CHAPTER 6, Part Four: Personal Issues Impede Production; Decison to Return to San Francisco; An International Tragedy.

Chapter 6, Part Four

WOMEN’S ISSUES SPARKS BOSS WHITE’S IRE; HELEN GOES BALLISTIC.

In our new building, it was my luck to be assigned to a desk behind a religious fanatic, a middle-age woman named Helen, who made it known to everyone in the office that whatever happened happened because it is “God’s will.” One morning, Barbara, a tall blond from the casualty department, stopped by Helen’s desk to see her about combining a property policy with liability. When she left, Helen confided to me that poor Barbara suffered pregnancies that ended in miscarriages. Then her face suddenly lit up in a beatific smile - -

“But, wonderful news! Barbara’s pregnant again! This time, this time,” she said, clenching her fists between ample breasts, “her obstetrician assured her and her husband that this time, she would not miscarry!” she crowed with an authoritative nod. Helen fawned and prayed over Barbara and asked us to pray, too, for a successful, full-term pregnancy.

Men tripped over themselves and Trevor ignored our new employee Phyllis’s habit of coming in late. She’d been hired for a position in Claims, on the other side of the floor from me, behind a bank of file cabinets. Phyllis hailed from Brooklyn and had an accent to match. She was young, thin, and single, and wore expensive, stylish clothes, and her long blond hair in a French knot. We could relate because we both came from historic, sophisticated cities, shared the same sense of humor, and traded snide remarks about the LA scene. One rainy day, we lit up our smokes over the remains of our lunch and relaxed as much as we could on our break-room folding chairs.

“You know,” she said, exhaling after a huge drag, “I’m late a lot. I don’t mean to be, but my boyfriend likes to have sex every morning.” She inhaled again. “And,” she chuckled, smoke coming out of her mouth in puffs, “they didn’t know it when they hired me, but I’m three months pregnant.” My immediate thought was about Barbara and how Helen would react when Phyllis’s condition became obvious.

Barbara wore tent-like, hip-length smocks over skirts with a hole cut out for her growing belly, when Phyllis started wearing fashionable, Empire-styled, calf-length maternity dresses. Phyllis held her head high as she moved gracefully about the office. Seeing Helen clench her fists and grit her teeth in outrage whenever she saw her, Phyllis sensed her dislike; she asked me if I knew why. I told her about Barbara. Phyllis shot back, “Oh, that Doris Day type from Casualty? All she does is complain. She’s in the right department. That woman is one huge casualty.”

Screams came from the women’s bathroom one morning. Someone ran out, shouting for an ambulance. One arrived in minutes; orderlies wheeled Barbara away on a gurney as Helen stood by with her hands clasped to her chest, eyes ceiling-ward. Later, she called the hospital; when she hung up the phone, she announced solemnly,

“Our sweet, innocent has Barbara suffered another loss; we must pray for her and the soul of her unborn child.” Phyllis happened to pass Helen’s desk at that moment on her way to the files. “Oh,” Helen sobbed loudly, pointed a finger at her, and wailed, “if anyone deserved to miscarry it is you! You shameless, fallen woman! Why? Why did Barbara miscarry and not you!” I did not want to get in the middle of it; I could ignore it; conveniently, I was on the phone with an agent.

“Come on, ladies, keep it down!” Trevor said, striding into our department, “What is this? Some ladies’ sob-sister support group? You're shutting down production! We’ve got work to do. I’ve got an agent in my office. You’re antics are distracting.” Helen stared at him uncomprehendingly, her mouth hanging open. Phyllis disappeared down a row of file cabinets.

Sitting behind Helen, subjected to her relentless venom towards Phyllis and her cloying, maudlin, holier-than-thou attitude, I’d had enough. “Helen,” I said, “remember: what happened to Barbara is ‘God’s will.’ He just didn’t choose Phyllis.” She spun around and glared at me, “Why, you! . . .” She turned dropped her head to her desk and cried. Telephones rang and were answered, people moved about, file cabinet drawers slid open and shut; papers shuffled, typewriters clattered and calculators chugged noisily, agents came and went, meetings went on in conference rooms, cigarette smoke rose and hung low against the perforated, soundproof ceiling. In other words, life went on despite Barbara’s tragedy and Phyllis’s snub to the era’s decorum and Helen’s religious convictions.

RUTH’S MAKEOVER; THE ERA’S DOMESTIC CONUNDRUM.

Ruth surprised us one morning by showing up with her mousy-brown hair dyed a deep chestnut, but her wardrobe stayed the same: man-tailored blouse, straight skirt with a slit up the back, no nylons, and white, scuffed, high-heeled shoes. We complimented her; she snickered, her face coloring as she bent over an ashtray to tap ashes from her ever-present cigarette.

