Installment # 4

I was commuting to San Jose from Belmont during the height of the gas shortage in 1974.  A gas station would put up a sign indicating that some gas was available and a line of cars maybe half a mile long would form.  The ones near the end of the line could be fairly sure that the station would run out of gas before they reached the pump, so the length of the lines was somewhat self-limiting.  Meanwhile people with short tempers would scream at drivers in front of them, who were maybe reading or dozing, to move up and close the gap before some yahoo tried to cut in front of them.  On several occasions during that time we would pluck the kids out of their beds at maybe 4:00am, bundle them up and get them into the car, and go get in line as early as possible.  I would drive and stay behind the wheel while Sandy tended to the kids, helping them get back to sleep.  She would generally hold Amy in her arms in the front seat.  Sandy just reminded me that a gas station would put up a green sign if it had gas available and a red sign if it did not.

Eventually California adopted an odd/even approach, where cars with license plate numbers ending in an odd number could buy gas on their days, and cars with plate numbers ending in an even number could buy gas on the other days.  That helped with the lines.  I guess they didn’t have those so-called “vanity plates” back then that could end in a letter instead of a number.  I remember how leaders who thought like me were urging everyone to operate the smaller, more gas-efficient cars, while their opponents were urging the federal government to do whatever was necessary to free up the oil reserves, keep the refineries running, and let us drive whatever size gas-guzzlers we wanted to drive.  (Wasn’t that the American way, they would ask). 

I was driving my 1965 VW bug at the time, and couldn’t see why everyone didn’t do the same.  The idea of a one-hundred pound woman using a 2,000 pound motor vehicle to transport a one-pound loaf of bread didn’t set well with me.  Of course, when the federal government makes any rule or law changes it can have tremendous implications and ripple effects for many companies, throughout a number of industries.  There will always be valid arguments on opposing sides. As a consequence, we just had to be patient as a nation and let the problem work itself out.  I don’t recall that our leaders were able to do much, but it certainly made the average citizen aware of the dangers of dependence on foreign oil.

Sometimes when we live through an era we take it for granted and do not see it as particularly important.  The advent of the birth control pill in the 1960s and the legalization of abortions by the Supreme Court in 1971 ushered in something called “the sexual revolution,” which in turn fundamentally changed the relationship between men and women, at least in America.  Almost simultaneously we had the women’s liberation movement and the battles over the Equal Rights Amendment.  Women are still fighting an uphill battle in terms of representation in corporate Board rooms and political leadership.  They are increasingly represented, but are still far, far away from 50%. 

Warren Buffet, the great business magnate and investor, now 83 years old, recently said how enthused he is about America’s future, because hitherto we were only using half of our human resources.  He said that his sisters were at least as intelligent and capable as he was, but when they were coming of age, the advice they received was to marry well.  That was their only perceived path to financial security and status in society.  Now, he says, by liberating/empowering women we have doubled our leadership resources.  If we could accomplish so much with only the male half of the talent pool, how much more will we accomplish now that the female half is getting involved?

To underscore this point, let me share that when I joined the San Jose office of Arthur Young & Co in 1973, (discussed more elsewhere) the office had an annual “Golf Day” for the male staff.  The few women professionals were encouraged to join the administrative staff (all women) on a shopping trip to San Francisco.  It took a couple of more years and additional female professionals before the office managing partner conceded that, indeed, “times they were a-changin’” and that the women needed to be included in Golf Day.  As I recall, the admin staff was also invited, and all attendees were free to choose among golf, tennis, swimming pool or ‘none of the above.’  I remember at least one year when some of the non-golfing women had a blast driving the electric carts around in their shorts and halter tops bringing cold beer and soft drinks to the players all over the course.  There were hoots of delight at the sight of the girls, (thinly disguised as delight at the sight of the refreshments). A few years after that the managing partner agreed that his membership in a “Men Only” business/luncheon club was sending the wrong message.

During my early adulthood I was given to understand that the typical man needs significance more than he needs security, while the typical woman needs security more than she needs significance.  In my mid-adulthood I believed that women need significance just as much as men do, but that they get it through wearing expensive jewelry and the latest fashions; through how successful their husbands are, the kinds of neighborhoods they live in, the kinds of cars they drive, what kinds of vacations they take (think cruises to the Greek Isles, etc.), where their kids are accepted to college, and so forth.  Men, on the other hand, sought significance through achievement and increasing responsibilities in their careers.  Now I believe that this path to significance is just as alluring to women as it is to men, and increasingly open to them as they address their educational, career and life choices.  (As a footnote, I just read that only 23 of the companies comprising the Fortune 500 have female CEOs, so we are talking about the future, and that is what Warren Buffet is excited about.) 

