Highlights Since GHS:
Like many of my peers, I suspect, I wanted to live somewhere other than Greensboro. First, I lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland during a hiatus from college. I worked as a housekeeper/nanny for two young children for six months, enjoying their lively company as well as the proximity to Washington, DC. The family was Reform Jewish but kept a kosher kitchen for the father’s Orthodox parents. It was a great experience and privilege to live as part of their family, enjoy the food and traditions, including Passover and Saturday night Sabbath. Plus, I got pretty good at housekeeping! After I left, I began a six week road trip with Mary Allegrone. She left the road trip in New York, for her summer of art history in Florence, Italy. I continued to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where I camped for a week in North Truro and further north camping in Vermont and New Hampshire. I then visited Canada, where I camped in Ste-Agathe-de-Monts for a week. I spoke no French and the other campers spoke no English. However, they kept bringing me English language magazines in order to communicate. Merci! After a final week of camping in Ontario province, I was homesick and returned to Greensboro. Several years later, following graduation from college, I moved to the San Francisco Bay area, with only $500 and no job. I did have friends there, though. Mary Allegrone was living in Oakland, and opened her home to me. I soon moved to San Francisco and lived in the Avenues for six months where I could hear the foghorns at night! It was an exciting time to live there and also a very challenging one. In addition to trying to find a full time job as a recent graduate and transplant, I had to learn about the culture of California. It was completely different from the one I grew up in. No one asked, “what do you do for a living?” Instead, the question was, “what do you like to do?” It was also the era of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, the murders of Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone and the first appearance of GRID (gay related immune deficiency), now known as AIDS. I worked at the Saint Francis Hotel for six months as a research clerk in the accounts receivable department. An unlikely hire, if ever there was one. The best part of the job was finding a lifetime friend, also named Carol, in accounts payable! But, I moved back across the Bay Bridge and worked at the University of California Press for the next three years. I was in the publicity department and helped authors get their books reviewed by newspaper, magazine and journal book editors. I took acting classes and was cast in a feminist retelling of the Oresteia. Free concerts were regularly available or, for just a couple of dollars, you could see a punk band like X or The Dead Kennedy’s. The Unification Church owned a bakery in Berkeley where I would buy delicious breakfasts and fend off invitations to visit their farm for a weekend of lovebombing. But, like my trip to Canada, I became homesick and returned to North Carolina. There’s more to the story but I won’t bore you now. Check back for further installments. LOL!
