After the Honeymoon (Part 2)

Judy and I set up housekeeping and started to think about money.  Our plan (such as it was) was simple.  I'd taken my pay for teaching at Corsicana High School over 12 months instead of 9, so I'd be getting a check for each of the summer months.  In September, I'd be a teaching assistant and North Texas State University (as it was called in those days), so I'd be getting paid.  But not much.  I've forgotten what the salary was, but it was a pittance.  Our plan was for Judy to get a job to take up the slack.  She was a graduate of Baylor University with a business degree (in economics).  How hard could it be to find a job?

Pretty hard, as it turned out.  Once again we looked in the newspaper's classified ads.  You might not be surprised to learn that there weren't a lot of job openings for young college-educated women.  It surprised us, anyway, but it shouldn't have.  Denton at that time was still a small town with very little industry and very few job opportunities.  However, we did find learn that a new company was going to relocate to Denton from California, and there were job openings.  Judy called up and got an interview.  Here's another surprise.  The interviewer wanted to talk to both of us.  To this day I have no idea why.  So we went to the interview together.

Surprise number three was that the only job openings for a young woman of any education at all was as a secretary.  Judy could type and file and do anything they needed.  The interviewer seemed a little embarrassed that it was the best he could offer.  We didn't see the possibility of her getting a better job, and we were going to be in town for only a year, so she accepted.  It turned out that until the rest of the employees moved to town, the man who interviewed her (or us) was going to be her boss, and that was fine with us.  We both liked him, and things went well for several months.

Then the rest of the employees came to Denton and Judy and her boss moved out to the big new building on the edge of town.  That's then things started to go downhill.  The main problem was that everybody who came from California to Denton hated the place.  They thought they'd been transferred from Paradise to Hell.  It was a toxic workplace before that term was invented.

Things were going okay for Judy, though.  She was great at her job, and her boss was going to move her up to a position with more responsibility.  I can't remember what it was, but she'd be more than a secretary.  It didn't happen, however.  The California contingent decided that a man needed to be put into that job, so they hired someone else and left Judy where she was.  All I remember is that the man's name was Doug and that Judy thought he was more or less incompetent.  She wound up doing most of his work along with hers, and after the first week she never referred to him by his actual name again.  Instead of "Doug," she always called him "that Doug."  You'll just have to imagine the thin edge of contempt that outlined the words.

By that time we still had about six months to live in Denton, and although six months seemed like a long time at our age then, Judy decided that she could stick it out.  The pay wasn't bad, and since the plant was so close to our apartment, she could drive home for lunch.  I'd leave the Auditorium Building, where the English Department was housed, and walk the two blocks to home so we could eat together.  

Often I'd stop at Griff's Burger Bar on the way to the apartment and pick up two of the 15 cent hamburgers Some days they'd have a special, and I could get two burgers for a quarter.  We'd eat burgers and watch TV on our little B&W 19-inch set.  Let's Make a Deal came on at 12:30, and that was a staple of our TV viewing.  After the Big Deal of the Day, Judy would go back to work, and I'd grade papers or do my reading or write a paper or work on my thesis.  I'm sure I did a lot schoolwork, but the one thing I remember doing most was translating old English.  That was tough.   Sometimes I'd do the washing or clean up the apartment.  Or, on a good day, I'd walk downtown to the Fultz Newsstand and buy a paperback book or two or three.  The photo is of me in a typical pose.

And that's how our first year went.  After I finished my thesis in the summer of 1966, it was time to move to Austin.