Becoming a Bookkeeper

 When I was working at Cherry Tree Aviation, my desk was in the center of everything that happened. Everyone who came in and out went by my desk. Most people (both employees and customers) hung out in the central lobby area because that was where the coffee machine and the cigarette machine were. One of the people that I got to know while working there was Peter (not his real name), who owned a plane that he hangared with Cherry Tree Aviation and went flying frequently during the work week (a perk of owning his own business). He was a very jovial fellow, like to joke and tell stories, liked by everyone.

When Peter learned that Cherry Tree was closing down and I was losing a job, he asked me if I wanted to come work for him at his small manufacturing company. He had a very small office with two people, a bookkeeper and an accountant. The bookkeeper handled all the accounts receivable and the order desk, while the accountant handled the accounts payable, and all the accounting issues like payroll and taxes. The bookkeeper was a young woman my age who was married and expecting her first child and planning to quit work about a month before her due date, which was coming up soon and he hadn't found a suitable replacement. Like John Pritchard, Peter had decided that I was probably capable of learning the job even if I didn't have formal office or bookkeeping training. 

Two weeks later I started work at Peter Works (not its real name). Most of the building space was taken up by the machine shop were their product, car and motorcycle headers, were fabricated by skilled machinists (like my father). At the very front of the building were two offices, the smaller of which was where the bookkeeper and accountant worked, and a slightly larger inner office that was Peter and his partner's. Peter was the idea guy, the one who talked to customer, made deals and designed the headers. His partner was an older, gruff fellow who was the one who turned the ideas into reality, he had engineering and machinist training and spent most of his time in the machine shop supervising and guiding the half dozen young men who fabricated the headers. 

For those who don't know headers are a fancy exhaust system (generally for cars pre-1980, but also for motorcycles) that help exhaust flow away from the engine and improve engine performance (increased horsepower and torque), so important for people who raced stockcars or motorcycles. Customers ranged from individuals, to small car and bike shops, to large distributers like JC Whitney in Chicago that had a huge catalog business of all kinds of car and motorcycle parts. [The image is of a set of headers designed for a small block engine Chevy car 1955 to 1957). Header design is specific to a car make and type, as the pipes must fit into tight spaces in an engine. 

It turned out that the bookkeeping was the easiest part of the job to learn. I was taught how to do double entry bookkeeping in paper ledgers and how to make daily reports to the bank on income and outflow of money. The hardest part of the job was working the order desk. I had a detailed catalog to refer to, but still needed to learn a lot of specifics about particular car makes and designs. It was necessary to know the exact size of an engine in cubic centimeters (ccs), and whether the engine had any additional modifications. If I didn't know an answer I had to track down one of the bosses and ask, but unlike the young woman I was replacing, I started taking notes, so that I would only ever have to ask a particular question one time.

I liked both parts of the job. I found working with numbers and details to be calming. Even the part where at the end of the day everything had to total up with no more than 1 penny difference was enjoyable. On the rare days that I had made a mistake the hunt for the missing  money to correct the error was challenging and fun. Talking with customers on the phone was also fun, most of the time. There was always some guy somewhere who didn't want to talk to a "girl" about technical stuff and would insist that I get him a man to talk to. Usually when that happened I would have Bob the accountant (often the only other person in the office at the time) take the phone. Bob was a good man, and a great accountant, but he knew nothing at all about cars or headers. Usually after the guy talk fruitlessly to Bob for a while, he'd be willing to do business with me, because I generally knew what I was talking about. 

Bob was an interesting character. He was a high functioning alcoholic, something everyone knew. But twice in the five months I worked there, he did not show up for work for two or three days in a row. The bosses would say "oh, Bob's gone on another bender," and nothing was ever said to him when he would show up again, sober and ready to work.

I particularly liked dealing with the small car and bike shops that would buy directly from the company. Over the months I developed friendly, bantering relationships with several of the men who ran those shops. One in particular I remember was a custom bike shop in Ohio. They ordered headers almost weekly and the owner was a funny and pleasant guy with an amazing voice. 

In addition to the headers we also sold t-shirts and bumper stickers with the company logo. Requests for those often came in the mail from teens and adults with five dollar bills for the t-shirts. It was my job to select the right size shirt, package it and mail it out to the client. 

There were only two problems I had working at Peter Works. The first I simply decided to ignore (and not tell my father about). The shop was not unionized, and about two months after I began to work there the International Machinists decided to try to unionize it. They began picketing the building during working hours. Now I was raised in a union family, and my dad was a member of the International Machinists, and I was brought up never to cross a picket line. It made me very uncomfortable (and as I said I couldn't tell my father about it) but I decided that I wanted to keep the job, so kept coming to work despite the pickets.  Part of my argument to myself was that Peter gave all the machinists raises, so that their wages were actually above union scale to keep them from organizing, and none of the workers were interested in foregoing those higher wages to sign a union card. Of course, Peter did not give out benefits like health care or retirement, but most younger workers didn't have the foresight to realize how important those were. The whole situation made Bob and me grumble, because our pay (mine was only $2 an hour) did not change, because at that time there were no unions for office workers to join. 

The UPS drivers who picked up our shipments also would not cross a picket line, but the pickets would leave as soon as the workers did at 4:30 PM, and the truck drivers were willing to make us their last call of the day, and show up after the pickets and the workers (including me and Bob) were gone. This arrangement with the truck drivers unfortunately made it easier for the second problem to arise. 

Small manufacturing companies without large capital investment often face a problem. To sell a product you have to make it, and to make it you need to buy materials (in the case of headers this is mostly steel), and pay wages of workers. This is acerbated by the fact that it often takes a long time, weeks if not months for small companies to get payment from their customers. To solve this problem banks would offer accounts receivable loan funding. Accounts receivable funding still exists, often from on-line lenders as well as established banks. How it works is that when a small manufacturing company ships product to a buyer, the bank will loan them about 80% to 90% of the value of that as yet unpaid shipped invoice. This means that for every item you ship out your door, you get money the next day from the bank to pay for new materials and current wages while you wait for your customer to pay you. When the customer does pay you, you pay back the bank for the loan plus small interest, and pocket the remainder (so less than 20% to 10% of payments coming in stay with the company, and the bank gets what they loaned out plus interest. This was why at the end of every business day, I had to send Peter Works' bank a report, the report had to include: bookkeeping summary for the day, a photocopy of all the invoices for products shipped out that day, and every few weeks a check for the money owed the bank. 

That year, 1974 was in the middle of a recession (the recession lasted 1973 through 1975) and it was made much worse by the Arab Oil Embargo that began in November 1973. Gasoline was not just much more expensive than it had been, it was also scarce. I had given up driving a car to work altogether in 1974 because in California one could only get gas every other day (depending upon whether your license plate ended with an even or an odd number), and waiting in a gas line could take hours that I did  not have. I bought a really nice 10 gear bike, a Peugeot, and rode the bike to work along the San Francisco bay. It was a glorious way to commute. But the difficulty in getting fuel and the overall recession hit companies like Peter Works heavily because they provided parts for vehicles that used oil products. 

Because of the International Machinists picket line in front of the factory, all our product was shipped out after I and all the other workers other than the owners had left. As a result rather than reporting shipping invoices the day they went out, I would find a stack on my desk in the morning when I came in, enter them into the books, copy them and add them to that days bank report. It was in my fourth month there that I slowly realized what was happening, and it took a phone call from one of our largest customers, a large retailer that carried Peter Works headers in their catalog. The call was a complaint about not having received a shipment of headers that had been ordered. I found that confusing, because I had recorded and reported invoices for those products, with shipping labels to them in the previous weeks. 

