Juvenile Hall

After my year off¹, I went looking for work.  I didn’t want to be a banker.  In fact I didn’t want to be anything.  I told my friends I had a serious disability, a total lack of ambition.  I just wanted a job, something to do, earn a little money, something worthwhile, no big career, no mover and shaker job.  I had my day being a mover and shaker and I wasn’t very good at it.  I didn’t enjoy it while I thought I was doing it.  In fact I wasn’t really moving and shaking very much.  I was just being used by my employers to look good while they made money in the usual way. 

One of the things I had always wanted to do was temp work.  I saw temps come through the banks I worked at and some of them were very interesting people.  They’d come in, help for awhile, the good ones quickly became part of the office and then they’d move on.  I thought it would be interesting to try it, to see the inside of offices I’d never worked in before and then move on.  I told a friend I was thinking about it and my first temping job was as a receptionist for the nonprofit where my friend worked.   

I enjoyed it.  They got a kick out of having a former bank vice president at their front desk and I made a few hundred dollars a week for a month.  Then I signed up with a temp agency and did receptionist and filing work.  One time a little boutique brokerage went on a ‘training’ junket for a week and left me in charge of the office answering the phone.  I was surprised they left a temp by himself but they were satisfied and I had a good time. 

The rest of the time was more like work.  I was a receptionist at Sutro, the investment house, with limited coffee breaks and I had to ask permission to use the restroom.  It didn't hurt my ego to be deflated a little.  Then I was a file clerk at Solomon Brothers on the 40^th floor of the Bank of America tower, great view.  The young up and coming masters of the universe avoided me like a leper.  I think they could tell I had come down in the world and they were afraid whatever I had might be catching.  I did chat a couple of times with the boss about mountain climbing.  I had to work hard for my $10 an hour. 

For a short week I was a messenger in the mail room at Morrison and Forrester, a big law firm downtown.  I saw lawyers like medieval monks in their cells scribbling away at contracts instead of tomes.  It didn't look very exciting.  On one of my treks through the floors passing out mail, I stopped to talk with an old friend who was working there.  Years before, I hired Richard's firm to do some legal work for the bank I was at.  He was good.  We became friends.  We had both sunk from our former glory days.  He was a lawyer at Morrison and Forrester and I was a mail room clerk, but we were OK. 

I don’t think knowing an attorney helped my status as a messenger.  The mail room supervisor let me go when I sat in the wrong chairs, the ones reserved for supervisors.  I moved, of course, but without feeling the proper guilt.  I guess I smiled and let it show I thought it was funny.  I didn’t mean to be disrespectful but the concern for small privileges was a little overblown.  I didn’t take any satisfaction in that.  I know small privileges are much harder to obtain than large ones.  The mail room supervisor deserved respect.  I guess it was hard for me to give him the respect he needed and look like I meant it.      

My temp jobs were fun but I needed to make a real living and the temp jobs were hard work, physically demanding, and I didn't earn much.   

I needed a real job and it was time to start looking.  As a banker I had been the caring face of banks who didn’t care much.  I served on community boards, I had done the Lord’s work and the banks took credit for it.  For my part I got paid to do the things I enjoyed.  Fundraising was the easiest way to get on the inside of a community organization whose good favor we needed.  I liked fundraising; I was good at it and I wasn’t looking to make the big bucks.  I was a volunteer fundraiser with a talent for it.  I thought it would be challenging to become a professional.  I could work for someone who really knew their stuff and learn the trade.  It seemed like something that would be worthwhile. 

Looking for work is not my best skill.  In fact, I am miserable at it.  I had a few informational meetings that I arranged through friends or my wife at the time, Susan.   Nothing came of them.  I didn’t impress anyone.  I think my lack of ambition showed.  I knew I could do a good job fundraising, grunt work, but people seemed to think they needed someone more dynamic.  My opinion is a lot of dynamic people try to make long hours and drive look like substance.

I went on an interview with CORO that Susan arranged.  I didn’t impress the new director at all.  As it turned out the director didn’t impress the board much herself and a year later was gone, but I didn’t get a job with her.  I don’t think she wanted to supervise someone her father’s age and she turned out not to have much substance herself, so someone with real experience and substance probably wasn’t the person she wanted to have around.

I finally had a solid lead with the San Francisco Ronald McDonald House.  The McDonald Houses are a franchise in most major cities.  They are good organizations doing good work, providing housing and a family atmosphere for families of gravely ill children while the children receive care in the local hospital.  The San Francisco director was a solid guy.  McDonald's Corporation takes credit for Ronald McDonald Houses while they make healthy profits creating generations of obese Americans.  McDonald's doesn’t contribute much on the local level, mostly their name, a little organizational help and seed money.  Each house does its own fundraising.  

I liked the job, I liked the people.  By this time, I was also pretty desperate.   The decision came down to me and another candidate.  We met in a waiting room before the board interviewed each of us separately.  I didn’t know the lady who was my competition but I had met her sisters in spirit many times.  She was dressed in a hard suit, nylons, high heels.  She looked very professional but up close she was wearing a mask of makeup to hide her age and a helmet of lacquered hair. 

It was obvious to me she had lived a hard life on the edge, trying to make money in real estate, fundraising or anything else.  She probably had a very nice car but lived in an apartment that smelled like a cat.  She was a middle aged woman in pain, crusted in bitterness and still holding it together.  I knew this job was going to be a reach for her and one more shot at credibility. 

I could be totally wrong about her.  Maybe the board saw something in her I didn’t.  They chose the lady with the lacquered hair. 

Now I was even more desperate.   I went to a job fair at Fort Mason on my way home from some dead end appointment.  There were all these personnel types from small companies looking for dynamic self starters.  I was surprised to see Consumer Credit Counselors, CCC a nonprofit I had run into as a banker when they were new back in the early 70s.  San Francisco Juvenile Hall was also there looking for applicants.  The lady from Juvy wasn’t very enthusiastic but I worked to sell myself and she finally gave me an application to take home.  I left an application with CCC. 

I went home and filled out the application for the City of San Francisco.  I remember there was a filing deadline or some problem I ran into and I pushed my way into talking to a personnel officer and got everything done and put in place.  Many years ago when I was finishing up at UCLA one of my daydreams had been to work in prisons.  I’m not sure why, my early days in hospitals may have left me permanently institutionalized.  I found prisons, jails and juvenile halls fascinating worlds. 

I took the test to be a counselor at San Francisco’s Youth Guidance Center.  They called it counselor but it was really a guard at Juvenile Hall.  I daydreamed of doing work that I really wanted to do.  Consumer Credit Counselors was hiring and as an ex-banker I seemed to be attractive to them.  The people there were good, the personnel officer and the manager.  I told them I had put in an application at Juvenile Hall and that if I got the job, I’d take it, but they hired me anyway.  I think they knew better than me the hiring process at the City was more complicated than just putting in an application. 

I started to work at CCC as a consumer credit counselor on July 1^st, 2001 at $35,000 a year and benefits.  I needed that job.  It was good work, counseling people who were nearly bankrupt and helping them to dig their way out.  The banks weren’t as enthusiastic about the program as they had once been and the people who owned the franchise were eager to make a profit which they took in salary and benefits.  We did most of our counseling on the telephone and I hated that, but it was a job.  When I was able to help people I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. 

I met Suzette Anderson there.  She was a young recent college grad and very smart.  We became good friends and 11 years later we got married.  At that time Suzette was a bit of tease.  She was in a relationship and I was married.  It took another 6 years for our friendship to blossom into an affair and even as an affair it smoldered more than flamed. 

Meanwhile I kept my application going at Juvenile Hall.  I took the psych test.  My short stay in a psychiatric unit in the Air Force came up.  I talked to the psychologist at the testing site and he cleared me to work.  I took the physical and they did a background check.  When I took the test there were about 50 candidates.  Half didn’t pass the background check.  It’s surprising how many people with shady pasts apply for law enforcement.  I think it’s a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome.  Another big chunk didn’t pass the test, basic high school grammar and math.  So by the time they hired us, there were only four candidates. 

In December, 2001 I was hired as an on call juvenile hall counselor.  On call meant we filled shifts for people who were sick or on vacation. 

In mid-December we had a week’s orientation class.  It was taught by Dennis Cleary², the Assistant Director.  We learned about Juvenile Hall and how it worked, the kids we’d be working with, and some basic self defense and control moves that we would have to use sometimes.  It wasn’t much but it was enough to get us started. 

I worked my first shift New Year’s Eve, 2001.  The first few shifts in Juvenile Hall were with experienced counselors and it was easy, just do what I was told.  The population at Juvenile Hall was a little over 100 kids, not just troublemakers, but the very worst troublemakers in San Francisco.  A youngster didn’t get locked up in Juvenile Hall unless his or her crime was very serious, or they were a danger to others or everything else had been tried and no place else would take them.  We had youngsters accused of murder, assault, mayhem, and gang violence.  And then there were the host of kids who were in the system and just couldn’t stay in foster homes, group homes or any other programs and kept coming back to us again and again.  They ranged in age from 14 to 18.  The 14 year olds were small but had less self control than the older youngsters.  Some of the most violent incidents occurred on the unit for 14 year olds. 

