Tape 17, Side B
[Begin Tape 17, Side B]
So the classes, you’re starting to not be so enamored of UC’s language program?
Yeah, no, you know, it was an ordeal. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend my precious time. How I did want to spend my precious time I wouldn’t have been able to say. I liked to hang around with Tina. I liked to go places with her. That was great. I liked to read, you know, and do my own… I didn’t want to do anything again [laughs]. [facetious hippie voice] I just wanted to be, man; I just wanted to be. Is that so wrong?
So you were kind of back to that feeling of…?
Yeah, but I knew I didn’t want to be in that position again. I never wanted to be in that position again where I didn’t have some kind of income, you know, some kind of… the elusive spondulix. I always wanted to have something. So I could see that my veteran’s benefits were about to run out and… I guess I needed to… and I was working… I knew that I would have to work a little; I’d have to be a working student, and I just didn’t see how that would compute at all. I knew that something would have to give. I don’t see how people do it. I never could see how people do it ‘cause I… it’s two whole lifes; but people do it. I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I were interested in… if I were interested in school I could have done it, or interested in something, but I wasn’t; I was just skating again, you know, just trying to avoid having to do things I didn’t want to do.
So you now had an AA, an associated arts degree, from Merritt, and you were working on a BA, or was it a masters program or what was it?
Yeah, right, you have to declare a major when you’re a transfer like that, so I declared that my major was Slavic languages and literatures, and, you know, they give you what the scheme is: Here’s what you have to take; and they don’t tell you when to take it though, so I was just taking all the ones that I wanted as much as possible and trying not to take any literature classes [laughs], any of the ones that I didn’t want to take, but I knew sooner or later I’d have to take them. And by then I had transferred from the targeting project—that was a real drag, you know, doing that all day—but I was starting to look around and see what was going on in the library and, you know, I’d always go up to the fourth floor and check out other library jobs too, so I quickly moved into the periodical division, and so I was a student there: opening mail—whatever students do—opening and closing, being on the desk, that sort of thing; that was great. I really liked the weekend work too because one of the other guys there, Arthur Mason, who later on got married to Armanda*.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is all new to me.
[Laughing] We should do a separate work tape sometime. (Let’s do work tape.) This is gonna be sealed for perpetuity, right? Yeah.
If you say so; only if you say so.
Well Arthur Mason, he had been in Periodicals a little bit before me. He was an SLE too, Student Library Employee, and yes, later on he got married to Armanda. Armanda she may have been a Student Library Employee too, up there in BSD or whatever it was. I’m not sure. I know she worked there as an LA*. But Arthur and I used to play chess all the time on Saturday and Sunday, on the clock, because, you know, there wasn’t that much activity at the desk, you know, covering the desk, that sort of thing.
So you’d just have a game going and that was alright with the sups.
Yeah, have a game going, yeah: God, there’s another patron. What do you want?! No, there’s no newspapers down here! Can’t you read the sign?! Get out of here. It’s on the fourth floor! Can’t you see we’re busy?! [laughs] But you know, couldn’t have a bell up there. But yeah, it was okay because it really wasn’t that busy. And so I’m just observing all this stuff, you know, I’m still trying to skate, do as little as possible. But, you know, the world of periodicals! Oh wow, what a treat, what a great place to work, because I loved them periodicals and was always buying magazines, and you know even after I became a real periodical person I still bought magazines: I never liked to check ‘em out, but you could read ‘em there though. Just the idea that there were so many of them.
You didn’t burn the eyes out?
No, I didn’t burn the eyeballs out [laughs maniacally], no, I thought about it though.
It was tempting?
Yeah. And so, you know, it seems like I’ve got a nice little SLE job there and I’m trying to figure out what’s going to happen after I ah… you know, because I’m not on the dean’s list, I’m on the opposite, whatever it is, your probation?
The shit list.
I’m on the shit list and I’m on probation. I’m on academic probation because, you know, I spend—I guess we were quarters then—I spend one quarter on academic probation and get off of it the next quarter and then the next quarter go back on, so I was still trying to string out those veteran’s benefits because I wanted to get every damn cent I could.
So what put you on probation?
Bad grades.
Anything below what?
Oh, I don’t know, D average [laughs]; I’m not sure; below a C I think. I think it had to go below a C. Yeah, I think it had to go below a C. And let’s see, what are we…? You know maybe… I’m sure I have the chronology all mixed up here. At some point Lee Roy came back from Ohio and we were sharing the place together and that wasn’t very successful because he was, he’d come in drunk a lot, and sometimes he’d come in all beat up, and anyway I was spending a lot of time out there in Oakland with my new main squeeze, [smooth soul voice] my lady: I’m very much in like with the lady [laughs]. So I just moved out there, you know, we worked things out so I could move out there.
So in a sense Lee Roy kind of drove you out.
Yeah, yeah, he did. I think that’s the way it happened. I’m not exactly sure.
He sounds like a consistently kind of crazy guy.