It took me a while to put the pieces together, but what was happening, was that after hours when only the owners were there, they were creating fake invoices and shipping labels for products that did not exist (they didn't exist because they didn't have enough money for the materials to make them). Through me they were sending false information to the bank and getting funding for product that did not exist yet in hopes of getting enough funding to actually create the product and ship it before the deception was discovered. I began to realize that I had been asked to lie to customers about their orders being produced and when they would be shipped, when there was little certainty of that happening. 

The knowledge of the deception and cheating took a great toll on me. I did not like having been used as part of this scam. While I did not report what was happening to anyone outside the company, I did immediately proffer two weeks notice. Those last two weeks there were the most uncomfortable working situation I think I've ever had. 

I don't know what the consequences, if any, to the company and its owners were. I do know that the company still exists today, located in a different city, under the same name, still making headers, which is why I have changed the name of the owner and the company. It was my first real brush with the corruption that exists in business, and a major factor in why I have come to distrust those who make large amounts of money through business. I have come to know many honest small business owners over the years. None of them because rich from their businesses. I tend to be suspicious of those who do. 

Working in Aviation: Cherry Tree Aviation

 

Writing about my experiences flying on company passes and about the role of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) in commercial aviation, gets me thinking about the eight months I spent working for a fixed based operator (FBO) at San Carlos Airport in California. I was a recent college graduate with a BA in sociology. My plans for graduate school had fallen through at the last minute because there was a recession and funding had been cut for the program I had been accepted into. My only option was to come home to my parents and start looking for work. 

Not one of my college professors had ever talked about the kinds of work that a degree in sociology might support. If they talked about anything it was graduate school, and at the time I didn't consider graduate school in sociology to be an option. Years later I learned about all kinds of jobs in local, state and federal government that welcomed folks with sociology degrees. But at the time, in 1973, I only knew to look for businesses. Luckily I had strong typing skills, so I went looking for jobs that would use that skill. 

Something that younger people don't realize is that in 1973, almost all jobs advertised in local papers were categorized by gender. There were two separate columns - jobs for hire male, and jobs for hire female. Rules were rigid and a young woman could not just go after jobs advertised for males. I was dogged, every day for two weeks, I got up, opened up the morning paper, circled all the jobs I thought I might possibly qualify for, then got in the car and drove to each and every location. Some required a call ahead and an appointment, but most one could just show up and fill out the employment form. Most employers gave you a typing test (which I aced), and many also gave a general knowledge test (which I also aced), but in the end, almost all of them hired a young woman with formal secretarial training over the young woman with a BA in sociology. In those two weeks I applied for at least 60 jobs. 

At the end of the first week, one of the places that I interviewed was a small aviation company called Cherry Tree Aviation at the San Carlos airport about 10 minute freeway drive from my parents home. The president, John Pritchard, of the company which was very small, interviewed me and liked me. He was particularly interested in the fact that I'd gone to Oberlin College. He had spent more than a decade working for the FAA at the big tracking station just outside Oberlin and knew the community and the college well. But in the end he told me they decided to go with a young lady who had formal secretarial training. And I went on to another week of job hunting.

 The second week did not provide any job offers either. I was not too discouraged, but rather, more determined than ever to start looking anew the next week. But that Saturday, I got an unexpected call from Mr. Pritchard. He said that the young woman they had hired had not worked out and was I still interested in working for Cherry Tree, if so I should come to work at 8 am on Monday. He told me on the phone that I might not have formal secretarial training, but he knew Oberlin College and if I was an Oberlin graduate than I ought to be able to learn anything I needed on the job. 

So the third Monday in June 1973, I started working at Cherry Tree Aviation. A fixed base operator was the workhorse of general aviation in those days. Cherry Tree Aviation did multiple things in the field of aviation.  First, the company had two pilots and two planes that could be chartered for a wide range of purposes. Second, they owned hangars that could be rented by individual plane owners to keep their planes, and they owned tie-down spaces (places outside to keep a private plane). Third, they had a professional mechanic who maintained their own planes but who could also do work for private individuals with planes. The mechanic was allocated a large hangar for maintenance use. Fourth, they rented space to even smaller, specialized aviation businesses: a parachute jump and skydiving school, a small flight instruction school (who had one plane and two instructors), and a two person helicopter company that did charter work. Fifth, they operated aviation fuel tanks and fuel trucks that scouted the field constantly looking for visiting planes to fuel. Sixth, Cherry Tree entered into a partnership with a man who sold planes, both new ones for Piper Aircraft and used planes. 

Technically I was hired to work for the aircraft salesman, a man who went by the name "Tom" Sawyer. That actually should have been a hint about the man's character. I was to be his secretary, do all of his correspondence, answer his phone, etc. I had a desk in the central  office area, where everyone gathered for coffee and conversation, and the other secretary for the company answer phones. As it turned out, there being a recession going on, plane sales were almost non-existent, and so I got called upon to do lots of other things for anyone who needed something done. Mr. Pritchard would ask me to help him come up with advertising campaigns, and have me work on promotional materials. The pilots would ask me to do paper work for them. Even then I often ran out of things to do. So I started volunteering to do things like learning how to move the planes around and to wash them. I would bring clothes to change into for that, from my "office dress". 

It was the kind of business where one could go many days in a row without anything much happening, and then something would happen and we'd have multiple requests for charter work. Much of the charter work we did would come without any warning. For example, we did charter ambulance flights for the military. It took me a long time to understand what was going on. This was still during the Vietnam War years, and it was not at all uncommon for young men who were tired of serving to go AWOL and run off into the rural areas of California. Then something would happen to them, they'd break a leg, or get sick, or get in an accident, and suddenly local law enforcement or hospitals would notify the military that they had an AWOL soldier or sailor in their jurisdiction. The military would hire us to go get their wayward men. Depending upon the severity of the illness or injury a nurse or maybe even two nurses would have to be hired for the flight from the local nurses registry. There would be a sudden flurry of phone calls and arrangements to be made and the main secretary would need my help to handle all of it. 

After I'd been with Cherry Tree for about six months, the Navy called us with a job to retrieve a man in a full-body cast (he'd had a motorcycle accident) from Chico. We were given several days to plan for this, and it was going to be on a Saturday, so the pilot asked me if I'd like to ride "shot-gun" with him, get to go flying on a beautiful day. It was a gorgeous day, the sky was so blue and it went on forever, there were no clouds anywhere and you could see great distances, that thing that pilots call CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited). I actually got a chance to fly the plane for a while, and do some simple slow banks and turns. It was an amazing day. We picked up the man and a nurse at Chico and came home. The man was quiet and said almost nothing. When the flight was over, and the man had been placed into a Navy ambulance and taken away, the pilot reached under the seat I'd been sitting in and pulled out a pistol. It turned out I actually was riding "shotgun" so to speak. He explained that while they had never had a problem, these men were in fact fugitives and might fight to get away. The only reason that he had decided it was safe to bring me, rather than the other pilot who was also former military and trained with firearms was that they knew the man was in a full-body cast and could barely move. 

