When I was ten, my parents drove Frank and me up to the Clarke ranch seven miles west of Laytonville, off U. S. 101.

It was a warm day, and as mentioned in Chapter 6 our car had no air conditioning.

Suddenly Dad stopped the car in the middle of the town we were passing through, and disappeared down the street. He reappeared, to the astonishment and delight of brother Frank and me, with ice cream cones for everyone.

This was an almost incredible luxury at the time. But our delight was greatly tempered when Mother reacted very angrily. She was concerned that we would slop the ice cream all over our clothes and arrive at the ranch in a state of chaos. She may also have been feeling that squandering twenty cents on ice cream cones was an unnecessary extravagance in view of our precarious financial situation. Still another possibility was that she had not been consulted on the decision beforehand, a rare event.

It was one of the few times our parents quarreled in front of the children. But Dad managed to calm the storm, and as I remember we managed to consume the cones without causing irreparable damage.

When we got to the ranch, I stayed on for a month after the others left. On the whole, the experience was more of an ordeal than a delight, but I learned a lot which gave me a greater perspective on what ranching in California is (or was) like.

For one thing, I discovered how stupid and yet how elusive sheep can be. Whenever I thought in later years about the Biblical comparisons between sheep and people, I sympathized deeply with God's difficulties in dealing with His children when they have behaved like sheep. The symbolism of Jesus as the Good Shepherd and His parables about sheep also have had a deeper meaning to me.

In trying to drive a flock from one pasture or section to another, for instance, my cousins were much more experienced and skillful. My uncle was hard pressed to control his hot temper when anybody failed to perform properly and made the job take longer than it should have taken. He tried to be patient with me, but he often made it clear that I had goofed in some way.

To make up for this clumsiness, I worked overtime to split the firewood which I had been assigned to do as a special chore. I remember one evening I was still at it when darkness fell, and my uncle Frank surprised me by calling me in with a more gentle tone of voice than usual and approved my diligence.

As a change of pace, we went one day to a swimming hole on the ranch. I remember being banished to a spot out of sight while the four girls in the family and their brother Douglas swam without any swim suits. Such were the delicate mores of the times!

One of my high school jobs was as a messenger for Western Union. The office was in central Berkeley on Shattuck Ave. A large map of the city was used to determine the air line distances from the office, with concentric circles drawn on the map at various intervals. The messenger was paid for each telegram on the basis of the farthest air line distance, with the other messages at a much lower rate.

From the messenger's viewpoint, this system was unbalanced because Berkeley has two types of terrain. The land slopes up from the bay rather gradually, until it suddenly gives way to the steep hills at the east and north ends. Obviously it took much more time and effort to climb the hills on a bicycle than to go on the flatlands.

Consequently we rejoiced when we got an assignment which took us to a flatland location, and groaned when we were given messages for the hill area. The only compensation for the latter was that it was a quick trip back down. But if the distribution of the telegrams called for getting from one part of the hills to another, this often involved going down and up the steep hills because the streets did not connect conveniently.

Thus an unlucky bike rider might spend the better part of a morning or afternoon trudging up and down the hills for much less than a dollar, while the lucky one might get an assignment to pick up outgoing messages from a factory or business building, and make much more in less time.

Once I was sent to the factory area near the bay, including Cutter Laboratories. While I was in the Cutter building, I passed Dr. Robert Cutter on the stairs. His wife Virginia had lived in my mother's home while Virginia was going to U. C., and the Cutters had been to our home several times.

So I greeted Dr. Cutter as if we were old friends. He looked puzzled but responded pleasantly. When I told my mother about this, she asked me if I was sure he knew who I was. She realized that he would have been baffled at being greeted by a mere Western Union messenger in his uniform unless I told him my name, which I had not thought to do. Later she was able to explain this to the Cutters, and they had a good laugh over it. The experience taught me to identify myself whenever I was uncertain as to whether someone I met had remembered me.

My Western Union job started as an after school job. As I recall, I continued after I graduated in December, 1934 and I took post graduate courses in typing and shorthand before going on to U. C. Berkeley in the Fall of 1935. However, I wonder now how I could have managed to keep the job and still do all of the extra curricular things at school, such as the school newspaper and plays. It is odd that I remember the scratchiness of the Western Union uniform, and the leather puttees we had to wear, but I don't remember my working hours and schedule.