Most of the time, most of the kids, were mostly good.  However, the kids were always on the lookout for a weak spot, a chance to take advantage or even to escape.  They needed constant watching and that’s what the counselors did.  A counselor was never alone with the kids in the unit unless they were locked in their rooms.  There were always two counselors, so if one was attacked, the other could sound the alarm and control the other kids.  Ideally there were three counselors, two to handle the kids hands on and one to stand back and control the situation until help arrived. 

More often than not it wasn’t kids attacking counselors as kids attacking each other.  A counselor would grab one, the other counselor the second kid and the third counselor would call for help.  Help was a shout on the radio of “Condition!” then the location and repeating it over and over.  “Condition B4! Condition B4! Condition B4!”   At that sound, the third counselor in each of the other units would run to the unit with trouble as quickly as he or she could.  Usually within two or three minutes, the room filled with an overwhelming number of counselors.  Most times it was an overreaction, but sometimes violence would spark violence and the whole room of youngsters would erupt in fights of long smoldering grudges, gang affiliations, and individual problems.  Anything could set it off.  Every condition had the potential to be a riot. 

Many of the counselors were huge; former college football players were common at the Hall and valued members of the team.  So once everyone was there it didn’t take long to calm the situations down, but the first couple of minutes could be difficult and if I was wrestling with a kid it could seem like forever until help arrived.      

Most of the counselors were incredibly good people.  All were college grads and the majority had been there a long time, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years.  On calls were vetted to see if they could make it.  If the supervisors and your fellow workers liked you, you were called to fill shifts until eventually they hired you.  If they didn’t like you, they didn't call.  The counselors were the kind of people who really cared about the kids.  They treated them well, they took care of them, and they liked their work. 

However, there were a minority of counselors who for one reason or another shouldn’t have been there.  They stayed because of the incompetence of personnel, the lethargy of the system, the union, and civil service.  There was one counselor who was very inappropriate with the young men, too close to them, bribing them with treats and gifts.  It just didn’t feel right.  He had been fired for this behavior, but he got a lawyer and fought it.  After a year he won his suit, was reinstated and given a year’s back pay.  He was there for good and it did no good to complain about him. 

There were other counselors who just played the system, one who was a pothead and liked to stir up trouble just because he could.  I’m not sure why they didn’t drug test us.  There were counselors who were too old or infirm to do the job, but just hung on, and counselors, who had twisted personalities, couldn’t handle kids, or were troublemakers.  They worked there because the pay was good and they could sit behind a desk and let everyone else do the work.  There was even a counselor who was a drug dealer and recruited kids in Juvenile Hall for his business.  He had very good political connections but he was eventually fired.   

My first week or two I worked with counselors who knew what they were doing.  The work was easy.  They were good people.  As an on-call counselor most of my shifts were swing shifts.  The regulars with seniority had day shifts.  Midnight shifts were an odd collection of burnouts and night people.  After the first few weeks I got thrown in wherever they needed me and without any seniority or clout more often than not it was with the counselors who were hard to work with. 

I continued to work at Consumer Credit Counselors.  I wasn’t sure I was suited to Juvenile Hall or whether they would take me if I wanted a job there.  My days off and holidays I worked at the Hall.  There was always a need for someone and I began working 40 hour weeks.  The pay was good and in March I quit CCC. 

The work at Juvy was great.  I loved the job.  For me it was unexpected but I even liked working with teenagers. 

When I went to work at Juvenile Hall they were still in the old building; new construction was being started behind it.  To get to the Hall I went through the Juvenile Courts Building on Woodside Avenue and down the hallway on the right, up a half flight of wide stairs and in through double doors that had to be buzzed open.  It was its own world.  Inside there was a gatekeeper who checked your purpose in being there.  

After the small narrow room there was a long wide corridor, plexiglass windows on one side and cinderblock walls on the other punctuated every 25 yards by double doors that were securely locked.  Behind the double doors were the units.  There were 7 units in Juvenile Hall, B1, B2, B3, up to B5 and then a girls unit.  B1 was 14 year olds, younger smaller kids.  B4 was 17 year olds, big kids and B5 was the maximum security unit, a unit for the very dangerous youngsters.  There was also a unit for non-dangerous arrivals.

B1 was the easiest unit.  The kids there were still very much kids and easily manipulated into good behavior.  They had to be watched closely because left on their own they had no sense of consequences and were capable of real violence on each other.  But for the most part they were small and easy to handle.  B4 was the 17 year olds and the kids there were generally calmer, easier to reason with.  It was the kids in between B2 and B3 that were the hardest. 

As a newcomer it was the kids in between that I usually worked with.  There were some good counselors, but that’s also where the counselors who were a problem worked as well.  Ms. Brown, the lead for B3 was an obnoxious evangelical Christian, grossly obese who played favorites with the kids, sat behind the desk and never moved.  When there was trouble she could always be counted on to make it worse, screaming like one of the kids making accusations and throwing out insults.  I could never figure out why she worked there, she seemed to hate the job and the kids. 

My day usually started at 3 p.m.  I’d go in, check the worksheet to see where I was assigned and who I was working with, the right counselors could make for an easy evening, the wrong counselors could make for a night of hell.  Usually it was in between.  If there were two of us who knew what we were doing we could compensate for the third counselor.  The supervisors tried to balance it out so no one had it bad all the time, but sometimes it just worked out that way.   

The unit was laid out in a line up from the doors, a 20 yard hallway.  At the beginning of the hallway was a door that opened on to a classroom, which looked pretty much like any classroom in a regular high school, a little more spare on decorations and a little more tattered.  

At the end of an upsloping 20 yards, the unit opened into a large room on either side.  On the right side was a dining room with a kitchen at the back and a serving slot between the kitchen and the dining room from where the food was served. 

At 5 o’clock the main kitchen delivered trays and pans of hot food.  It was institutional food, noodles, heavy gravies, nondescript meats, unimaginative vegetables, salad, and cobbler type desserts.  There was milk and juice.

On the right side of the corridor was a rec room.  The tables in the dining room were fast food restaurant tables with the seats attached that two people could lift and move to the TV side.  There were very few things in a Juvy unit that could be picked up and used as a weapon.  Things like buckets, brooms, and mops were kept in locked closets. 

After the rec room and kitchen the unit narrowed down and on one side was a bench for the kids to sit and on the other a waist high cage and behind it a desk with a chair and a telephone.  This was the counselors’ desk.  Notes, papers, and the daily log were kept there and anything the counselors wanted out of reach from the youngsters.  Behind it was a closet that could be locked where the sporks , a combination fork and spoon, and kitchen utensils were kept and a small bathroom that the counselors could use.

Before three o’clock the kids were locked in their rooms for shift change.  We’d check in at the desk, exchange information with the day shift, check the radios and the plastic sporks.  The sporks could conceivably be used as weapons; these and the metal ladles and serving spoons were counted at the beginning of shift, after meals, and at the end of shift. 

Further on the unit opened up to a large bathroom for the kids and hallways on either side and one straight back.  The rooms were on either side of the hallways.  In the straight hallway on one side was a shower room.  At the end of the right hallway there was a large closet with linens, towels, clothes and cleaning equipment. 

The rooms were reasonably large, with two iron bed frames bolted into the floor.  We put foam mattresses on the frames.  If the hall was crowded we sometimes put an extra youngster in the room and sometimes even two.  The youngsters liked this, the more kids the more it was like a party, so the kids who got put together were the kids following the rules, easy to work with, the kids who got along. 

All the cleanup, floors swept and mopped, toilets cleaned, food served and everything else we needed, the kids did.  Any reason they had to get out of their rooms was appreciated and cleanup was considered a privilege.  The kids who knew their way around Juvy watched their behavior to earn the privilege.  It was one of the many tools at our disposal to guide the behavior of the youngsters. 

At 5:30 we served the kids dinner.  Depending on the counselor and the kids, one counselor would work the kitchen and the kids would help.  Some of the better kids, usually kids who had been there a long time and knew their way around were very helpful and it paid off for them in time out of their rooms and other privileges we had to dispense.  And it was just easier to live there when we all got along, easier for us, easier for the kids. 

At first there was a lot of skepticism about my being in Juvenile Hall.  I was a grandfather, though most of the counselors there were close to my age.  I’m not big, 5’9” and I’m not a fighter. I’d rather talk, but after a while most people came to accept me.  The macho types who believed in being rough with the kids never did, but I got along.  I proved in a fight I could wrestle with the kids.  I learned it was a matter of just jumping in, like being a lineman on a football team.  When the quarterback called the number you jumped and hit hard.  If you knocked the kids off balance that was usually enough to end the situation. 

