Jaki Jean & Remembering Foley's Downtown

This weekend, a piece of downtown Houston retail history & of my life was imploded & demolished.  The building will be forever removed from the landscape of Main Street at Lamar.

During another decade of my life, for several years, five days a week, sometimes six, I rode the elevators to the ninth floor of Foley’s in downtown Houston & then took a short elevator to the tenth floor offices & the Sales Audit Department.

The imprint left by my time working on the tenth floor of Foley’s in the Sales Audit Department has not yet diminished.  Time & aging & memory may alter that particular text, perhaps even demolish it.

But for now, I remember.

I was married during those years. 

There are few people who have known me for most of the decades of my life, outside my family, who remember me as a married lady

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But married I was during the decade that included my time at Foley’s

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My husband, Mr. Barnhill, worked in the Accounting Department & he mentioned to his boss that I was looking for a job.  She mentioned to her Divisional VP, who told the manager of the Sales Audit Department to hire me.

Now, of course – I knew nothing of the machinations behind the scenes until years later, when my manager finally hired me on as a permanent, budgeted employee.

But that is not this story.

This story is about what went on during those five or six days a week, eight hours a day, twelve hours during Christmas & the computer conversion, in the Sales Audit Department & my life.

When I joined the Sales Audit Department as Christmas help, I was the youngest person in the room.  All of the seasoned, experienced Sales Auditors were in their sixties & seventies, working on twenty years tenure.

Three of the twenty-year veterans used comptometers – Nina, Gladys & Fitzy.  The other vets, Edna & Ms. Purcell, had made the transition to calculators.

Comptometers precluded adding machines or calculators.  I was a wiz on a calculator, but the comptometer defeated me.  As did the women who used them.  They were faster than I could ever hope to be on a ten-key.

During my time with the ladies in Sales Audit, I learned how to work in an office environment, how to adapt to changing regulations & systems & equipment, how to conduct myself in the presence of upper management, & how to form lasting relationships.

And I learned the importance of emptying one’s bladder & drinking cranberry juice & never using soap on one’s face.

In those days, sales media was collected at the register, placed in a cash bag & sent upstairs to the keypunch operators.  Then keypunch sent the trays of media to the sorters & then the trays came to Sales Audit.

With each tray we received printouts of each register & dove in to try & balance each register report to the key-punched sales media.

Nina Ford trained me on balancing a tray of keypunched media to a computer printout.

And as she trained me, her fingers flying across her comptometer, she told me the story of her life.

All the other ladies of twenty year tenure complained about the fact that Nina talked to herself as she worked.  Nina always denied it, but it was true.

She was fierce, Nina Ford.  She buried two husbands.  Mr. Havard, the father of her children, & Mr. Ford.  She was pushing seventy, lived alone in a quadraplex in Montrose & rode the bus downtown to work.  On Sundays & Wednesdays, she attended Sunday School & services at Houston’s First Baptist Church.  In those days, the church was still located downtown. 

Nina hated the way I bit into a peach (apparently my method was repugnant to her) & did not want anything in her apartment that needed watering or feeding.  Except for herself.  She had two grown children & over the years at times I believed that I knew Jack Havard & his sister Jean, married to Willard.

Gladys once threw a media bag at me because I failed to find several items during my audit of that register.  It was the first & last time I totally fucked a register audit.  Gladys was one of my fiercest supporters & cheerleaders. 

Fitzy, Lucille Fitzgerald, was a widow who lived in the Heights & was an avid Eastern Star.  She was a bit grumpy, but if I sang Kenny Rogers “Lucille” to her, she smiled & her eyes twinkled.

Then there was Annie Bammel, who lived in West University with her husband Willie, who retired & went to work for a local hardware store in the Village.  Annie was born & raised in Houston – her family lived in downtown, in a wonderful old house now long forgotten.  She met Willie at the downtown drugstore, when she & friends rode the street car to check out the boys hanging outside the store.  Eventually, Willie took the streetcar to Annie’s house & asked her father permission to court her.

Purcell (I never knew her first name – she was always Purcell) sat by the entrance to Sales Audit & had control of one of four phones in the department.  She was also the keeper of the department scissors.

I credit Foley’s Sales Audit for my obsession with office supplies.  I love office supplies – especially colorful, zany, absolutely non-professional office supplies.  Purple staples, paper clips shaped like feet or hearts, colored paper clips & binders, Sharpies of every color . . . but that is another story.  Post it notes in seasonal shapes . . . neon dry markers for the dry erase board, push pins topped with shapes.  And stickers.

In the beginning of my tenure with Sales Audit, we worked in rows – we each had a simple table desk, a chair, a calculator, a pen & a pencil.  If you wanted a new pencil, you had to take your current pencil & submit it to the examination of a peer named Cindy, who determined if the pencil was still viable or if you truly needed a new one.

Finally, there was Edna, who headed up Post Sales Audit.  A mysterious part of the department – Edna & her direct reports audited the audits – tracking trends, exposing theft & graft & mayhem. 

 

Edna moved with her postman husband & four children from New York City to the East End of Houston.  She had two daughters & two sons.  And at the time I knew her, both her daughters made her a grandmother – she kept pictures of Nicholas & Amy Elizabeth on her desk.  Nicholas we saw often – a beautiful, happy, breast fed baby with thunder thighs.

Whenever I felt depressed or stressed or needed a smile, I would borrow Edna’s pictures of Nicholas & Amy Elizabeth & put them on my desk for the day. 

 

Years later, when I finally faced the fact that there was a distinct possibility that I would not give birth to a Kate, I chose Nicholas for the name of a male child I was certain the goddess would not give me.