Yeah, he has his problems. He likes to do things the hard way. He’s got a problem with intent and a problem with alcohol, but, you know, he’s fifty-two years old, he’s still very innocent and he’s still not doing so well right now, but he’s delightful to be around. The consequences of his actions, I mean he’s his own worst enemy and sometimes if you’re his friend certain things he does rebound on you too, negatively, but when you’re with him for a minute or two you forgive him everything: so, you know, that’s just the way he is. You can’t tell him: Well if you’d shape up and take charge of your life and stop believing all this bullshit you’d be a lot better; you just can’t do that [laughs], A: it won’t do any good because he has to discover things the hard way; plus he’s always been, since his spiritual experience, he’s always been involved in that, you know, he’s not the greatest devotee in the world but it’s always been there, it’s always been solidly there for him, you know, he goes to satsangs* and he goes to meetings and he associates with people in this yoga and he always tries to get back to it.
So even through whatever problems, alcohol and drugs, everything, he always has that still.
Yeah, absolutely, yep. And so what happened then? I’m not sure… As with so many things, I forget how the transitions go, but suddenly I’m there, you know, somehow I’m there and I’m living in this house with this grownup woman and her son.
How old was her son?
Seventy five [laughter].
A wizened little fellow.
No, he was, I guess he was hm, then he was seven or eight maybe. I’m not sure. Let’s see, if he’s thirty now that means he was born in what, sixty-eight? Sixty-eight and we’re talking seventy-eight, yeah, nine or ten, something like that, talking seventy-six actually, so eight to ten, somewhere in there. All these things that I’m mentioning now, they take place in a range of three year period and I’m not sure which came first.
Did you have any feelings one way or another about him? Because you would have been moving into the household when he was roughly the age you were when your mom died. Did you have any kind of feelings about your relationship to him or…?
No, absolutely none, in fact I made it clear that, you know, I wasn’t going to be… I mean his father was still there and he spent time with his father, time with his mother; I was just the new boyfriend or, you know, I had no claim on his affections and didn’t want any, and so he grew up with me like, just like that, you know.
He had quite a bit of contact with his father then? His father lived nearby?
Oh yeah, right, in Alameda, and he was in the Scouts in Alameda; he went to school nearby, so yeah, plenty of contact.
So you weren’t really expected to take on, and Tina didn’t expect that.
Exactly, no, that was the beauty of it for me: I didn’t have any… I didn’t have to do that, and there was no way I was going to anyway, and there was no way I could. I wouldn’t have known; I wouldn’t have been able to… I thought it was interesting that there was this sort of, you know, built-in family structure. I don’t think I could have got into it any other way. It’s like: Here’s this… we’ll shoehorn you in right here. Look! It’s a kind of a pretend little…
It already existed.
Yeah, right. So that’s always been fun to play with but it never... I was just interested in being with her, and I made it clear that that’s all it was. In fact that led to many many problems later on when I wouldn’t [laughs] go to, you know, family gatherings or I refused to hang out with her father and mother and anybody else because I just kept saying, you know: It’s you and me, babe [laughs]. I don’t care about anybody else. So I was kind of stubborn on that point, but that was the only way I figured I could do it was just to be right out front and say the truth; I mean that’s actually what it was, as unappetizing maybe and unpalatable and ‘abnormal’ as it is: that’s the way it is; that’s the way it was. I’m getting, you know, I get better [laughs].
Does she know? Have you sort of given her your life story?
Pretty much, yeah.
I mean does she know why you…?
Nobody knows as much as you do, Chris [laughter].
I’m gonna soak you for all you’re worth, Conkin [laughs].
[Laughing] Nobody knows as much as you… and the audience. No, she pretty much knows all this stuff, and I pretty much know how bad it made her feel, you know, and what kind of a bind it put her in.
Is she pretty close to her parents?
Well they’re both dead now, but they… I mean that was one of the reasons that I didn’t want to because she had a horrible time whenever she went with them and I just never could understand the sense of it, you know: You’re having a horrible time and yet you want me to go along with you to have a horrible time too. So that was the bind that I felt I was in and I didn’t feel like I was that masochistic.
So if they had had—I mean this is just hypothetical but—if they had had a great relationship and were really interesting and fun people and…
… and didn’t make her feel bad…
… and didn’t make her feel bad…?
Yes, I think it would have been completely different.
And you wouldn’t have objected on…
No. It might have taken me a while to get into it, but it would have been different; that was the main reason is that her family made her feel bad. And, you know: Oh, let’s go over to my sister’s for Christmas and... But you hate that, you always tell me that you hate that; it makes you feel awful. Why should I do it? [laughs] You think you have to. I’m always saying: You don’t have to. Cut those people off; I’ll show you how to do it [laughs].
She doesn’t take your advice though it sounds like.
Nope, she’s a different person, she’s a whole different person and that’s the treat for me: she is a different person. I like, you know, I like the unexpected and surprises and I like to get my bubble burst every now and then and I’m in the perfect place for it.
So this is, when you moved out there what year was that?
