirty look. Carol winked.

Russ directs me to strike a pose in in his garden, 1963

One day I came to work and the doors to our department were locked. We all stood or sat in the hallway to wait for someone to unlock them. Ruth had been there since seven; she stomped around so hard in her nubby steel heels I expected to see machine gun bullet holes in the carpet. She had been searching for the building manager when I got there. She was so mad, she only got as far as removing the bobby-pins from her pincurls and her hair coiled up like bed-springs. I was standing in the hallway with the others when she came stomping around a corner, hair coils bouncing, and nearly bumped into me. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Ruth! You look like Medusa and the Snakes!” Her eyes shot lasers at me. I thought for a second I'd had it. Then, her faced crinkled; she laughed.

Next up: Chapter 6, Part Three: The office moves across the street from the Ambassador Hotel. I find out about Ruth and Bunker’s lives outside the office. Pre-computerized city maps. More hassles on time off for children issues; Ruth sticks up for me. A co-worker gets orgasmic over a new desk. The evil religious fanatic defends "Doris Day". Ruth changes her image!

Chapter Six: Part One, From Theatre Gigs to Welfare and Back - - to Life Insurance 101

Circumstances were such that it was necessary that Ed be completely out of the picture. I wanted to be totally independent of him and not have to rely on anyone for the responsibility of my or my children’s life. I had to get a job. I applied at the Emporium and other stores; I answered ads for assembly-line work and for just about every job I felt I could do. You had to show your age on applications back then. And I, at 26, was “too old.” “They” wanted girls right out of high school; besides, I hadn’t worked full-time in seven years, and had children. “Kids,” they said, “get sick so you'll have to take time off.” Having three - - ages seven, five, and three - - simply multiplied the "problem." To tide us over, my father - -recently retired and living on Social Security - - opened a small savings account for me. Desperate, my only hope was Welfare.

We lived on the slopes of John McLaren Park in Visitacion Valley, a south-eastern part of the City, not far from the Cow Palace. One morning, the four of us trekked on dirt foot-paths through empty lots to catch the San Bruno Ave bus to the Welfare office, housed in a dismal, grey monster of a building (now a shopping mall), abutting the entrance to the Stockton Tunnel, on the edge of Union Square. The looks we got as we walked in, from welfare seekers and case-workers alike, said, “What are you doing here?” I picked up my fifteen (at least) page application from the counter and sat next to an older woman. She said that if I expected to get benefits, I had to look like I needed them. “Next time you come in here, try not to look like you’re goin’ shoppin’ at I Magnin’s.” I had no money except for the little my father gave me. We had nice clothes - - some I'd made but most were second-hand. Did we have to look destitute to qualify? I wore a skirt and blouse, heels, and a full-length black coat, earrings, and my hair up in a French knot. I dressed the boys in white shirts, pants, and jackets. The majority of applicants seemed beat down, weary, sickly. In shabby clothes, most slumped or leaned in folding chairs, eyes closed, or staring into space with vacant eyes at nothing. Children ran around playing, or hanging onto their mothers, screaming, or crying. Women of all ages (some grandmothers?) grabbed at and held them, speaking either soothingly or sharply. My boys watched, wide-eyed.




I lit a cigarette and concentrated on completing the form on both sides, then put it on top of a stack piled in a box marked “Applications” sitting on another counter. Behind a partition, under a cloud of cigarette smoke, caseworkers - -men in suits, or sportcoats, and ties and women in skirts, blouses, or dresses - - shuffled papers and stubbed out cigarettes in overflowing ashtrays. Every so often, a case worker would look up and call out a name over a din of typewriters and ringing phones. They'd hustle back and forth carrying thick files, guiding people into small rooms along the walls. I’d brought along Little Golden Books for the boys; I read the Chronicle while we waited. Finally, I heard my name and followed a round-shouldered, tired-looking man in an ill-fitting tweed sport-coat and shiny gabardine slacks. Holding both a lit cigarette and my forms in one hand, he opened the glass door of a room barely large enough for a desk and two chairs, ushered us in and shut the door. He sized me up, looked at the kids and said something like, “You don’t look like our typical welfare recipient.” He read my application, stared at me, sighed, and signed it; shoved it across the desk for me to sign. He handed me a form to take to yet another counter where I was given a book of food-stamps equaling about eighteen dollars for a month’s food, and a Welfare check - - I don’t remember for how much.



After a couple of months of reapplying in person every month and picking up my check and stamps at that dismal office, and having people cast the evil eye at us. I made another stab at getting a job. Again, with no success. I’d been writing to my sister and her husband in Springfield, Mass about my travails. Seems Springfield Life Insurance where my brother-in law worked was opening a branch in San Francisco. He knew the company president and the office manager out here. He wrote a letter of recommendation for me. I went to their new office on Montgomery Street for an interview, and, based on his letter and my previous experience at Met Life, was hired to work in the billing department.


