21 - Looking for Jobs with an Ex-Con

              In 1978, Bruce and I arrived in Boulder, Colorado.

              We were low on funds and needed to find some income. So on the morning of October 19, 1978, we bought a paper and looked for jobs. But not before we picked up a hitchhiker:

              Went to Neo-Data to be mail sorters. There we met Brenda, an 18-year-old ex-con who had hot wired a van to transport 200 lbs. of cocaine. She was into dogs, mountains, travel, chugging vodka, and jokes. She asked the woman interviewer for her job, for as it turned out, there were no mail sorter positions left.

              We went on with Brenda, the irrepressible hitchhiker, to Wendy’s. Branda gave the manager shit for not seeing us soon enough, so we left there. We dropped Brenda off at her home; she invited us to smoke drugs, but we declined. Went to “Job Service” for pine beetles but yelled “Hamburgers.”

              Yes, I wrote that last sentence, but have no idea what it means. Perhaps I got a contact high from Brenda?

              From there, Bruce and I went to an even less upscale Boulder establishment:

              Went to the Bustop[i] – casino/bar/topless joint. Huge bouncers. Topless dancers. Hooting crowd. Hassle with sheriff. We filled out applications for bartenders and spoke with Mike, who told us about blackjack dealing classes and then asked us if we were interested in being bottomless male dancers on “Ladies’ Night.” All options are open. Mike, big bear of a man, crushed our hands in his paw. Very friendly, despite his size. 

              Having enough job hunting for one day, we went back to the hostel and crashed, to resume our search the next day. 

              From October 20, 1978: 

              Went to nursing home. They would take no jive. They’d have us, but the don’t like training people who leave after a few weeks. I felt guilty.

              (But not so guilty that we didn’t routinely fill out job applications with false names of references, such as the bass player and drummer from the German jazz-funk band “Passport.”)

             Went into Bean & Spirits Factory, new Mexican restaurant/bar. They needed nerds. [When I worked as a busboy at Victors in Ann Arbor, we adopted the dubiously gender-neutral noun “busnerds” after hiring a female busser.] We called later and got jobs. Start tomorrow at the grand opening.

              We joyously celebrated our new-found employment. 

              First, we test-drove mopeds, which became a regular theme while we were in Boulder.

               We went to bars:

              Everyone parties on Friday afternoon. Whoopee! Went to Harvest House. All outside, umbrellas, Hurricane [cocktails], millions of people. TV crews there filming a drinking contest between Colorado and Nebraska before their football game. Went from there to “’Round the Corner,” a new-fangled bar with telephones at the tables.

              Heard cool country music in the Alferd Packer Memorial Grill: [ii]

In 1968, students at the University of Colorado Boulder named their new cafeteria  grill 

the "Alferd G. Packer Memorial Grill", with the slogan, "Have a friend for lunch!" 

I took this photo in 2018. “Memorial” has since been dropped from the name, but see 

behind Alferd's left shoulder the name "El Canibal, Mexican Specialties."

              
            We clumsily flirted:

              Lunch at Herbie’s. I told the waitress not to consent to marry until Bruce asked her. We later returned there, briefly. The waitress rolled her eyes at seeing me, but then smiled and waved. W bought a frozen Snickers bar. We left and talked to two girls at a movie ticket booth about me being an eccentric chocolate magnate.

Bruce "W" Weil in Boulder, 1978. Future husband of Herbie's waitress?

              And caroused:

              Went to Krazy Kollege Klub and heard a cool rock band. Kind of punk, but good rock. Van Halen, Zeppelin, Who. Good singer, great wild drummer, decent lead. Danced a bit with a girl who worked at Dixie Cream Donuts. 

               We finally went back to the hostel where we talked with our ex-roommates in Ann Arbor. I also tried to make some chess moves with my friend Mike, but “The operator gave us shit about giving codes over the phone.”

              My former roommate Mike and I were playing long-distance chess. We would convey chess moves by making pretend person-to-person phone calls, to avoid paying long distance charges. We used old-school chess “descriptive notation” as follows: “Hello operator, I would like to place a person-to-person call to Mike Hooven at extension P-QB4.” (Pawn to queen’s bishop, square 4)         

              Mike would always deny he was there to save us the phone charges, but by then he would have had my move. I would later call him from a pay phone to take his response, whereupon he would say something like, “Professor Hooven is not here, but you may be able to reach him at extension NxQB3.” (Knight takes queen’s bishop’s pawn) It was cumbersome, but effective.

Studying chess at the Boulder library.

              After all that celebration, we crashed. We would be starting our new jobs at Bean & Spirits the next day, and I briefly wondered if Brenda would be one of my co-workers. Wasn’t her, but there was somebody else we knew. 

              Next: Bean and Spirits, 1441 Pearl Street Mall, Boulder, Colorado.

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[i]              Yes, it was spelled that way. This controversial Boulder institution was open until the summer of 2018, closing with a big party just before I arrived this fall.

[ii]             If you aren’t familiar with Alferd Packer, it is surprising that a university eatery was named after him, and more astonishing that it remains true today – as Packer was a cannibal. He confessed to eating the flesh of others in his expedition, after they failed to survive travel through a mountain pass during the harsh winter of 1874. Packer was later convicted of killing these companions, and served 40 years in prison, where he reportedly converted to vegetarianism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alferd_Packer

Photo credits: Bruce Weil's collection except for (1) Bustop and Boulder Spoke, my collection; (2) Bruce in Jet hat, Katharine Kaufman; (3) Alferd Packer Grill, me 2018; (4) Passport sketch, me, 1977; (5) chessboard, Wikipedia.