Another kind of charter flight that we often did was for news organizations, TV stations and newspapers when there was breaking news and the reporters wanted to get there quickly. These also were things that often happened with little warning and involved an all hands on deck response. During my time at Cherry Tree Aviation there were several earthquakes in nearby parts of northern California, for which TV camera crews were eager to get footage. One time when the task of talking to the news departments and scheduling flights for crews, I made a rookie error. I put the camera crews from two competing network affiliates in one plane. No news center wants their aerial footage to be from exactly the same angle as that of their competitors it would seem. 

Not only was there a recession happening, but in October of 1973 an event occurred that rocked the small aviation industry, as well as many other industries that relied on oil from the middle east. On October 6, 1973 (the war started on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and also was in the middle of the holiest month of the Muslim world Ramadan)  an alliance of Arab nations lead by Egypt and Syria made a surprise attack on Israel. The war lasted until a truce was called on October 25, 1973. One of the many consequences of this war was an embargo by Arab oil producing states against the U.S. and other nations that had supported Israel in the conflict. The oil embargo went into effect almost immediately. Supply of aviation fuel was dramatically cut and prices skyrocketed. Aviation fuel sales had been a major portion of Cherry Tree Aviations revenue. Suddenly, the company only had enough fuel for their own planes, and none to sell. Not only did they need to stop selling fuel, they needed to sell their fuel trucks and lay-off all the young women who worked the fuel trucks. 

A little side note here: selling aviation fuel at a small airport is a very competitive business, at least two other fixed base operators at the very small San Carlos field also had fuel trucks running around the field trying to sell fuel. John Pritchard had very effective, if highly sexist idea. All the other operators hired young men to run their trucks. Cherry Tree Aviation not only hired attractive young women (college age or just out of college), they also outfitted them in bright blue hotpants (the term in 1970s for tight, very short shorts). It worked, until there was no more fuel to sell. 

The oil embargo affected the companies income in multiple ways - including the cost of heating the building.  The decision was made to lay off not only the young women who ran the fuel trucks, but also several of the other workers deemed non-essential, that included the young man who had done all the janitorial work (which was picked up by all of us who were left), the accountant, and the young woman who was the main secretary (who had been there for months before me). Pritchard justified laying her off, instead of me, by pointing out that I was really Tom Sawyer's employee, not Cherry Tree's, but it was really because he had come to find me a far more useful, flexible and interested employee. Moreover, he knew I'd do things like wash planes and get dirty, and the original secretary wouldn't do anything outside the office. I was also paid less, minimum wage, which was $1.80 an hour at that time. Note that the President took a salary only equivalent to $2 an hour for 40 hours a week, despite all the work he did outside those hours. Only the pilots and the mechanic were paid more, because the company couldn't operate without them. I know what folks were paid, because my new chores included doing the books and the payroll. 

My job became more and more interesting, and more and more varied. Mr. Pritchard would often sit down with me or call me into his office to talk about the business and the problems that it faced. He talked a lot about the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). It was almost impossible for a small FBO to land a contract with the CAB for a regular "route" between two locations. Mr. Pritchard wanted Cherry Tree to start regular service between San Carlos and Reno, to take gamblers every weekend. We could do charter flights for people to anywhere, but the real money came from having regular flights, where one could fill all the seats and charge less per person. The big airlines also chaffed at the control of the CAB. The CAB limited the number of airlines and the number of transcontinental routes. Any large airline that was awarded one of the plumb transcontinental routes (like SFO to NYC or LAX to NYC) was also required to serve a number of smaller markets that often lost them money. The CAB guaranteed that every community that had an airport that could handle large planes would be served by the large airlines, even if they did so through subsidiary, regional, commuter airlines.  No city would get left behind, even if they weren't a money making market for the big airlines. But smaller air companies, like Cherry Tree, didn't get a chance at tackling those smaller markets either. 

Mr. Pritchard felt that the solution to Cherry Tree's problems was to be bought out by a somewhat larger aviation corporation. By December 1973, Mr. Pritchard had found a buy, and we became a subsidiary of a larger company. Now added to my work was writing reports of income and expenditures, activities and services and sending them daily to the "head" office. They took over accounting functions like issuing paychecks, all I did was report everyone's hours and the pilots' flight hours. I still had all my other responsibilities, manning the phones, scheduling charters, finding nurses for the ambulance flights, moving planes, washing planes, and being Mr. Pritchard's sounding board. 

I haven't said much about the man I officially worked for, "Tom" Sawyer. He was a slick operator, who craved to be much richer than he was. But he had not been very successful as a plane salesman, not for lack of trying, but simply because the market just wasn't there. Shortly before Christmas 1973, about the time that Cherry Tree was being taken over by the larger company. We became aware that Tom who had been a cosigner on the company checks, had cashed a couple of large checks (several thousand dollars each) with only his signature on them (not legal) and one of them had bounced. This was brought to our attention by the San Mateo County Sheriff who had come to arrest him for writing a bad check. Tom was not in the office that day, and none of us knew where he was. While the Sheriff was standing there talking with people, the phone rang and I answered it and it was someone from Pan American Airlines wanting to talk to Mr. Sawyer to tell him that his flight to South Korea was going to be delayed by several hours. We were able to ascertain that Tom was at the airport already waiting for his flight, so I gave the Sheriff all the information, flight number, gate number and the Sheriff talked to the airline agent to see if they could locate and keep an eye on him. Then off the Sheriff went to arrest Tom. I do not know how the story ended, other than Tom Sawyer was no longer associated with Cherry Tree Aviation after that day. 

Unfortunately, the sale of Cherry Tree Aviation to the larger company did not really help its bottom line. By Valentine's Day 1974, the decision was made to close the business down, and I lost my first post college job. Luckily I met a lot of people, who kept their planes in our hangers or used our charter services, through working there. One of them owned a small manufacturing company, Sanderson Racing Headers (which does still exist!) and needed a new bookkeeper. His current bookkeeper was pregnant and would be leaving the job before her baby was born. So I got signed up to work for Sanderson, before my job at Cherry Tree Aviation ended. 

Couple of little add-ons:  

One of the people who hangered his plane with us was a man named Stephen Bechtel, who drove the most beautiful Lamborghini (with a personalized license plate that said  STEEL) which he left in the hangar while he was out flying. I was in love with that Lamborghini. I didn't know until many years later who he actually was and all the things, many of them reprehensible for which Bechtel Corporation was responsible.

Cherry Tree Aviation rented space to a two person helicopter company called Golden Gate Helicopters. The company consisted of the owner/pilot and his secretary/assistant who could also fly. They did a lot of television and movie work, including work for the very popular show The Streets of San Francisco staring Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, both of whom I got to meet on a couple of occasions when they came down to fly out of San Carlos with the chopper. For one episode The Streets of San Francisco even chartered one of Cherry Trees Planes to be the "bad guy escaping" so the whole camera crew, etc. were at San Carlos Airport for that. 

Flying - Part 2

 

In 1960 United Air Lines purchased its first passenger jets, the DC 8 made by Douglas Aircraft. The company through a huge party for all of the workers at the San Francisco Maintenance Base and their families. The party was held inside one of the huge new hangers designed for the jet aircraft. There was food and live music by The New Christy Minstrels. The acoustics inside the hangar were amazing, especially when the band got the entire audience to participate in a round of Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore.  The highlight of the party was the opportunity to walk through the new DC 8 and see all the new features of the aircraft. 

The plane was so large, much longer than a DC 6 or DC 7 propeller plane, and somewhat wider as well. The initial DC 8's had only two rows on each side with only two seats together, just like the propeller planes, but the isles were wider, and the cabins felt much more open. Even someone over six feet tall could fully stand up in most of the plane. 

