Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (5)

 One of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers whose tapes of social or case histories and correspondence I would sometimes transcribe and type-up during my work day was a culturally-straight-looking white woman who seemed to be in her 40's, wore glasses all the time and was someone whom most men at that time would likely have considered not particularly attractive on either a physical or personality level.

So many decades later, I can't recall ever having exchanged more than a few words with her, whenever she appeared near my desk to either drop a tape to be transcribed in a basked or to pick up a typed transcription of one of her tapes, during the time I worked at Travelers Aid-International Social Services [ISS].

All that I recall about this particular social workers is that, despite being a conventionally married woman, her husband was then working in some southern U.S. city, Monday to Friday, while she worked in Manhattan at Travelers Aid-ISS, Monday to Friday. And apparently, the only time they slept together as husband and wife was when her husband would fly up to New York City for the weekend or when she would fly down South for the weekend.

And I remember thinking that it seemed that she and her husband's apparent desire to have a more affluent and conventional middle-class standard of living had led them to develop the kind of long-distance marriage relationship that most women I had previously known would not have found very emotionally or sexually satisfying.

The second Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, for whom I helped transcribe tapes and type-up social and case histories, was a more culturally-hip-looking white woman with shortly-cut dark brown hair, who seemed to be in her early 30's, whom most men at that time would have likely considered physically attractive and "pretty."

But although this woman social worker was the only woman in the Travelers Aid-ISS office who then wore a pants suit, rather than a dress or shirt, to work, she never indicated any interest in ever chatting with either me or any of the other transcription-typists, when she either dropped her tapes into the transcription-typist pool baskets or picked up the typed pages of her dictations that we all produced for her.

Apparently, she then had either a husband or a boyfriend. But since I can't recall ever exchanging any words with her, there's really nothing else I can now recall about her, so many decades later.

The third Travelers Aid-ISS social worker for whom I transcribed tapes was a white woman, with light brown hair, from some Scandinavian country, who seemed to be in her 40's, whom most men at that time would likely have still considered "pretty" and physically attractive. Apparently, she had ended up working in the USA for Travelers Aid-ISS in the 1970s because she had married a white middle-class or upper middle-class man from the USA, whom she had met in Europe after World War II who wished to bring her back with him to live in the USA as his wife.

After having some children and raising them at home while her husband went to work during the 1950s and 1960s, this social worker from Scandinavia, who still spoke English with a slight Scandinavian accent, had returned to the work world in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Although the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker from Scandinavia always came to work in the office wearing a dress or skirt and blouse, rather than slacks or a pants suit, and still used lipstick and makeup in the mid-1970s, she was still the only other person in the Travelers Aid-ISS office who then seemed to be some kind of a socialist in her political beliefs other than myself. Probably because she had grown up within a social democratic-led Scandinavian country and because her parents had likely voted Social Democratic party candidates and raised her to be a socialist in her political views?

Also perhaps because, besides being personally happy with her life and family situation in the USA, she was a socialist, the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker from Scandinavia was the only social worker there who noticed I likely would then have preferred to be earning my economic survival money by having a job other than the dictaphone-transcriptionist/typing job I had in the Travelers Aid-ISS office?

Because a month or two after I had been working at Travelers Aid-ISS and, as my hair grew longer, I had begun to reveal myself as being some sort of a hippie-freak, she stopped by my work desk and suggested to me, in a friendly, slightly Scandinavian accent, that I look into the possibility of trying to get some work during the summer on one of the New England-based fishing boats, that she had learned were looking to hire some men, like myself, who were in their 20's, that summer.

Although I expressed my thanks for her thoughtful suggestion and admitted that a job on a New England-based fishing boat for the summer would, indeed, be considered by me to be a more interesting work world situation than the job I then had at Travelers Aid-ISS, I also indicated that I was still reluctant to yet move out of New York City in the mid-1970s and give up my relatively low-rent apartment.

But, aside from having this particular conversation with this third Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, whose dictated tapes I helped transcribe, about possible job openings on New England-based fishing boats in the mid-1970s, I don't recall anything more about this social worker from Scandinavia. 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (4)

 So many years later, I can only vaguely recall three of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers whose case histories and correspondence I transcribed. And I can also only vaguely recall the contents of the dictaphone tapes I transcribed each day in a general way.

But what I do recall less vaguely is a fourth Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, whose case histories and correspondence I also transcribed, whom I did come to know a little better outside of the office workplace, during the time I worked at Travelers Aid-ISS in the mid-1970s.

