3.26 1644 Haight Street, 1960

1644 Haight Street, San Francisco ~ From the time I was twelve I spent my summers with my dad and worked for him in his store in the Haight, and when I got older, I worked Christmas and Easter vacations too, saving my earnings for milkshakes, school clothes, and college.

As you walked through the double swinging doors of his five and dime, there was a four-sided counter nearly the width of the store; it had glass candy bins that ran the length of the front and back of it with a big black cash register at each end. On each side of the store were long wood counters with glass dividers creating the stock bins. At the front right were the bolts of yardage and pull out drawers filled with patterns. In the middle of the store stood the same divided counters that lined the sides. They all had closed cupboards beneath for back inventory, and each counter had a second level of suspended shelves filled with more stock. Toward the rear of the store were the oilcloths on long rolls and a row of hanging plastic curtains for sale.

On the shelves you could find kite string, ribbon, thread, and rope; diapers, dishrags, dustpans, soap; vegetable, bird and flower seeds; he had fish food, underwear, white socks, and handkerchiefs for any mood. The side bins held balloons and beads, ribbons and bracelets; the shelves above were stacked with tea sets, toy trucks, stuffed bears, and board games. The back aisle was stocked with sandpaper, paint, hammers, and nails; the front with erasers, paperclips, pencils, and lunch pails. By the register were Life Savers, Mars bars, Big Hunks and Jujubes along with Aspergum, Beechnut, Dentyne, and Wrigley’s. The covered candy bins in front held rock candy, turtles, and jellybeans, orange sticks, gumdrops, and vanilla creams. In the corner stood spinning racks of Golden Books, greeting cards, and comics: Casper, Archie, and Mighty Mouse Atomic.

My dad, who was tall and elegant and always wore a white shirt and suit and tie, taught me how to work as soon as I was old enough to be employed. First, he showed how me to sweep: to maneuver the big push broom up and down the aisles. He taught me to stock shelves: yarn and yardage, nylons and paper napkins, silverware and dishes; he taught me to stock the under-shelves from the back room, to write down and keep track of inventory, to keep the wooden bins neat, clean and full. I learned to use the adding machine, the pricing gun, and the cash register; to count money, make change, and fill out bank deposits. He taught me to balance the till, wait on customers, and watch for shoplifters; to open the store in the morning and lock it back up at night. He broke it down one job at a time and didn’t give me a new one until I learned to do the last one. I liked working; I got to be with my dad.

Dad with his sister Mary in front of store, Feb 1960

I earned fifty cents an hour, not what he paid the “girls” who were three times my size and four times my age, but I was part-time and twelve. The girls made a dollar an hour. They didn’t make much in a dime store, but they loved my dad and worked for him for more than fourteen years. “Mr. Clemens,” they respectfully called him. Angie, Norma, and Clara came with the store when my father took it over in 1953. If Sprouse-Reitz hadn’t closed the store I imagine they’d have stayed on until they died. Josie came later, working there only a short time. She was younger, sweet, funny, kind, and worried about her weight, she went to a doctor who gave her diet pills. Sweet Josie was dead less than a week later. It was awful.

Angie, Josie, Norma, Clara

Clara—the oldest with thick legs, wide hips, gray hair, and glasses—didn’t like me interfering with her yarn section; on her day off I’d overstock it just to get a rise out of her. She acted like it was her store. Angie loved me and let me stock anything I wanted in her sections. She was from Malta and wore three-inch heels during work hours. She took the 8:00 a.m. bus in and ran in her tennis shoes for the 6:00 p.m. bus home, making several transfers in the 45-minute ride to her family in the Mission. Norma, who owned the flat my dad once rented on Belvedere, had fancy bleached blonde hair, heavy pancake makeup, and was the same age as Dad. It was her mother, Irene, who was married to my father for three years before she died from a heart attack which I suppose sort of made Norma my stepsister.

Those three women worked their feet off. When you worked for Dad, he’d better not catch you sitting down, and you’d best not dawdle and chat, either. “I don’t pay you to stand around all day,” he’d snap. I worked half days at first. For some reason, my stomach ached when I stood for a long while; Dad let me sit, maybe because I was twelve, or maybe because I looked pale. When it kept getting worse and I doubled over because it hurt like a knife stabbing me in the center of my stomach, he took me to a doctor at St. Mary’s Medical Center just up the hill from the store. The doctor determined I had something wrong with my pancreas and put me on a low-fat diet. He also told me to quit eating the bonbons and turtles out of the candy bins which also helped some. Even today, if I get too worried, stand too long, or eat too much greasy food, my stomach bothers me. But even when my stomach doesn’t hurt, I have a constant restlessness gnawing inside me, like a cache of crickets. When my anxiety envelops me, the restless feeling escalates to a swarm of grasshoppers gone berserk, then moves to a horde of voracious locusts ricocheting off my insides.

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
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