Home at Last!

A Season of Seeking

(circa 1968 – 1970)

The long-anticipated day finally came: January 18, 1968. Our household items were packed up and shipped out (compliments of the Army), our car was packed and all we had to do was wait for Bill to get his discharge and we would finally bid a not-so-fond adieu to Fort Hood and Killeen, Texas.

It was pouring down rain that morning and Bill was dressed up in his Class A uniform as he drove to the base for the final time. After getting all his paperwork signed, he raced home, ran into the house, changed into his civilian clothes, wadded up his rain-soaked uniform and threw it into the trunk of the car. We were finally on our way HOME – to Burbank, California – to family and friends and church and Bob’s Big Boy and the beach and…well…everything we loved.

It was a 20-hour drive and we made it there in 22 hours, stopping only for food, gas and a short nap. The Burbank city limit sign never looked so sweet and being in the arms of our waiting family and friends never felt so wonderful.

And so, it was time to start life again.

After two weeks living with Bill’s parents we moved into our new apartment. Bill got his old job back at Lockheed, working the “graveyard shift” (12:30 to 7:00 am) and so began a new phase of our life.

A NEW JOB

I, on the other hand, had to look for a new job – and I found one back at the corner of Hollywood & Vine. This time it was in the famous round Capitol Records Tower building. I was a Senior Clerk Typist in the Manufacturing & Engineering Dept. Eventually I was promoted to Administrative Secretary. After several years a position opened up as the Forms Control Specialist. I had my own little office on the 7th floor that had a birds’ eye view of the iconic Hollywood sign and was pretty much my own boss. I got to work with every department in the company, designing, typesetting and paste-up of all the business forms within the company.

My office was filled with all kinds of old-school graphic machines and materials. Besides an array of drafting pens, Xacto knives and a giant, fume-filled, headache-inducing bottle of rubber cement, I had a light table and waxing machine. Being that there were no computers in those days, I also used an IBM Selectric Composer for typesetting and a Photo Typositor to make headline type.

The Photo Typositor was this monster of a machine that I named “Igor”. It had a camera and several different solutions for developing the typeset images on strips of photographic paper. I would have to hang up these strips to dry before I could cut it them up to glue onto a document. I was in my element and loved every minute of my job!

A CAPITOL RECORDS CHRISTMAS

Capitol Records was a great place to work. Every year at Christmas we had a door decorating contest. One year I decorated my door with a “12 Days of Christmas” theme. I made a huge pear tree that not only covered my door, but also the entire wall outside my 7th floor office, floor to ceiling. I made all the characters: a partridge, French hens, lords a’ leaping, ladies dancing, all the way up to 12 drummers drumming and, of course, 5 golden rings.

Then one night I stayed late in the office and after everyone had gone home, I sneaked upstairs and added some branches of my tree “growing” up from the floor of the 8th floor. Then I sneaked downstairs and made some roots “growing” down from the ceiling of the 6th floor. A photo and write-up of my creation made it into the Capitol Records employee newsletter Vibrations, and yes, I won First Place.

BAKING & SEWING

It was during this season of my life that my love for baking flourished and baking is what I did. Of course Bill was the recipient of my baking but I also brought the bounty into work and became affectionately known as the “7th Floor Bakery”. Whenever I brought goodies into the office, I would put up a sign at the coffee station: “7th Floor Bakery Is Open” and enjoyed the happy smiles from my co-workers as they came to my desk and savored the fruits of my labor. Whenever someone’s birthday came around, I baked birthday cakes.

One day when I came into the office there was a present on my desk. Everyone had gotten together and bought me a cake decorating set. My cakes then became works of art (albeit amateur efforts, as I never pursued any formal training).

There was a guy in the office who was always playing jokes on people so when his birthday came around, I played one on him. I found a cake-shaped box and did a beautiful decorating job on it complete with candles and “Happy Birthday, Steve” written on it. Everyone was admiring the cake as he blew out the candles. Then he took the knife and began to cut the “cake”. Ummm, there was something very, very wrong. He tried to cut it again and began to realize that this was a very – tough – cake. He was obviously trying to be nice about the situation but had no idea how to handle it, his distress painfully evident. Finally, feeling very sorry for him, I broke out laughing and brought out the real cake.

It was also during this time that my sewing flourished too. I spent countless hours perusing patterns and shopping for fabric and trim and buttons and zippers and, as a result, increased my wardrobe exponentially. I was glad that Bill worked all night long because there were times when I decided I would like a new outfit to wear the next day. So I would come home from work at 6:00 pm with a new pattern and fabric and by the time he got home at 7:30 the next morning, voila! I had a new outfit to wear that day. Of course, the day would be spent not only wearing my new outfit to work, but also fighting to stay awake.

BACK AT CHURCH

It was also during this period of our lives that we began to get very, very active in our church. It was so good to be back with our friends and family and way of life. Our time in Texas had been like a journey in the wilderness, rarely going to church, let alone being active in one. Now we were back and we began making up for lost time.

I became a leader in Pioneer Girls and worked with junior high girls. I also served on the Nominating and Hospitality Committees and sang in the choir and in a women’s trio. Bill was a leader in Boys’ Brigade and was elected the youngest Deacon the church had ever had. We were also leaders in the high school youth group.

But our favorite endeavor was being leaders in our Young Married Sunday School group. This was our wonderful circle of friends. We became so close to these couples and had so much fun together. By that time we had bought our first house (Bill’s parents’ house – for $25,000!). It had a pool and was a perfect place to have our group over for pool parties – and that we did.

Late one Saturday night some of us sneaked over to another couple’s house with a big roll of butcher paper and masking tape, and proceeded to “gift wrap” their little car – completing our work of art with a giant bow. Trying vainly to be quiet, we stifled our laughter as we tripped over each other in the dark, loudly “shushing” each other. Apparently we didn’t rouse them because the next morning at church we innocently looked at each other as they described the surprise that had greeted them that morning when they tried to leave for church. (Ummm, they were a little late, having to unwrap their car.)

KNOWING ABOUT … OR KNOWING

Our group was also a safe place for us to be real with each other and we were free to pour out our hearts. We didn’t always fit in with the church’s straight-laced culture but that’s where a genuine love for Jesus began to germinate and take root in our hearts.

Little did we know where the journey of that love would lead us.

Bill and I were born into Christian homes and raised in the church. We knew Bible stories and were experts in finding verses in the Bible. In fact, I often was the winner of “Bible Drills” (contests to see who could be the first to find certain scriptures) and my memory verse ribbon was full of award stickers. We did all the right things (well, mostly), knew the program and behaved accordingly. We fit religious expectations quite well (except for when we ate crunchy Corn Nuts in church).

John 5:39-40 in The Message says: “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.”

We knew so much about the Bible and were so busy working for God in our church, we totally missed the point: we missed the person of Jesus! There is a HUGE disparity between religion and a genuine love for and relationship with Jesus – between knowing about Jesus and knowing Him. We were just beginning to discover that immense, life-changing revelation. And so began our “Season of Seeking”.