I guess it’s like seventy-six, seventy-seven, something like that; somewhere in there. And we were going to… you know she dug Elvis Costello; we were going to Elvis Costello, you know, the new hot guy on the town. She went to The Last Waltz with me; she didn’t like The Band that much; I said: We’ve gotta go there. I got myself a tuxedo, you know, rented a tuxedo.
So you went to the show?
Oh yeah. And we went to the Planet Waves tour, Dylan and The Band, oh man, that was somethin’.
Is she into that?
No, she doesn’t like The Band so much; she likes Dylan a little bit.
But she liked the New Wave stuff more, Elvis Costello and…?
Well Elvis, you know, yeah, she really digs Elvis, she dug Elvis. And, you know, we’d take trips too. Jenner—she had a car! She had a car!
She drove!
Like them women with a car. I always wanted a woman with a car. Now I are one [laughter]. Yeah, that was a treat, and she loved to drive, and she didn’t put the moves on me to drive until a little bit later, and actually I did get a license: when I was thirty-three years old I got myself a driver’s license and we took a trip to Southern California and I drove a lot down Highway 5. I like that Highway 5 driving because it’s just straight out and there’s not too many tricky things and you don’t have to worry too much about the others. I like… actually, you know, when it comes down to it: I like to drive as long as there’s nobody else on the road.
That you can run into or can run into you.
Yeah. I’ll drive for fifteen minutes and then pull over and sit for a while, and then I’ll get up and drive for another fifteen minutes. That way I break up the… because I think I told you I don’t have the same kind of reactions that most drivers do: I get distracted real easily and especially by the rearview mirror, because it’s like a little picture up there [laughs], and I start watching the…
Kind of go into it?
Yeah, kind of watch the rearview mirror and forget where I’m going, so by pulling over every now and then I can restart the list, restart the rules, you know, restart all the things so I don’t get caught up into that stream.
Is that alright with Tina?
No [laughter]. No, no, she’s a hot driver, you know, she’s fast, she’s fast and she has great quick reactions: she’s a good driver. No, drive too slow; can’t pull over. But I did pretty good on the big long trip. Haven’t really driven much since then; that was… I guess that was seventy-nine or eighty, something like that. It’s been a few years since I drove. I renew my license faithfully though. So on that side of things, on the real life side of things it was great, you know, every day was a revelation and it was great to live in this gigantic house [laughs]. You’ve been there: it’s palatial [laughter], bigger than an apartment, so...
He’s exaggerating slightly but...
Kind of hard to get back and forth, I mean now I’m used to it but they didn’t have BART then, yeah, so it was kind of hard to get back and forth.
‘Cause you have a BART station not too far away.
Yeah, I can walk to the BART station; it’s a twenty-minute walk. I don’t like to walk going back, especially if it’s dark, but going down in the morning, even if it’s dark, that’s okay; twenty minutes; and there’s busses that go right by too. No, there was BART by then; I think there was BART by then, yeah. But on the work side of things: there was another unit starting up across the hall sort of where the systems office is now. There was a lot of money coming into the library from federal funding, Title 2C funding they called it, and it was for conversion of the catalog from cards to machine-readable form, and so they started hiring catalogers and people on the soft funds to start the work of converting the catalogs, and they soon realized right away that they needed some… well, they didn’t realize this right away. One of the things they had to do, or an ancillary project was try to get more serials ISSNs into a database, so a unit formed called the ISSN unit. And this was started by one Margaret Ide, who was—Dorothy Gregor was the head of the serials department then—and she was a pal of Dorothy Gregor’s. And she started this little ISSN unit and basically what they were gonna do, and Stanford was cooperating too, Stanford was gonna take a hunk of titles and UCB was gonna take a hunk of titles and try to get ISSNs for them, and they had various ways of doing this and they needed some students to work on that so they came around asking if anybody would like to do that so I said yeah I’d like to do that, so I stopped working for periodicals and went to work for this ISSN unit.
So in those days having an ISSN number was not… I mean now ISSN numbers are just like a standard thing, like having a Social Security number.
Yeah, standard, right, it was kind of the, I mean the International Standard Serial Number, the standard part of it was just a dream [laughs]. A lot of people were doing it, Yugoslavians, you know, they seemed to jump right on top of it, in fact they had extra ISSNs, extry. But when we would do that we’d go, we’d set up projects, sometimes we’d go into periodicals and just take an armful of periodicals that didn’t have ISSNs and we had some mailers and stuff from the Library of Congress and we’d send them to the publishers telling them how they could get an ISSN.
So you were actually encouraging the publishers to get ISSNs.
Encouraging, yeah. And I remember we sent one to… and we got a letter back from, I think the journal was called Rain, I think it was Northwest, I think it was like Seattle or Portland; it was called Rain and I don’t know, I think it was an eco-journal of some kind, and they wrote back this nasty letter saying: The title of our journal is Rain, that’s it; it’s going to be Rain. There are not going to be any numbers on [laughs]… I’ll have to go look them up and see if they’re still alive and have an ISSN. I don’t know; they probably didn’t… But that was extreme. Mostly we were comparing the journals in our block of the alphabet I guess and seeing—we probably got a printout of some kind—and if there was no ISSN we’d consult these other sources, find an ISSN, you know, like Ulrich’s or The Irregular or something like that, and then get that ISSN attached to that record in some database. Stanford was doing the same thing. And that went on, you know, seems like it was a couple… that’s when Ed* started, Ed was on this project too, he was in the ISSN unit, or was he… Yes, he was. Yes he was.
