drafted in March. We spent his last 30 days fixing the garage up
as an apartment, painting it, laying tile, so we could rent it
while he was away." He went into the Marines and he did very well.
He had a high IQ and he could type so he was soon processing the
papers for all the Marines in the West. He never did go to Korea.
When he returned from the Marines they sold the garage apartment to
the people who'd been renting it and Vernon decided to go back to
school and get a business administration degree. Nora had a job as
a secretary and he went back to working 40 hours a week in a market
while going to school.
The Ys have
always planned their life precisely. Nora worked until Vernon, Jr.
was born. Vernon got his degree and remained in the grocery
business. They moved rapidly ahead in terms of Vernon's job and in
their possession of material things.
They had
started low. "Vernon had a horrible Studebaker when we married. My
father kept it running—my father can fix anything. We kept it
until it fell apart and then we got another used car. I was working
and we had to have transportation." In 1955 they bought their first
new car, a Chevrolet, and a couple of years later they bought a
second car, an old wreck that had belonged to Vernon's grandmother;
its gearshift did not work in the lower registers and it had to be
started each time with a push. Vernon took it to work, leaving the
Chevy for Nora. By the time the second child arrived, the
grandmother's car had lost all its gears. They traded the Chevy for
a used Oldsmobile station wagon.
In 1961
Vernon had an opportunity to be a founding partner in a chain of
supermarkets in the San Francisco area. The Ys bought a new Buick
and moved to San Jose. Within a year Vernon was disillusioned. "He
came home one day, much to my shock and said he was quitting. We
had to move at once and we'd just bought a new house." Vernon moved
to Sacramento with a new company. They sold the Buick and got an
old station wagon. In his new job Vernon had the use of a company
car.
The Ys spent
what Mrs. Y calls the "happiest years of our lives" in Sacramento.
They were not, she concedes, the "best career years for Vernon,"
but they lived in a big old house and the pace was relaxed. A
daughter and another son were born. The son died in infancy. Then
the neighborhood began to change; a superhighway was built through
it, splitting off the most affluent part. The rest began to decay.
Vernon got a new job and the Ys moved to Los Angeles in 1967. "One
has to change companies to advance," Mrs. Y says, "but it was the
hardest move of my life. We were all happy there." They've kept the
house in Sacramento, which they rent out.
By the summer
of 1973 the Ys were still pursuing their carefully planned lives
but they were feeling the pressure of their upward mobile march.
Their four cars are a necessity. Mr. Y leaves home at 4 a.m. each
day and drives 35 miles to Los Angeles in his 1970 Buick Riviera.
The car, which he bought second hand, gets ten miles to a gallon in
the combination of freeway and urban driving. Mr. Y is not
satisfied with that but he and Mrs. Y agreed that it is too