Midnight Mutterings | Remember May 13, 1973?

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

What is the significance of that date? What were you doing on May 13, 1973? (This question isn’t appropriate for those of you who hadn’t slipped out into the air yet, or even arrived a decade earlier as you weren’t likely to have been reading the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or any other major city newspaper.)

And why am I bringing this particular date up here? Well, besides the fact I find it hard to think what to write in this column every fortnight, I recently came upon a copy of the aforementioned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and chose eventually to read what was left of it and to think of where I might have been and what was going on in my life just over a half century ago.

Thirty years ago I bought a house on the beach at Obstruction Pass here on Orcas. The house wasn’t in great shape—roof leaking in several rooms, sills rotted in the single pane windows facing the water, furniture included not so great with a bed with a big sink in the middle, side porch rotted with broken glass not keeping the rain and cold out which was entered by a very long ramp—the previous owners had some mobility issues. There was a Franklin fireplace in the living room that sucked out more heat than it shared with the room. The garage that had never been used as a garage that had rather nice windows and some wavy wallboard, and electric lights in the ceiling and a single electric outlet. No plumbing. On the water side of the house there was a small sagging deck, high off the ground. Then there was the orange carpet throughout the house everywhere except the bathroom.The carpet had crept inside probably in the seventies, just around the time the newspaper mentioned above had come into the house. Yes, the orange carpet was in the kitchen too. It must have been of excellent quality as it was in fine condition save a few burns in the kitchen. I remember thinking when I signed the purchase papers that the carpet had to go right away. (It did leave, replaced with oak flooring twenty years later.)

The house had a full basement with a ventilated fruit room. The basement was full of treasure: wonderful antique tools. Block planes of many sizes, terrifying scythes and sickles (for harvesting grain where?) hand saws of many sizes, even a double handled saw for partner-cutting down large trees. There were drills, including some electric that didn’t work, and a brace and bit that you held in place with breast plate. There were paint brushes of all sizes, some almost a foot wide with brushes soft as angels wings. The tools and brushes were in excellent condition and the basement shelves were lined with cans of carefully sorted nails, screws, bolts, washers, staples and other (I think) fasteners I couldn’t name.

Some of the wonderful tools disappeared within the year when the unlocked basement was on its own while I did medical treatment in Seattle. When I returned and got busy getting the house repaired, I ignored the basement, especially the fruit room.

Now, thirty years later I finally paid attention to the fruit room. Not much was in there. Just some old canning jars including one filled with (maybe) watermelon pickles. I haven’t been able to open the lid, so it’s still in my possession. The neighbors on either side of that house have died, but thirty years ago they told me of the couple who had lived in my house. They were much loved. Apparently they had owned a paint store which explained the brushes, but not the tools.

About a year ago, I put a worm bin in the fruit room and used some old newspapers to cover the worm bed, not bothering to look at the age of the paper. A couple of weeks ago, I finally looked at the last section remaining on the shelf of the fruit room. And I’m now so disappointed in myself as it is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer dated May 13, 2073, section D-3. An archive.

So here are some highlights of what was happening in Seattle on that date just a half century ago: On page D 10, I read about a woman who works in the Radiology Department of Providence Hospital. She works in a dark room transferring exposed x-ray film into an automatic developing machine and is responsible for keeping all the films and records straight. Her name is Mrs. Douglass Kendall and she has been on the job for about three months now that her four children are old enough for her to have spare time. Her husband taught her how to do her job. He has the same job at the University of Washington Hospital. It turns out that they met at the School for the Blind. She had been blind from birth and he was blinded in a gunpowder explosion (not explained) at age five. It turns out she does have a first name, Kendall, that is mentioned as an afterthought.

Then there is a column by Dr. Joyce Brothers about Witch Doctors and Psychiatrists and healing methods they share. Not as interesting as an advice column by David Ruben about a woman whose husband continually assaults a ‘plump little divorced girl of about 38’ in their apartment hall and then the ‘girl’ complains to his wife. Dr. Ruben suggests that the wife to tell the girl to tell the husband ’knock it off’ and maybe to consider what the wife is not doing to keep her husband satisfied so he doesn’t have to bother ‘girls in the hall.’ Further, he thinks the ‘young girl is bragging about her charms’ to the wife. Not the therapist you want in any decade.

There’s an article about the UW faculty wives club and it new officers who also have no first names other than ‘Mrs. Husband.’ And one refreshing article about how women race car drivers ‘can’t get no respect’ and are shunted into ‘powder puff’ derbies if there are enough ‘girls’ to compete. Mrs. Husband Scott and Mrs. Husband Arbini are satisfied and aren’t sure they want to race the men anyway when they get accused of cheating as their lighter body weights give them an unfair advantage.

In the eight pages of this section of the Seattle PI which seems to be the social and fashion section, i.e. women’s pages, the sexism is stunning to me even though it was my specialty (gender development) when I had one. The articles seem to go on and on about women named Mrs. Husband’s name who win awards, plan events, sit on boards and get advice from experts about how everything is their own fault. One last article suggests that you can get your husband to wear a caftan by telling him Burt Reynolds wears one.

The last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was March 17, 2009. There was an online version apparently until 2022. I’m not sure what happened to an online newsletter version after that…

Meanwhile the Equal Rights Amendment had been passed by the House and the Senate in 1972. However it had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states by the deadline of 1979. That deadline was extended to 1982. In 2030, Virginia became the final state needed, it was almost 40 years too late.

Once again in a few weeks we will elect a president, either a Black/Indian woman or a convicted male felon, who defeated the first woman candidate of a major party eight years ago — before he was convicted.

So what was I doing a half century ago when this newspaper, the esteemed Seattle PI, was published? Well, I was a graduate student at a fancy university in Northern California where I had enrolled, not wanting to become a faculty wife at a Catholic Women’s college, just a little further north. My kids were in elementary school on the campus and I had a job as a substitute teacher and a bicycle for transportation around the city. Most of the 12 students in my program were vying for the plumb job that year which was on the east coast. I had collected my data and sat my orals, but not submitted my dissertation and was the only female, so didn’t have a prayer of a chance.

So did I get the job at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville? I did, which shocked everyone, especially me as I hadn’t really applied, and enraged most. I moved part of my family across the country to get an office without a window. An office from which my chair was stolen in the first week. I remember the assistant dean cantered down the hall and into my office where I was standing at my deck. He clapped me on my back and said, ‘Keep it steady, big fellow,’ and cantered away. I taught language development and social development and traveled across the Blue Ridge Mountains once a week to help elementary teachers transition to teaching kindergarten, and tried to reassure them that free milk would not likely make the children become Communists. I was also dissertation advisor to three PhD. candidates. Did I ever learn to type well enough on a manual to finish my dissertation? I did not. Just proof that a woman would waste a perfectly good opportunity she obviously didn’t deserve. Still can’t type very well or proof my own writing as you can so clearly see. Later, I worked at Seattle Children’s Hospital which bragged it was the first hospital in the nation to have an all-women board of directors. Each board member was named ‘Mrs. Husband’s” name.

Eventually, I made my way to Orcas Island by way of Seattle and Waldron Island, and found that fifty year old newspaper thirty years later in the basement fruitless fruit room and fed most of it to the worms in the bin before I noticed the date. The worms and I are very happy here.

Do you know what you were up to around May 13, 1973? Waiting to be born counts, too.