Schools Out (Published April 18, 2022)

  All through junior high and high school, I spend my summers working at my parent’s miniature golf course.  For college, I went to the nearby Cal State Northridge so still lived at home with my parents.  But once I was off to college, I wanted a different summer job.  I no longer wanted to work for my parents at their miniature golf course.  So once school ended each year, I tried something a bit different.   In the summer of 1968, I worked as a parking lot attendant at Roxbury Parking in Beverly Hills.   In the Summer of 1969, I worked at a gas station on Olympic Blvd. in West Los Angeles; in the Summer of 1971, I worked at Magic Mountain, the summer the amusement park first opened.  The only Summer I did not work while an undergraduate, was the Summer of 1970 when I traveled to Europe for nearly four months with two friends I had known from high school.  Each of these four summers has a story, a memory, that I still recount today.  

For today’s writing, I will pick my first summer, post-high school, while I was “out of school for the summer” and was a parking lot attendant for Roxbury parking.  Roxbury parking, is named for Roxbury Drive, is the commercial position between Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards in the heart of Beverly Hills.  They owned a large parking lot on the street called “The Roxbury.”   But I soon found out they operated several parking lots in Beverly Hills, Westwood, and at the beach in Santa Monica.  I was a rover, going from lot to lot as needed.  My first two weeks were at their flagship lot, The Roxbury. 

Let me digress for just a minute.  I went to high school in the heart of the all-White San Fernando Valley.  My extremely large graduating class had two African American students.  As far as I recall, there were only three African American students in the entire school out of a population of over 4,000 students.   Roxbury Parking on the other hand had twenty employees: nineteen African Americans and me.  The company, at the time, was eight years old and I was the first Caucasian ever hired. 

Back to my first two weeks.  The parking lot was several stories, both above and below the ground.  There was a medical building nearby and the lot filled up early each day with doctors and staff working in the medical building.  After around 9am. The lot had patients of the medical buildings along with shoppers for the stores, most of which was several blocks to the East.  On my very first day just before noon, Jimmy, the guy who I was working with said he had some emergency and asked that I block entry to the lot and go to a booth one floor down from street level.  I was supposed to tell people that Jimmy would be returning in precisely a half-hour.  I remember being puzzled at closing the lot to cars as the lot was not filled.  I was also puzzled by the fact that we had a booth at street level so why have people go to the basement booth, but I followed orders.  When I got down to the basement there was already a lineup at the parking booth window.  I proceeded to the booth as told and informed people that Jimmy was away but would return by 12:30. The line continued to grow.  I really did not know what was going on.  Were all these people lined up to pay their parking fee for the day?  I wondered if everyone drove out noon.  By about 12:20 someone in the back of the line was impatient and wanted to see what was happening upfront.  I explained that Jimmy would be back shortly.  He started rambling about Dapper Dash running in the first race at Hollywood Park.   The second or third guy in line said Dapper Dash was injured the week before and was likely scratched.  The guy asked me if I knew.  I shrugged.  The conversation grew more animated about this horse and that horse.  Someone else talked about the Dodger score the previous night and how he had just made “the spread”.   About that time Jimmy appeared and I was relieved for lunch.  By the time I returned, the line was gone.  It took me almost all two weeks to figure out Jimmy was a bookie and all these fine-dressed folks in the line were placing their bets and getting their paybacks came by every day at noon. 

My next lot was across Rodeo Drive from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.  O worked at this one lot for most of the summer.  At the time there was a luxury department store chain from Texas that occupied the building on Wilshire Blvd and this small lot was directly behind.  The store was going out of business and as the store emptied, the number of cars in the lot decreased.  The lot was postage stamped sized, but we managed to park cars three deep into the little space. Each time someone would need their car, I would dash to drive the cars blocking the car at the rear, then drive the car to the booth and help the driver into their car.  A tip always resulted.  Here is my stereotype of the 1968 tipping order.  Men in the Rolls Royce or similar cars gave a big tip.  Women often in uniform, and driving modest cars gave good tips.  Men with modest cars gave some tip.  Women in Rolls Royce or similar cars gave no tip.  After I learned this order, I rushed for some people and took my time for others.  My favorite was this supposed movie star Hal March who showed up almost every morning to meet someone at the hotel coffee shop across the street.  He did not want his Rolls parked in the three deep lines but right next to our little pay booth.  We accommodated him.  Each day when he returned to the car, he waited until we started it and pulled it forward three feet so he could enter.  He provided a $10 bill for this luxury.  I only got to do this one time as Hiram, a long-time employee, did the honors each day.  The one time I did do it, I got $20 as it was the 4^th of July.   I remember having to work that day alone in the lot. 

My third and final lot was next to David Orgell’s in Beverly Hills.  This lot was clearly the most profitable.  I was left to work this very small lot by myself.  On the very first day, I set the record for cramming the most cars in a single day.  At the end of the day, I smiled as I handed Leroy, the manager, all of the money I had collected.  I was so proud and was awaiting praise.  What I got was a cussing out.  Apparently, his cousin had worked the lot for years.  My successful day would make his cousin look bad I was told in no uncertain terms.  Leroy said, “if I were a giving man, I could donate all above $1700 to a charity”.   He really didn’t care.  I hustled more each day after that.  Let's say the final two weeks of parking were more lucrative than any summer job I ever had.  That parking lot reminds me more than anything of the term “Schools Out”.

It really was a great summer job.  I learned more about life there than anything that I would have been taught in school.  I spent many a night in parts of LA I had not been in before having a barbeque, drinking Thunderbird,  and experiencing life.