Big D, Little A, Double L A S

Dallas

Mike called my mom's house to talk to me two days after I left.  I told her to tell him that I had nothing to say and hang up.  And that's what she did.  I guess he called several times; I remember hearing the phone ring only one time off and on for the next couple of days.  He didn't know that we were moving to Dallas, and that was fine with me.

I hated moving, I really did.  I had moved so many times in my short life, and I would move many more times over the years.  I knew that this would be a grueling move.  Driving two vehicles and pulling a Uhaul and both my brother and mother drove like they were decrepit.  Neither would travel 1 mile over the speed limit at any time.  A few parts of I-40 and I-30 were still not completed, and that meant traveling down podunk, barely 2 lanes wide, roads in some parts.  And it was hot, September in the South, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas was brutally hot.  It was something that I would have to get used to.

The last time I had been in Dallas was a year earlier.  I had driven down there with my mom and Glen when he was not quite a year old.  Dallas was not what you see on TV today or even how it looked when the series Dallas was on television.  It was still very much like it had been in 1962, there were some new highways and a new lake, and the population was spreading out, but it was still a culture shock having lived in the DC area for most of my life.  There were not very many skyscrapers at that time.  A few, the old Mercantile Bank Building, Republic Life Insurance, The Adolphus, the old Southwestern Bell building, and a new one, One Main Place.  There was plenty of construction all over downtown for buildings that you see today, lots of holes in the ground.  It would become a modern-looking city in a few short years.

We found a house to rent in  Mesquite; it was an okay house, a little small maybe, but nice.  About a half-mile down the road, there was a new daycare.  That would come in handy when I found a job.  I think I went downtown and started job hunting 2 days after we settled in.  I had an interview at Employers Insurance of Texas.  They asked a lot of personal questions, something that isn't done anymore.  They asked me where my husband was.  I could tell that telling them that I was separated and getting a divorce was not the right answer.  I told them that Mike would be coming to Dallas in two weeks.  The two men interviewing me were holding an interrogation, not an interview, and I will never forget it.  After they asked me many questions about Mike and I satisfied their nosiness, one of them said, " Well, we're glad you are married because we don't hire divorced women."  Wow, talk about discrimination; it was alive and well in Dallas County, Texas.  And two male chauvinist pigs hired me.

I was going to be working in the file room. I believe my pay was $70.00 a week,  poverty level pretty much.  I had to attend a day of orientation conducted by the 2 pigs.  I remember they kept telling really stupid and borderline tasteless jokes.  Then the younger of the 2 guys told a joke about an Aggie.  I was the only one who didn't laugh, I had no idea what an Aggie was, and I didn't really care.  The pig asked me why I didn't laugh, and I told him that I didn't think it was funny.  Everyone just stared at me.  I could hardly wait to get out of there.

When I finally went up to my department, I was relieved to see that everyone was young, and we were all females.  The supervisor was about 55 and had worked there all of her life.  She just sat in the office watching everyone.  I was the local freak show; everyone made fun of my Yankee accent, which I thought was funny because all of my family was from Dallas, so I had picked up some of the expressions from them over the years.  When I lived in Ohio, they made fun of me because they thought I had a southern accent.  I was somewhere in the middle of the two, but everyone would ask me to say certain words.  They would then laugh; obviously, they didn't know how they made my ears cringe listening to their yokel yak.  Other than that, everyone was very nice, and we all got along very well.

The first payday, some girls came up with said that "today is chili pie day."  I asked then what that was, and they said every payday, they would all walk to the bank and then go to the Pickle Barrell to get chili pie and a chili dog for lunch.  So I would be finding out what chili pie was.  Chili pie is a layer of chili, a layer of Fritos, a layer of onions, and a layer of cheese, repeated until the container was full, with the top layer having the cheese melted on it.  I liked it, and at least we all smelled like onions together.  I was fitting in.  One weird thing was when it was time for our breaks, a bell would ring like we were in school or prison, and when it was over, the bell would ring again,  Very archaic for 1972.

We had stacks and stacks of files delivered to us every hour.  We had to purge them of trash and old claims before we filed them.  It was neverending, and I hated it, but I made the best of it.  I would take my files and sing and dance around back in the stacks where the boss couldn't see me.  I would have the other girls rolling on the floor.  And that would just encourage me to do more.  But we had to try and keep it down.  I did that job for three months, and then I got a promotion, now I was going to be a Run Down Girl.  That means no more filing.  I would be given tickets for missing files that the auditors and agents needed and searching for them in every office all over the multiple floored building.  If I found one, I would tag it to be sent to the requesting party.  I liked that job.  I got to meet everyone in the building, and it was a little more money for me.  This was so much better than getting my butt kicked by a husband; yes, I liked being almost single.

And who was that charming guy that just started working on the fifth floor?  Hmmm.