There was one small catch: pass passengers (i.e., employees and their families riding for free) were barred from riding on the jets when they were initially put into service. The ban did not last all that long.

 As I wrote in the first installment about flying as the child of an employee, all commercial air travel was tightly controlled by the  Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), a federal government regulatory agency that determined which airlines got which routes and how much could be charged for the various levels of service. Airlines were not able to compete with each other on the price, as the price of flights was determined for all airlines by the CAB. The CAB kept prices high so that they would adequately cover all the costs of regular maintenance, up-keep, and all the labor of pilots, stewardesses, and ground crew. The lowest cost coach fare for a round trip ticket from west coast (San Francisco) to east coast (Washington, DC) in the 1960's was about $550. Adjusted for inflation that is the same as about $5,600 today (2025) which is substantially more than a person would pay for a first-class round trip ticket today. In other words, air travel was out of the reach of most Americans in the 1960's. Affluent people, business men, and air line employees were the only frequent fliers. 

What this meant in practical terms was that the new big jet aircraft that United and other airlines now flew non-stop across the country were frequently only partially full, and at some times nearly empty.  As a result the ban on pass riding employees on the jets ended pretty quickly. The airlines realized that filling those seats with employees on vacation looked better for business than having a sea of empty seats. Riding on a pass as an employee came with some rules and responsibilities, one of which was how one dressed. Employees could be barred from flights if they or their family members were not sufficiently dressed up, especially since it soon became common practice for employees to be placed in the first class section, as those seats were less often filled than coach class. So I was always wearing dresses and dress shoes while flying. When I was in college I sometimes envied my friends who were paying for their tickets because they could get on a plane in blue jeans and a sweat shirt, but I always had to be dressed up. 

Most of my memories of flying on jets are memories of flying first class and all that entailed in the 1960's and 1970's. This included not only family vacations from California back to Virginia to see relatives, but also my four years of solo travel while going to college in Ohio. Cross country first class travel was leisurely and luxurious. Meals in the first class cabin were served on real china plates with real silverware, actual crystal glasses, and sparkling white, cloth napkins. The food was served hot from china serving dishes on a cart directly to your plate. Often one of the entres was roast beef, where a large roast (enough to feed dozens of people) sat on a wooden carving board on the cart, and the stewardess would cut the amount you wanted from either the end the was more well done, or the end that was more on the rare side. When you were old enough (as I was in college) the stewardess would pour you wine in a crystal goblet from the several bottles available on her cart. The food was always delicious. 

The first year that my family and I traveled by jet was also in the first year that Dulles International Airport was open (it opened in November 1962 and we traveled there in the summer of 1963). The Dulles International Airport was the first airport specifically designed for jet planes, and only the second airport directly owned and operated by the Federal Aviation Administration (the FAA). It was initially authorized by President Eisenhower and took 12 years from authorization to opening. Eero Saarinen was the architect who designed its sweeping roof and modern lines. It was by far my favorite airport, so open and airy and modern. And it had the first "digital" clocks I'd ever seen. where the numbers were on cards that clicked over with each minute. 

The most unusual thing about Dulles was its "mobile lounges". Jet planes did not taxi up to the terminal building at Dulles, but sat out away from the building on the tarmac. Passengers would present their tickets at the gate inside the terminal and then be ushered into a large room with comfortable seating all around it. The room had many windows so that passengers could watch what was happening on the tarmac.  

One of my most memorable travel experiences happened at Dulles, to be honest I cannot remember if it was on our first trip in 1963, or a later trip in 1965, although I expect the latter. We were at the end of our vacation, tired and ready to go home. The plane was unusually full, so there was some question about whether or not we would be able to get on. Also unusual was that the president of United Air Lines, William Patterson was also on the flight. I can remember him standing and talking with my father in the mobile lounge. Patterson helped to make sure that we got on the flight, even though we had to be separated and scattered throughout the plane. There were five of us and they were able to seat my mother and my youngest brother together (he would have been 8 at the time), my other brother (12) and me (14) were sitting alone among strangers, as was my father. The plane was full, every seat filled even in first class. And something went wrong. 

I'm sure they told us what it was, but I don't remember it specifically enough, just that there was a crucial part that wasn't working. At first they thought that they could fix it. So they held all of us on the plane while the maintenance crews worked. That took a while. Then the word came that it could not be fixed, that it had to be replaced and the part had to be flown in from somewhere else. That would take some time, but it would take less time than it would to free up another jet and fly it in. It was summer time, and very hot and humid and on the ground, the planes own air conditioning system wouldn't work. 

Mr. Patterson took control of the situation. He told everyone what was going on, told people that he was ordering ground HVAC trucks to come and hook up to the plane, ordering more food and drink, making all drinks free. If anyone wanted to leave they would happily accommodate them, but to my knowledge no one left the plane. If they did they did so quietly without any fuss. The air conditioning got hooked up, the plane cooled off, the food and booze started to flow, and a really big party got going. No one got belligerent or angry, although some adults got quite tipsy and silly. There was lots of laughter and joking and storytelling.  We were on the ground, on the tarmac for four hours total before being cleared for take-off. In our family we always talked about the time the passengers got high before the plane took off. Can you imagine any of that happening today?

Unlike during the era of the propeller planes, the DC 6s and DC 7s, during the era of jet travel my family never experienced being "bumped" and only that one time at Dulles ever had difficulty getting on a flight. During my four years of college when I traveled back and forth between San Francisco and the Cleveland Hopkins Airport, I also never really had difficulty getting on a flight, and usually ended up in first class. However, my sophomore year, I decided that instead of going home for fall break I would go visit relatives in Virginia. That experience was very different. Planes from Cleveland to DC (or to other cities on the eastern seaboard like NYC or Boston) were very frequently full, and not easy to get on for a pass-passenger, even though such flights were far more frequent than the cross-continental ones. 

I set out for fall break in the early morning, and did not get on the flight for which I'd registered. I had to find a payphone, call and re-register to stand-by for another flight. This one in about 3 hours. Lot's of college students who were not children of airline employees also used standby as a way to get cheaper paid tickets, so many of my fellow students were stuck in the airport with me waiting for a flight. There was a young man, who was a couple of years older than me, a senior when I was a sophomore, that was also stuck waiting for an open flight to Chicago. We had worked together in the college cafeterias for more than a year, but had never had time for a long conversation. I think we probably talked on and off for a total of five hours that day, through several missed flights. 

He finally got one to Chicago, but I reached the end of the day without getting a flight to Washington, DC and I was panicking. I didn't have any way to get back to the college, not much money, and my next possible flight was the next morning. It looked like I might have to stay in the airport all night. I found a pay phone to re-register to standby for the first flight in the morning. The woman working in reservations asked me for a phone number for contact, and I started to cry. I told her, my situation, stuck at the airport with no place to go, and an amazing thing happened. She said that she worked there at the airport, and that I could meet her when she got off work, ride the metro-train into Cleveland and stay overnight at her apartment, sleep on the couch and then ride the train back in the morning with her for my flight.  

