CHAPTER 129. MOVING LOCATIONS: JOB AND RESIDENCE 1970 - 1971
Ian our Iguana died during the New Year’s weekend, 1970-71. The apartment building lost heating just after Christmas and it was out for a week. The temperatures ending the year were in the low teens. It began snowing on New Year’s Eve and continued well into the day of the First.
Iguanas are tropical beasts native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Ian caught a respiratory infection and although we gave him medicine, he died in my arms. He was nine years old and in captivity should have lived twice as long. Our little (5 foot-long) perfect apartment pet was gone. I sold an article by that title a few years later (1974) to “Animal Lover’s Magazine” although they printed it as simply, “Ian”.
end of 1970 to a location in Center City. We were now on Sansom Street between 12th and 13th Streets. We left behind the parking lot at 33rd and Cherry for a parking garage downtown; yes, we were in the basement beneath yet another and larger parking lot. We entered through a door between the garage and this brick building next door, going down a flight of stairs and through a door at the bottom.
It was a roomier place and brighter inside. but
more infested with bugs. These were very large flying cockroaches and you might open a desk drawer and have one fly at you. There were offices down the side to the right of the entry door that led into more open space. My desk was right at the angle of this L corner.
run, but nothing balanced. The tech guys, who installed the system, were at a complete lost. I went in and investigated. The answer was painfully simple. The installers had no understanding of accounting and had programmed the assets and liability entries to act in the same way; that is, in assets the debits add and the credits subtract from the total, in liability accounts this is the opposite. Their system programed debits to always add and credits to always subtract whether they were an asset or a liability.
Once the system was reinstalled correctly, I was put in charge of it and promoted to Operations Accounting Supervisor.
In mid-January, I registered at Temple for the Spring semester. Registration this year didn’t bode well. As I wrote Joe Rubio:
I screwed up this year, though. I went up on Wednesday, the first day of registration, taking off from work and getting there at 3:00. You have to get there early or too many classes are filled. I had planned my courses from the bulletin and figured I’d just get the class cards and then come back Friday to finish out. Once you have class cards you’re safe. I was going to take Advanced Composition, Interpretation of English Fiction, Interpretation of English Drama and American History from Reconstruction to the Present. Well, first off Advance Composition. wasn’t offered at all. Then the two Interpretation courses were scheduled at the same time. So I selected Shakespeare and Religion I as substitutes. I was then informed of an error and had to wait about until 6:30 to see an advisor, who sent me to the Assistant Dean.
More bad luck. According to the registrar I hadn’t attended since 1968. They seemed to have misplaced my records. She (the Assistant Dean) said they’d fix things up and okayed my roster, except for changing Shakespeare to a sociology course. It was now twenty to eight. I went back and the Sociology and Religion classes were filled. So I am only taking two subjects this semester instead of four.
Those two subjects were Interpretation of English Literature – Prose and U. S. History since Reconstruction. I got an A in the Literature course and a C in History, which was taught by the same Marxist professor I had for United States History I. As it was, this proved to be my last semester at Temple. When those courses ended I dropped out. I had 49 Credit Hours and a Grade Point Average of 3.00. My Grade Point Average had been steadily rising each semester before I dropped out. It was getting difficult to do my job and also attend school, but more to the point Lois, was sick of me going to evening college and wanted me to quit. She had been on me about this for several months and I finally gave in to her. She claimed she felt isolated.
Tipton on Market street during lunch break and we stopped to talk. It was cold. Old snow was turning dirty in the gutters. We had bumped into each other one or two other times downtown since we had our misunderstanding in 1963.
We were both working at banks, I at Lincoln and he at Girard (Left). He had continued exchanging Christmas Cards with my parents over the years and I believe he began this conversation mentioning getting a card and nice note from my mother. He suggested we get together for lunch and we set a date. We decided on the next Tuesday and would meet in the City Hall courtyard.
It snowed overnight into that Tuesday and I walked through the freshly white city on not shoveled walks. The day was frigid and gray. I waited in the courtyard and saw Ronald. wearing a long black coat over his tall thin frame, approaching. We shook hands.
“You ever been to Day’s Deli?” he asked. “They have great sandwiches.”
Day’s dominated the corner. You could easily enter from either street. We pushed through revolving doors into a garden of fragrances, imported cheeses, spicy meats, fat garlic pickles, horseradish and crusty breads. It was an armada of aroma assailing the digestive juices of mouth and stomach and preparing your body to attack with gusto. We passed a long glass counter
displaying the sources of these olfactory delights in glorious array and moved to another doorway in the back.
A rather dapper man wearing a large brown bowtie greeted us warmly and took us to our table. He handed us large golden menus. Soft jazz soothed the room.
“It is a bitter day,” said the host, “may I bring you gentlemen some coffee to warm away the frost?”
We ordered our pre-meal drinks. “I will bring them immediately. Gus will be here shortly to serve you.”
We ordered from Gus, who appeared with the coffees and for over an hour talked about our life and reminisced when we were boys in Downingtown. It was a pleasant conversation in a pleasant place.
Then we again went back to our separate lives.
There was an interesting coda to this. That evening I told Lois about the lunch and what a nice place Day’s was. We decided to go there for lunch on Saturday.
were both great walkers then. It was a chill day, but easy going since the sidewalks were now swept of snow and slush. There was little wind. We walked straight to Day’s and pushed through the revolving door into the hallucinatory smells
“Have you ever been here?” I asked.
Lois said, “No.”
“I think you’ll like it. The food is great and they’re really friendly.”
We waited at the dining room door, and waited, and waited some more, though we could see the host plainly. He saw us, too, but just stood toward the side biding his time. Finally, he snagged up a couple of those big menus and came to us where he brusquely pushed them into my arms.