I enrolled my boys in a state-run, pre-school program attached to Commodore Stockton Grammar School, in Chinatown. My oldest was in the second grade, my five-year old had just started Kindergarten, and the youngest, three, stayed in day-care all day. The fees for the program, which got its start during WWII to help mothers who went to work for the "war effort" while their men were overseas, were based on one’s salary. We got up at six in the morning, dressed, ate breakfast, and trekked over the trails to the bus for an hour's ride downtown, where we transferred to a bus to Chinatown. I'd drop my kids at the school, then walk down the hills to my new job.




My boss, white-haired and gruff, took me to a desk where a blond German woman about my age was punching away at a manual calculator as she scrutinized a yards-long tape the machine churned out while she flipped over stacks of checks. She barely looked up when he introduced me and told her she was to train me. Reaching out a hand, she grabbed an empty chair, wheeled it next to hers, and gestured for me to sit down, never taking her eyes off the tape or the checks. I threw my coat over the back of the chair, shoved my purse underneath and sat. Her acrid body odor made my eyes water. She talked me through the process of balancing check totals; she showed me tally sheets of hand written premium amounts and payouts I was to enter into the Ten-Key Add. She had written them in the European manner - - the commas where, in the US, the decimal points go and decimal points, commas - - e.g. for $1,295.00 she wrote $1.295,00. When I pointed this out, she spoke harshly to me in heavily accented English which I could barely understand. So I shut up. Of the many job training courses offered in high school, one was Office Machines (calculators, adding machines, Xerox machines, everything but typewriters - - a whole separate course), which I'd avoided like the plague and now was almost sorry I had.



I’d been on the job a week when I told my boss I had to have a couple hours off to take one of my boys to the doctor. He said, “I hope this doesn’t happen often or we’ll have to let you go. There’s too much work around here for you to be taking time off for your sick kids.” An older woman who sat behind me confided that she’d been working in offices for twenty years. “It was easy for women to get jobs back then. All the men got drafted. But lots of us got fired when they came back. I was lucky. I wasn’t married and I didn’t have kids.”



About a week later, one Sunday, Mom, my step-dad, Carl, and my father came by to see how we were doing. Synchronistically, presciently, my brother, Russ, his wife, Gayle, and some friends with a pickup truck and a camper, just happened to show up on their way home to Los Angeles from a trip to Canada. Though my parents and step-dad knew I'd separated from Ed, I hadn't said anything to Russ until then. His reaction was to take over our lives. Russ is one of these guys who can sell the proverbial refrigerator to an “Eskimo.” When he was seven, he traded a friend an Argyle shoelace - - one shoelace - - for an expensive pocket-knife (Mom made him give it back). He not only convinced me to move to Los Angeles, leave with him right then and there; he also convinced me and Mom that she and Carl, who lived in Sunnyvale, near San Jose, should take my boys until I got a job and a place to live in LA. It was a plan that I would not have ever, suddenly, decided on my own. My father reassured me that he and a neighborhood friend would take care of my household things. Mom and Carl packed their car with the kids' stuff and some small necessary items. We hugged each other, my boys and I cried. I promised I’d come back for them soon. We got in our separate vehicles and took off. I called my boss from LA to tell him I quit.



Next up: I land yet another insurance gig; my co-workers hate me; I rent a cottage near Echo Park, take Greyhound to San Jose to retrieve my boys. My boss Ruth is an amplified version of Rhonda at Met Life; I jeopordize my job when I call her "Medusa, of the Snakes."

Chapter Five: Part 2, Theatre Gigs

Maria Schell: Photo from Flickr

I did not know what to tell people who called when I worked the box office to ask if they could bring their kids. When I was about nine or ten, my mom worked as an usher at the Orpheum Theatre (which now stages live musicals). If she couldn’t get my aunt or a neighbor to baby-sit or my dad had to work, she’d take me, my 12 year old sister and 7 year old brother with her and plunk us down in the loges (a costly prestigious raised area behind the last row of “orchestra” seats) where she could keep an eye on us. The movies were either sexy film noir (“Mildred Pierce”) or war (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”). We saw everything (“Bambi”). So I hemmed and hawed on the phone, trying to make change and getting it wrong, and irritating people standing in line. Then I remembered what Norman from the toy store told me: the most important people were the customers in the store, not the ones on the phone. So I’d apologize and hang up.

