Random memories from those early 70's

I don't know if it is age and time that blurs the memory of the early 70's years, or whether it was simply a matter than our life was really one long blur. We literally worked from 9 to 9 on a regular day and more sometimes. Time away from the office (for me) and being on the road (for Dick) was mostly for company affairs, an occasional trip (usually combined with business), and social events with the partners.

We were introduced to the 'high life' by our partners, and by the partners in the CW group. We learned what it was like to eat in the best of restaurants, go to the races, have social events in their homes and go to night spots. Money flowed easily with them and the standard procedure was to have every couple throw $100 into the hat (and remember this was the early 70's) and one person would be in charge of paying for everything. This was usually Al from the CW group. If he ran out of money, we all chipped in again.

We had some fun company events - an awards dinner and dance each year, a Christmas Party at the main office, and a company picnic in the summer. When we were in the big new office and our staff had grown, we would often bring in a large pot of stew, or home made soup into the office, with french bread and everyone would help themselves. Dick also got quite a reputation for his spaghetti and we would announce that he was serving in the local park that evening and the employees would show up with their families.

We tried to be good bosses, and were quite flexible with work hours, only asking that they got their job done to the best of their ability. We put a washer and dryer in the main office, so that the working moms and wives could bring in their washing and do it there.

Dick mentioned that I made a trip to Oklahoma City to try and secure the financing on our proposed Oklahoma motel. That actually had some amusing angles to it. To begin with, I was treated royally by the Bank - eating lunch in the private lounge for VIPs only, but I was really out of my league on some of the terminology of getting loans. This had always been done by Don Geary and he himself was not able to do this one and wasn't too happy that Dick had sent me instead of doing it himself. Things were going well until the banker brought up the requirement of a corporate guarantee on the loan (meaning that the corporation would back up the loan as well as having a lien on the property itself). I understood that what he was wanting was a personal guarantee from the owners themselves and I knew that they wouldn't go for this, so I kept arguing the fact and basically thanked the man for his time, and started to leave. He suddenly gave in and gave us the loan without the corporate guarantee, which was the first loan we had ever been able to get like this. Needless to say, Don Geary was impressed!!! If he had only known!.

Having Bill, Frances and the boys come back there was great for me. It was the first time I had family around me for many a year and I learned to cherish that part of it.

The memories actually flood in, but most of them would not hold the reader's interest as they would mine - and to be honest some are quite personal in nature and therefor not able to be told. By that I mean mostly about some of the employees. We tried to be as much help to them as possible, and sometimes got involved more than we would have liked. We ended up playing marriage counselors, financier for some family issues, detective for a partner in his familyproblem, and an advocate for others. Our 'family' was a major part of our life. We baled people out, and put some in jail.

Only one wife of our partners are alive now, and many of our employees have left us. Each Christmas seems to bring one card less. A thousand faces can be recalled, and a lot of names, although we struggle with most of them now. But they are all part of the memories of Dick's and my early life together.