“Lunch,” he snapped.
I nodded and followed him to a table near the kitchen. Each time a server went in or out the door banged the back of my chair. I looked over at Lois as we now waited to be served.
“Well, he was friendly enough when I was here with Ron.”
“Larry,” she said, “didn’t you notice?”
“What?”
“Look around.”
I glanced about at the full tables and booths all filled with men. Lois was the only woman in the room. The waiter did finally deign to serve us, but the food proved less than expected, and I despaired that prejudice was always a two-way street. I had certainly learned that when I went walking with Jane back a couple years, how when among White crowds we got dirty looks and then among Black crowds we got dirty looks. Our friendship wasn’t accepted anywhere because I was a White man and she was a Black woman. In Day’s we weren’t accepted because Lois was a woman.
Late Saturday morning Jeannette and Frank braved the walk downtown through the chill. It was easier now with the sidewalks swept of slush. The sky had lightened and the wind had died. The snow piled in the gutter had turned black.
They walked straight to the Deli and pushed through the revolving door into the hallucinatory smells.
“Have you ever been here,” he asked.
“No.”
“I think you’ll like it. The food is great and they’re really friendly.”
At the dining room door they waited, although the host stood nearby biding his time. There was no doubt he saw them. Finally he came, snagging two of the giant menus from a rack on the wall. He stood before them.
“Lunch,” he snapped.
Frank nodded and stole a look at Jeannette. The host took them to a table near the kitchen. Each time a waiter went in or out, the door banged the back of Frank’s chair. He lowered the menu and looked at Jeannette.
“Well, the place was friendly when I was here with Roger.”
“Frank?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you notice?”
“What?”
“Look around.”
Frank glanced around the room at the full tables and booths, all filled with men. Jeannette was the only woman in the place.
The waiter did finally deign to serve them, but the food was less than expected, and Frank despaired.
Excerpt from “City Scenes” (2001)
From my collection, Keep All the Animals Warm, (2003)
On March 14, Lois entered the University of Pennsylvania Hospital for an operation, which was performed on the 15th. One procedure was Cervical Cerclage, which was a sewing of the cervix. The other procedure repositioned her womb, her uterus had been facing the wrong direction. The doctors advised us and cautioned that these operations were experimental, but it was felt this would allow her to carry a baby closer to term so she would not be losing them by the fifth month.
She was eating the same day after her surgery, but suffering a great deal of pain. She had a lot of adhesions. She was in the U. of P. hospital until the nineteenth. It was a terrible time for her because of the indifference and inattention of the staff. They were very unresponsive to nurse calls. Often groups of aides would stand about talking and giggling even though the patient’s call lights was on. Lois was confined to bed, not allowed to get out or walk. On one instance she was brought her meal, but the attendant simply left it down below the foot of the bed where she could not reach it. Though she rang for help, no one came. Finally, the lady in the other bed got up, walked over and pushed her tray table up to where she could eat.
That lady was released before Lois and she got a new roommate, who was something of a religious fanatic. When Lois was finally allowed to walk, she went into the bathroom where she was in distress and in great pain. Lois was calling for help. She looked over and the roommate was kneeling in the bathroom doorway praying her Rosary. Finally, a nurse came in and asked what she was doing. The lady said her roommate was having difficulty so she was praying. The nurse told her, “Don’t pray, call us, we’re right here.” Here was a case of a person “so Heavenly minded they were no earthly good.”
After she came home from the operation, things returned to a kind of normalcy. My dad picked us up for Easter because I still had car troubles. He were stuck on the Schuylkill Expressway, though, for hours due to an accident. (They didn’t call it the Schuylkill Parking Lot for nothing.)
Conshohocken Restaurant, a converted warehouse called, surprisingly, The Warehouse. It cost $65.30 for 5 people. It was a white table-cloth place, too, not some dive. (Clockwide from left: Me, my Grandmother, my Dad, my Mom and Lois. Yes she was a blond then..)
On the 25th of June , I gave a birthday present to myself. I had it with the VW not running. I bought a new car. We brought the new car up and put it into my parent’s garage until I could get the license. It would sit there for a month.
The year before, two guys came by and told us they had bought The Commodore from the Old Womenwho originally rented us the little studio apartment. They said they were renovating the place and talked us into moving to a one-bedroom flat at the rear of the first floor. Well, they were true to their word about renovating. They put in updated kitchens and baths, painted the rooms and did other nice adjustments. The new apartment looked very nice.
What they didn’t do was fumigate. We had some roaches visit us in our first apartment, but nothing
like in the new. The renovation activity must have stirred the little buggers up and they were now grazing in herds. If I went into the kitchen at night and turned on the light I would see them scatter in every direction and worse, hear their footsteps. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I had never even seen a roach until I moved to the city and now I was surrounded by an army of them.
We had little choice but to endure and then one night I was in the kitchen and heard a strange noise. Something was in the wall between kitchen and bathroom and decidedly much larger than any roach. I stood there listening and then it began pushing against the pipe panel on the kitchen side of that wall. The plywood covering was actually bulging in the middle. I feared this monster whatever was about to break into the apartment. I shoved the kitchen table against the panel and it eventually ceased its attempts to enter.
I walked into the living room and said, “That’s it. We’re getting out of here!.
Lois didn’t object. The new apartment was at the rear of the building and our living room and kitchen had windows overlooking a parking lot behind. Lois was always nervous about this, feeling it would be easy to break into our place. Besides, we both hated the roaches.
We found a new, newly built complex in Aldan, Pennsylvania called The Lansdowne Towers. We didn’t realize the change this would make in our social and sexual lives.
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