Installment # 19

In June 2013 Sandy and I flew up to Michelle’s house to help them and the City of High River recover from the worst flash flood in memory.  Driving past the piles of ruined possessions, cars in trees, broken boats on lawns, etc, I said to Ryan, “Just think: some day, years from now, you can tell your grandchildren that you were a teenager during the great flood of 2013, and regale them with stories of what you witnessed.”  High River sits at an elevation of some 3,200 feet, in the foothills of the Rockies that rise another 2,000 – 3,000 feet above them in the Canadian province of Alberta.  Evidently, during the rainy season each June, the danger exists that if they get too much rain at once, it will melt the snow too quickly, causing what I visualize as an avalanche of water (instead of snow) pouring down on High River and surrounding areas.

I can’t compete with the 1906 earthquake, and I arrived in High River after the danger was over, but my grandsons in Canada are in awe when I tell them that I served in the U.S. Army for three years from age 17 to 20.  I hasten to explain to them that:  a) the draft was in effect, so I had very little choice, and b) it was peace time, before Vietnam – nothing like they see on television or in their video games.  I guess in every generation boys have been awed by war stories.  We used to play with little plastic figures we called “Army guys.”  Now they have those incredibly sophisticated and realistic interactive war videos.  Although so much more realistic, the boys still do not connect with the trauma and horror of real combat. Justin is a very conscientious, deep-feeling boy, but he happily talks about killing and being killed in the video games.  Yikes!

Of course, the technological changes I have seen are so immense as to defy description in terms of how they have changed our lives.  One of my favorite stories (not sure if it is true) holds that around the year 1900 in New York City, the greatest minds of the day said that the biggest problem New York would face 100 years hence would be horse poop.  Based on the growing population, the projections for economic growth, and the most common mode of transportation of the day, they were convinced that the horse droppings would be waist high by year 2000.  True or not, that gives us some appreciation of how much technology has changed our lives and how difficult it is to see it coming.  Further to the point, I recently read the Henry Ford quote about the automobile: "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse'."

The thirty-something colleagues I mentioned earlier were fascinated to think that I had first hand memory of the Civil Rights Movement.  When the book The Help came out we were all shocked to realize that I was twenty years old in 1964 when life in Mississippi was as pictured in that book.  It seemed incredible to them, akin to meeting someone who grew up owning slaves on a southern plantation.  Sadly, when I was in my early twenties I was paying no attention to what was going on outside of my immediate surroundings.  I so appreciate the young people today who are so aware and so concerned.  They were there in my day, too, but I wasn’t one of them.  There were whites travelling from California and all other parts of the U.S. to join in support of the marches and sit-ins in Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, and ultimately Washington D.C.

The only thing that struck me at the time, as I recall, was loading empty aluminum caskets onto Pan Am flights destined for Saigon and offloading full ones coming back.  We sent them out dozens at a time and brought them back one or two at a time.  I worked for Pan American Airways at the San Francisco International Airport from December 1964 to June 1973 (ages 20 to 29).  I had been discharged from the Army in October 1964 and arrived in California with my best Army buddy in November.  We stayed at his mother’s house in Castro Valley until we both were hired on at Pan Am in December, then went in with one or two other guys and rented a place of our own near the airport.

Actually, we moved so many times and with so many different combinations of guys in the ensuing year and nine months that I have completely lost track.  The number 8 sticks in my head – as in 8 moves.  I recall that I had so little worldly possessions that I could fit everything in one trip in my VW Bug.  I had a baseball glove, a lamp that I bought from the Salvation Army for 75 cents, a mandolin (still have it…long story), some books, and a few other things.  Around September 1966 Sandy and I found an apartment that would be our first place together when we came back from our honeymoon in October.  It was in South San Francisco, a separate city just north of the airport and south of the actual city of San Francisco.  We had a 13 month engagement, from September 1965 to October 1966.

I remember that one of the guys I worked with recommended I go to a place called Good Deal Used Furniture and see if I could find some suitable apartment furnishings.  He said, “Don’t let the name fool you; they have good stuff there.”  I found a bedroom set I thought was very nice and worth the price, so I suggested a lay-a-way plan where I would mail them a check every month, and by the end of September 1966 it would be paid for in full, and I would come and get it.  That’s exactly what I did, except that those nice folks explained they did not have the exact set I had ordered.  They showed me an alternative, which they would actually have delivered for me at no additional charge.  I could not remember what the original set looked like, anyway, and was eager to have the furniture all ready and waiting for us when we returned from our honeymoon. 

Sandy took one look at it and informed me that I had been cheated; that it was cheap junk.  It looked OK to me, and it worked, so I said we would just have to live with it.  Upon reflection, I don’t think that little one-location store was set up to handle a lay-a-way plan but figured, if this kid wants to send us monthly checks for the next year, we will take them and worry about the bedroom set later.  They certainly weren’t going to tag it and store it for a year.

