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Please scroll down to PART 1 to begin this series ::: ME AND MY GIRLS
I was hired at Central Arizona Light And Power Company on March 17, 1947, as a Pre-Biller. The meter readers would take the meter books scheduled to be read that day out into the field and transcribe the reads into the books for each meter and subtract the previous read from the current read. At the end of the work day the meter reader would return the books to the Pre-Billing dept. We pre-billers would use comptometers to subtract the previous read from the current read and enter the difference in the (used kilowatt hour) column. Then another pre-biller would add the used kilowatt hours to the previous meter read to see if it equaled the current meter read. Thus proving the accuracy of the figures. Then the meter book would be delivered to the Burroughs Billing Machine Room for the manual production of the customers’ bill by the billing machine operators. The placing of my desk was such that I was facing a beautiful girl named Joan Cormier who worked in the Customer Accounting Dept. She had just moved to Phoenix from Indiana. In time we became acquainted, dated and fell in love.
We ate lunch together; went to movies, lay around in Encanto Park necking; went on Saturday nights with my Mom and Stepdad to Riverside Ballroom to dance to the music of Buster Fite And His Western Playboys. Sometimes we spent more time under the table dodging beer bottles when the dancers had too much beer and got into fist fights; which was not all that uncommon. My stepdad was a big Irishman so we weren’t too afraid. Joan and I were so much alike and even said the same things at the same time; used the same toothpaste and a lot of the same toiletries. We liked the same foods. I liked her taste in clothes and she liked mine.
She lived with her parents and teenage brother in a mobile home park in the 3400 block of East Van Buren Street. Her father was totally blind. Her mother could not work because of the need to look after her blind husband. I did not own a car and did not know how to drive so we had to ride buses when we went most places. After coming back to her place at the end of a date we would go a block or two from her residence to a Vernor’s Ginger Ale joint on Van Buren. We’d order big mugs of ginger ale and dance to the music from the juke box, i.e. SOUTH, KING SIZE PAPA, MAMSELLE, DANCE BALLERINA DANCE, and such hits of the day until it was time for my bus to appear at the bus stop. There we shared a goodnight kiss and hug and I boarded the bus and she returned to her mobile home residence; the bus stop being right in front of the mobile home park.
Soon there was talk of marriage and that was what killed our love. She attended Central Methodist Church. I did not attend church but favored a certain church my grandparents attended and with which I was familiar. Her preacher had a Sunday morning service at the church and it was re-broadcast on the radio later on Sunday afternoon. I went a few of times with Joan to the Sunday morning service and listened a few times to the radio broadcast. There came a time when I could no longer stomach that preacher either at a live service or listening to the radio broadcast. I began to make excuses to her for not attending the church service. In my opinion he was a pompous, overweight, obnoxious little man. But he was well known and revered in the Phoenix area. When marriage was discussed I told her that I had no objection to being married in her church and that we would attend her church and take our children there but that I would not join her church. I told her that I was familiar with my grandparents church and that if I ever joined a church it would be that one. She immediately called me an atheist and said that under the circumstances she could not marry me. By the same token I told her that I could not marry anyone who forced me to join her church and not doing so did not make me an atheist. We broke up and I went home and locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours....luckily no one else was home. It became unbearable to have to face each other every day in the office when our desks faced each other. But it was not long before Central Arizona Light And Power Co. built their own office building at another location. We both moved into that office but she was on one floor and me on another. So we did not but rarely see each other and when we did we did not speak.
Later I started dating Juanita Ashmore who worked at the telephone company. We fell in love and were married. My friend, Jackie Ratliff, a high school friend was at mine and Juanita’s wedding and reception and afterward Jackie told me this story. She said after the reception she went to the old Palms Theater to see a movie and at intermission time she went to the ladies room and while washing her hands Joan walked in. I had introduced them on an earlier occasion. Jackie said Joan was crying and asked Jackie if she had gone to my wedding that night. Jackie told her yes and that was all there was to it. Jackie said it was a sad movie so she did not know if Joan was crying over the movie or over me getting married that night.
Joan soon left the company where we both worked and her co-workers later told me that she and her family returned to Indiana where they had come from.
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