I hated doing the box office: “Gervaise” was a popular film for the avant garde, foreign film buffs lined up in front of me, impatiently waiting while I took money and struggled with counting back change. I was relieved when Linda came back from break, but that meant I had to replace Ella in concessions, which, like I said, also involved money. People grabbed up boxes of JuJubes, Milk Duds, Hershey bars, Black Crows, peanuts, and Big Hunks - - sometimes all at once and all with different prices. Fifteen minutes were like an eternity and sometimes Ella would be late coming back. I didn’t mind ushering, for obvious reasons. One night, Ed got a baby-sitter and came to the show. I'd told Rita he was coming, expecting that he wouldn't have to pay; like an angry crow, she fluffed up her black fringed bolero, glared at me, and warned, “Just this once!”

On Sunday, at the end of my first week, everyone was seated and there was no one in the lobby; Tom was at his post inside; Ella was in the bathroom; Linda was in the glass box, counting out the money; and Rita was in her office (I thought). The strains of the waltz over the opening credits filtered through the doors into the lobby; I took the carpet sweeper from its alcove, began pushing it around on the burgundy carpet. Back and forth, round and round the lobby, I waltzed - - swept away as it were - -with the sweeper. Head thrown back, dizzy, I caught something out of the corner of my eye, something black flitting past me, rippling the air, like the witch from “The Wizard of Oz.” I stopped in mid twirl. Rita flew into her office, giving me the look of death, and closed her door. I put the carpet sweeper back in its nook and started for the box office to relieve Linda and set it up for the next show. Rita stopped me before I got out the door. “Come into my office, please.” I followed her. She sat down at her desk, scribbled on a rectangular piece of paper, picked it up and handed it to me. "It's a week’s pay. I cannot tolerate your outrageous behavior in this theatre. I have to think of our patrons!" I was dumbfounded. What on earth was wrong with waltzing? Maybe she objected to my partner. Later, there were days I’d see her walking up the street to her car as I was taking the kids to the playground. I’d turn around and walk the other way. “Mommy, Mommy," my oldest would protest, "I thought we were going to the playground!"

Determined to try working in a movie theatre again - -I mean, how hard can it be? - - I brazenly walked into the Bridge Theatre, asked the dude at the ticket/concessions counter for the manager and was directed up a short flight of carpeted stairs. I knocked on a door marked "Manager" heard a gruff voice say, "Come in." I opened the door on a harried looking man behind a desk. I started selling myself as an experienced theatre worker, crossing my fingers, figuratively, telling him of my stint at the Presidio hoping he wouldn’t check. I started that night. Seems my new boss was not only harried but desperate because the counter dude had just quit.

Said dude gave me a brief overview of the job: you ran the concessions while you sold tickets, and you had to keep the money separate. If you need change for the concessions, you can take it from the ticket sales, but you have to put it back, and, oh, the phone, see all these buttons? Well, they're linked to the company that runs all the other theatres the Bridge is a part of. So, someone might call and ask to speak to someone at one of the other theatres, so you press this button here, and then press this one and say, "Blah blah blah . . ." then press this button - - my head was spinning. And he was gone. I tried. I didn’t even know what movie was playing.

Patrons were lining up by the thousands; I jumped like the proverbial flea on a hot griddle from concessions, to the ticket counter, to the phone, my hands full of bills I’d shove in the concessions drawer that probably should have been for tickets. The phone rang and rang. I did okay for a while on the phone, until I cut off a honcho from one of the other theatres who wanted to speak to the Bridge manager. He phoned back and called me a dumb bitch. I left my post, abandoned the line of patrons, walked up the stairs to Mr. What’ssisname’s office, opened the door and said, “I quit.” Turned around, grabbed my coat and purse, and pushed my way through the crowd of confused, complaining people and heard the manager behind me apologizing, calmly saying, “It’s all right folks, we’ll have this all straightened out in no time . . .” Passing the window, I caught a glimpse of him behind the counter, moving deftly from tickets to concessions, and picking up the phone. Whattaguy! What did me in this time was not the waltz, but these newfangled phones with all those buttons! Oh, and keeping the money straight. Truly, I do admire people who can do this kind of work.

The Bridge Theatre on Geary and Blake, at night, still open with first run films and midnight specials.

After these short-lived gigs and three kids, Ed and I separate. We - - the kids and I - - move to Los Angeles where my brother lived and I begin my rocky "career" in the insurance business.



Next up: Chapter Six: A Brief Intro into Insurance and the Move to Echo Park in Smoggy Los Angeles.

Chapter Five: Part 1, Life After Met Life

My last day at Met Life, I said goodbye to Katie, Rhonda, Shirley, and others, including Grace, whose husband was a “garbage man” (not a scavenger or refuse engineer). Grace didn’t have to work, she said, he made enough money, but she wanted to be out of the house before he came home at eight from his shift because he brought the smell of garbage with him which took all day to get rid of. They lived in a house in the Sunset which had an area outside the utility room where he changed and showered. Then he’d wash his clothes immediately and open all the windows to let in the fresh ocean air to blow away the smell before she came home at six.