So we’ve got Armanda; we’ve got…
I didn’t know her then. Me and Arthur and Ed kind of palled around. Ed didn’t play chess though so feh [dismissive gesture]…
[Laughs] He was useless.
Yeah, useless. But I really played a lot of chess with Arthur. I mean we would go to coffee shops and play chess; we would go to lunch places and play chess. Chess chess chess. What I liked about it was we were evenly matched: sometimes I’d win and sometimes he’d win. I didn’t want to play anybody that I could beat all the time or who could beat me all the time. There were a lot of people like that around there and I started I suppose right around that time, I was hanging out with Ed Rosenthal, he was a grand master and he knew a lot of chess people—I think he was a grand master, maybe he was just a master—but he was a hot player; his specialty was speed chess, where you take an hourglass, you know… oh no, you don’t take an hourglass, what do you do? There is a thing with an hourglass, but speed chess is you just decide—you have a clock, you’ve gotta have a chess clock—you decide that the game’s gonna last five minutes. You ever see guys playing speed chess?
No.
There’s a chess board and they have their clock; they’re just doing this: move, boom, bing, bing, bam. They’re moving and hittin’ the clock; moving and hittin’ the clock, moving and hittin’ the clock. The idea is to do a normal three-hour game in five minutes [laughter]. It’s amazing what they do.
Sounds like it’s for people from New York.
Yeah, that’s where he’s from; he’s from New York. People from New York and Russians too. They’re really good at chess.
Fast especially? I would probably be good at slow chess.
Slow chess, that’s what I liked, slow chess, you know, just sit there and watch all the—didn’t even want to move—just watch all the potential moves flutter and develop in the air and then fade away into the mist; but you know I didn’t like real chess ‘cause it meant you had to study, you know, that just took all everything… it just became mathematical. It was interesting to replay Bobby Fischer’s games or something like that but competitive chess at the next level higher than I was doing it just wasn’t interesting because, you know, you’d have to buy the books and restudy, you know, the famous games and all the different opening combinations and the endgame moves and that sort of stuff. I liked to do… chess problems were fun, you know chess problems they just…
Oh, like they have in the paper?
Yeah, like they’re all endgames. They show you a chess board with just a few pieces on: mate in three, how do you do a mate in three? three moves. So those are kind of fun, but the real chess players I didn’t… but I liked to play chess with Arthur. So I was doing this other thing in this ISSN unit now, and suddenly it was going to stop, the work of the ISSN unit was going to finish and they were going to develop… by then all the people who were working on the conversion effort, they were pulling cards out of all the catalogs, you know there’s the author-title catalog, there’s the subject catalog, there’s the official catalog, there’s the shelf list catalog. What they were doing were pulling, there were cross references and series authority cards and all sorts of things. For every title that they were working on they were pulling what was called a complete card set: that means every card in all these catalogs that pertained to this title they’d pull it and rubber band it together and put it... It got to be too much; it got to be chaotic, so they realized that they needed some sort of support effort.
Now they were pulling them out…
Pulling them from the catalog, leaving pinks.
… in order to use the information…
Yeah, in order to get the complete picture of the serial, you know, in all its aspects that was recorded on all the information that’s on these cards, they would give you the complete bibliographic picture of this journal, the serial, and that’s what was needed to convert it to machine-readable form. And so they were spending all their time, you know, these ace catalogers, in filling out the pink slips and going to pull the cards; they had a little bit of student help but not much, so what they needed was a support unit, and I got the… again, I don’t remember [laughs] how it happened but I knew they were going to post a position for a real full-time job as the head of this conversion support unit and… let’s see… oh, simultaneously the Periodical Division, which was, you know, like a twenty, twenty-five FTE operation; it was run by a librarian and had an assistant head who was an LA IV; that person, that LA IV had quit and that job was open, and somehow Margaret Ide, who was the head of this ISSN unit, was going to go there, and so she would have been the normal person to take over this conversion support unit but she was going in another direction; so anyway, to make a long story short—if I can possibly do that now—they posted the position; I applied for it and I got it. Oh, by the way—I have to mention this—when I was a student library employee working in the ISSN unit I never went to class at all, I hardly ever went to class.
So class was sort of going out the window.
Actually that was the second stage; the first stage was I’d come into work, punch in on my timecard and go to class [laughs].
[Laughs] So you were getting paid.
I was trying… see, you know, I couldn’t figure out how to do both of these things. I didn’t have enough time to do both of these things but I still wanted… you know…
Work-study.
Yeah. So that’s when I dropped out.
We’re right at the end.
I dropped right out.
You dropped out of school...
Dropped out of school; went to work.
… and you went to work. Okay.
The end.
1970…?
The start of nineteen… I guess we’re still in seventy-nine.
