Cal in the '30s Offers Challenge, Independence, Love to a Young Woman
At Stebbins I was given a key and shown to room 228 at the rear of the building, a room I was to occupy for two of the most interesting years of my life....
While [my new roommate] and I were getting to know each other, the house was filled with thumps of trunks and boxes, and the laughter and greeting of girls, all sorts of girls. ... Most were wearing homemade clothes. One girl had tailored a coat from a blanket. ...
I spent the first day or two of that first semester hurrying up and down hills, campus map in hand, inhaling the smell of tomato catsup, which someone had explained came from a cannery "down in the flats." Downhill to Harmon Gym, where I waited in a long, long line to register for classes, uphill to the women's gym for a physical examination. There all the girls were handed ancient gray bathing suits to wear for modesty. Why I cannot guess. They were ill-fitting and all had large holes in the crotches. ... Meals at Stebbins! Eighty-two girls plus 15 boarders who lived in rooming houses across the street. The low ceiling of our crowded dining room compressed conversation, laughter, and the rattle of dishes into a din that forced us to raise our voices to high pitches. ... Nevertheless, from the babble I learned that at Cal grades were important, and something to worry about. Required courses were often dreaded and certain professors should be avoided if possible. ...
Campus social life centered on dances: club dances, house dances, fraternity and sorority dances. ... Largest of all were the biweekly Assembly Dances held in Harmon Gym, admission $.15 with a student-body card, dates not necessary. ... The orchestras were good, and because Cal had two and a half male students to every female, there was always a stag line of men looking women over as if we were auditioning for the honor of dancing with them, which I suppose we were. ... At one Assembly Dance a tall, thin man with black hair and blue eyes stepped out of the stag line and asked me to dance. He said his name was Clarence Cleary. ... I hoped he would telephone me, and I was glad I was wearing a becoming pink dress Mother had made with great care....
Several days after the midterms, the blue books were piled alphabetically on the floor outside classrooms. When I collected mine, I was shocked. Instead of A's and B's, I had sunk to B's and C's. What was wrong? Obviously, I must work harder, and others felt the same way. ... And then finals. ... Evenings, from time to time and for no reason, male voices would call out, "Pe-e-dro-o-o," a sad and lonely sound, a Cal custom whose origins were lost, if not in the mists of time, in the fog of San Francisco. ... In those days, before ballpoint pens, we filled our fountain pens, emptied them, and refilled them just to make sure. ...
[The fee to live at Stebbins was raised her first year to $24 a month.] We were aghast. Where could we find an additional $6 a month when most of us could barely manage $18. ... One girl had a white fur "bunny" jacket that she rented for $.50 an evening to girls going to formal dances. It shed on dark suits. ... I found $6 in the style of the times. Hems 12 inches from the floor were no longer fashionable, so I opened a skirt-shortening business: $.50 a skirt if it was straight and didn't have pleats. I could shorten a straight skirt in half to three-quarters of an hour, which beat the $.40 an hour Cal set for student labor, and I saved precious time because I could work in my room. My business, although hardly flourishing, did bring in enough to make up the $6 without my having to write home for money, something I had vowed I would never do. I wanted independence more than anything. ...
(After graduation, Beverly attended the University of Washington School of Librarianship. In 1940, she married Clarence; they are the parents of twins, now grown, and live in Carmel.)