I remember her kindness, but I don't remember her name or even what she looked like, although I do remember her roommate - a very vivacious blonde. I remember the metro-train, how clean it was, how smooth and quiet it was. I remember the apartment, the couch I slept on and the poster on the wall. The poster was picture of a single large tree in the middle of a field with low hills behind it and the words "Let it Be" on it (the title of a Beatles song). I also remember how miserable it was not to have clean underwear, and how I never, once since that day ever went anywhere without a clean pair of underwear in my purse.  The next day, I got on the first plane and was on my way to visit with relatives - a story for another day. 

One last memorable plane ride: my very last one as a pass-passenger. I graduated from Oberlin College at the end of May 1973. I would not qualify for any more passes as an adult child, not in college after this my last trip, home after college. Unlike most of my friends, I did not go home immediately after graduation. The dorms were closed, but I was dating a man 15 years older than me who lived in town, and had moved in with him for a week. I had a couple of other friends who also lived in town, including a family that I had started as a babysitter for and become one of the family. I had ties to the town that went beyond the college and I wasn't quite ready to give them up yet. One of my friends, not the man I was dating, was a lawyer who who worked for the city of Oberlin as their local prosecutor, and he had plans to travel to San Francisco for a legal convention a week after my graduation. So part of the reason I delayed was so that I could have companionship, rather than fly alone which I had done for four years. 

On the day of our flight to San Francisco, the plane was not full, so I had no difficulty getting on it, but as was customary, the flight attendants wanted to move me to first class. My friend, Chuck, however, had a coach ticket and so I told I wanted to stay there, and someone else could get the bump to first class. This was only the second time I'd ever gotten to travel with a friend, and was really enjoying our conversation. I was a veteran traveler and Chuck had flown a number of times, but both of us were very much startled by the rather large bump and noise, almost like a small explosion, that occurred during our take-off. After we had gained some altitude, and leveled out a bit, the pilot came on the intercom and told us what had happened. At least one, and perhaps more of the tires on one of the landing gear had blown just as the plane lifted off. This presented no problems at all for us in our trip across the country, but could mean danger in landing in San Francisco. The decision was to continue on, alert San Francisco and take appropriate cautions on landing. 

The trip itself was extremely pleasant and unremarkable, I really enjoyed Chuck's company, we spent most of the time talking about shared interests and shared friends. But as we approached San Francisco, the pilot came back on to tell us what to expect. While everything might be okay, San Francisco was scrambling all its firefighting equipment and lining it up along the runway, just in case. The pilot warned us we would see not only fire trucks but also large numbers of ambulances, and that we would go through all the procedures of an emergency landing. In all my 22 years of flying I had never been through an emergency landing, although I knew after all those years exactly what to do. We had to take our glasses off, stow everything away, put our heads down and brace against the seat in front of us. Chuck and I expressed our appreciation to each other for having a friend to go through this with. 

The landing was the roughest I've ever experienced. Missing two tires on one side, lead to a very bumpy, rocky ride, but the plane stayed level, the fire trucks and ambulances were not needed, and we walked off the plane safe and sound. 

I have flown dozens of times after that last pass-passenger flight, but always as a paying customer. Moreover, plane travel has changed drastically since the 1970's. The CAB was eliminated in 1977. Airlines have been free to set their own rates, and also free to go bankrupt. My last trip by plane (probably my last ever plane travel) from Kentucky to San Francisco in 2013 was even first class, but it is nothing like it once was. 

Flying - Part 1

DC 6

As a child, I flew fairly frequently, not because my family was affluent, but quite the opposite, because U.S. airlines found that by giving their workers free travel they could pay well below the usual pay scale for various occupations. My dad was a licensed machinist, a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) union, who worked for United Air Lines (UAL) at their San Francisco main maintenance based from the time I was 6 months old until I was 25 years old (and he was 65).  

For the first fifteen years of my life, my father and all the other IAMAW workers for the airlines were paid substantially less per hour than machinists in other industries. The airlines argued that they provided workers and their families with free air travel, an untaxed benefit in those days, and therefore did not need to pay their employees more. This was successfully challenged by the Great Airline Strike of 1966, but that is a story for another blog post. This post is about what it was like to be a frequent flyer in the 1950's and early 1960's, as a pass-riding employee family and child. 

The earliest trip I can remember would have been when I was three and a half, when my brother Charlie was just over a year old. That meant that we needed three seats on the plane, two for mom and dad, one for me, and Charlie would have to sit on mom's lap. As an employee family riding on a free pass, we were always on "stand-by" meaning that we would call in, tell the reservations agent our intentions as the flight we wished to take, but have no actual guarantee of getting on that flight. We had to show up in person at the gate and wait until everyone else was boarded, and if there were enough seats left over we got on. If not, we stayed at the airport and waited for the next flight that might take us in the direction we wished to go. 

Charlie and me in 1954

The uncertainty meant that my parents had to plan for food, drink and diapers for Charlie. They had to be ready to take naps in the airport. Because we were low income we could not afford to buy things at the airport (or on the plane where meals were not free), so we brought our own food - sandwiches or sometimes cold fried chicken and lots of fruit. Sometimes we got on the first flight, sometimes we waited for hours, but we always eventual got a flight. 

The first plane I remember riding in was a DC 6 which had four propeller engines, two on each wing (see photo at top of post). Made by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958, it was the primary work horse of U.S. airlines during those years. The body of the DC 6 is not much narrower than modern jets (excluding "wide-bodies") and there were only two seats on each side of the plane, so a family like ours that needed three seats was always in at least two rows and as the last comers, often not rows near each other. The seats on those small DC 6's were wider and more comfortable than what you find on today's jets. The isles were quite a bit narrower. 

The DC 6 did not have a highly pressurized cabin. It did flew at a much lower altitude than present day jets do. That meant many things for a child: amazing views of the world below the plane because we were much closer to it; skimming just above the clouds most of the time, but sometimes actually flying through clouds which always felt mysterious and fabulous; and a really significant change in pressure on take-offs and landings that was really felt in your ears. One of the tasks of stewardesses (yes, stewardesses, they were always young, unmarried women) was to pass out chewing gum to every passenger both before take-off and again just before landing. Chewing the gum would help people adjust to the changes in air pressure and relieve the pain in their ears. It was also a task that stewardesses were glad to hand over to a bright, cute blonde child who felt very grown-up going from row to row offering people gum. There were other small tasks that the stewardesses might give me to do, but the one that sticks in my mind the most is the handing out of gum. 

Not only did the DC 6 fly lower than today's jets, but it was slower, had less fuel capacity, and had much less range. In addition to the technical issues that limited range, all civilian air traffic was controlled by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) a government regulatory agency. The CAB controlled which airlines got which routes, how much they could charge for each route, and how many hours that pilots and cabin crews could work. In the 1950's the CAB limited airline crews to 8 hours of work per 24 hour period. NO overtime allowed. An airline that allowed a crew to work longer than eight hours, even if it was just a few minutes could be heavily fined by the CAB. So if one was traveling from one coast to another in the United States, one could not do so in one plane with one crew because it took too long. 

Now my family's trips by plane were always from San Francisco (where we lived) to visit my parents' families in Virginia, where we were from. In the 1950's those trips were never non-stop. The best flights had only one stop in a major hub like Chicago, but often the only flights we could get on were shorter hops, like to Denver or Salt Lake City, and then required at least two more hops to make it all the way to Virginia (to National Airport, now Reagan in DC, or Friendship, now BWI Thurgood Marshall, in Baltimore). 

