In 1957, after I found a job in Los Angeles at the Pacific Fire Rating Bureau, it was time to find a place to live. Mom and Dad were still out there so they helped me find a place that would be on a trolley line to work. The apartment that I ended up with was in the coach house over the garage on the property of a very large home near Mac Arthur Park. The whole property was enclosed with a fence overgrown with a tall hedge. I had to share a kitchen and a bathroom with two other ladies but it was nice and set back from the hassle of the street.
The next thing that my folks wanted to do was introduce me to relatives that lived in the area. First, we went to see my Mom’s cousin who lived in San Bernardino and worked as a window dresser for a very large department store. The four of us went to Disneyland together. This is when Disney was still in the process of building his first place. Many of the things that are there now, didn’t exists then. I remember going into Slue Foot Sue’s Saloon and having Fritos for the very first time in my life. Having always had potato chips, now I got to try corn chips. This was exciting.
Trying new things is an adventure in itself. This reminds me of the time my parents when to New York City in the ‘40s. They came back telling us about a vegetable pie that they had eaten and really liked. Vegetable pie didn’t sounds very good to us but later we found out that it was called Pizza Pie.
Back to my story…The next person that they introduced me to, was Dad’s cousin. I guess they just wanted me to have contacts in case I needed help. I didn’t think that I would bother either of these cousins but it was nice to have met them.
Mom and Dad soon headed for home and I went off to work. I was in a training program with three other people. I hadn’t brought a lunch that first day so one of the other trainees shared her lunch with me and we became good friends. I liked working there even riding the trolley back and forth in the heart of LA.
Then one day I got a call from Dad’s cousin, Barb. She wanted to know if I would like to go to church with her. I agreed and we met early Sunday to go to the one that she had picked out. It turned out that she and I were the only two white people there. We decided to try a different one the next weekend.
But the next weekend we went with her boyfriend out to the desert, Palm Springs to be exact. This was fun. I really didn’t think that we would be doing that much stuff together. She was a bit older and had a really good job managing Kaiser’s Los Angeles office.
The next time we went to church was at the big Methodist Church in downtown LA. We walked in and sat down. A little while after we sat down, a young lady came down the aisle and told us that they have a coffee hour on the third floor right after the service. She pointed out where the elevator was behind the stage up front.
Barb and I decide to stay and see what that was all about. After church we headed to the front and up the elevator. When we got off, people surrounded us. It was the habit of this group for all the boys to surround any new girl and the girls did the same to any new boy. As you can imagine, we met a lot of people fast.
On the way home, Barb and I laughed a lot about all of that and decided that we needed to attend that church more often.
The next week we learned that they had a volleyball game on Wednesday nights for anyone who wanted to come and that they had activities planned for Saturdays. There was a guy in charge of all the activities for this group. Maybe because the minister’s daughter’s were members, it was a very active group. One Saturday we might pile into cars and go to a church member’s house to go swimming in their pool. The next Saturday might be a beach party at Redondo Beach. There was always something to do with this group.
By the time my sister, Betty came out and found a job at a bank, we were very active with this group. Barb’s boss wanted her to go to New York and clean up his office so she took off. After that it was just Betty and myself. Betty and I used to take our bathing suits to church on Sunday and talk some unsuspecting guy into taking us to the beach afterward. We even talked one into taking us to a Red Cross First Aid Class. We were good at talking people into stuff.
At this same time, one of my supervisors at work named Clayton was in charge of double-checking our work. He also had to deal directly with the insurance people. We were assigned numbers and if there was a problem, the insurance representative might call and ask for number 41. Then we had to explain why we had tagged something of his the way we had. Clayton took these calls and would have us come to the phone and talk to the representatives. One day Clayton called me to the phone. I looked over the policy in question before I went to the phone and I could see where he was probably right so I was ready to apologize.
I took the phone and told the man on the other end that I was sorry that his policy got tagged but that if he would send it back or bring it in, I would be happy to fix the problem. I mentioned that I was glad that he had caught this. After humbling myself as much as I could, this man had the gall to ask me what I was wearing. This upset me and I started to get angry. I repeated myself as calmly as I could about fixing the problem, but he just kept asking personal questions. (I didn’t know that this was a set up.) Clayton was laughing and I was just getting angry. Finally I hung up on the guy. Clayton told me that this man worked two floors above us and he had asked Clayton to watch for something that I might do wrong so he could call me on it. The policy in question wasn't even his.
Later that day he came down and Clayton introduced me to him. He asked if I would like to go to lunch across the street tomorrow. I agreed on the condition that Clayton would come with us. He agreed to this and so did Clayton. That is how I met my first husband.
He invited me to meet his parents and I invited him to church on a beach party Saturday. I had moved and my old landlady called to tell me that I had a package at my place. She wanted to know if I could I stop by and pick it up. Betty and I agreed that I would catch up at church and we both took off in different directions. When I got to church, here was this poor man standing in the middle of the crowd of women. (He probably really liked it.)
The beach party was great but Betty and I already had plans to head back to Wisconsin. I corresponded with this man until he finally came to Wisconsin about 6 months later. We got married a year and a couple of months after I met him.
It was an interesting time to be in LA.
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