Some people were never going to accept me and that was fine.  The first real fight I saw I did stand flat footed for a few moments.  A large kid seriously attacked a smart mouthed youngster and bloodied his face.  I also learned a lesson in report writing.  The older experienced counselor worked with the other counselor to write a report that made me look like the problem, diverting attention from the other counselor’s mistakes.  Most people are stunned by violence, it’s unexpected and they don’t know what to do.  But after a while and with a little experience, I learned to respond to it.  I used my voice a lot more than muscle, but I learned to jump in when I needed to. 

I liked working in Juvenile Hall.  I liked the kids.  I talked to them, I teased them, I listened to their problems.  I treated them well.  Most of the time that worked very well with our population.  There were very few of the kids who seemed thoroughly evil or mean.  Most of them had a good side and most of the time that’s what I worked on.  I did learn never to trust the kids.  They were all schemers and like bank customers when I was a banker, friendship was fine but when it came down to it, they were going to do what they thought was best for themselves not caring who was in their way.   

There was one youngster, McKissick, I don’t know what he was in for.  Most of the time we didn’t know.  He was well over 6 foot tall, but very slender and gangly, not coordinated at all.  He was 15 years old, but his voice hadn’t changed and he had a real little kid kind of feel to him.  He had been put with other 15 year olds but he had been victimized by the more mature sophisticated kids and so he was put down in B1 with the younger kids.  He fit in and did just fine.  He was there for awhile and so he became one of the trusted kids.  He was cooperative and helpful and was a regular for cleanup and other privileges.

At one time he sprained his ankle and he had a crutch from the clinic.  Crutches were treated with great care in Juvenile Hall and when he wasn’t using his crutch it got locked in a closet.  The fear was he or one of the other kids could use it as a weapon before anyone could get close to them. 

The kids were locked in their rooms after meals, during cleanup, and during shift changes.  After the evening recreation they were locked up until the next morning.  A constant thing between the kids and the counselors was their need to use the bathroom.  It went on all day and all night.  Any time they were locked up it seemed the kids needed to use the bathroom.  The more I let them out the more they needed out.   I learned to pace their bathroom breaks, make sure everyone got one and then to ignore their whining.  If you absolutely must use the bathroom, piss on your shirt and we’ll give you a new one after shift change.  They very seldom needed to do that.  It took balance.  I let the kids out regularly to use the bathroom, when they really needed it and sometimes just because they wanted out, but it had to be controlled. 

And whenever the kids were locked up and a counselor was alone in the unit, it seemed like they all needed out.  If I was in there for a long time or there was a genuine need, I would call to another unit or a supervisor and someone would come and join me while we let the youngsters out and did bathroom breaks for the whole unit.  The rule was never to be in the unit alone with a detainee out.

It was particularly difficult on the midnight shift because all the units but a couple had single counselors and getting a backup counselor could take some time. 

One night as usual Mr. Peters was working the midnight shift in B1.  He had been at the hall forever and the midnight shift was his regular time.  Peters was about 5’3” and 120 pounds.  He was an older man, frail and small.  He had a good sense of humor, was a very nice guy, but he was one of the midnight people.  It was known that some of the counselors sometimes let the kids out by themselves.  They knew the good kids; some counselors were big enough to handle anybody and didn’t worry about being attacked.  It wasn’t the norm but it happened. 

That night Peters let McKissick, the good kid out.  McKissick nearly beat him to death with the crutch.  He left Peters in a bloody heap behind his desk, took his keys, and escaped the unit.  Sometime later someone checking the units found Peters.  Paramedics were called and his life was saved.  The police found McKissick on the roof of the building trying to find a way to get over the tall fences that surrounded the facility. 

Peters survived but he never came back to work.  McKissick was charged with attempted murder and was going to stay in custody until he was at least 25 years old or maybe longer.  I think kids locked up often dreamed about mayhem but we never gave them the chance.  Peters gave McKissick the chance.  His story was added to the cautionary tales that got told to remind us all to follow procedures.     

I watched counselors relax their guard because they knew the kids, because there hadn’t been any trouble for a long time or just because they were tired.  I always reminded myself, that Juvenile Hall was easy, and it was comfortable, but it was always dangerous. 

Occasionally filling in at B5, the maximum security unit was usually easier because the counselors knew their kids were dangerous and they were always vigilant.  They followed procedures carefully and almost never bent the rules. 

Most of the time I enjoyed going to work.  I enjoyed my shifts, I enjoyed the people I worked with and I really enjoyed the kids.  I got invested in them.  I found them funny and warm and I liked that they responded to being treated decently.  Besides the counselors, there were teachers during the day, some of whom were incredible.  There were nurses who visited the units with meds, mostly Motrin, and antibiotics.  There were a few kids on psychotropics but not many.  There were psych counselors, probation officers and lawyers.  In the evening there were whole host of volunteers, yoga instructors, mentors, community workers, rehab programs, music teachers, and art teachers.  There were also families.  It was a community, a community I enjoyed. 

Sometimes my stomach would twist in anxiety at going to work that I might be stuck with one of the counselors who made working there more dangerous than it had to be.  Ferrar was just such a counselor.  He spouted some sort of South American liberation ideology, read books at work and provoked the kids just out of sheer boredom and cussedness.  He’d get into it with a kid and jack the kid up until there was an incident and the kid was locked up in his room for days as punishment for having lost control.  The whole unit would be locked down and Ferrar could read his book.  Ferrar enjoyed power and he was unpredictable. 

Another counselor, Michaels, was just stupid and always trying to get out of work and lording it over anybody who he thought had less seniority than he did.  The kids took advantage of him and then reacted badly to his neglect.  He’d argue with them and working with him was always a problem. 

There was one counselor who was too old and decrepit to be of any use on the unit.  Another counselor was just a twisted personality and had some sort of weird sexual thing going and went sideways with the kids unpredictably.  There was another counselor who was into the plight of the Black Man and would provoke the black kids against the white counselors stirring them up with his own sense of victimization.  Most of the counselors were very good and decent people but the few who weren’t could be a real problem. 

One Christmas at Juvenile Hall I was scheduled to work the swing shift on Christmas Day.  I didn’t have much seniority.  It was my Monday as we call our first day back after two days off.  I agreed with Susan to go down to LA for Christmas with her family, but I had to make it back to work at 3 p.m. on Christmas Day. 

I did the Christmas thing with family and then I left early and rushed to the airport, making a plane for San Francisco.  I got to San Francisco with little time to spare and rushed to Juvenile Hall.  I made it there just before three.  I thought it was important to be there for the kids.  Holidays were hard for them and I knew they needed someone who cared. 

Weekends and holidays the sheriffs who manned the front door of the Juvenile Court Building were off and one of the counselors would be assigned door duty.  I looked at the duty roster and that’s what I got.  I had been burning with the satisfaction of my own altruism in rushing to be with “the kids” on Christmas Day and I spent the shift watching a door that was little used.  Juvenile Hall was like that. 

I worked on call for six months.  The usual thing was that an on call counselor just worked right through the limited hours that defined on call and by default became a provisional counselor working full time with benefits.  Personnel and procedures at Juvenile Hall were so bad, that this haphazard way of promotion had become the norm. 

I was used to doing things right, needed to have some definition and as I neared my 1096 hours of work in one year, I said something about it to a supervisor.  The next day I was told to stop working and go home until I was called back or until the next 12 month period started.  There were four of us in the same situation and the other three were laid off as well. 

I was told, don’t worry about it, they wanted to have me full time and the layoff would be temporary.  Of course being hired required budget, approval for hiring, and a lot of bureaucracy.  It felt like an astrological lining up of the planets to the right configuration.  Even if it happened it might be beyond the ability of personnel to take advantage.  The personnel office for Juvy was behind a locked door in the court house part of the building.  You had to ring a buzzer to get someone to come to the door.  That's where business was normally conducted, at the door and no further.  Often no one was there or they just didn’t answer the buzzer.  If I called on the phone I got an answering machine. 

I went home and started collecting unemployment.  I remembered when my mother collected unemployment during the 50s she knew she would be called back to work but she had to demonstrate she was looking for work to get her checks.  Apparently that wasn’t the case by the time I was collecting unemployment but I felt like I should look for work anyhow.  

One morning while surfing the internet I thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  The answer was easy, a Park Ranger.   It turned out State Parks was taking applications online.  

Susan, my wife, at the time, had worked for Willy Brown when he was the Speaker of the Assembly and she had kept up her contact with Willy and the people who worked for him.  She kept hounding me to let her call Willie’s office.  Willy was the mayor of San Francisco.  Finally after four months of waiting to hear from Juvenile Hall, I decided I would let her give it a try.  I called my friend, Dennis, the assistant director and warned him that Susan was going to call the Mayor.  I just wanted him to know where it was coming from. 

One thing a bureaucracy hates is scrutiny from an elected official, particularly the Mayor.  This fear can even overcome inertia.  Two days after my call the four of us were called back to be hired as Juvenile Hall Counselors.  