Multiple stops and plane changes were probably irritating for paying customers, but they could be seriously problematic for stand-by flyers like ourselves. It was not uncommon to lose our seats to paying passengers at an intermediary stop. Sometimes that meant a few hours of sitting in a strange airport waiting for another flight, on rare occasions it meant an unbudgeted and difficult to afford overnight at a hotel. When I was six and our family had expanded to five members, Charlie was four and baby Frank was less than one, we had a trip where we were first "bumped" (removed in favor of paying passengers) in Salt Lake City. This was not problematic as one of mom's brothers lived nearby in Ogden. So we had an unscheduled but delightful visit for several days with my Utah cousins. Then come Monday we got a flight from Salt Lake to Chicago and got bumped again. The next flight that was at all possible was at least 12 hours away the next day, so all five of us including a wailing baby ended up in a very cheap Chicago motel room with no air conditioning in August. Not a pleasant memory. Luckily we found a flight the next morning and were in the arms of family again in Virginia. 

In my second installment I will talk about how the introduction of jets changed our experiences as pass riding passengers. 

Thanksgiving

 

Yesterday I received a diagnosis of invasive lobular cancer in my right breast. Suddenly a lot of disparate things about the last year fell into place and made sense. The odd pains in my breast, the fatigue that I just couldn't seem to shake, the lack of interest in food (even chocolate!), the slow and unplanned (but not unwelcome) loss of weight, weird blood test results that no one thought were particularly alarming except me, and the general sense of something being wrong or off. 

There had been other things to blame: I have rheumatoid arthritis and we've been messing around trying different biologics this year. I have diabetes and chronic kidney disease, and severe asthma.  I was sick twice for a month at a time, first with cold/bronchitis/asthma complications, and second time with Covid (my first time I think)/asthma complications. We lost our beloved dog Bob this year. We lost yet another elderly cat. My husband lost one of his two jobs and we had to rethink our family budget. Of course, there was always the bad stuff in the outer world to add to my sense of gloom: global warming, regional natural disasters, the total dumpster fire of American politics. 

Having a diagnosis of cancer is actually a relief. I knew something was wrong, I just didn't know what and couldn't get anyone to figure it out with me, until now. So on Thanksgiving, I am actually grateful for my diagnosis. I am also enormously grateful for my loving husband, who stands by me through everything. Grateful for all the friends that I have around the country who care about what is happening to me, and the kind and helpful neighbors I have nearby, who are always ready to give a helping hand. Grateful that we have the resources and the health care to take care of my cancer. 

The Writing Life

 

In April of this year I made a big leap from occasionally writing a sociological blog here on blogger that got viewed by one or two friends, to writing a sociological blog/newsletter on Substack. I did this to push myself to write more and to have a chance to reach a wider audience with the things I wrote. 

The result, so far, is that I am finding the motivation and interest in writing a couple of times a week, and am aiming for more as time goes by. As for readership, I currently have 20 subscribers and each post (which are all free) is read by not only subscribers but also additional casual readers. 

I feel like I am thinking clearly again, and having some small impact on the world again. 

I have discontinued my Sociological Stew blog, but plan to keep this one, Sunflower Roots, for more personal writing, memoirs, poetry, artwork and such like. 

If you are reading this and want to check out my Substack here is the link. There is no paywall, and the subscriptions are free (and always will be). 

https://reflectionsofasociologist.substack.com/

Everyone Has a Story

 Meditations upon reading Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.'s Gay Poems for Red States:

Everyone has a story. Everyone has pain. Everyone has fear. Everyone gets scared. Everyone has doubts. Everyone has obstacles. Yes. Some people’s obstacles and pain are objectively, measurably worse than others. Being unable to walk in a world built for walking people. Being black or brown in a society so deeply based on whiteness that white people never have to think about being white. Being LGBTQ+ in a world where every religion every society is grounded in the idea of male/female dichotomies and relationships.  Being non-Christian in a society that is drenched in the forms (if not the deep ways) of Christianity. These are objective obstacles. But they are not the only obstacles. They are not the only pains.

Everyone has a story that should be heard. No one story should be privileged over any other story. Giving others the right to be heard, to be seen does not silence other stories. Stories can co-exist. So much of what we see now feels like people whose stories have been privileged for hundreds of years, are feeling that somehow their story will be erased by new ones. They won’t be. The fear is baseless. We are all richer by having more stories, more flavors, more colors, more modes of being.

The best thing about hearing more stories, is suddenly discovering that there are many, many people out there with similar (and yet unique) stories. Women discovering “me too” was a revelation. Adults finding similarities to others childhood stories and realizing, ah, that’s why I was different as a child (previously undiagnosed neurodivergence, or PCOS, or gender dysphoria, or many other obstacles).

We learn about others from their stories. We learn about ourselves by being free to tell our stories and by seeing little pieces of ourselves, our emotions, our fears, our anxieties, in the stories of others. Our enemies have stories. We need to hear our enemies’ stories too. We have to know them as people with stories. We do NOT have to privilege their stories over ours, but their stories have a right to exist.

Everyone has a story.

A good society is one that is open to all the stories. 

 

How grooming for motherhood backfired

 

My mother Josie was the fourth of six children. She had two younger brothers, but she never had the opportunity to help with their care. First, her mother (my grandmother Lillian) was not well most of her childhood and she had little patience with supervising a child caring for another child. The family was solidly middle class and hired in home help with cooking, cleaning and child care. The help, as was true of many middle class southern families, was black women, who left their own children at home, to care for the children of white women. Second, my grandmother Lillian died, probably due to complications of childbirth within two days of giving birth to her last child.  

The baby, Thomas, was immediately adopted (officially) by one of my grandfather’s brothers. He and his wife were childless. Meanwhile my mother, just short of her eighth birthday when her mother died, was quickly farmed out to live (not officially adopted) with her aunt Sue whose farm adjoined her fathers. Aunt Sue already had three children older than Josie. As a result, my mother never had any experience with babies and small children.

Josie’s lack of experience with babies and children, left her unprepared for motherhood. She was absolutely terrified to bring me, her first child home from the hospital. She spoke of this fear she had several times to me when I reached adulthood. I’ve also found letters and diaries that she wrote at the time, the speak of the overwhelming fear of making a mistake that she experienced. Consequently, Josie decided that I, her daughter would learn about babies and small children and how to take care of them while I was young. Something that she told me explicitly when I was middle aged. Oddly enough, however, she did not do that by expecting me to share in the care-taking of my two younger brothers.

While I did not know her reasons at the time, Josie’s approach to teaching me how to care for babies and children, was to start me in the babysitting business when I was 10 years old. She essentially began grooming me for motherhood. My first job, completely arranged by my mother, was with the family next door to us. They had recently moved in and were composed of a young couple in their early twenties and a baby under 6 months of age. The couple went out to dinner or a movie, not sure which, and were gone for at most two hours. I stayed in their home with their baby sleeping in his/her (?) crib.  I remember the awesome sense of responsibility I felt for this tiny thing in the white crib. But I otherwise remember very little about it. I don’t remember if I had any trouble, if I had to call my mother, or if everything went smoothly. I do remember how nice it felt to be given a crisp dollar bill (fifty cents an hour was my fee).

My mother arranged a few more jobs for me, taking care of babies, in homes that were within view and earshot of our house – one of the advantages of growing up in a new suburb during the baby boom, lots of work for babysitters nearby. By the time I was 13, however, I was managing my own work. I was a popular babysitter, mostly for older children (2 to 8) because I liked playing games, singing songs, and watching kids TV with them. I began to work for families that lived several miles away (where either my dad or one of the parents would provide transportation before I got my license). I liked being with children. I liked the money I earned (officially still fifty cents and hour, but regular families often added a little extra). But most of all I loved being able to stay up late on weekends, and watch late night TV and late-night movies.  This was not allowed at home. At home we went to bed at 9, and the TV was never on in the evening.