The intriguing men in the office were Bunker and a ruggedly handsome, dark-haired older claims adjuster whose name I don’t remember. He looked like a movie star in his dark, pin-stripe, Italian-tailored suits and expensive wingtip shoes. Think today’s David Strathairn. His diamond-studded gold cuff links and tie clip, and 14 karat gold Longines watch led me to wonder about under-the-table rake-offs from claims he settled. Ruth told me he was married. Even if not, I sensed he was way out of my league. Other co-workers - - single and married - - came on to me. Still, early on I vowed never to become involved with a man from the office, a vow I ended up breaking. Somehow, I had developed an aversion to square, uninformed, and unhip “white-collar” workers with pale hands and white fingers; business men in ill-fitting suits and worn shoes - - with the exception of claims adjusters. This was the era of the housewife-and-mother where men were the “bread-winners” in split-level, ranch-style, two-car garage homes. The weight of responsibility for house payments, food, clothes, pocket money, allowances, and education dragged them down. They staved off depression with three-martini lunches and after-hour endless “Happy Hours” at nearby bars; or engaged in not-so-secret affairs, evidenced by flushed faces and slightly rumpled clothes when the assignees came back from lunch through separate entrances. At work, men shambled about in their cheap, dandruff-flecked, brown suits, and worn shoes; grasping files and cigarettes with nicotine stained fingers, aspiring to one day earn the magical annual salary of ten-thousand dollars. They, including Trevor, went around like ciphers. The difference? Trevor wielded power.

Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Disneyland.

OFF-HOUR RECREATION, SMOG EFFECTS, "THERE ARE NO CHILDREN IN SAN FRANCISCO."

A friend came down to LA to visit and we went to movies, took the kids to the beaches, sometimes with Russ. We hiked the Angeles National Forest and when my father rode Greyhound down for a weekend, visited Griffith Observatory. Russ took me and the kids spear-fishing and snorkeling at Laguna Beach and to Disneyland when it first opened. So it wasn’t as though all I did was work and come home. Most weekends, the kids and I went to Echo Park, near Aimee Semple McPhereson’s Four Square church, just down the hill from our bungalow, or endured a long bus ride to Santa Monica.

But I hated Los Angeles from the start. It was everything the SFChronicle’s Herb Caen said it was: hot, smoggy, and humid with tall, skinny, sickly palm trees lining every street. A heady, floral fragrance mixed with the odor of rotting garbage hung in the air everywhere. And people swanned around like they were expecting to be Hollywood’s next big discovery. Trendy men (or thought they were) wore skin-tight pants on legs as skinny as their ties and women wore stiletto heels, wigs, or teased their hair into gigantic beehives.

Terrence, my middle son’s asthma was getting worse because of the smog. Our pediatrician advised leaving the area, maybe even think about going back to San Francisco, which I desperately wanted to do. At a salary of two fifty a month, I still managed to put money away for a year, saving enough to send to my father to rent us a flat. He wrote back that he’d found one in the Mission and enclosed the key in his letter. Mr. Loomis arranged a transfer for me to the St. Paul San Francisco branch; and by phone I enrolled my sons in the day care they had attended before our move south. I gave two-week’s notice and trained a woman to take my place. A co-worker asked me, “How can you move to San Francisco? You have kids. I heard there were no children there.” Some in the office spoke of San Francisco as though the city were a dream, a magical place; who flew up often just to spend a weekend there. It was beyond them that I had ever left it for LA. It was for me, too, why I was going back.

AN INTERNATIONAL TRAGEDY.

A little over a week before I left, a white-faced, shaking Trevor stood in the middle of the floor, asked us to stop everything we were doing and listen. Some of us groaned - - oh, boy, not another company restriction. But he seemed about to cry, then in a broken voice, told us that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and was rushed to a hospital. Stunned silence, shouts of disbelief, and, “No! It’s a joke!” heightened by tears, and panic. Phones rang wildly; people cried, yelled, and sobbed. Pandemonium reigned. Word got out that he was dead. Sobbing, Phyllis and I hugged. We gathered up our belongings and rushed out of the office. Walking quickly on eerily quiet streets, yet with radios and TVs blaring from every storefront and window, I made it to the kids’ day-care and school and found them sitting subdued and wide-eyed. Teachers and staff could barely control themselves. They didn’t want to alarm the children. Roark, my oldest, was in day-care with his brothers because the school had closed. He was old enough to understand when I told him that someone had shot and killed President Kennedy. Russ lent us a TV so we could watch Kennedy’s funeral. Clips of the rider-less horse and the black carriage carrying his coffin played endlessly; I had to switch it off. But two days after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy, I did catch the live, stunning broadcast of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald.

Somehow during that devastating week, I arranged to ship by rail a few furnishings, kitchen stuff, and clothes to be delivered to our new place. I said my goodbyes at a small going-away party held during the afternoon coffee break. I wished Phyllis the best for her, her boyfriend and new baby; sorry I wouldn’t be around to see it. (This was not to be the last I’d see of her or LA.) Barbara never returned to the office. I thanked Helen when she said, "God bless you, dear," clasped my hand warmly and smiled. Ruth said she'd really miss me, smoke veiling her reddening face. Trevor came in for cake and boomed a hearty, "Good Luck! I'll look you up next time I'm in the San Francisco office."

"Swell," I said, thinking "not."

A day or two after a somber Thanksgiving, Russ packed us into his VW bug and we endured a cramped but fun trip almost 500 miles to my mom and stepfather’s place in Chico, north of Sacramento. The next day, Russ drove off to ski near Tahoe; the kids and I took Greyhound to San Francisco and I started work the following Monday.

NEXT UP: You can go home again; The Bureau; St. Paul's Invisible Man; blatant verbal sexual abuse.

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.