(Garbage trucks were like scows back then - - huge open gondolas about 15 feet deep, with metal foot rests on the sides. “Garbage men” wore a leather cape over their shoulders. On their routes, they’d wheel huge round containers into side allies, garages, and basements, lift and dump full metal garbage cans into them; the men had to be strong. Then, with a horrific clanging and banging, they’d literally toss the empty cans and lids aside, making enough noise to wake up entire neighborhoods. When the containers were full they’d roll them to the open truck parked in the middle of the street, sling them on their back - - why the leather cape - - then climb up the side of the open gondola and dump the contents into it.

They would sing operatic areas con brio as they worked, which almost compensated for the clanging and banging. Once the behemoth trucks were filled, the men would throw a huge tarp over the top and tie it down. Sometimes they’d get in and stomp on the piles of garbage to make room for more. When I first moved back to the City, I’d stayed with an aunt for a while who lived in Navy housing on Hunter’s Point. On my way home from school, I’d see these juggernauts hauling ass down Third Street to Bayshore Blvd - - men hanging off the sides - - tarps flapping and pieces of garbage flying off behind them, with strains of a Radamés aria from “Aida” wafting in the air, mingled with smells of garbage. They'd unload at the county dump off the Bay near Brisbane. It was rumored that the Mafia ran the scavenger companies. According to Grace, you had to be Italian to get a job and the money was great. Still, the newer “green” closed trucks make more noise with their pneumatic lifts, the shaking and thumping of heavy duty plastic containers. And they’re on the street two or three times a week: to collect from the recycling bins, then the composting bins, and last landfill. The saddest part: the collectors no longer sing.)

I also said goodbye to self-proclaimed spinster, Lillian, an Italian-American Catholic who had called me a pagan because of my non-denominational stance, though she insisted I could at least say I was a Protestant, which, of course, I refused to do. She had written me off, but did manage a weak smile; and hyperactive Florence who popped aspirin like M&Ms.

Thus began a transition period where I divested myself of Harry through a marriage annulment arranged by his folks with their family attorney, married Ed, a teamster whom I’d met one summer on a visit to my Mom and stepfather’s place in Portland, and started a family. After my third child was born, Ed agreed to let me get a part-time job in the evenings after the kids were in bed so I could have my own “pocket” money. I scanned the want ads and found an opening at the Presidio Theatre in the Marina. At that time, it featured foreign films, which I was and am really into (The Presidio later became an “adult” movie house; then shut down because of the complaints from well-to-do families in the Marina District. Decades later, it re-opened as a mainstream movie house and remains so today). I got all dressed up and was interviewed in a tiny cubby-hole office off the lobby by Rita, the manager, a tiny woman dressed completely in black with her black hair in a chignon. She had tiny, mean-looking, dark-brown eyes and a sharp nose - - features which should have warned me what was to come - - but she seemed nice and needed someone to start immediately. I was hired to fill in - - fill in for what, I asked. “Oh, you’ll do the box office when Linda’s on break, and usher when Tom’s on break, and the concession stand, when Ella’s on break.” Ushering I could do. Box office, concessions - - uh-oh, those required handling money. Oh, well, I thought, it would be just fifteen minutes; I can handle it. Rita added that when I wasn’t spelling the others and the audience was seated, I was to carpet sweep the lobby.

Ironically, it turned out that Rita lived on my block and offered to drive me to work. I thanked her, but declined. I have this thing about getting too close to one’s boss. It meant we’d have to talk and I didn’t want to.

The film “Gervaise” was playing during the week I was there. It starred Maria Schell, sister of Maximilian, a good actor who now does Stella Artois commercials. “Gervaise” was one of the most depressing films I have ever seen, but it opened with a most beautiful soaring waltz over the credits. I did sort of okay jumping from ushering, to concessions, to the box office, which was the worst. You’re in this glass box in front of the theatre and you take money and press levers, and the tickets pop out of a slot in a metal counter you sit in front of. And the telephone at your elbow rang constantly. People would call while I was taking money for tickets, making change, and pressing levers, and handing tickets to people. Not like today where when you call (or go on-line), you get a menu to choose from, giving you all the information about the theatre and the movies that are playing. Even the ratings. This was way before ratings. People called to ask me what the film was about. Or worse - - if they could take their children. I was not the one to ask.

Coming up: Part 2. Early exposure to films; Ed pays a visit and I get a feel for Rita's wrath; fired for waltzing with an inanimate partner; I try again at the Bridge Theatre and am undone by the phone. I come to admire people who work in small theatres. A separation, I take the kids and move to LA.

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.