Because Nicholas with the thunder thighs never failed to restore my soul.

Neither do either of my sons. 

Sales Audit did not participate in a Christmas or holiday celebration.  It was our busiest time of the year, extending to the end of January.  Then we had a company funded soiree.

Foley’s provided turkey, ham, roast beef, condiments, drinks, all the decorations & cutlery & everyone in Sales Audit brought a dish.  Annie Bammel always brought her bourbon balls & Nina Ford swore we all got tipsy on them.

Everyone got a birthday card in Sales Audit, picked out by Purcell & signed by all your peers.  If you had a death in the family, Sales Audit sent a condolence note.  If you had a baby, Sales Audit sent a basket of gifts for your little boy or girl.  If you got married, Sales Audit passed an envelope & Purcell chose the gift.

One year, I arrived on Monday morning with the worst sunburn of my twenty three years.  (I had fallen asleep, lying on my stomach on a beach towel at Padre Island).  It was so painful that I brought a pillow to sit on.  (Sick pay at Foley’s did not cover sun burn injury).  

The next day, all of my tenured ladies brought leaves of aloe vera plants.  And at each bathroom break, they lifted my dress & spread the aloe vera gel across my back & legs.

They did this until the burn healed.

As I mentioned previously, my husband, Mr. Barnhill, also worked at Foley’s.  He was promoted out of the Accounting department into the Internal Audit Department. And he served on the Board of Directors for the Foley’s Employee Credit Union.

We rode to & from work together.  We ate lunch together.  When I started going out to lunch with co-workers my age, he called my mother & told her I was hanging out with lesbians.  

Both my lunching co-workers were straight.  

It was a difficult time for me.  As Mr. Barnhill attended prayer breakfasts that preached the missionary position as the only position for sex, as he flooded our commute with Christian radio, & called in the only Catholic priest in the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese with exorcism experience because I obviously needed exorcising.

After all, I had gone to lunch with two co-workers.

When Mr. Barnhill was named to the BOD of the Credit Union, there were meetings after work.  So I would walk down the street from the Foley’s building to the downtown library.  

For me, libraries are always a safe haven.  I was at home, comfortable, not worrying about exorcism or the demons that apparently possessed me. 

No cell phones in those days – I relied on my Mickey Mouse watch to gauge when Mr. Barnhill would show up at the curb & pick me up.

That night, I started standing at the curb at 7:00.   I was not alone.  Children, families, women, men all stood with me.

And all climbed into cars that showed up at the curb.

It was late.  The library was closed.  Only one small group of people were waiting for a ride.  As each of them climbed into a car, my anger increased.

When the last man, woman & child entered the last car, the driver said:

It is almost ten o’clock.  May we give you a ride?

I tell him that my husband is coming, that I am all right but I don’t believe my husband is coming & I am not all right.

Then there is just me, under a tree in the yard outside the downtown library.

And a man in a t-shirt with a picture of the little bird Woodstock from Peanuts joined me.

In his hands was a dead pigeon.  He carefully pulled off each of the pigeon’s toes & then threw it in the air, crying:  Fly, little birdie, fly.  

And then he would throw the bird into the air & moan when it plummeted to the ground.

He had a sack of dead pigeons.

After the third or fourth pigeon desecration, I made up my mind to walk back toward Foley’s , check into the Lamar Hotel, call in late to work so I could buy fresh clothes with my Foley’s card & discount & get a divorce.

As I was walking toward my goal, Mr. Barnhill appeared with our vehicle.  I sincerely debated walking on.   

But I was curious, so I got in the car & asked him about the delay.

Quietly asked him about the delay.   When I ask quietly, I am beyond pissed.  It is much better to deal with a screaming, maniacal , insane Jaki Jean than a quietly beyond pissed Jaki Jean.

It turned out that Mr. Barnhill was giving spiritual counseling to a blonde named Cathy.

Nina Ford warned me about Cathy.  Nina had it on good authority from her fellow bus riders that Cathy had her sights set on Mr. Barnhill & had announced that the fact he was married did not diminish her ardor.  

On hearing that I spent time with a deranged man who descecrated pigeons because my husband was giving spiritual counseling to a blonde named Cathy, I was silent for what seemed like forever.

And then I said quietly:

This will never happen again.  Should you lose your mind & leave me alone in front of the downtown library with a deranged man obsessed with desecrating pigeons in order to give counseling to a woman who has been vocal about her intentions to end our marriage . . .

And then I was silent.

He was never late again picking me up.

 

But I began to plan my exit from the marriage.

Which included leaving Foley’s Sales Audit & my ladies.

Ironically, it was a former co-worker of Mr. Barnhill who set in motion my exit from the tenth floor of Foley’s.  Faith, whose last name eludes me, recommended me for a position with a French Offshore Company.

Foley’s offered me a transfer to any other store, a transfer to the new store in Austin.  I told my manager Diedra Ballard that I did not want to leave Houston & my family.  I just wanted to leave Mr. Barnhill.

And so I left Foley’s.  The next fall I left Mr. Barnhill. 

I learned more during my years with the ladies in Foley’s Sales Audit than I ever learned from marriage.  Except for the fact that I was never going to be marriage material.

I developed my work ethic from that group of sixty & above ladies.  I learned to value kindness & experience.  I learned to listen to their stories & appreciate the value of those stories.  I learned that I was not too young to be strong or fierce.  And that I could be strong & fierce at fifty or sixty or seventy or . . .

When I watched the implosion that leveled the sixty-five year old building at Main & Lamar, something took my breath away.

A piece of history, of my history, removed except for memory,