I went back to work, got a regular shift on B4 and enjoyed working at Juvenile Hall for another two years.  I didn’t stop my Ranger application.  I took the test with State Parks.  Juvenile Hall sent me and another counselor to Juvenile Corrections Officer Training through POST, Police Officer Standards Training, at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose. 

The training was great, six weeks all together.  We were in a class with Juvenile Hall Officers from Santa Clara and Monterey County.  It was a good course and at the end of it we were Peace Officers, unsworn and unarmed, but peace officers nonetheless.  Along with our class there was a class of Santa Clara Adult Prison Officer Cadets and a class of police cadets for San Jose and other Santa Clara municipalities.  One of the cadets was a retired math teacher.  John was 57 years old, a year older than I was, and he was doing well in the class and enjoying it.  Later when I was called to be a Ranger, John was one of my inspirations to go ahead and try it.    

I went back to work at Juvenile Hall as a Peace Officer and I enjoyed it.  But two years later when State Parks asked me if I wanted to go to the Academy, I said yes.  It was dangerous to work at Juvenile Hall, not because of the population itself, but because of the administration of it, because of incompetent counselors and because safety and procedures were secondary to bureaucratic inertia. 

I liked working outdoors.  I liked the idea of being a cop.  I liked being a Ranger.  But I missed Juvenile Hall.  There’s something comfortable about pastel walls.  And I missed the kids. 

 1.  In 1999 I quit California Commerce Bank and took a year off

^2.   I’ve changed most of the names of my coworkers in Juvenile Hall.  It can be dangerous and a little bit of paranoia is well founded working there.  Also it allows me to be more honest about some of the characters I worked with. 

3.  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2003/07/27/CM64815.DTL&object=%2Fc%2Fpictures%2F2003%2F07%2F27%2Fcm_badgirls_6.jpg
From the San Francisco Chronicle

Mom

My mother was a very admirable woman.  In her long and rich life she made strengths out of her weaknesses.  Against incredible odds, she survived the loss of her mother, a crippled father, the Depression, and deafness.  Not only did she survive, she made a comfortable life for herself and her children.  She had an amazing ability to cope and she did it better than anyone could have ever imagined.

My mother was born February 3, 1918 in Flatriver, Missouri, now called Park Hills.  Her mother, Lorraine Jackson died a day or two after she was born, maybe from the Spanish Influenza which was particularly devastating to young adults at that time or maybe just childbirth.  Her father, Munroe Lashley, was crippled about the same time by polio. 

My mother was raised by her grandmother, Malissa Jane Firebaugh Lashley, who still had four or five of her own children at home.  I think my great grandmother also took care of some other grandchildren left by one of her sons.   My great grandmother had at least 8 children of her own and my mother had two older brothers, Tommy and Charlie.  As a child she had the mumps which left her so deaf she couldn’t continue on with school.  She was called a dummy and her formal education stopped at the age of 9 in the 3^rd grade. 

When she was 14 she went to live in St. Louis with one of her uncles, Walter, and his wife.  Forty years later she still hated both of them.  She never talked about it.  I only knew about it because on a visit to Missouri I met them.  They were very friendly and nice to me.  I told her about them and she dismissed them with a bitter remark.  It seems Walter’s wife treated her as a servant.  As a young woman, 18 or so she worked in a candy factory in St. Louis and her best friend was Pat.  They kept in contact for the rest of their lives.  . 

In St. Louis sometime after she left Walter and his wife she remade herself from an impoverished orphan into an attractive woman, a transformation that included having all of her teeth pulled and false teeth made to replace them.  She was raised Hard Shell Baptist.  I don’t think anyone in her family was particularly religious.  One of her aunts who lived near us in California was Foursquare Gospel, but she didn’t have any respect for that and always talked disparagingly of holly rollers. 

At the end of 1939 she met my father, got pregnant, and converted to Catholicism.  They got married and moved to Glendale, California.  My father got a job at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank.  In 1942, my father went back to St. Louis and enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  After a short time my mother left her two children with my father’s mother and joined my father.  She went with him to San Angelo, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana.  When my father went overseas she went back to live with my grandparents in St. Louis.  She adored my grandfather and at his urging went to work in an aircraft factory in St. Louis, probably McDonnell Aircraft.  The company provided training and my mother had a real talent in math. 

A story I have heard but don’t know the facts of is that my father returned from the War and was in St. Louis some time.  I have no idea how long, before he returned to his wife and two children. 

I was born in 1946 and my younger sister was born in 1950.  After my younger sister was born we moved from the Barracks to a rented house near the railroad tracks and my mother was working for Weber Aircraft in Burbank.  Weber made seats for aircraft.  I remember she was laid off at one time and collected unemployment.  I remember at the Barracks my mother used to do laundry with a wash tub and wringer affair, but on Ash Street she had a washer.  After that she always had a washer.  She never used a dryer.  I remember her hanging clothes on a clothesline in the back yard. 

At this time I felt protected and cared for by my mother.  I liked being around her. 

My mother was always trying to get me to wear what I thought were outrageously colored clothes.  Both my parents had grown up in the Depression and my mother was particularly aware of the cost of things and the importance of making do.  I think some of the clothes must have been on sale because they couldn’t sell otherwise.  My mother was an extrovert and I was an introvert particularly as a child.  My mother was always trying to convert me. I think we both thought of it as a moral question and not just a personality trait.  I preferred quiet and out of the way.  My mother thought that was something she could change in me.   

In 1952 my father got a job with Stainless Steel Products, a new metal fabricating company.  He worked there another 30 years.  My father earned most of the money, but she took care of it.  My mother began looking for a house to buy in Burbank.  My father had very little to do with these things and took his allowance from my mother each week and left everything else to her.  We moved to 817 East Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank above downtown on the slope up to the Verdugo Hills.  We called it living in the hills and it was a wonderful neighborhood.  

My mother stopped working and took care of us and the house.  In 1954 we visited Missouri and saw her father and brothers and my father’s parents and relatives. 

My mother smoked Herbert Tareyton cigarettes and called them Hoppies.  She used Sen Sen to freshen her breath and shared the Sen Sen with us.  I don’t remember my mother particularly drinking.  If there was a party or some event it was common that my mother got drunk.  She would come home apologetic, defensive and aggressive.  She told us all how much she loved us, and we’d never know how much she loved us and how hard her life was.  She’d grab us and hold on tight.  I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be there.  

After her conversion my mother was a devout Catholic.  She sent us all to St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School the local parish on our side of town. 

My mother took care of all the money in the household and made sure we knew she had grown up in the Depression.  She seemed to be particularly shaken by the recessions in the 1950s, though my father never lost his job our household standard of living went up and down with the aircraft industry and space effort.  Around 1958, 1959 she went to work at the Disney commissary and brought us giveaways and stories from the Zorro Television series.  My father apparently didn’t like her working and she quit that job after awhile. 

I remember other than those rare episodes when she was drunk or in one of her self pity moods, which usually went together, I enjoyed being around my mother.  When I became an adolescent she seemed to change.  She was more aggressive toward me.  I think she drank a little more and often had wine in the afternoon.  She was very discouraging of any relationship with girls I might have.  That seemed a major theme for her and my elder sister that I should be protected from the inclinations of the male sex, sent to an all boys school, protected from females. 

After grammar school she enrolled me at St. Francis of Assisi High School an all boys school in La Canada.  La Canada is a wealthy neighborhood in Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains between Pasadena and La Crescenta.  My mother was very concerned that the boys who went there from rich homes shouldn’t know I didn’t have more clothes.  I had to wear white shirts so they wouldn’t know how many I had.  I’m not sure what that was all about.  I had plenty of white shirts which I wore for four years of high school. 

My mother served me my first glass of wine when I was 13 or 14.  We drank wine together in the afternoon, initially just a small glass, but I could have as much as I wanted.  It was a rough red wine she bought by the case of gallon jugs.  My father drank red wine with his meals.  My mother drank it during the day. 

She found my cigarettes sometime around then. I started smoking when I was 14 after my freshman year.  My sister Joan came home from college smoking and that summer I started. My mother had stopped smoking Tareytons and started smoking Salems before I was in high school.   In my senior year I began smoking openly at home.  I bummed Salems from her.

The whole time growing up my mother never belonged to any sort of organization, parents’ clubs, Cub Ccouts, card groups or anything else.  I think it had a lot to do with her hearing.  My mother couldn’t hear people in groups.  The way she lived was largely shaped by her hearing problems. 

During the 1950s my mother was referred to Doctor Howard House, an ear surgeon, who was pioneering surgical techniques to repair some types of hearing loss.  My mother was operated on in 1952 and her hearing was partially restored.  She had additional surgeries after that and while my mother was still hard of hearing it was not what my sisters remembered from before.  She could hear one or two people in a conversation as long as we spoke clearly and one at a time.  Of course, long before that she had learned to compensate for her hearing by dominating any conversation that she was part of.  If she controlled the conversation, she could hear better.  She still wasn’t good in a group and she avoided them.   