[End Tape 17, Side B]
So the classes, you’re starting to not be so enamored of UC’s language program?
Yeah, no, you know, it was an ordeal. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend my precious time. How I did want to spend my precious time I wouldn’t have been able to say. I liked to hang around with Tina. I liked to go places with her. That was great. I liked to read, you know, and do my own… I didn’t want to do anything again [laughs]. [facetious hippie voice] I just wanted to be, man; I just wanted to be. Is that so wrong?
So you were kind of back to that feeling of…?
Yeah, but I knew I didn’t want to be in that position again. I never wanted to be in that position again where I didn’t have some kind of income, you know, some kind of… the elusive spondulix. I always wanted to have something. So I could see that my veteran’s benefits were about to run out and… I guess I needed to… and I was working… I knew that I would have to work a little; I’d have to be a working student, and I just didn’t see how that would compute at all. I knew that something would have to give. I don’t see how people do it. I never could see how people do it ‘cause I… it’s two whole lifes; but people do it. I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I were interested in… if I were interested in school I could have done it, or interested in something, but I wasn’t; I was just skating again, you know, just trying to avoid having to do things I didn’t want to do.
So you now had an AA, an associated arts degree, from Merritt, and you were working on a BA, or was it a masters program or what was it?
Yeah, right, you have to declare a major when you’re a transfer like that, so I declared that my major was Slavic languages and literatures, and, you know, they give you what the scheme is: Here’s what you have to take; and they don’t tell you when to take it though, so I was just taking all the ones that I wanted as much as possible and trying not to take any literature classes [laughs], any of the ones that I didn’t want to take, but I knew sooner or later I’d have to take them. And by then I had transferred from the targeting project—that was a real drag, you know, doing that all day—but I was starting to look around and see what was going on in the library and, you know, I’d always go up to the fourth floor and check out other library jobs too, so I quickly moved into the periodical division, and so I was a student there: opening mail—whatever students do—opening and closing, being on the desk, that sort of thing; that was great. I really liked the weekend work too because one of the other guys there, Arthur Mason, who later on got married to Armanda*.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is all new to me.
[Laughing] We should do a separate work tape sometime. (Let’s do work tape.) This is gonna be sealed for perpetuity, right? Yeah.
If you say so; only if you say so.
Well Arthur Mason, he had been in Periodicals a little bit before me. He was an SLE too, Student Library Employee, and yes, later on he got married to Armanda. Armanda she may have been a Student Library Employee too, up there in BSD or whatever it was. I’m not sure. I know she worked there as an LA*. But Arthur and I used to play chess all the time on Saturday and Sunday, on the clock, because, you know, there wasn’t that much activity at the desk, you know, covering the desk, that sort of thing.
So you’d just have a game going and that was alright with the sups.
Yeah, have a game going, yeah: God, there’s another patron. What do you want?! No, there’s no newspapers down here! Can’t you read the sign?! Get out of here. It’s on the fourth floor! Can’t you see we’re busy?! [laughs] But you know, couldn’t have a bell up there. But yeah, it was okay because it really wasn’t that busy. And so I’m just observing all this stuff, you know, I’m still trying to skate, do as little as possible. But, you know, the world of periodicals! Oh wow, what a treat, what a great place to work, because I loved them periodicals and was always buying magazines, and you know even after I became a real periodical person I still bought magazines: I never liked to check ‘em out, but you could read ‘em there though. Just the idea that there were so many of them.
You didn’t burn the eyes out?
No, I didn’t burn the eyeballs out [laughs maniacally], no, I thought about it though.
It was tempting?
Yeah. And so, you know, it seems like I’ve got a nice little SLE job there and I’m trying to figure out what’s going to happen after I ah… you know, because I’m not on the dean’s list, I’m on the opposite, whatever it is, your probation?
The shit list.
I’m on the shit list and I’m on probation. I’m on academic probation because, you know, I spend—I guess we were quarters then—I spend one quarter on academic probation and get off of it the next quarter and then the next quarter go back on, so I was still trying to string out those veteran’s benefits because I wanted to get every damn cent I could.
So what put you on probation?
Bad grades.
Anything below what?
Oh, I don’t know, D average [laughs]; I’m not sure; below a C I think. I think it had to go below a C. Yeah, I think it had to go below a C. And let’s see, what are we…? You know maybe… I’m sure I have the chronology all mixed up here. At some point Lee Roy came back from Ohio and we were sharing the place together and that wasn’t very successful because he was, he’d come in drunk a lot, and sometimes he’d come in all beat up, and anyway I was spending a lot of time out there in Oakland with my new main squeeze, [smooth soul voice] my lady: I’m very much in like with the lady [laughs]. So I just moved out there, you know, we worked things out so I could move out there.
So in a sense Lee Roy kind of drove you out.
Yeah, yeah, he did. I think that’s the way it happened. I’m not exactly sure.
He sounds like a consistently kind of crazy guy.