Another incident from those days comes to mind. One day the other messengers and I who were on duty were sitting on the bench facing the dispatcher's desk, when the door opened and a couple of men came in.

It was instantly clear that these were Western Union VIPs coming to inspect the office. The staff came to attention like army corporals in the presence of The Brass. One of the men came over to the messengers and officiously inspected our uniforms and the folders we carried in our jacket pockets. The folders contained the various notices and other literature we were expected to keep in neat order.

The other man went around the office warmly greeting the staff, and even the messengers, as if he had just dropped in for a friendly visit. But even at that age I recognized the fact that the officious one was the underling and the friendly one was the "big boss". I have seen this ritual repeated in many forms and in many institutional guises including the Church.

For two summers, I worked as a dishwasher in the Berkeley municipal camp near Echo Lake in the mountains south of Lake Tahoe off Highway 50.

The first summer I "specialized" in scrubbing the pots and pans. The next summer another fellow and I washed about 125 sets of dishes, three meals a day, by hand. In addition, we peeled vegetables and did whatever other chores were assigned, and we were responsible with other members of the staff for the campfire programs at night.

The wash tubs were galvanized iron, built at a height which required taller people like myself to bend over almost double. The dishes were heavy pottery, which had to be cleaned off before they were washed, of course. So it was quite a chore in itself, aside from all the other duties. But we didn't consider ourselves to be slave labor. We were glad to have jobs in the clean mountain air, and there was a comraderie which made it more enjoyable.

One of the staff members the second year was Vernon Graves, whom I saw again for the first time at our 50th anniversary Berkeley High reunion in May, 1985. He went on to a successful career as a dentist. In his reminiscences at the reunion, he was especially enthusiastic about the campfire programs we did.

These programs represented a mish mash of Boy Scout skits I remembered, plus whatever original material we could conjure up from the experiences and the personalities of the campers, with occasional use of talent among the campers.

The second year I had a moonlighting job along with everything at the camp. Through a notice in the "Daily Cal", or the Bureau of Occupations (the student employment service), I was hired to distribute samples of Philip Morris cigarettes at the resorts along the shore of Lake Tahoe. The pay was mainly in free samples of the cigarettes, but there was some money in it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a car. So I had to depend on other staff members to take me down to the lake when they went off on their own, and this meant of course that my time for distributing the samples when we got to the Lake was limited too.

The boxes of samples kept coming all summer long, though. So I wound up with a sizeable stock at home that Fall. Unfortunately, (or fortunately in terms of my health), after the samples had been sitting in the dry mountain air for weeks, they tasted more like mattress stuffing than tobacco, so I threw them out. This was my only plunge into the depths of commercialized vice, and it was good for my moral character in the long run. Seeing the gambling casinos from the perspective of a non customer also had a beneficial effect.

The next time I saw this part of Lake Tahoe was early in the following summer, when I hitch hiked up to the south end of the lake and slept in my sleeping bag in the El Dorado Forest Service camp ground,near what was then the village of Bijou. It was early and the winter snows had been late, so the grounds were not officially open yet, and I had the place entirely to myself. I remember walking down the two lane highway which had been carved through the trees, and looking up at the stars,with a strong sense of God's presence and reassurance.

(After years had intervened without our seeing Tahoe, Carol and I drove past that same area in July, 1985. The camp ground is still there, but a six lane highway borders it, and the traffic was bumper to bumper for several miles along that stretch, as people maneuvered to get through the maze of traffic lights and side roads leading to huge casinos and other blights upon the landscape. On the basis of my theological understanding, I would say God was also present in that scene. But the evidence was considerably harder to discern.)

The following day I hitched a ride to Camp Richardson, a resort west of the `Y' where Highway 50 came into the lake. There I found that the telephone operators at the Tallac office nearby were looking for a handyman to do some temporary jobs. I spent a few days washing the soot off the ceilings, and doing other odd jobs. But I decided to go back up to Echo Lake, where the Hamptons had a cabin. I had met this family through my parents, who had known the Hampton parents when their children and Frank and I had been pupils at Rockridge School in Oakland.