At that time it seemed like my mother began to drink more.  Whenever there was a party or some event she went to we would expect that she would get quite drunk and maudlin, how much she loved everybody and how no one appreciated her.  When my eldest sister went off to the convent in 1959 my mother became particularly maudlin and protested how much she missed Ellen and how devastated she was by her loss.  These episodes became more and more frequent. 

When Ellen came home for visits, my mother clutched at her and tried to control her every moment and cried when she wasn’t there.  At first Ellen would visit and stay in the convent but eventually she stayed at home on her visits where she was a virtual prisoner of my mother.

I graduated from high school in 1964 and my mother and I went to my graduation.  I don’t know where my father was, probably working that Saturday.  I went off to the seminary that summer.  My mother seemed very pleased to have a future priest in addition to the nun she already had.   

After six months I returned and got a job at the Phone Company and my mother was supportive.  I lived at home.  She still wasn’t fond of the girls I dated but that seemed to be normal. 

In September, 1965 I went off to college.  My mother paid many of my expenses the first year.  I paid my tuition from my employment at the Phone Company and the next year she paid my tuition.  I met my future wife, Cathy, in my second year at Loyola.  My mother really disliked her.  She only became tolerant of her after our first son was born.

When I returned to Los Angeles my mother helped out financially while I went to UCLA.  She gave me odd jobs to do and paid me well.  We struggled through the year on the GI Bill and those extra few dollars helped.   

As I write this, I’m struck by how supportive my mother was and how until I was 14 or 15, I had thought of her as my best friend.  There were moments when she was particularly hard to deal with, particularly her drunken tirades of despair and protests that no one appreciated her, but overall she was there when I needed her.  My father was a distant figure. 

When I had a family, my mother talked this wonderful support and love for her grandkids but she was destructive around my kids, feeding them candy and sugar treats, promising them things that she didn’t deliver and demanding that they visit but not really paying any attention to them when they were there.  We had thought she might babysit the kids, but we left them with her once and it was a terrible experience for everyone.  She complained about it for weeks afterwards and said we were taking advantage of her. 

When I got sober my mother repeatedly tried to convince me to have just one beer with her.  "One beer won’t hurt," she said.  I couldn’t believe she was undermining what was obviously an improvement that I desperately needed.  When we left home my mother began complaining of my father’s alcoholism, but never talked about her own.  My sobriety starting in 1983 seemed to offend her.  When my father got sober in 1991 she tried to convince my father that AA was stupid and he could still drink, he just needed to drink less.  She wasn’t successful.  He stopped going to meetings but he didn't drink again.    

Sometime in the 60’s my mother and father had become very active alcoholics going from what was probably Stage II to Stage III alcoholics or even Stage IV¹.  They bought their vodka by the case.  As alcoholism does, it got worse until my father’s recovery in 1991.  My mother continued to drink until she died. 

So what was it that made my father OK at the end, a loving and loved parent and my mother not?  By the end of her life, I avoided my mother completely.  I found her destructive, mean, and venomous.  It wasn’t just the alcoholism.  My father had been an alcoholic and even during his worst days, there were warm moments when he was sober. 

My mother was an extraordinarily strong character.  Her survival alone was a testament to that.  And she had gone from extreme poverty in the 1920s to a middle class life in the 1950s where her children were able to go on to college.  It was all through my mother’s efforts.  My father contributed a paycheck and even that was at the urging and nagging of my mother.  I don’t think my father would have been employed fulltime without her taking care of everything for him. 

Somehow my mother was living a lie.  There were so many lies we didn’t know what the truth was.  The first lie that she never admitted was that Ellen was born in October when in fact she was born in August, only 6 months after my parents were married.  She also made such a deal of how much she loved and was loved by my father, when it was obvious growing up that most of the time there was little love or respect between them at all.  My father had as little to do with my mother as possible, was normally very sarcastic to her and the only time it seemed like he loved her, was if any of us were disrespectful to her and he would attack us viciously for it. 

She never thought any of us loved her enough.  I don’t think she liked the men in her life.  When I began acting like a young man my mother attacked me and accused me of being like her father, someone I barely knew, that I didn’t appreciate her and no one got to treat her that way.  

When I had my own family, she demanded that we come and visit and when we did she complained that we didn’t do it enough or she complained about my sisters and how seldom they visited.  Holidays she demanded that we spend time with them, and my sister from Chicago went along with her and thought our duty was to make my parents holidays what they wanted.  After a few years, we stopped going.  There was no room for us and our family in the holiday and I felt my children had a right to a normal Christmas.

My mother certainly gave birth to me, but in the end, I didn’t want to have anything to do with her.  In writing the facts of my mother’s life, it‘s hard to explain the animosity and coldness I felt toward her. It doesn’t seem fair or reasonable, but those of us who knew my mother knew that it was necessary to fight for your life when you were near my mother, to keep her at bay, to erect a wall against her.  She had nearly destroyed my eldest sister and Ellen stayed as far away from her as she could.  My youngest sister had left home at 18 and had nothing to do with my mother and father or any us until this day.  She is still hiding from us.      

My mother died alone.  Maybe my sister was there.  Maybe she wasn’t.  If she was, it was only because she had to be.  It was our mother, and mothers should be loved and respected.  I mean no mother is perfect and you hear people complain about their mothers all the time but in the end, no matter how bad they were, they were our mothers, right?

My mother’s strength of character is something I hope I have inherited.  I am a survivor.  I’m persistent and I work hard.  My children have strength of character and their children do as well.  Maybe that’s my mother’s legacy.  She gave our family backbone and some good math genes.  We're all her beneficiaries.  I’m sorry she didn’t know how to bend a little.  I think her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren have an ability to hear that she didn’t.  I hope we have learned to listen and with our strong characters to bend a little.   

^1.          Stage I alcoholism is when drinking is fun most of the time.

            Stage II alcoholism is when drinking is fun but sometimes it’s a problem.

            Stage III alcoholism is when drinking is a problem but sometimes it’s fun.

Stage IV alcoholism is when drinking is always a problem and it’s never fun.  The alcoholic has to drink to survive.  

Cars

My first car was a 1958 Chevy Delray.  I bought it in the spring of 1965.  I was 18 years old. I needed a car to drive to my first real job working for the Phone Company. 

The car was huge and it smelled bad, a sort of vinyl seats, horsehair stuffing and too much sun smell.  The main body of it was blue and then a light blue on the side panels.  Or it was green with light green side panels, or blue with light green side panels.  Whatever it was, it was badly faded.  Besides being huge, smelling bad, being an odd color and a gas guzzler, it was ugly.  I told people my 1958 Chevy¹ was General Motors gearing up for an impending war and this was the car they made before they transitioned into tanks. 

The first car I looked at was a 1953 Chevy Convertible.  It was white with gold highlights and very cool looking.  Rick Sharp, my best friend and I saw it at a used car dealer's.  It was only $500 which seemed reasonable.  I’m not a mechanic and I just thought I wouldn’t be able to keep it running.   It was a pipe dream more than anything else.  I didn’t know how to buy a car by myself and I didn't even talk to the salesman.    

My mother found the 1958 Chevy and we went to see it in Hollywood.  The owner was a youngish gay man who was selling it to buy something new.  She decided it was the car for me and we bought it on the spot for $800. 

My mother made the decision and she was an irresistible force when she decided.  My mother made all of my father’s decisions for him and she was doing the same for me before I learned to get out from under her.  My mother would get these ideas into her head and that was it.  At the time she decided Volkswagens and small cars were dangerous.  It wasn’t good enough that I should get something bigger than a Volkswagen, I needed a behemoth just to be sure.  There wasn’t much on the road bigger or boxier than a 1958 Chevy. 

Five days a week I drove the Chevy to my job in Reseda about 20 miles away.  I think it got 12 miles to the gallon but gas in those days was about 25¢ a gallon.  It was a big roomy car and great for making out with somebody.  My first girlfriend after the seminary asked me how I felt about French kissing.  I said I thought it was a sin.  That was stupid, we never French kissed.  With my second girlfriend I kept my ideas of sin to myself.  We French kissed and even after awhile made it into the backseat of the Chevy which was very roomy. 

A side note here, being Irish, Catholic and an ex-seminarian it was a long time before I ever got laid and even longer time before I ever made it in the back seat of a car.  10 years later my wife and I decided to try it and we made it in the backseat of our car, a Volkswagen Van. 

I drove the Chevy to work until September, 1965 and then I left it at home while I went to college in Westchester, near the airport.  I think it was about then I bought a Suzuki 50cc motorcycle, a zippy little thing that maxed out at about 35 miles per hour, 40 with the wind at my back.  It was a two stroke engine which was always smoky and fouled.  I lived with my sister in an apartment in Mar Vista and used the Suzuki to get to school.  I drove it across town to Burbank when I went home.  I rode it in all kinds of weather including torrential rain when I got soaked to the bone.  I also slipped and went down a couple of times while riding it on slick streets.  In those days helmets weren’t required and no one wore them.  I certainly didn’t have one, it never occurred to me. 

