Sociology 1A

A Memoir of the Sixties

Part 2 of 2

 

 Sleep was hard to come by at home. It seemed you were always in transition, from sleeping during the day, to sleeping at night on your days off, and then back to the night shift routine. Somehow in the transitions, you lost a day and half of sleep, or so it seemed.

Your wife did the best she could to keep the kids quiet and occupied. This included your two vivacious daughters and the little boy she took care of, a nervous little bird named Donnie. He was nearly two and still in diapers and he cried a lot. You could hold him and comfort him and calm his crying, but smiles were hard to come by, and laughter just wasn’t part of Donnie’s personality. But the thing that made Donnie unique, that set him apart from all of his peers, was the fact that when he pooped his pants the smell was unbearable. It was so bad it could trigger your gag reflex. You had to tie a bandanna around your face like a cowboy in order to change his diaper, and even that didn’t help much. You found yourself asking What the hell is your mother feeding you?

Your shift at LRL ended at 8:00 a.m. There was a great donut shop (it reminded you of Scotty’s in Vallejo) on the north edge of the campus, right on your way home, and now and then you’d stop and pick up a mixed dozen for the family. Generally, you were home in bed asleep by 9:00 a.m. and wide-awake around 3:00 in the afternoon. Then it was time to get up and help take care of the kids.

You’d pray Donnie would hold his fire until after his mom picked him up.

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Several evenings each week and most Saturdays, you drove up Highway 24, through the Caledecott Tunnel and on to Walnut Creek, to sell shoes at Grodins. Fred was the department manager, a great guy who became a good friend. Freddie had a line of malarkey that was perfect for talking a customer out of his old shoes and into a new pair of Florsheims. Years earlier, when he first applied for a job at Grodins, the store manager asked him What do you know about men’s clothes? Freddie said Well, I’ve been wearing ‘em since I was fifteen. The manager cracked up laughing and hired Freddie on the spot. Brash, cocky, funny, and a pretty good golfer, too—that’s Fred.

The Bay Area stores were covered by the Retail Clerks Union, so you were paid a flat hourly wage, or six percent commission, whichever was greater. Walnut Creek was a good store and you always made commission. Actually, you made out pretty well for a part-time job.

Occasionally they’d assign you to work at the Grodins in Berkeley, on Telegraph Avenue just south of Sather Gate. That location was dying a slow death because most of the students shopped at the local Army-Navy Surplus store. You’d stand around and watch the colorful scene out on Telegraph Avenue, watching the clock tick slowly toward closing time, wishing you were back in the Walnut Creek action.

Or home in bed asleep.

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It was a bright January day and you were going through the mail, and there it was: the envelope from Merritt College with the grade report for the fall semester. You opened it and saw that you had earned an A in the class you completed. And then on the next line you read: Sociology 1A – Incomplete. Holy crap! John Lennon didn’t turn in a drop; he gave you an incomplete.

After work the next morning, you headed for the Merritt campus to take up the issue with the front office. The lady at the counter listened sympathetically and then told you that only the instructor could change the grade report. Unfortunately, Mr. Lennon wasn’t teaching a class in the spring semester and wouldn’t be on campus. So, she looked up his phone number and gave him a call; the phone was disconnected. You stressed the urgency of the matter, that you had to submit your application to Sac State and you needed this corrected ASAP. She thought about it for a while and then said I’m not supposed to do this, but here is the last address we have for him.

You jumped in the car and headed for the address on Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley, which turned out to be an apartment building that had seen better days. You found his apartment and rang the bell and he answered with a hearty Hi, how ya doin’? like you were a long lost friend. You explained the importance of changing his grade report from an incomplete to a drop, and he immediately launched another attempt to change your mind. Tell ya what, I’ll give you a book, you’ll read it and give me a couple-page report and I’ll give you a grade. Whataya say? You said Thanks, but no thanks. You didn’t add that his proposal offended your sense of ethical behavior. He finally gave up and promised to phone in the change. Then he grinned and waved and wished you well as you hurried away to your car.

That’s that you said to yourself—again. But this time you didn’t have much confidence.

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For the most part, your experience at Merritt College had been positive. You’d completed all your general education requirements, maintained a 3.8 GPA, taken all the computer science classes you could squeeze in, and generally enjoyed the experience.

Over the course of several semesters, you’d come to know a couple of guys you enjoyed hanging out with during class breaks. One was a CHP officer, the other a guard at San Quentin. Both were Black and though they were farther along in their careers than you, it was amazing how closely their lives paralleled yours. They were concerned for their families, looking to find homes in clean, safe neighborhoods, looking for good schools for their kids. They were just like you and you looked forward to chatting with them every week.

When Martin Luther King was assassinated, suddenly it seemed like a wall had sprung up between you. You felt a decided coolness, as though you weren’t welcome in their circle anymore. Even though it was understandable, it hurt, and you never really got over it. Maybe you tried too hard, or said the wrong things? Maybe they just needed to process this devastating loss in their own way? With time, you could have fixed it, and perhaps they’d be your friends to this day; but your time there was running out. It remains one of the few bad memories associated with Merritt College.

Another bad one was the night the Black Panthers came on campus and locked the Faculty Senate in a meeting room, refusing to let them go until they agreed to the hiring of more Black instructors and the development of an African-American studies curriculum. There was a rumor Angela Davis was with them but you could never confirm it.

You cut class that night and went home. All you wanted to do was hug your kids.

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As the spring of ’69 progressed, so did The Plan. You moved your family from Alameda to the house in Fair Oaks near Sacramento. Your wife went to work for Allstate Insurance, and your mom lived with them during the week to take care of the kids. You continued to work at LRL, living during the week at your mom’s home in Vallejo and commuting to Berkeley. Your application to Sac State was in the mail, along with a copy of your transcript. According to plan, you would start the fall semester in Sacramento and work part-time at the Grodins located in Country Club Center.

One morning, you decided to call the Merritt College office and check on that grade report, just in case. The woman who answered the phone made sure you were authentic and then went to pull your records. Sociology 1A? Ah yes, you got an A. After you picked up your jaw, you thanked her and hung up the phone.

So, John Lennon had changed the incomplete to an A. You had to think about that for a minute. Should you call back and go through the nosebleed of trying—yet again—to get the record corrected? Or not?

You thought about your life. Did it not range from the pristine suburbs of Alameda to the ghetto campus in Oakland, from the radicalized scene at UC Berkeley to the upscale shopping malls of Walnut Creek? In your daily travels, didn’t you move in and out of various layers of society, through institutions both revered and reviled? Did you not rub shoulders with stoners, barbeque purveyors, future scientists, and Black Panthers? Isn’t sociology the study of society, its systems and institutions, and wasn’t your life a field study in progress? If anybody deserved an A in sociology, most certainly it was you.

Damn the ethics! Full speed ahead!

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It wasn’t long after that when The Plan began to fall apart. The coup de grace came in the form of a polite letter from Sacramento State College, advising that they could not accept you for the fall term due to an enrollment glut. The letter suggested you apply at Humboldt State in Arcata, way up north, where the application volume was less impacted. Unfortunately, you now lived in Fair Oaks. Arcata would be a hell of a commute. And so you found a job in the Sacramento area and settled in to work and care for your family, your college dreams deferred for the time being.

That was a long time ago. At the age of eighty, it’s good you remember all the people and places, the sights and sounds and smells, and especially what it was like to be so young and alive and lucky, to run down Grove Street with an old man’s laughter at your back, sprinting toward a future that would fill your heart, then break it, then fill it again. And all of those memories triggered by a simple line on a transcript:

 Class: Sociology 1A / Semester Units: 3 / Grade: A

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