Sunday Read: How I met My Future Wife Ruth at the Record Store
From the Personal History archives!
This is part 4 of a personal history story that breaks format of the newsletter with an origin tale. Hope you enjoy the diversion.
When last we met in this series a few weeks ago I told you how two young guys quit their jobs at a used record store in Berkeley to start their own shop in San Francisco and how it was a wild success.
But two years into it, at age 23, I decided that the retail life wasn’t for me, and I wanted to break free and pursue a career in photography. I made a deal with my partner Bruce to leave, effective August 1, and continued working through the end of July 1979. (And he kept the place going for 40 years, through 2017!)
On or about June 26, I was running the cash register and manning the Recycled Records store on Haight Street with my co-worker and family friend Gary Lambert.
A woman with short curly hair and a winning smile, who I would describe as having a New York look, a grown up in a sea of hippies, upwardly mobile gay and black clients—our usual collection of customers in the Haight district, came in and asked for help.
She had just bought a new stereo and wanted advice on records to take home. She said she liked James Taylor and Carly Simon. I was happy to oblige, and walked her through the store to the appropriate sections, suggesting that if she already had Sweet Baby James, Taylor’s breakthrough, she might like his follow-up, “Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon.” This was the disc with Taylor’s rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend” and other great songs like “Love Has Brought Me Around,” and “Hey Mister, that’s me on the jukebox.”
For Simon, I liked “Boys in the Trees,” her most recent album, which featured her cover of the Doobie Brothers song “You Belong to Me,” and a duet with then husband James on “Devoted to You,” a cover of the Everly Brothers classic.
Gary joined in with some recommendations as well, and the conversation turned lively and fun. We were performing for Ruth, throwing in comedy and music references, most of which probably went over her head, but she seemed to enjoy the experience.
Customers and the cash register called Gary back to the front, and I continued to walk Ruth around the store, which should have been lined with rock and roll memorabilia on the walls, but wasn’t. Because I was obsessed with photography, I had hundreds of prints that were begging to be shown, and we had these huge walls.
I walked Ruth through the photos, which also included my specialty at the time: hand-colored black and white prints. This was a process that went back to the early part of the 20th century, where artists would “tint” their photos by painting directly on the print. I would make huge 16x20 black and white prints, and with a toothpick and a tiny piece of cotton, apply oil paint to the photos. It was a slow, laborious process, but I enjoyed it. And I loved the way the final print looked. My goal was to take this and run with it, to move to L.A. and forge a new career photographing album covers for the rock bands of the 1980s.
At the time, when I wasn’t at the store, I was roaming around Marin County with my camera, taking black and white images to transform into wild color images in this pre-digital area. I would spend hours at the rent a darkroom in San Rafael making prints, and take them home to paint. I kept myself company with the great television of the day—All in the Family was my all-time favorite show, and I never missed The Rockford Files. I wanted to be Jim Rockford and live in a small trailer on the beach, like he supposedly did.
Beyond records, I was also obsessed with TV, and collected old TV Guides. I bought the first VCR when it went on sale. I watched Taxi, Laverne and Shirley, Barney Miller, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, reruns of I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners. I even thought it was cute to photograph the shows off the TV set and re-color the images with wild colors.
Ruth seemed intrigued by my explanation of the hand-coloring process, and we certainly were hitting it off, so I asked her to join me for dinner the next night. She accepted and agreed to meet at the store the next night.
However, she didn’t show up.
But Twinkies brought us back together.
At the time, I was a huge fan of terrible snack foods, from Twinkies to Suzy Qs, from Ho Hos to Ding Dongs. So much so that I had a bumper sticker, “Twinkie Power,” and for some dumb reason, I thought it would be cute to have it in our store window, along with old albums piled high. (What can I say?)
You’ll recall that a San Francisco supervisor, Dan White, killed the mayor, George Moscone, and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk in cold blood at City Hall in 1978. When he went on trial for the murders, his attorney’s claimed the “Twinkie Defense.” in May of 1979. It was the Twinkies that made him do it. (Diminished Capacity due to the all-sugar diet he was on.)
Dan White was given an ultra-light sentence.
At age 23, I wasn’t paying attention to current events, and should have known better than to have that bumper sticker in the window.
One of our neighbors let me know this as well, and smashed our window on June 28. I got a call to get into the store right way, called the Glass Repair shop, and stood outside the store at 8 a.m., awaiting their arrival.
Meanwhile, as fate would have it—our store happened to be directly in front of a bus stop. One in which young Ruth came to frequent for her ride downtown, where she was working as a secretary at radio station KKHI.
Was she surprised to see me in front of a store with a smashed window.
“Hey, what happened last night?” I said.
Caught, she apologized, said something came up, and promised to make it up to me.
“Great—how about tonight?” I said, as her bus pulled up.
Yes, she said, and started for the bus.
“No finking” I said. “Six o’clock!”
She promised. No finking.
The glass company arrived, fixed our window, I removed the bumper sticker (which I should have kept for sentimental reasons) and we opened for business, as usual, at 11 a.m.
At or around 6 p.m., Ruth showed up, in a black beret and tan trenchcoat. We left and headed to my car, a white Mazda Miser which had been purchased as a gift from my father in 1977.
The next question was where to eat. I didn’t have a place in mind. Neither did she. So we started driving.
We left the City and somehow ended up an hour away on the El Camino Real in the South Bay, by Palo Alto, where she had grown up, but we still couldn’t make a decision. So we kept driving.
She didn’t know anything about records. Or TV. But somehow, and this makes no sense, we clearly were enjoying talking to each other. We ended up in Santa Cruz, some 90 miles away from San Francisco (we must not have been very hungry) and ended up at a place called Suzanne’’s By the Sea.
I’d love to tell you what we ordered, but my memory can’t call that up, and Ruth doesn’t remember either. I can tell you there was an ocean view and the restaurant was everything you’d want: quiut, dark and romantic.
I can report that we went to the Boardwalk after dinner, went on the bumper cars, walked around, and kissed on the pier.
We drove back to the city, I dropped her off and we agreed to meet again.
We had several dates—at the bowling alley, breakfast by the sea in Tiburon and a visit to the July 4th Fair in San Rafael.
Thirty days later we were back together in the Mazda, heading up and down the coast and across the West on our first big Road Trip.
Sound familiar?
Want to hear about the journey, and what happened at the end of it? About how a budding photographer ended up shifting to a writing career and Ruth found journalism in Los Angeles as well? Just say the word and Part 5 will be delivered right to your inbox!
Thanks for taking the time to join me as I go down memory lane today—and to those of you who took advantage of the weekend sale for my iPhone and Pixel courses and independent journalism by being a paid supporter of this newsletter!
The sale continues through Monday with the code blackweekend. Follow this LINK to access it.
This is great! Can’t wait for part 5!
I couldn’t love this more!! You two!! 😊❤️ YES to part 5!