In High School babysitting was a doorway to adult life, to money of my own, to being up late, to watching adult shows. While I liked children and enjoyed playing with them, that was secondary to the pay and independence babysitting afforded me as a teenager.

Continuing babysitting was not something that I had thought consciously about when I went away to college. However, when the directors of my dormitory turned out to be a young couple with an intelligent and interesting five-year-old, I volunteered to babysit. The dorm directors also had friends living within walking distance of the dorm that had small children and would refer me as a babysitter.

One family (let’s call them Goodfolks) in particular became regulars. Babysitting for the Goodfolks over the next four years offered me something that was the opposite of what I had found in babysitting as a teenager. They offered me a warm and welcoming family life and a respite from the “adulting” of college. I became part of the Goodfolks family, a bond that continued at least 15 years after I graduated. I would come back and visit them many times over the years as a family member rather than an employee.

I also continued babysitting as a source of extra income in college, and although I continued to state my fee as 50 cents an hour, the majority of families simply paid me a flat five or ten dollars per session depending upon the amount of work involved (more for cooking meals, getting kids off to school etc, less if I was just watching TV while the kids slept).

Then one summer I got a job as an au pair.  Another student who had worked for a wealthy family through an agency was asked by the family to find someone to work for them (they did not want to go through the agency again – I should have taken that as the red flag it was). She knew I did a lot of babysitting and recommended me. The family like my phone interview, and they liked my references. For ten weeks, I got an insiders view of the domestic life of the corporate elite. I spent most of my time in bucolic Greenwich, Connecticut. An easy train ride to NYC and art museums, although I only got two chances to go as my “day and a half” off, wasn't always honored (remember the red flag). The family also took me with them on vacation to Maine, and I have longed for the coast of Maine ever since.

Somewhere along the line, in college spending so much time with young families and their children drastically changed my own personal views about having children. It wasn’t that I came to dislike children, quite the contrary. But I came to be more and more cognizant of how hard it was to raise children in the modern world, and to balance family and career. I saw this playing out in the families for whom I worked. I began to question whether or not I wanted children of my own.

I made the mistake of bringing this up once with my mother while visiting during a holiday. That’s when I began to learn about how getting me started in babysitting had been her plan to groom me for motherhood. Now I was telling her that my experience made me question whether I wanted motherhood at all.

My babysitting experiences in graduate school expanded my doubts. In graduate school, I had a half dozen friends who were divorced, working (or grad student) mothers.  As a friend, I would look after their daughters (they all had daughters), to give them a break. Sometimes they paid me, sometimes they just fed me, sometimes I fed them. These weren’t jobs, they were expressions of solidarity among friends. They were also a telling insight what life as a single female parent was like, and how none of these women had gone into parenting with the expectation of becoming a single parent. 

Between all the years of experience with scores of children between 1 and 10, and multiple courses in development psychology and family sociology, I became quite the expert on childhood development and child behavior. I developed the confidence and knowledge that my mother had hoped for, but I also developed a healthy skepticism about my ability (and desire) to be a parent. My career seemed more rewarding. Some times too much knowledge is an impediment.

My first husband wanted children. His family was large and loving and very supportive. So we tried. But as fate would have it. I couldn’t get pregnant. The marriage ended within a couple of years before alternatives such as fertility treatments or adoption even became something to discuss. Had I gotten pregnant easily, then I would have become a parent, but I did not. I suspect that I would not have wanted to put in any extra effort to become a parent, even if the marriage had lasted. By the time I met my present husband I was already experiencing menopause, and he was not interested in having children.

Sometimes I think about my mother who passed away more than a decade ago, never having any grandchildren.  She was so anxious for grandchildren that she began grooming me at age 10 with babysitting jobs, but she never did anything to prepare my brothers for parenthood. None of us had children.

What Got Me Here

 

When I read Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild several years ago, it affected me as no other piece of writing had done before or since. There was one paragraph in particular that really struck me a chapter or two before the end of the book:

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck everyone one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”

Except for the reference to heroin, everything in that paragraph struck against my mind the way a clapper does on a bell, causing my mind to reverberate for days, the vibrations echoing through my life in a way that changed the way I saw everything, felt about everything both past and present.

I had sex with a lot of men between the ages of 20 and 40. How many men? How much sex, well it depends upon whether you accept Bill Clinton’s definition (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman…Ms. Lewinsky”) or the definition of Bill Clinton’s detractors.  Until the late 90’s my definition of “having sex” was pretty much on par with President Clinton, but after his impeachment I found it necessary to revise my list of men I’d “had sex with” upwards by 3 or 4 names. And it wasn’t just the sex, it was the emotional attachments, the stalking behavior; the men, often friends, that I wanted to sleep with but couldn’t who sometimes got hurt because of my impulsive behavior. I am genuinely sorry for pain that I caused. Yet I’m still glad for the experiences, because they all taught me something. They made me into the person that has negotiated this wonderful yet turbulent, nearly 30 year marriage to my soul mate.

 

Getting Work Done is Hard These Days

The pump in our dishwasher died weeks before we realized what happened, what alerted me finally was noticing white hard water stains on the kickboards of our cabinets, where small, but daily overflows had been soaking in. Once we realized it on February 4th, we turned off the water and power to it and began hand washing. 

We had the plumbers come to diagnose whether we had leaky pipes or leaky dishwasher, and they verified our suspicion that the pump had failed.  I did some research on-line, decided on some highly recommended models and we went that weekend (February 12th) to Lowe’s to buy a new one. 

We did not realize the extent to which the pandemic had changed the way Lowe’s operated. We’ve bought appliances there before (most recently a new stove in 2021), where within a day or two a Lowe’s truck and Lowe’s employees would show up to install the purchased item, for little or no additional cost. Now Lowe’s contracts with a 3rd party installation company (which turns out to not be an installation company but a company that then hires 4th party local businesses/workers to do the actual installation). 

It was a week before we heard from the installation company, and then another two weeks before they could come and make the measurements (why they had to do this and could not trust us on the measurements I don’t know).  The (4th party) installer (a nice feller) told us for the installation contract (and payment), which Lowe's never did.  So I called them and discovered that because of an illness/accident the young man who sold us the dishwasher was out on leave, and no one really knew what was going on with our order.  It took 24 hours to find someone who could get access to all the documents and write up our installation contract, which added another $150 on to the original cost of the appliance (only 15% of the original cost but still unexpected). 

We had to wait again for the installment company to contact us with an appointment to actually install.  The first appointment we were given was March 15 (at this point we had been without a dishwasher since February 4). The day they were suppose to show up we got a call to reschedule, because the local (4th party) installer had one truck and it was broken, so they rescheduled for today March 21. 

First thing this morning the young man who was suppose to do the install called us from Lowe’s to tell us that the store had somehow misplaced/sold/lost/never gotten (??) our dishwasher and he had nothing to bring to install. He said the appliance department at Lowe’s would reorder the dishwasher and let him know when it came in and then we would get another appointment to install. 