I think when I went back to work at the phone company in the summer of 1966 I drove my Chevy again.  It was the summer after that, 1967, when my father decided that since he had driven it all winter and made some repairs to it that it was now his car and I had no claims on it at all.  Even I was a little surprised at how arbitrary and unfair that decision was.  My father was adamant and at 20 it didn’t do any good to argue with either of my parents. 

That summer I went in the service and and in the spring got married to Cathy Bruemmer.  She joined me in Bedford, England and I worked 12 miles away at Chicksands.  We used a bus to get to the base when we needed to and by myself I hitchhiked to work.  Public transportation in England was good and we didn’t get a car until our second winter there.  I bought a 1956 Ford Popular². It was cool.  It was a pre-War design and looked like a miniature gangster car.  I drove it a few times and then it stopped running.  A friend on Dog Flight  said he would help me get it running again.  We got it torn apart in the base auto shop and that was it.  We never got any further.   

That spring I bought a 1963 Volkswagen from a sergeant who was going back home.  The Volkswagen was wonderful.  It ran and ran and ran.  I found a mechanic, a Pole in Bedford to work on it and on cold days I learned to jump start it by running beside it and jumping in. 

We drove the Volkswagen to Italy and all over the Midlands and southern England.  It was a wonderful car and our first son, Sean, loved it more than we did.  Volkswagen was among the first words he learned.  

When we got back to Los Angeles we needed a car.  One can live in England without a car, but no one can live in LA without a car.  I found a Volkswagen advertised in the newspaper, went to see it and I bought it for $500.  Our Volkswagen in England had been a deep shiny blue, the new one was Volkswagen pale green.  The English VW had been a 1963³ and the car I bought in LA was a 1968, but they were just about the same car. 

I drove my Volkswagen from North Hollywood to UCLA in Westwood every day.  I looked for cheap gas and found a place where it was about 22¢ a gallon.  I put gas in it and I drove it.  Sean, 3 years old and Ted 1 year old bounced around in the back seat.  There were seat belts in the car but in those days we didn’t use them.  If you came to a stop suddenly there was this reflex arm movement with the right arm to the passenger if they were a little person to keep them from flying forward. 

I remember driving down Venice Boulevard and coming to a sudden stop and both boys in the back seat tumbling forward into the foot well.  A very clear voice, every word distinct, said, “Don’t do that.”  Ted was talking. 

Something finally went wrong with the car.  It was overheating and someone told me it needed a regulator or some part.   I called around to see how much it would cost and reached a Volkswagen garage in Glendale where the owner quoted me the lowest price to repair it.  The day I was supposed to pick it up I got a phone call from Julius, the mechanic.  He told me that he had mispriced the item and in fact it was more expensive than he had quoted.  I made some sort of sighing comment and he said, “Oh no, he wasn’t going to charge me more.  He just wanted me to know.”  I went to Julius and then his son Rich for the next 20 years. 

When I got a job, I could afford to service the Volkswagen regularly and repair things as they wore out.  I even bought new tires for it.  I could tell I needed them; I was getting flats and seeing white ribbing in the tires.  Julius kept my Volkswagen running until 1981 when I finally gave up on the Volkswagen after two rear end collisions.  The second one did it in and it didn’t seem worth it to put a new engine in a 13 year old car.  I sold to it to Sean who was 12.  He wanted to work on it and get it to running again one day. 

In 1976 we bought a used Volkswagen Van as our second car.  It was great for family vacations.  The engine was a little more touchy than the Volkswagen Beetle and the van took more servicing and mechanical work, but it ran well.  It was a great car, blue and white.  It even looked cool.  I drove the van most of the time and Cathy drove the Beetle. 

When the Beetle died in 1981 we bought a brand new Honda Civic.  Hondas were the new Volkswagens.  It had a small engine, was very well designed and zippy like a sports car.  I liked it. 

In the beginning of 1983 the transmission on the Volkswagen Van gave out and we decided it was time to get another car.  I think Cathy was already planning our separation and she wanted to get a new car before I left.  We bought a Toyota Tercel station wagon for her.  It was an odd little thing, four wheel drive and a boxy look.  When we did separate later that year she kept it.  I made payments on it until it was paid off.  I think she drove it well into the 90s.    

By 1989 with a 135,000 miles on it, the Honda was beginning to show its age.  Ted, my second son, was driving it one day and we started out on a green light across Riverside Drive and a Ford Bronco went right through the red light and plowed into us.  Thank god, Hondas are sturdy little cars.  We weren’t injured.  Ted was a little bruised.  The car still ran but it was mashed.  I gave the Bronco driver’s insurance company a chance to pay me off and they took the car.     

I was ready for a pickup truck and I bought a 1989 maxi cab Toyota with a camper shell on the back.  Toyotas run forever.  I never liked the look of it, but it was practical for camping and carrying bicycles. 

I took it north when I moved to the Bay Area.  I left Rich in Glendale and got it serviced elsewhere.  In getting the service done somewhere new, it wasn’t checked for preventive things and on a drive back from LA, the timing chain gave out.  Now on my list of things to do with a car, is to change the timing chain around 175,000 miles.  The engine froze up and I had it repaired for $1200 but it never ran the same again.  Also Susan, my wife at the time, had one of these who goes first collisions on the front left fender that left it looking sickly.  I replaced it, but never painted it. 

With Susan’s input we bought a 1998 Honda CRV, much bigger than I would have wanted and with leather seats.  At least we didn’t buy the Mercedes Benz she proposed to get at first.  In 2004 we bought a Honda Civic Hybrid.  I loved that little car, as fun as my first Civic and you could watch the readout on gas consumption and try for more than 50 miles to the gallon on a trip. 

When Susan and I divorced she got the Civic.  I still drive the CRV.  Hondas today last much longer than they used to last.  The CRV has 203,000 miles on it.  I changed the timing chain at 175,000 miles.  The car runs great.  It will be another year or two before I buy another car. 

In 2008 I bought a Honda Rebel Motorcycle⁴.  I like small cars.  I like small motorcycles.  The Honda is a 250cc.  It tops out at 75 or 80 mph and keeps up with traffic on the freeways.  It has a four stroke engine and runs like a top.  I appreciate my CRV.  It has done well by me for 14 years and over 200,000 miles.  I love my Rebel.  And I wear a helmet.

^1.  http://stormpix.deviantart.com/art/1958-Chevrolet-Delray-167853227

²  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Popular

³  http://www.remarkablecars.com/main/volkswagen/1963-vw-001.html

^4. My own photo

My AA Story

From the 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous:

Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.

This is my personal story.  I can’t write my own biography without talking about my alcoholism, how I stopped drinking and what it means to me.  I am not a spokesman for AA.  There is nothing official about this, it is just my story.  The AA members I mention in the story are deceased and their anonymity is no longer an issue. 

I had my last drink December 13, 1983.  I haven’t had a drink since.  I went to my first AA meeting a week later, December 22^nd, 1983.  

I grew up in alcoholic family.  My grandfather, my mother, and my father were all alcoholics.  I started drinking at around age 14.  My father drank red wine with his meals.  Our family’s self image was that we were sophisticated drinking red wine like Europeans.  My mother bought the wine by the case, Pride of Cucamonga, four large gallon bottles in a cardboard box from the Monte Carlo Italian Deli.  It was a Zinfandel that left a red stain on my teeth.  I started having a glass of wine with my mother in the afternoon.  

After that I could pour myself a glass of wine whenever I liked and I drank a little wine with my meals.  At first a half glass, we used water glasses, of the Zinfandel was enough.  By the time I was senior in high school I would have a full glass or maybe two if I felt like it and I began to go places with a bit of buzz on.  At 16 I started drinking beer with my dad and by the time I was 17 I was going with my sister who was 21 to the liquor store to buy a six pack of beer.  My father, my sister and I would drink it until it was gone and sometimes go for another.  One time in a liquor store in Glendale the clerk stopped us.  He wasn’t going to sell me a six pack of beer.  I deferred to my 21 year old sister.  He wasn’t going to sell her the six pack either.  Other than that one time it was never a problem.

By the time I got to college, I could drink pretty well.  I still drank beer as much as was available, but I eventually learned to stop sometimes when there was still beer left.  I remember one wedding I attended I got so drunk I tried putting the make on the groom’s sister.  She was married and much older than I was, and I think she may have thought it was funny.  I don’t remember ever seeing the groom again.   

At college there wasn’t much opportunity to drink beer.  By this time I drank mostly at home.  Sometimes there was a jug of Red Mountain wine at a party and I always drank my share.    