The post-1965 escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam had, by the mid-1970s, produced large numbers of orphaned Vietnamese children in South Vietnam. And, by the 1970s, some of these orphaned children of the cities in South Vietnam, that were still then-controlled by the U.S. government-armed and funded Thieu regime, were being housed in South Vietnamese orphanages affiliated in some way with some U.S.-based religious or missionary organizations, that had been involved in "humanitarian relief projects" in South Vietnam; at the same time hundreds of thousands of U.S. military troops had been waging war in rural South Vietnam against South Vietnamese National Liberation Front [NLF] guerrillas, and the South Vietnamese civilians who had supported the NLF, for many years.

In addition, besides housing some of the South Vietnamese children whose parents had been killed by either the U.S. military or the troops of the U.S. government's puppet regime in South Vietnam during the many years of war, the South Vietnam orphanages were also housing some of the babies given birth to by the South Vietnamese women whom some of the U.S. GIs sent to South Vietnam had knocked-up while stationed or on leave in South Vietnamese cities like Saigon. Before these U.S. GIs were either killed or wounded in battle returned back home to the USA.

Because some of these babies were half-white, some of the culturally-straight, usually conventional middle-class or upper middle-class, U.S. white couples who wanted to become adoptive parents, but preferred to adopt a half-white infant or child, rather than an African-American infant or child born in the USA, were the adoptive parents to whom Travelers Aid-ISS provided some of these half-white orphaned or abandoned Vietnamese infants or children.

Apparently, by mid-1970s the number of U.S. white couples in the USA wishing to only adopt a white infant or white child then exceeded the supply of orphaned or abandoned U.S.-born white infants or white children then available for adoption.

Hence, the half-white/half-Asian orphaned or abandoned Vietnamese infants or children being housed in some of the South Vietnam city orphanages, who were then being placed by Travelers Aid-ISS with white U.S. adoptive parents apparently were used to provide one way of responding to the shortage of available U.S.-born white infants or white children then existing for white couples in the USA who weren't willing to consider adopting an orphaned or abandoned African-American infant or child.

Transcribing and typing up the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers' case reports or social histories, I couldn't help noticing that, during the 1970s at least, the culturally-straight, usually middle-class or upper-middle class U.S. white couples who adopted South Vietnamese orphaned or abandoned children and infants usually all then changed the first names of the children they adopted from their Vietnamese language-sounding original names into more common English/U.S. language-sounding first names; whether or not the child they were adopting was born of two South Vietnamese parents or of a South Vietnamese woman who some white U.S. GI had knocked-up while on leave, before returning to the States.

By the time the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers were taping the social histories and case histories of the prospective adoptive parents, which I transcribed and typed up, the couples who were not considered culturally-straight enough or economically secure enough to be then seen as appropriate adoptive parents seemed to have been already rejected or screened out by social workers of other agencies. Because I can't recall ever typing up a case history or social history related to an adoptive parents couple and the child that was being adopted in which any of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers expressed any negative concerns about whether or not the adoptive parents couple would make good parents for the child they were adopting.

If the South Vietnamese child or infant being adopted had some physical disability or developmental problems, the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker would make reference to the disability in that particular child's case history. But the content of case histories and social histories that the Travelers Aid-ISS tapes which I transcribed mostly consisted of a final summary of all the facts which demonstrated in a detailed, conclusive way how the best interests of the particular South Vietnamese orphan or abandoned infant or child were, indeed, being served by moving forward with the adoptive process.

In addition, the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers also seemed to be involved in doing at least one follow-up visit to the homes of the U.S. adoptive couples with whom they had placed a South Vietnamese child or infant; in order to confirm that the adoption had worked out well. Since I also  vaguely recall transcribing tapes in which the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers briefly summarized how well the adoption had worked out, as evidenced by what they had observed in their follow-up visits. 

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (3)

The last of the three other dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists working in the Travelers Aid-ISS dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist pool was also another woman in her 20's who apparently had also moved to New York to find office work, from some other city or town in the USA.

But, unlike the white culturally-straight woman from Scranton, PA., she was a short-haired woman of Native American background, who likely would have been considered neither physically unattractive nor physically attractive by most men of her age in that decade. But her sarcastic way of relating to men like myself in the office, whenever she responded to some remarks she had had heard me make (in the rare general office conversation that happened during the few times when the baskets weren't overload with tapes of case histories and social worker correspondence to be transcribed), seemed to indicate, though, that she distrusted men for some reason; and that she was more personally unhappy with her current personal life situation, in general, than any of the other women workers in the office.

Yet after a few weeks of occasionally chatting with the woman of Native American background and realizing that (despite her identifying herself as a Native American who seemed to resent the fact that Native Americans were still being discriminated against in the USA in the 1970s), she wasn't into being a supporter of the American Indian Movement [AIM] or any other liberation movement in the USA or elsewhere and also seemed too self-centered in her personality, I concluded that, even if I had felt an interest in asking her out to lunch for a date, it was likely that she would feel there was no real basis for socializing with me outside of the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace office.