This afternoon, someone from Lowe's installation department called us.  Now this is one of the things that really annoys me in all this. Lowe's has a department called "Installations" but they don't actually DO installations any more. They just contract with 3rd parties to do them. I realize that this has to do with protecting their workers from COVID or other things, and that it does provide jobs for small local businesses. But, often those small local businesses are overwhelmed with more than they can handle, and they don't get all the money paid by people, because Lowe's takes their cut first. And workers in small businesses don't have the same benefits or rights or opportunities that Lowe's workers do. 

The Lowe's installation department worker was very apologetic and promised to provide us with information within two business days about what happened to our dishwasher and when they would get one for us. But, in all likelihood, given how busy the  (4th party) installer is, things will be pushed at least two more weeks! Which means that we might end up with them wanting to install the same week that my husband has surgery. 

There was no ill intent or willful stalling involved here. Some of the problems arose because a key worker got ill, or a key piece of equipment (truck) broke down. These are things that happen. What is problematic is that current business practices involve skimping on redundancy in labor and equipment, there are few if any backstops. Ground between the demand by stockholders/owners for more profit and the demands of consumers for cheaper goods and services, the costs of doing business are pared to the quick. So it is not surprising that it takes one persons illness or one truck breaking down, to cause the hold structure to come to a stand still.

I Secretly Love Global Warming

 In recent weeks I have been thinking a lot about why we as a society are so reluctant to seriously fight to eliminate carbon emissions. I am an environmental voter. I look for and vote for candidates that take environmental science seriously, who appear to understand climate change, and understand that the only real solution is to dramatically cut emissions of green house gasses, and that our carbon economy. As an individual I purchased well insulated housing, use energy efficient heat pump, keep my thermostat at 67 degrees (60 at night) in the winter and wear extra layers. We bought Priuses more than ten years ago, and before that sought out the most fuel efficient cars possible. I recycle, reduce, reuse. Never replace items (including electronics) until they completely give out. As both and individual and a citizen, I try to be environmentally conscious about all my decisions.

But...you knew there was a but coming! But, I love having 60 degree weather the first week in January. I love that our winters here in eastern Kentucky are overall so much warmer and milder than they were twenty-five years ago. Yes, I absolutely know all the reasons why this is problematic. I understand how extremely mild weather in January, creates problems for plant life cycles, and how plant cycles can get out of sync with animal life cycles of hibernation, migration, mating and new generations. But I love it. My nearly 72 year old, arthritic joints love it.

I also know that we are not only getting warmer winters, we are getting hotter summers (which I don't like quite so much). Moreover, we are getting much frequent weather extremes, including the horrific flooding event that devastated eastern Kentucky in July 2022. I know all this. I know that the long term problems are going to be even worse. That the underpinnings of modern agriculture and modern society are threatened by climate change. Yet I still love these mild winters, I find myself cheering when I see that the NOAA three month climate predictions show high chance of warmer than usual weather this Jan/Feb/March. It also shows higher chance of precipitation, but as long as it's not snow...

All this suggests to me that the crusade against climate change has a significant problem, because I can hardly be the only person who intellectually grasps the problems of climate change, yet still on a personal day to day business enjoy its fruits especially in winter time. Which means that there are many of us, regardless of well we understand the problems created by climate change, might balk about making real  sacrifices in the comfort and convenience afforded by a fossil fuel economy that are really needed in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

New Things

    I started writing journals when I was 12. I had read The Diary of Anne Frank and decided like her to create an imaginary friend that I wrote to regularly. My friend was named Margie. Like Anne I wrote a lot about my feelings. Unlike Anne I did not do a very good job of describing what was actually going on in my real life. No one reading those "Margie letters" today would learn much about what life was like in suburban California in the early 1960's. 

    The "Margie letters" were written on binder paper, making it easy for me to write the letters during class periods when I was bored. I stored them all in a large three ring binder. I started in 1963, and continued that practice through my sophomore year in college. I still have the binder with all the letters packed away in a box somewhere.  They may have been cathartic to write, but they hold little content of interest to me as I aged.

    At the end of the summer of 1971 just before my junior year, I made a change. I purchased a hardbound record book, 12" x 8.5" format, and began writing a different kind of journal.  There was still a lot of internal emotional reflection, but I began to write much more about  the world around me, observations of the world, people, events, and activities. Writing in a bound journal seemed to me a much more serious undertaking than my "Margie letters" had been. It suggested permanence and the possibility that others somewhere in the future might read what I had written. 

    That December (1971) in my first bound journal I began what became an annual tradition that lasted for the next two decades: my firsts or new things list. Each December I would think back over the year and write down everything that I had done for the first time, every new experience I had encountered. In my twenties, thirties and even early forties, my lists of new things were quite lengthy. I traveled quite a bit in the U.S. visiting far flung friends and relatives, attending scholarly conferences, doing research. I moved from one state to another, from my parents home in California, to college in Ohio, a summer job in Connecticut, graduate school in Kentucky, professorships in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. I worked a variety of jobs, went to graduate school, started a career, got denied tenure and started career jobs. I married, divorced and married again. 

    Then at some point in my fifties, I stopped doing this recording of new things. Part of it was because there weren't as many new things. As we age, we generally have fewer novel experiences, things we've never experienced before. Moreover, the new things I began to experience in my fifties and sixties were generally not fun things: hysterectomy, cataracts and surgery, developing rheumatoid arthritis, and type 2 diabetes. I got out of the habit not only of my annual new things list, but of journaling in general. 

    This year, however, was an eye opener. A very big "new thing" happened, not just to me but to all the people around me: a great flood that devastated vast stretches of eastern Kentucky. While this is not a "good" new thing, it is important, significant, and affected us in profound ways, even those of us who lost little or nothing directly in the flood. It has made me want to pay closer attention again, journaling again, even my year end chronicle of new things. 

    

Christmas/Holiday Cards

 Well I did it. I set out to send a Christmas/Chanukah/holiday card to every single person in my address book before December 15. I completed that task yesterday (December 8) and put the last batch of cards in the Jenkins, KY post office. Now oddly I'm feeling a loose ends.

When I retired I thought that I would have the time to get back to keeping up with correspondence, like I did in my twenties and thirties. Back then I wrote letters every month, had dozens of people that I corresponded with regularly. These days there's only two people that I correspond with regularly, and they (my brother and an old college chum) vastly prefer to use e-mail so that what I do for them. There are two or three others who e-mail a couple of times a year. My oldest friend from junior high prefers Skyping for communication, so we do that at least once a month. One sweet college friend is very good with cards and notes on all the major Jewish holidays. But no one writes letters like we used to do. 

So it all comes down to Christmas/holiday cards, which I had gotten lax about for the last decade or so of work life. But it turns out that having plenty of time in retirement, does not translate into have "wherewithal". I have struggled most of the past five years to just simply reply to everyone who sent me a card. So I made this promise to myself, and back in October ordered two types of cards, matching stickers and address labels, and set to work on the first of December writing cards. 

I've gotten to an age where I don't know if all the friends and family whose addresses I have are still alive. Most are in their 70's or older. The ones who spend time on Facebook I know are still there, but with some of the others our only contact is holiday cards. 

Facebook gives us an illusion that we know what is going on with each other. But I know I don't post much about what is actually happening in my life, and I suspect that most people leave lots of stuff out of their social media. All the details of life that we used to share face-to-face, or even in letters, gets washed over. 

I may never do this again, at least not at this level. It was expensive, and it took almost two weeks of working on it for several hours a day. At least I can say I did it once.