ON THE STREETS WHERE I'VE WORKED

My very first job was with H.M. Newhall & Co. insurance agency on Market Street just off of First Street in San Francisco.  I went to a map and a surface street picture.  The building where I worked is still there, but it’s much changed from when I worked there and looks nothing like it did 65 years ago, so I opted for no picture for that one.

Across Market Street First Street becomes Battery Street and after a block, Battery Street crosses Pine Street and 160 Pine Street on the corner of Pine & Battery seen in this picture is where I worked for Continental Insurance Company.  Actually, when I first started working for them the name was a combination of two different insurance companies: Loyalty Group and America Fore, and the name of the newly formed company was America Fore Loyalty Group which sounded rather patriotic.  The name Loyalty Group was especially significant because my Mom & Dad had worked and met while working for Loyalty Group in the late 1930s, and here I was now working, in part, for the same insurance company.  One of the VIPs of the new merged company had worked for Loyalty Group and remembered both my Mom & Dad as she’d been my Mom’s supervisor at the time, and when I told her who I was, she welcomed me into the company personally.  Rather neat.

I worked for Continental Insurance Company on Pine Street for three years, then transferred to their Oakland office which was a little closer to home – at least on the same side of the bay.

I commuted to work in San Francisco via the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  This was the bridge on the east (Oakland) side of Yerba Buena Island back then.  It has since been torn down & replaced by a modern, more earthquake-proof bridge.

And this was the bridge on the west (San Francisco) side of Yerba Buena Island.  I kind of missed commuting on the bridge when I was working in Oakland.  Interesting things happened on the bridge sometimes.  But the shorter commute to Oakland was nice though we did run into stalls on the freeways there too.  I used to knit on the bus to and from work.  If we got stuck in traffic, it just meant I’d get more rows done. J

Continental’s office in Oakland was on Webster Street just a half block up from 20^th Street – very convenient to the Kaiser Center on 20^th Street where I ate lunch in their cafeteria often and either shopped in their small mall – mostly in Joseph Magnin’s when they were having a sale, or I’d go for a walk in their rooftop garden over the parking garage – a particularly lovely way to spend a lunch hour.

Part of Kaiser’s roof garden

I went back after a few years to work in the San Francisco office again for a while, but returned to Oakland for the last year of my employment with them which ended when I married and moved off to the woods & mountains to raise a family.

I first went back to work in 1978 as the receptionist for Yosemite Union High School on Road 426 in Oakhurst, CA. when my husband was transferred to the U.S. Forest Service Bass Lake District office in Oakhurst.  This picture of part of the campus was obviously taken on a day I wasn’t working.  It was a Saturday and I was showing my mother-in-law the school where I worked.  It was a beautiful campus with a number of individual buildings set on a hillside.  It was a whole new concept.  Walls between classes in each building did not go all the way to the ceiling – only partially such as in present day office buildings.  The divider walls were insulated, however, so the noise level was low.  There were classrooms in the building where my office was and I remember one day it started snowing outside which was somewhat unusual for Oakhurst.  Someone in the office looked out a window and said “Oh look, it’s snowing!” and all of a sudden there were heads popping up over the tops of room dividers all over the place – everyone laughing & looking at the snow & students waving back & forth to each other for a moment until teachers urged them to sit back down and all was quiet once again.  It was a rather neat moment that couldn’t have happened in a standard school building with floor-to-ceiling walls.

And then my husband was transferred to Groveland.

My youngest child was ten years old in 5^th grade when I began working again – as Director of Music at her elementary school.  In fact all three of my children were going to school there, so the job was perfect.  This was at Tenaya Elementary School in Groveland on Highway 120 – the Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite National Park.  I managed to get a picture of highway 120 at the turnoff into the school.

Too bad the sign wasn’t visible in the highway picture.

I worked at Tenaya (pronounced Tenigha) School for a while, then began a music program at the elementary school in Chinese Camp and taught music there for a time.

Chinese Camp School on Red Hills Road in Chinese Camp, CA.

When Chinese Camp school lost funding for their music program (!!!), I went to work for the County School’s Office in Sonora off Stockton Street. (The black car there is heading up toward the building.)  Unfortunately I didn’t get along well with the gal I worked for, so I was only there a few months.  Oh well.  I was ready to retire for good anyway.  It left me time to pursue several hobbies I hadn’t had time for like writing and getting involved in small community acting productions and other fun things.

And thus ended, finally, my days of working on the streets – so to speak. J

:->

La Nightingail

P.S.

Oops - the other prompt pic' I was supposed to use.  Oh well.