Yeah, he has his problems. He likes to do things the hard way. He’s got a problem with intent and a problem with alcohol, but, you know, he’s fifty-two years old, he’s still very innocent and he’s still not doing so well right now, but he’s delightful to be around. The consequences of his actions, I mean he’s his own worst enemy and sometimes if you’re his friend certain things he does rebound on you too, negatively, but when you’re with him for a minute or two you forgive him everything: so, you know, that’s just the way he is. You can’t tell him: Well if you’d shape up and take charge of your life and stop believing all this bullshit you’d be a lot better; you just can’t do that [laughs], A: it won’t do any good because he has to discover things the hard way; plus he’s always been, since his spiritual experience, he’s always been involved in that, you know, he’s not the greatest devotee in the world but it’s always been there, it’s always been solidly there for him, you know, he goes to satsangs* and he goes to meetings and he associates with people in this yoga and he always tries to get back to it.
So even through whatever problems, alcohol and drugs, everything, he always has that still.
Yeah, absolutely, yep. And so what happened then? I’m not sure… As with so many things, I forget how the transitions go, but suddenly I’m there, you know, somehow I’m there and I’m living in this house with this grownup woman and her son.
How old was her son?
Seventy five [laughter].
A wizened little fellow.
No, he was, I guess he was hm, then he was seven or eight maybe. I’m not sure. Let’s see, if he’s thirty now that means he was born in what, sixty-eight? Sixty-eight and we’re talking seventy-eight, yeah, nine or ten, something like that, talking seventy-six actually, so eight to ten, somewhere in there. All these things that I’m mentioning now, they take place in a range of three year period and I’m not sure which came first.
Did you have any feelings one way or another about him? Because you would have been moving into the household when he was roughly the age you were when your mom died. Did you have any kind of feelings about your relationship to him or…?
No, absolutely none, in fact I made it clear that, you know, I wasn’t going to be… I mean his father was still there and he spent time with his father, time with his mother; I was just the new boyfriend or, you know, I had no claim on his affections and didn’t want any, and so he grew up with me like, just like that, you know.
He had quite a bit of contact with his father then? His father lived nearby?
Oh yeah, right, in Alameda, and he was in the Scouts in Alameda; he went to school nearby, so yeah, plenty of contact.
So you weren’t really expected to take on, and Tina didn’t expect that.
Exactly, no, that was the beauty of it for me: I didn’t have any… I didn’t have to do that, and there was no way I was going to anyway, and there was no way I could. I wouldn’t have known; I wouldn’t have been able to… I thought it was interesting that there was this sort of, you know, built-in family structure. I don’t think I could have got into it any other way. It’s like: Here’s this… we’ll shoehorn you in right here. Look! It’s a kind of a pretend little…
It already existed.
Yeah, right. So that’s always been fun to play with but it never... I was just interested in being with her, and I made it clear that that’s all it was. In fact that led to many many problems later on when I wouldn’t [laughs] go to, you know, family gatherings or I refused to hang out with her father and mother and anybody else because I just kept saying, you know: It’s you and me, babe [laughs]. I don’t care about anybody else. So I was kind of stubborn on that point, but that was the only way I figured I could do it was just to be right out front and say the truth; I mean that’s actually what it was, as unappetizing maybe and unpalatable and ‘abnormal’ as it is: that’s the way it is; that’s the way it was. I’m getting, you know, I get better [laughs].
Does she know? Have you sort of given her your life story?
Pretty much, yeah.
I mean does she know why you…?
Nobody knows as much as you do, Chris [laughter].
I’m gonna soak you for all you’re worth, Conkin [laughs].
[Laughing] Nobody knows as much as you… and the audience. No, she pretty much knows all this stuff, and I pretty much know how bad it made her feel, you know, and what kind of a bind it put her in.
Is she pretty close to her parents?
Well they’re both dead now, but they… I mean that was one of the reasons that I didn’t want to because she had a horrible time whenever she went with them and I just never could understand the sense of it, you know: You’re having a horrible time and yet you want me to go along with you to have a horrible time too. So that was the bind that I felt I was in and I didn’t feel like I was that masochistic.
So if they had had—I mean this is just hypothetical but—if they had had a great relationship and were really interesting and fun people and…
… and didn’t make her feel bad…
… and didn’t make her feel bad…?
Yes, I think it would have been completely different.
And you wouldn’t have objected on…
No. It might have taken me a while to get into it, but it would have been different; that was the main reason is that her family made her feel bad. And, you know: Oh, let’s go over to my sister’s for Christmas and... But you hate that, you always tell me that you hate that; it makes you feel awful. Why should I do it? [laughs] You think you have to. I’m always saying: You don’t have to. Cut those people off; I’ll show you how to do it [laughs].
She doesn’t take your advice though it sounds like.
Nope, she’s a different person, she’s a whole different person and that’s the treat for me: she is a different person. I like, you know, I like the unexpected and surprises and I like to get my bubble burst every now and then and I’m in the perfect place for it.
So this is, when you moved out there what year was that?
I guess it’s like seventy-six, seventy-seven, something like that; somewhere in there. And we were going to… you know she dug Elvis Costello; we were going to Elvis Costello, you know, the new hot guy on the town. She went to The Last Waltz with me; she didn’t like The Band that much; I said: We’ve gotta go there. I got myself a tuxedo, you know, rented a tuxedo.