They had a daughter, June Adele, about my age. We had been somewhat friendly at Echo Lake the previous summer, and I thought I would be helpful by doing some sprucing up of their place while staying somewhere in the area. So I got a ride up to the junction of the road which went to Echo Lake and hiked down to the Hampton cabin.

It was in good shape, and I decided to sleep on their porch. But I needed food, so I went back to the little store operated by a man named Ralph King, who also operated the boat rentals and other services at the lake.

I had left instructions at the Tallac telephone office to have the check for my services there be sent to Echo Lake. I assumed that I would have no trouble getting supplies on credit from the store, since I felt like an old timer in the area. I felt insulted when I was treated coldly, and insulted further when King called the Tallac office to confirm my story about the check being forthcoming. I was also annoyed when I realized that King was suspicious about my innocent intention to spruce up the Hampton cabin. This experience has come back to me often when I found myself in the opposite position, and I realized how naive I had been. It was my first experience in being in a situation where my integrity was not taken for granted because people knew me or my parents.

I realized to my embarrassment later that I was also presumptuous in doing work for others without checking with them first. In this case, the Hamptons had arranged to have King do the kind of handyman chores that I was planning to do, and they would have told me not to meddle with the situation if I had asked beforehand.

Furthermore, I discovered later that King was not the most saintly character himself, and he may well have attributed the same ethical standards to me that he was living by.

A very different kind of experience with a stranger in the Tahoe area came to me the next summer (if I have the sequence of summers right).

The father of my uncle Tom Oliver had driven me up to Hobart Mills, a few miles north of Truckee, where Tom was superintendent of the lumber mill as his father had been when Tom was a child. Tom had come to U. C. Berkeley to study forestry, and there had met and married my mother's younger sister Minora.

The mill was a fabulous place for a child to visit, and the highlight of my 12th birthday was a ride on the donkey engine which hauled logs to the mill from the woods.

My purpose in going back up there this time, though, was to get a ride to the Tahoe area so I could get a job for the early part of the summer.

Mr. Oliver graciously drove me down from Hobart Mills to the junction of the road which ran down to Tahoe City from Highway 40. There I waited for some time until an old Model A Ford came along, and the driver stopped to pick me up.

As we drove along, the driver asked me where I had come from and where I was going. When I mentioned the Olivers, he indicated that he knew them, so I assumed he was either living in the Tahoe area or did business there regularly.

I realized later that he had learned quite a bit about me by the time we got to the Lake, but I knew nothing more about him.

When we got to Tahoe Tavern, he pulled up in front of the entrance and told me to wait in the car. While he was gone, I leaned over and read his name on the car registration sheet which all cars had to display on the steering column. The name was Matt Green, but this meant nothing to me.

When Mr. Green came out, he said:

"I talked to the manager, and he said he could use you."

I couldn't help blurting out: "Are you sure?"

He replied: "Yep, I'm sure. You see, I own this place."

It seemed incredible that such an unimpressive old geezer would own the fabulous resort which was so often mentioned in the society columns of the San Francisco papers. But I learned that he had come to the Tahoe area years earlier to work as a barber. By shrewdly investing his money in real estate he had become rich enough to buy this magnificent resort from the Southern Pacific Railroad. The S. P. had built a spur track from the main transcontinental line to the Tavern, so the wealthy could take the train from the Bay area to the Tavern and luxuriate there.

No doubt the decline of railroad transportation in favor of automobiles, and the rise of the gambling casinos on the Nevada side of the lake, contributed to the demise of Tahoe Tavern. In time the land became more valuable than the resort, and the buildings were torn down to make way for condominiums and elaborate individual mansions.

My first job at the Tavern was to shovel away the snow which still surrounded some of the buildings. As the opening day approached, the regular crews took over, so I went back to Berkeley.

When I started Cal in 1935, I knew I would have to earn most of the cost of my education, although my parents provided me with room and board a contribution which I came to appreciate much more later than I did at the time. There was no tuition fee, but student fees amounted to $26 per semester, and of course there were expenses like books, carfare, and lunches (mostly sandwiches brought from home, but occasionally more expensive snack foods bought at campus eateries on Telegraph Ave. or Bancroft Way near the campus).