The recent hand-wringing over “global warming” reminds me of one of the big deals of the 1970s – the population explosion.  Charts showing the historical trend line in world population were visually alarming.  Some of my college class time was taken up with discussions about the implications and what to do about it.  The titles of two of the numerous assigned reading items were: “My Petition for More Space” and “Population Explosion and the Great Calorie Swindle.”  The latter pointed out that the Western world was consuming far more calories per person than was the Third World, when you consider the calories consumed by the live stock that comprised significant portions of our diets.  I’m just pointing out here that the population explosion issue was as dominant in our minds in the 1970s as global warming is today.

People born after year 1990 or so may not realize that to be “openly gay” was very rare until quite recently.  The “gay community” still thanks and pays tribute to the high-profile people, such as Ellen DeGeneres and Billie Jean King, who came out early and led the way.  (I can’t cite Liberace; because he was such a far-out flamer that no one thought they could be like him.)  As a teenager, when I first heard that there were men who preferred men, I could not believe it.  It seemed absolutely absurd…not possible.  By then I had come to realize, of course, that almost anything was possible, even if very rare. I probably thought that the chance of being a homosexual was about the same as the chance of being, say, criminally insane, or something.  More on this later, perhaps, but for now, I am just trying to mention some of the many changes that I have lived through.

In a similar vein, AIDS was virtually unheard of prior to the early 1980s, and for a time some authorities and experts had us worried that, once it jumped to the heterosexual population – which it did – that mankind was doomed.  The theory on how it had jumped to the human population in the first place had to do with a man and a monkey in Africa.  That’s all I will say about that, and it may not have been true.  How it jumped to the heterosexual population had to do with intravenous drug users, bisexual individuals, and the like.  My impression is that promiscuity and unprotected sex took a definite step backwards, at least temporarily. 

Meanwhile, I was very pleased to have been monogamous with the same person for many years prior to the outbreak. (That’s not a redundancy – there is also serial monogamy, for example). I see that the Centers for Disease Control were founded in 1946 (Isn’t the Internet great?), but I never heard of them until the AIDS epidemic.  I remember that various spokespersons were serious about the potential impact of AIDS on, for example, the fashion industry, due to a high concentration of homosexuals.  The history of how AIDS was brought under control is easily researched on-line, so I will not go into it here.

A major change that we tend to overlook is the deregulation of the airlines.  I recall as late as 1972-73 during my time in the MBA program at Berkeley, taking a Transportation class where the professor challenged us to make some phone calls to some airlines and try to get them to “cheat” on the official, regulated fares.  He was trying to prove to us that things were changing in the airline industry and that market forces were creeping in, despite the government’s best efforts to prevent it.  I think the airlines were introducing the 14 and 21 day non-refundable excursion fares, and the reduced fares for staying over a Saturday night on a round trip flight.  The rationale for the excursion fares was that it helped the airline plan better, improve their cash flow, and operate more efficiently.  Supposedly, the destination cities gave the airlines some sort of incentive to encourage them to have passengers stay over Saturday night, when they were most likely to have leisure time, seek entertainment, and spend money locally.

Deregulation and phase out of the Civil Aeronautics Board officially began in 1978.  This was a great boon to the Travel Agency business, where people would sit down with an agent, discuss alternatives, and wait while the agent made phone calls or otherwise analyzed the current fares and potential trends in the fares.  At first only qualified and duly recognized travel agents could access the airlines’ reservation systems for inquiries and ticketing. 

With the advent of the internet and home computers, we eventually could all access the systems and help ourselves.   The airlines cooperated in this and the days of the physical location of Travel Agent offices were beginning to be numbered.  At first the airlines encouraged our use of the travel agents by imposing a fee for calling the airline directly, but with our internet self-help capabilities we no longer need the agents.  That industry has shifted over to cruises and complex itinerary planning, away from airline reservations, and many agents operate only on line, with physical locations a thing of the past.

Electronic ticketing (the “E ticket”) is of course one of the many changes brought on by the internet.  We used to receive bulky, multi-copy packets in the mail or over the counter.  If you got to the airport without your hard copy ticket, you better have the time and the money to buy another one, or you likely weren’t flying anywhere. Young people might also be surprised to know that baggage check-in fees are also quite new.   With deregulation came price and cost competition that resulted in less service and more fees. 

We rely on market forces to keep prices down and service up, but over the past 12 years or so, the number of major U.S. airlines has dwindled through bankruptcy and acquisition from ten or so to only three today: American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta (4 if you count Southwest Airlines).  Now we need to rely on the innovation aspects of the free market system to create transportation alternatives that keep the airlines in check.  The alternative would be to revert back to government regulation of the airline industry, which I don’t think anybody wants.