I went in the service at 20.  On the base servicemen could drink 3.2 beer on base at 18 and in Mississippi we could drink 3.2 beer off base.  I turned 21 a few months later and I could drink hard liquor but mostly I stayed with beer.  After Mississippi I was stationed in England and I became a regular at the local pub, the Gordon Arms.  My new wife and I drank red wine, Volipacella from Italy in half gallon bottles in baskets.  We bought it at the Class VI store on base.  We had quite a collection of empties hanging on the kitchen door.  We used them as candle holders and gave them to friends. 

There were a few parties or events where I drank too much, but most of the time it was just fun.  I loved the pub.  For less than a pound, I could drink all night and most nights that was 3 or 4 English pints, 20 ounces each.   In the service we didn’t think anyone drank too much.  I remember being a little shocked at Sergeant Welch drinking bottles of Ripple as he drove me home one Sunday morning after our shift.  And Sergeant Irving, an older man in Personnel, had an alcohol problem. 

I came home from the service and went to college.  We lived on the GI Bill, $240 a month and my wife and I could barely afford the Safeway Chablis gallon bottles we bought weekly.  On weekends I drank my fill of beer at my in-laws house or at my parents.  When I went to work at Bank of America drinking was a regular part of the job.  My first boss got a DUI, driving under the influence, and quit LA and went back to San Francisco. 

In the PR Department we often went downstairs to a bar after work.  As the newest and youngest member of the department I would freeload the best I could from my better paid co-workers.  At one time, one coworker and I made regular visits to a Carl’s Junior in the Broadway Department Store basement mall where they sold pitchers of beer for $4.  It wasn’t very dignified drinking pitchers of beer in Carl’s Junior, but it was cheap.   

By the time I got sober my drinking had progressed to a quart of wine every night starting with a glass at dinner.  I drank martinis when someone else was buying and sometimes I had a bottle of gin at home.  Every so often we’d discover something new like putting cheap scotch in coffees or using tequila to make margaritas.  Scotch and tequila never lasted very long in our house.  So while I didn’t think of myself as a hard drinker, just a little beer wine, I was drinking hard liquor frequently and beer and wine all the time. 

One of our favorite things to do was to make fondue with white wine.  We dipped our bread in the cheese and drank Chablis while we did it.  Afterwards I’d make margaritas in the blender and we’d get really blasted.  Like the red wine when I was a kid, the fondue pot made us feel sophisticated. 

I had friends I drank with and friends I didn’t drink with but most of my friends were people who enjoyed a few drinks and what I thought of as convivial company.   I drank a lot of what I didn’t think of as drinking.   Beer and wine didn’t really count.  When I worked in the bank branches my regular lunch was to go to a mini-mart, buy some cheese and an apple and a can of beer.  I gave the beer a lot of thought.  Sometimes it was a 16 oz can but sometimes a 12 oz can because I had to do something at work or needed to be more alert or maybe it was a couple of 12 oz cans because I deserved them.  These decisions included a lot of factors and subtly balancing them out.  I didn’t get much work done in the afternoon, but I don’t remember anyone complaining.   

Occasionally I found myself drinking too much in the wrong company.  I seemed to have offended my wife’s co-workers at a party at someone’s house I can’t remember.  I thought of myself as just flirting with pretty women, but I may have been just boorish.   I tried to avoid those situations that would get me in trouble, but sometimes I just couldn’t.  One time I invited my friend Burton Katz to join me and my drinking buddy Bill Kline at the Sportsman’s Lodge.  Bill and I could down a few and it was with Bill, who always bought, that I indulged my taste for martinis.  The next morning Burt called me at work and told me how shocked he was at my behavior and he didn’t want to ever see me drink that much again and how I shouldn’t hang out with people like Bill.  I never invited Burt to drink again.

I was embarrassed by Burt’s call.  It was like a pebble in my shoe, something I couldn’t forget.    

After that I was working at our Century City branch.  It was not a good situation.  One morning I came in to work smelling of wine. I can’t remember who pointed that out to me.  After that I was more careful about when I stopped drinking.  I made a new rule to stop at midnight on weeknights.  I had a lot of rules around drinking.  One day the Regional Vice President came to the branch and announced to the staff that I was transferred from Century City to Loan Administration Department.  In the Loan Administration Department I was a replacement officer for loan officers in the branches who were on vacation or sick.  My friend Bill had just barely saved my job for me. 

Shortly before I got sober I was invited to a party at a customer’s house.  By that time I had figured out it was better sometimes if I didn’t drink.  I did OK that night, but after the party I bought a six pack of beer and drank it in the car as I drove home.  I had learned to put my beer in a large coffee mug and drink it that way in the car.  I took an accounting class at UCLA Extension and before the class I would have a beer in the parking lot.  When my wife drove me to a football game at the high school she taught at I put a healthy serving of gin and a little vermouth in a travelling mug and arrived at the football game blasted with my face numb from the gin.  

I drank and I drove.  I drove to the places I drank and I drove back from the places I drank.  Sometimes when I had too much to drink, driving was a struggle.  There were things I could do, close one eye, hug the line, things that always got me home.  I was never stopped by the police.  I think those were different days.  I don’t remember any checkpoints.  Even among my drinking friends drunk driving arrests didn’t happen or no one knew about them.  My first boss was the only one I knew personally.   

A week before I got sober, I called a priest my wife and I were seeing for marriage counseling.  I don’t know what I said to him, but at some point he said, “You’re nothing but an alcoholic” and that I was nothing but a self-pitying drunk.  I didn’t think he was much help, but he was the first person who ever called me an alcoholic to my face. 

It was preying on my mind.  The 13^th of December I went to my estranged wife’s house and dropped some boards off I thought she could use.  She gave me a beer, I had a second and then I went home to my parents’ house.  For some reason I decided not to have any more to drink that night.  I never drank in the morning before going to work and I didn’t drink at lunch the next day.  That night as usual I stayed at work late after everyone left.  I found myself at work alone, writing in my journal.  After my wife and I separated I lived at home with my parents and most nights I stayed late.  I made tea in the bank lunchroom.  My parents were alcoholics and were bad company in the evenings.  Dinner with them was a dismal affair, so I normally waited until I was sure they had gone to bed before I went home.  They went to bed early, thank god.   

Writing in my journal I admitted I was an alcoholic.  Writing makes me honest.  It was almost a joke.  I was Irish and Scotch Irish.  Both my parents were alcoholics and I drank every day.  Of course, I was an alcoholic.  Years before I had attended training for supervisors in which an Employee Assistance person told us how to recognize and deal with the alcoholic among us.  I remembered the class.  That’s where I had first heard alcoholism is a progressive disease.  For the first time looking at myself I finally admitted, I was an alcoholic.   

That summer I had decided my Saturdays were lost in a beer haze and I decided to stop drinking for awhile to see how that was.  It was OK for a couple of days and then I went to a party and was doing just fine until they brought out champagne left over from a wedding.  Well just a glass of champagne and my short days of sobriety vanished.  For the first time I realized I needed to drink.  I didn’t think about it after that, but it was always there.  I was drinking hard liquor now.  I was drinking and driving and drinking had caused a number of problems.  My boss made pointed remarks about my drinking.

The next morning I called EAP, the Employee Assistance Program, and talked to a counselor.  He agreed to come out and see me.  “How was next Wednesday?” he asked. 

I told myself I wouldn’t drink before I saw him.  My last drink had been a beer at my estranged wife’s.  I didn’t drink that week.  I didn’t drink that weekend.  I went out to lunch with a friend and when I normally would have had a beer I didn‘t.  It was easy. 

The counselor came the following Wednesday and gave me a schedule for Alcoholic Anonymous meetings in Los Angeles.  It was a thick little book.  He told me I sounded like an alcoholic to him and there were different programs I could go to but the only one that worked in his experience was AA and he said that’s where I should go. 

I spent a lot of time poring over that little directory looking for just the right meeting.  Finally I decided on a meeting at St. Francis of Assisi Church on Brunswick Avenue in Atwater.  Eleven years before I lived on Brunswick down the street from St. Francis.  The little Episcopal chapel always seemed to be a place of peace and tranquility.  I had been to St. Francis High School and afterwards a Franciscan monastery.  The image of St. Francis was familiar to me.   

I waited at work until it was time to go.   I arrived in Atwater early and went to the Brown Keg Liquor Store across the street and bought a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.  I usually didn’t smoke cigarettes but it seemed like a cigarette night.  I was wearing my banker’s blue pinstripe suit.  I went in and found a seat in the chapel and waited to see what would happen. 

My marriage had fallen apart.  We had been separated a month.  I was living at home with my parents.  My job was about as bad as it got.  I worked for Joe Bent who was later fired because he was out of control and a petty tyrant.  He seemed to take satisfaction in torturing the people who worked for him.  I was an Assistant Vice President.  The Assistant Manager, another AVP had recently been fired.  Joe told me I was never going to be the Assistant Manager and it was true. 

I think I had been placed at Joe’s branch because Joe and I were both problems.   I was known to give supervisors a hard time and they didn’t really care which one of us crashed and burned.  The smart money was on Joe but if they were lucky they’d get rid of both of us.