The only other office workers who did some typing that I can recall from my days working at Travelers Aid-ISS were two typists sent in from a temp agency; after the pile of ISS social worker reports and correspondence in the dictaphone-typist pool's basked which needed to be transcribed or typed grew so high that the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel director needed to call in a request for some temps to the temp agency she sometimes used to obtain temp workers.

One of the temp typists was a white man who seemed to be in his late 40s or early 50s, with slightly-graying hair, whose temp assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS lasted for about three or four weeks. He apparently lived rent-free in a residential building somewhere in Manhattan's midtown or upper east side, which he had inherited from his parents, whose family had purchased the small brownstone building before the neighborhood's block had turned into a white upper and white upper-class residential neighborhood.

So prior to registering with the temp agency which assigned him to work temp at Travelers Aid-ISS, he didn't seem to have felt much economic pressure to find himself a straight 9-to-5 permanent job; perhaps because, prior to the post-1969 economic recession deepening in New York City by the mid-1970s, he may have possibly been able to obtain money by renting out one of the follors of the brownstone he had inherited.

But apparently the impact of New York City's economic decline in the early 1970s was being felt enough by him so, despite his rent-free personal situation, he still felt the need to pick up some extra money by doing temp work?

The late 40 to early 50-year-old white male temp typist at Travelers Aid-ISS had a straight-looking short haircut and was beardless. But although he didn't seem artistic-oriented, interested in current events and the 1970s U.S. and world political scene or intellectual, and did seem non-rebellious, after his first day as a temp worker at Travelers Aid-ISS, he no longer came to work dressed in a suit and tie. And, like me, he just came to work dressed more casually, wearing neither a tie nor a sport jacket.

When I noticed the pile of typing to be done inside our dictaphone typist office pool's basket was starting to increase, I advised this white male typist in his late 40s or 50s to try to stretch out the length of his temp assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS by working more slowly. But although he had hoped to collect more temp agency paychecks from his Travelers Aid-ISS temp job for a few weeks longer, he apparently was still too new at working at temp jobs to take my advice; and once there was no more work for the temp to do at Travelers Aid-ISS he disapppeared from the scene, after about three or four weeks.

The second temp office worker who appeared at the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace while I worked there was a tall Black woman with an Afro hairstyle, and a gold tooth in her mouth, who lived in a Harlem apartment.

But after only one week working on her temp assignment at the Travelers Aid-ISS office, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager signed her temp time sheet on Friday afternoon and told her that the temp assignment had ended and she would no longer be needed to work at Travelers Aid-ISS in the following weel.

Because I had chatted with the African-American woman temp a few times during the wook in the office, she started to chat with me on the Manhattan street after we left the East Side building in which the Travelers Aid-ISS office was located, and walked towards the different subway stop stations we used to commute home.

Apparently, the Travelers Aid-ISS white female personnel manager had accused her of taking too much time on her breaks and lunch hours and not working fast enough. But the African-American woman temp in her late 20s or early 30s felt the real reason her temp assignment at the Travelers Aid-ISS was ending was because of racial bias; and she expressed anger at the assignment ending.

I agreed with her that, since this particular Travelers Aid-ISS workplace didn't seem to employ any Black clerical workers (except maybe the office worker who was the mailroom clerk) or any Black social workers in the 1970s, it was likely that the white middle-class female personnel manager's racial bias had led to the temp job assignment ending.

But, after stopping to converse with each other on the street for about 10 minutes, we both concluded that, unless her temp agency stopped giving her new assignments because Travelers Aid-ISS had ended her assignment after just one week, it made more economic sense for her to just call the temp agency and get assigned to report to a different workplace during the following week. Since there was a possibility that, in the short-run,  if she complained now to her temp agency about Travelers Aid-ISS's racial bias, she would then be seen as a "troublemaker by her temp agency; and the temp agency, itself, would start going out of its way, in a racially-biased way, to avoid giving her temp work assignments with any of the temp agency's other clients.

After our 10-minute sidewalk chat, I felt somewhat physically and intellectually attracted to the African-American temp woman worker whose assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS had just ended. But, not knowing whether or not she was already now involved in a relationship with another person, not wanting to use the fact that I had provided a sympathetic ear for her to vent her anger at the temp assignment ending so suddenly at Travelers Aid-ISS as a means of getting her inclined to feel willing to exchange phone numbers with me, and not feeling any vibe from her indicating she wanted me to ask her out for a date, I didn't ask her for one.

So although I felt attracted to her somewhat, I quickly decided that she would likely consider it illogical if I said anything more to her other than just wishing her luck, before we went our separate ways.