One of the jobs I got through the campus employment service was with a florist named Jack Benatar. His open air stand was on University Ave. near Oxford St. at the west end of the campus.

Jack was a jovial, energetic fellow who knew the flower business thoroughly. I knew nothing about flowers, but my job was to look after the stand while he was elsewhere. He usually brought the day's supply of flowers from the wholesale market, which meant that he had to get up very early in the morning. Usually I opened the stand, which consisted of unlocking a back door, then cranking up the vertical awning which covered the front of the shop.

My most vivid experiences working there were embarrassing ones. Once Jack asked me to back up his truck while he was arranging the fresh supplies, so we could unload the rest of the truckload. I didn't see a large bundle of fresh flowers and backed over them. Since the market for fresh crushed flowers was limited, I expected a tirade from Jack. But he was remarkably cheerful.

Another time I sold a Christmas tree which had been sprayed with aluminum paint for about the price of an unsprayed tree. The custom of spraying or flocking Christmas trees was a novelty then, and I didn't realize how much of a premium price these decorated trees should have been sold for. Again, though, Jack was very patient with me. Several years later, Jack moved into a store building in the neighborhood, and I think I repaid him partly for his patience by ordering flowers for occasions like Mother's Day when we were living elsewhere.

Through the campus employment bureau I was also hired occasionally as a waiter for banquets. My expertise in this job was minimal when I started, but I got better at it as time went on. Ever since, I have been both more sympathetic and more critical of waiters and waitresses in restaurants. In my campus jobs, of course, I had nothing to do with taking orders the menu was set, and my job was to serve the various courses as they were ready, provide items like extra tableware and to clear the dishes away.

Sometime during my sophomore or junior year, I got a job working at a Texaco service station near our Virmar Ave. home in Oakland.

This station was at the northwest corner of Claremont Ave., Forest and Colby Sts., where the street intersection formed a narrow triangular lot. Most of the time there was only enough business for one person. The manager worked during the day, then turned the station over to me for the hours between 6 p.m. and closing at 9:00. I also worked ten hours during the day on Wednesdays and fourteen hours on Sunday. This was in addition to my full schedule of classes at U.C.

The one gas pump had a glass bowl at the top, with metal markers inside the bowl to indicate gallon intervals. As I recall, it was a more modern version than the really old fashioned pumps, in that the bowl was refilled by electricity rather than by pulling the pump handle back and forth to fill it.

Even so, the trick was to shut off the pump exactly on the gallon mark. Otherwise it was a matter of guesswork as to how much gas had been put into the tank, because there was no digital meter to measure the flow.

During the busiest times, the manager and I worked together to handle both the pump and the lubrication rack. The ideal situation was to have enough lube business to add to the manager's income (which was based on a percentage of the gross), and still handle the gas customers without making them wait. There were so many stations competing for gas then, customers would pull away if they had to wait more than a minute or two.

At the same time, the lubrication customer expected his or her car to be finished within an hour or so, or at the time promised. Texaco lubrication charts were provided for each make of car, marked with all the many points to be treated, and the attendant was supposed to check off each one as he did them.

In addition, the gas customer was supposed to be provided with what the company called "Circle Service". The attendant was supposed to greet the customer by wiping the driver's side of the windshield while he "took the order", then move back to fill the tank, wiping the side windows on the way. After he did this (holding the nozzle all of the time the gas was going into the tank), he was supposed to wipe the back windows and the other side windows, finishing up with the passenger's side of the windshield. Then he was supposed to check the radiator water and the oil, and offer to check the tires before collecting the cash (no credit cards, because they were not in use yet).

Many drivers, of course, wanted a minimum of service or none, so the attendant had to use his judgment as to how much service to offer. There was always the risk that a customer was a company agent checking on service and that the attendant would get into trouble for not pushing his services, or that the customer would be angry for getting more than he wanted.

All of this must seem as far away as the stone age to younger drivers who grew up with credit cards, electronic pump meters and self service. The station site is now occupied by an office building, near the Rockridge BART station.