So you went to the show?
Oh yeah. And we went to the Planet Waves tour, Dylan and The Band, oh man, that was somethin’.
Is she into that?
No, she doesn’t like The Band so much; she likes Dylan a little bit.
But she liked the New Wave stuff more, Elvis Costello and…?
Well Elvis, you know, yeah, she really digs Elvis, she dug Elvis. And, you know, we’d take trips too. Jenner—she had a car! She had a car!
She drove!
Like them women with a car. I always wanted a woman with a car. Now I are one [laughter]. Yeah, that was a treat, and she loved to drive, and she didn’t put the moves on me to drive until a little bit later, and actually I did get a license: when I was thirty-three years old I got myself a driver’s license and we took a trip to Southern California and I drove a lot down Highway 5. I like that Highway 5 driving because it’s just straight out and there’s not too many tricky things and you don’t have to worry too much about the others. I like… actually, you know, when it comes down to it: I like to drive as long as there’s nobody else on the road.
That you can run into or can run into you.
Yeah. I’ll drive for fifteen minutes and then pull over and sit for a while, and then I’ll get up and drive for another fifteen minutes. That way I break up the… because I think I told you I don’t have the same kind of reactions that most drivers do: I get distracted real easily and especially by the rearview mirror, because it’s like a little picture up there [laughs], and I start watching the…
Kind of go into it?
Yeah, kind of watch the rearview mirror and forget where I’m going, so by pulling over every now and then I can restart the list, restart the rules, you know, restart all the things so I don’t get caught up into that stream.
Is that alright with Tina?
No [laughter]. No, no, she’s a hot driver, you know, she’s fast, she’s fast and she has great quick reactions: she’s a good driver. No, drive too slow; can’t pull over. But I did pretty good on the big long trip. Haven’t really driven much since then; that was… I guess that was seventy-nine or eighty, something like that. It’s been a few years since I drove. I renew my license faithfully though. So on that side of things, on the real life side of things it was great, you know, every day was a revelation and it was great to live in this gigantic house [laughs]. You’ve been there: it’s palatial [laughter], bigger than an apartment, so...
He’s exaggerating slightly but...
Kind of hard to get back and forth, I mean now I’m used to it but they didn’t have BART then, yeah, so it was kind of hard to get back and forth.
‘Cause you have a BART station not too far away.
Yeah, I can walk to the BART station; it’s a twenty-minute walk. I don’t like to walk going back, especially if it’s dark, but going down in the morning, even if it’s dark, that’s okay; twenty minutes; and there’s busses that go right by too. No, there was BART by then; I think there was BART by then, yeah. But on the work side of things: there was another unit starting up across the hall sort of where the systems office is now. There was a lot of money coming into the library from federal funding, Title 2C funding they called it, and it was for conversion of the catalog from cards to machine-readable form, and so they started hiring catalogers and people on the soft funds to start the work of converting the catalogs, and they soon realized right away that they needed some… well, they didn’t realize this right away. One of the things they had to do, or an ancillary project was try to get more serials ISSNs into a database, so a unit formed called the ISSN unit. And this was started by one Margaret Ide, who was—Dorothy Gregor was the head of the serials department then—and she was a pal of Dorothy Gregor’s. And she started this little ISSN unit and basically what they were gonna do, and Stanford was cooperating too, Stanford was gonna take a hunk of titles and UCB was gonna take a hunk of titles and try to get ISSNs for them, and they had various ways of doing this and they needed some students to work on that so they came around asking if anybody would like to do that so I said yeah I’d like to do that, so I stopped working for periodicals and went to work for this ISSN unit.
So in those days having an ISSN number was not… I mean now ISSN numbers are just like a standard thing, like having a Social Security number.
Yeah, standard, right, it was kind of the, I mean the International Standard Serial Number, the standard part of it was just a dream [laughs]. A lot of people were doing it, Yugoslavians, you know, they seemed to jump right on top of it, in fact they had extra ISSNs, extry. But when we would do that we’d go, we’d set up projects, sometimes we’d go into periodicals and just take an armful of periodicals that didn’t have ISSNs and we had some mailers and stuff from the Library of Congress and we’d send them to the publishers telling them how they could get an ISSN.
So you were actually encouraging the publishers to get ISSNs.
Encouraging, yeah. And I remember we sent one to… and we got a letter back from, I think the journal was called Rain, I think it was Northwest, I think it was like Seattle or Portland; it was called Rain and I don’t know, I think it was an eco-journal of some kind, and they wrote back this nasty letter saying: The title of our journal is Rain, that’s it; it’s going to be Rain. There are not going to be any numbers on [laughs]… I’ll have to go look them up and see if they’re still alive and have an ISSN. I don’t know; they probably didn’t… But that was extreme. Mostly we were comparing the journals in our block of the alphabet I guess and seeing—we probably got a printout of some kind—and if there was no ISSN we’d consult these other sources, find an ISSN, you know, like Ulrich’s or The Irregular or something like that, and then get that ISSN attached to that record in some database. Stanford was doing the same thing. And that went on, you know, seems like it was a couple… that’s when Ed* started, Ed was on this project too, he was in the ISSN unit, or was he… Yes, he was. Yes he was.