Well, we went to visit one of Sandy’s high school friends, Susan Potts, who had also recently married and was renting an inexpensive furnished apartment with her husband.  She was in the middle of apologizing about the cheap furniture when we recognized that they had the exact same bedroom set that we had!  I was mortified.  Sandy was, too, except she had the satisfaction of being able to say, “I told you so,” and reminding me that she had nothing to do with me picking out or accepting that substitute junk that I had paid for.  That could have been our first marital spat, but I remember it instead as one of the first times I experienced Sandy’s graciousness and started to appreciate her savvy about such things.  It made us better life partners, not only because I recognized her wisdom, but also because I was learning how to handle adversities and surprises with grace instead of with the male ego.

In the last 15-20 years or so, when one of us has a major screw up, the other one will most likely say, “Glad it wasn’t me who did that!  Glad it was you and not me!” rather than expressing anger and disappointment.  I remember the time that I parked my car in front of the house closer to the driveway than usual, and Sandy backed right into it coming out of the driveway.  Instead of a bunch of loud accusations and character assassinations, it seems our first impulses, aside from dismay about the inconvenience and cost of getting them fixed, was concern for how the other felt about their role in the incident:  If I had just parked it where I usually did, or at least given her a ‘heads up’; If she had been more careful, etc, this wouldn’t have happened. 

We had to pay $500 deductibles on each of the cars, plus work around our schedules in getting them repaired: an expensive inconvenience, to say the least.  What we didn’t need to worry about repairing was our relationship.  Some people would say that we are holding our anger inside, and it is not healthy; that someday it will explode and destroy us.  Well, as the man who jumped from the 100-story building was heard to say on the way down: “So far, so good!”

I just came across a copy of our first joint income tax return – 1966!  The W-2s show that I earned $8,483 from Pan Am that year.  That probably included a lot of overtime pay.  Sandy’s W-2s show earnings of $2,112 from Bank of America, $649 from Wells Fargo Bank, and $203 from Payless Cleaners on Solano Avenue in Berkeley.   Per the prior year W-2s, I earned $6,137 at Pan Am for all of 1965 (that was a full-time job!) and Sandy earned $912 from Host International (where she was working when we met) and $59 at the cleaners. For a number of years Sandy and I would take our pay checks down to the bank, get cash, and physically spread the cash among a number of envelopes.  We had envelopes labeled “Auto Repair,” “Clothing,” “Food,” “Rent,” “Entertainment” and the like, knowing that if we did not set the money aside, it would not be there when we needed it.

I remember when Pan Am changed us from a weekly check to a bi-weekly check (or vice versa…not sure), and one of the guys I worked with shared with me that the weekly paycheck really ruined some of the men, because no single paycheck was enough to pay the monthly rent, and they didn’t have the discipline to set some money aside each payday.  When we were paid bi-weekly, the check was big enough to pay the rent with.  By the way, there was no such thing as direct deposit in those days.  We took our precious little checks down to the bank, filled out the deposit slips ourselves, showing the total amount of the check, less any cash to be received, and the net deposit.  You had to sign for receipt of the cash, and the teller had to witness you do it.  If you forgot and signed before you got to the window, you had to sign it again in front of the teller.

Prior to our envelope system, my co-workers and I used to go to the B of A that was on the airport grounds.  The queue concept hadn’t been imported from Europe yet, so we each chose a line in front of one of maybe 8 or 10 teller windows, and hoped we didn’t get a slow teller or that we didn’t get behind a customer who had a difficult banking problem or question.  There were no ATMs, of course.  I would actually look at the people in line and try to avoid a line where a customer looked like they were confused, or had a bag of coins or a stack of checks, or something.  Most banks hadn’t thought of having separate windows designated for merchant activity.  I remember the time one of our guys yelled, “What’s the hold up?” and my friend Steve Claus cautioned him loudly to never yell “Hold up” in a bank!  He was just kidding, and the people around us all laughed, but it was so quick and witty that I never forgot it.

The banking industry was so non-competitive in those days that no effort was made to make the experience pleasant.  They were doing you a favor by letting you be a customer.  In those days the banks opened to the public at 10:00am and closed at 3:00pm, Monday through Friday.  If that was not convenient for you, that was just too bad.  These days, of course, most banks are open from 9:00 to 5:00, plus all day Saturday.  And now when I enter Wells Fargo Bank there are designated greeters who practically trip over each other to welcome me with a warm smile and handshake.  The bank manager is generally on the floor, as well, and her face lights up with recognition (or pretend recognition) when she sees me. 

These people are so young, they think I am exaggerating or kidding when I tell them what banking used to be like.  There are hardly any lines now, thanks to the ATMs outside, and the teller happily fills out whatever form is needed.  If it is a busy time, the queue procedure helps, and they open more windows.  In the process, I am asked about plans for the weekend, or any upcoming trips, anything else they can do for me, etc.  Banking has turned 180 degrees around in the last 50 years, including the fact that in my branch the manager is a woman, and many of the tellers are men.  That absolutely did not happen 50 years ago.