My life was a disaster.  I needed to start doing something about it.  I thought Alcoholics Anonymous was like going to yoga, a self improvement class.  I figured I had a lot of problems and it wouldn’t hurt to stop drinking.  

The format of the meeting was three speakers who shared.  The first two speakers were probably newcomers and gave short 10 minute pitches and then a regular speaker with a little sobriety telling his AA story.  One of the speakers went through a list of woes in his life.  It was a laundry list of things gone wrong, mostly good intentions failed and he ended each failure with the refrain, “And if I don’t drink, it will get better.” 

I heard that.  If I don’t drink, it will get better, no matter what and I believed it.  At the break, everyone was friendly and they gave me the two books I would need to get started, Alcoholics Anonymous and 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.  The books were for sale.  I only had a couple of dollars and some change on me.  They said that would be OK, I could pay the rest later.  They also pointed out that the meeting I was at was a gay meeting and that I might be more comfortable at other meetings.  They told me about a place in Glendale where there were meetings every night.  

That was Thursday, December the 22^nd.  I went to my next meeting Saturday, December the 24^th.  Later people asked me how it was to get sober at Christmas time.  Christmas time?  Hell, I didn't care what time of year it was.  I had more important things to worry about than Christmas that year.   

On Christmas Day I did go to my ex-house and see my sons.  I told them I had stopped drinking.  My middle son, Ted, who was 12 at the time, said, “That’s a very brave thing to do, Pop.”  I didn’t think it was brave but when he said that I thought this is something I’d better stick with.

My sons were 14, 12, and 8 when I got sober.  I tried to be as good a father as I could be.  I never thought about it before I got sober, a few beers was who I was, but alcohol did not contribute to my being a parent.  I wasn’t there a lot of the time for them.  It takes a lot of time to drink.  I came home late.  I spent time on the couch barely conscious.  My moods were unpredictable.  Even when I wasn’t drunk I could be volatile and angry without provocation.  As a person I was unreliable.  I drank and I drove with my children in the car.

It’s hard to admit, but drinking was probably more important to me than parenthood. 

A Start in AA

The first few days were easy.  I just didn’t drink.  I read the books they gave me.  I drove down to San Diego on the day after Christmas and visited with my Uncle Ed.  My uncle had been sober since 1946, though there was a short time in the 1960s when it seems he might have gone out again.  It was either the booze or a manic episode or probably both.  My Dad got involved, no one explained it, and he was found in San Francisco.    

My cousin was there for the holidays and I learned she had gotten sober a couple of years earlier.  She and I were only a few months apart in age and she always made sure I knew she was way ahead of me in just about everything.  She sneered I was still in the pink cloud phase of sobriety and that it would go away.  Out of spite to my cousin I kept my pink cloud through good times and hard times.  I claim it never went away. 

I drove back to LA and went to a meeting in Atwater on my way home.  I remember in that meeting people tried to warn me about slippery places.  I thought I didn’t need to worry, I had this program and it was easy.  I started going to meetings once a week or so at the Windsor Club in Glendale.  Club Houses and there are thousands of them are separate from AA; run and funded by their own boards, usually AA members.  They provide a place for people to hang out and rooms for AA meetings.  The Windsor Club is a two story brick building with a lounge and café in the first story and meeting rooms upstairs.  It even had a parking lot and when there were meetings the parking lot and the streets around the club house filled with cars.  It was a popular place.   

The Monday night meeting at the Windsor Club was called the Gong Show.  It was a large raucous meeting with 150 people or more.  The room was packed, every seat taken and people standing up along the walls and in the back.   It was the standard LA format, a reading from the Big Book and the 12 Traditions, cakes for anniversaries and chips for newcomers at their first meeting, and chips for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and six months.  There was a 10 minute speaker, usually someone new, and then a circuit speaker, one of the AAs well known for their pitch and invited specially to give it.  

Most AA meetings are pretty informal but the Gong Show took informality to an extreme.  The meetings were rowdy with bikers, punks, suits and street people, mostly on the younger side.  I attended regularly and it seemed like everybody knew each other.  After a few weeks I still felt isolated and out of place.  I didn’t know anyone and no one talked to me.  It just wasn’t working.  I realized I couldn’t even make it in AA.   

I went home devastated.   I opened up the Big Book and read the Fifth Chapter, “How It Works.”  I just wasn’t getting it.  I read the chapter; I read the 3^rd Step prayer.  I did everything I could think of.  I don’t believe in God, but I’ve always believed in the power of prayer.  I don’t know who I was praying to and I didn’t care.  If it worked it worked.  The 5^th Chapter didn’t tell me who was in charge.  It didn’t tell me how to become part of it.  It didn’t tell me what makes it work or how to get started?  It didn’t answer any of my questions.  It just gave me the Steps and recommended I work them.  Exhausted I finally went to bed. 

The next day everything seemed to change.  It seemed like a weight had been lifted.  One of my friends, a customer, called to see how I was doing.  That day I had this feeling that people cared about me.  It wasn’t anything major, just small things.   

At the Gong Show there was one gentleman, who like me wore gray slacks, a blue blazer and a tie.  Church, as he was called, seemed to always be around and he seemed to get the program.  He seemed comfortable with himself.   

When I got him aside I asked him to be my sponsor.  He told me he was gay. 

I asked if that made any difference.

He said, “I don’t think so.”

I said, “That’s fine with me.”

I think he said, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll help you find a new sponsor.” 

Church was my sponsor until he died 9 years later.  At that time he had about 5 years of sobriety.  He worked for a commercial insurance brokerage downtown.  He was comfortable with himself and he worked a wonderful program.  Under Church’s guidance I began working the 12 steps.  He also recommended I find another meeting.  He recommended a meeting in Pasadena known as the Women’s Club.  The Wednesday Night Speakers Meeting met in the South Pasadena Women’s Club for fifty years or more. 

I went to the meeting and came back and told Church it seemed like everyone there was blue eyed, well dressed, and they were all lawyers and bankers.  He said, “Yes.” and looked at me.  I realized maybe instead of the bikers and down and outs at the Gong Show; I should start hanging out with people like myself.  Of course, there were more than just white people and professionals at the Women’s Club but overall it was a more gentle and sophisticated meeting. 

I started attending meetings regularly at the Women’s Club. 

I still went to the Gong Show but not as often.  One night I came in late and was standing in the back of the room.  There was a young man there dressed in white jeans and a white turtleneck.  He looked pretty cool, but he didn’t seem to be able to stand still and nervously he backed up to the counter in the back of the room.  There was a coffee urn there and as he backed up he hit the spigot and hot coffee poured down his white jeans.  I felt sorry for him, he was trying to be cool and it wasn’t working.  It reminded me of myself.  By this time I knew the Gong Show was mostly newcomers like I had been.  The court card people, people ordered to attend AA by the Judge, hung out in the back and that's where I had been trying to make friends.

The place to find AA is not in the back of the rooms, but up front where people are getting it and not in meetings where everyone is a newcomer but in meetings where people keep coming back.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  In South Pasadena I got a job pouring coffee and I didn’t just stand around anymore.  I became one of the regulars who stuck my hand out when I saw someone uncomfortable.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.   

In Pasadena I got to know people.  I worked the steps, gradually I became very comfortable with this meeting and sometimes even comfortable with myself.  After awhile I began to sponsor people.  Eight years later I was the secretary of the South Pasadena Wednesday Night Speaker’s Meeting known as the Women’s Club.  At work where I was just another bank Vice President I wondered what people would think if they knew I was the head drunk for the Pasadena area including San Marino.  Of course, the secretary of an AA meeting is not that important, as the book says “Our leaders are but trusted servants.”  Most importantly I belonged and AA worked for me. 

It’s been 28 years since then.  I don’t attend AA meetings much.  I’ve never connected in the Bay Area with AA the way I did in Pasadena.  My job and weird schedule made meetings hard to do and I don’t have much in common anymore with newcomers.  Even some sober AAs aren’t comfortable with cops.  I’ve been sober so long I look like the middle aged white guy that doesn’t have a clue. There are enough new people who are cool and who are getting it to take care of the newcomers. 

I’ve taken the concept of service as I learned it in AA and done it elsewhere.  I worked as a counselor at San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  As a Park Ranger and cop I was always open to helping people in need, especially people mired in addiction with no way out.  Sometimes the best way to help is to arrest them.

When I got sober it took a long time to recover the trust I had squandered with my sons.  I tried to be there for them.  I tried to control my own anger, fears, and rage.  I tried to listen and I tried to support them.  Most importantly I tried to insure that nothing came between me and them.

Years later I have a very satisfying relationship with my adult sons.  I appreciate them.  We are friends and they are part of my life.  With Paloma I have another chance to be a parent and I think I’m better at it than I was the first time.  I have my sons as good examples for being a parent and they give good advice.

My life has been good and the first principle of my life today is I don’t drink.  The speaker 28 years ago was right.  If I don’t drink, everything gets better and better.