So we’ve got Armanda; we’ve got…
I didn’t know her then. Me and Arthur and Ed kind of palled around. Ed didn’t play chess though so feh [dismissive gesture]…
[Laughs] He was useless.
Yeah, useless. But I really played a lot of chess with Arthur. I mean we would go to coffee shops and play chess; we would go to lunch places and play chess. Chess chess chess. What I liked about it was we were evenly matched: sometimes I’d win and sometimes he’d win. I didn’t want to play anybody that I could beat all the time or who could beat me all the time. There were a lot of people like that around there and I started I suppose right around that time, I was hanging out with Ed Rosenthal, he was a grand master and he knew a lot of chess people—I think he was a grand master, maybe he was just a master—but he was a hot player; his specialty was speed chess, where you take an hourglass, you know… oh no, you don’t take an hourglass, what do you do? There is a thing with an hourglass, but speed chess is you just decide—you have a clock, you’ve gotta have a chess clock—you decide that the game’s gonna last five minutes. You ever see guys playing speed chess?
No.
There’s a chess board and they have their clock; they’re just doing this: move, boom, bing, bing, bam. They’re moving and hittin’ the clock; moving and hittin’ the clock, moving and hittin’ the clock. The idea is to do a normal three-hour game in five minutes [laughter]. It’s amazing what they do.
Sounds like it’s for people from New York.
Yeah, that’s where he’s from; he’s from New York. People from New York and Russians too. They’re really good at chess.
Fast especially? I would probably be good at slow chess.
Slow chess, that’s what I liked, slow chess, you know, just sit there and watch all the—didn’t even want to move—just watch all the potential moves flutter and develop in the air and then fade away into the mist; but you know I didn’t like real chess ‘cause it meant you had to study, you know, that just took all everything… it just became mathematical. It was interesting to replay Bobby Fischer’s games or something like that but competitive chess at the next level higher than I was doing it just wasn’t interesting because, you know, you’d have to buy the books and restudy, you know, the famous games and all the different opening combinations and the endgame moves and that sort of stuff. I liked to do… chess problems were fun, you know chess problems they just…
Oh, like they have in the paper?
Yeah, like they’re all endgames. They show you a chess board with just a few pieces on: mate in three, how do you do a mate in three? three moves. So those are kind of fun, but the real chess players I didn’t… but I liked to play chess with Arthur. So I was doing this other thing in this ISSN unit now, and suddenly it was going to stop, the work of the ISSN unit was going to finish and they were going to develop… by then all the people who were working on the conversion effort, they were pulling cards out of all the catalogs, you know there’s the author-title catalog, there’s the subject catalog, there’s the official catalog, there’s the shelf list catalog. What they were doing were pulling, there were cross references and series authority cards and all sorts of things. For every title that they were working on they were pulling what was called a complete card set: that means every card in all these catalogs that pertained to this title they’d pull it and rubber band it together and put it... It got to be too much; it got to be chaotic, so they realized that they needed some sort of support effort.
Now they were pulling them out…
Pulling them from the catalog, leaving pinks.
… in order to use the information…
Yeah, in order to get the complete picture of the serial, you know, in all its aspects that was recorded on all the information that’s on these cards, they would give you the complete bibliographic picture of this journal, the serial, and that’s what was needed to convert it to machine-readable form. And so they were spending all their time, you know, these ace catalogers, in filling out the pink slips and going to pull the cards; they had a little bit of student help but not much, so what they needed was a support unit, and I got the… again, I don’t remember [laughs] how it happened but I knew they were going to post a position for a real full-time job as the head of this conversion support unit and… let’s see… oh, simultaneously the Periodical Division, which was, you know, like a twenty, twenty-five FTE operation; it was run by a librarian and had an assistant head who was an LA IV; that person, that LA IV had quit and that job was open, and somehow Margaret Ide, who was the head of this ISSN unit, was going to go there, and so she would have been the normal person to take over this conversion support unit but she was going in another direction; so anyway, to make a long story short—if I can possibly do that now—they posted the position; I applied for it and I got it. Oh, by the way—I have to mention this—when I was a student library employee working in the ISSN unit I never went to class at all, I hardly ever went to class.
So class was sort of going out the window.
Actually that was the second stage; the first stage was I’d come into work, punch in on my timecard and go to class [laughs].
[Laughs] So you were getting paid.
I was trying… see, you know, I couldn’t figure out how to do both of these things. I didn’t have enough time to do both of these things but I still wanted… you know…
Work-study.
Yeah. So that’s when I dropped out.
We’re right at the end.
I dropped right out.
You dropped out of school...
Dropped out of school; went to work.
… and you went to work. Okay.
The end.
1970…?
The start of nineteen… I guess we’re still in seventy-nine.
[End Tape 17, Side B]
posted by epikles at 4:09 PM
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