Lesbian – Page 2 – tradeswomn musings

From Civil War Spy to Lesbian Collective

The Strange History of 386 Richland Avenue

In the 2000s, I began to deconstruct my Bernal Heights home. In opening up the walls, I started to uncover the house’s history, leading me to an investigation into its owners and architectural evolution from the distant past to its having been bought by my lesbian collective in 1980. The story of 386 Richland Avenue is one of Bernal Heights, San Francisco, and California more broadly, speaking to themes of land ownership and development, the legacies of slavery, and the role each person has in shaping their neighborhood.

386 Richland Avenue 1980. Photo: Molly Martin

An old house holds the ghosts and remnants of all the people who have occupied it over the years. When you live in an old house I believe you must acknowledge all the people who have lived there and the people who built and worked on the house.

When I got to San Francisco in 1976, I decided there was no place I’d rather live. I had never owned a house before and really had no hope of ever owning a building in San Francisco until my living collective of four lesbians agreed to pool our money.

I got curious about the history of our Bernal Heights building as soon as we bought it in 1980. How old was it? Real estate records said it was built in 1900, but that is the default date for all San Francisco buildings built before the earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed city building department records. So I knew it was probably built before 1900. It was always a weird looking building: three stories with three flats over a garage. Notice the weird roofline and window placement. What architect would design such a building?

I wanted to know who had lived there before me.

The Land Underneath

Ohlone village

The first human residents of this land of gently rolling grassy hills were the Ramaytush Ohlone. Hundreds of shell mounds have been uncovered all around the San Francisco Bay and there is evidence of a great Ohlone settlement at the mouth of Islais Creek, which once flowed just down the hill south of my house where Alemany Blvd and Interstate 280 now flow with traffic. Before progress changed its course and buried it, Islais Creek formed a deep gorge on the south side of my neighborhood of Bernal Heights. The creek was long ago undergrounded and replaced by freeways but the gorge remains.

I was delighted to learn that islay is an Ohlone word naming a native bush called the islais cherry (Prunus ilicifolia) that grew along the creek and still grows in forgotten corners of San Francisco. The shiny leaves look like a cross between holly and oak. And the fruit is edible. They were eaten by the Ohlone along with plentiful bay creatures, shellfish, fish, birds, deer, and other land animals.

Spain had laid claim to San Francisco and what it called Alta California in 1542. Starting in the 1760s the Spanish established missions from San Diego up to Sonoma along the king’s highway or El Camino Real, now Mission Street and Highway 82. The Spanish and the Indians they enslaved built San Francisco’s Mission Dolores in 1776, and so the road from San Jose and the south had come sometime before that. These are well-traveled pathways that extend quite far back in time.

After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, it secularized the Catholic missions. In order to receive a Mexican land grant, a man had to be a Catholic. But the land was not handed out to the church as it had been by Spain.

José Cornelio Bernal was granted a league, about 4,400 acres, by the Mexican government in 1839. José was the son of Juan Francisco Bernal who, with his family, arrived in San Francisco with the Spanish Anza expedition in 1776. José and his family were cattle ranchers, some of the original Californios. Over time they lost the land to squatters, lawyers, and bankers. The family first defaulted in 1859 to William Tecumseh Sherman, a banker before he became a Civil War general, who had loaned the Bernal patriarch money. The Bernals finally relinquished their last 25 acres to foreclosure in 1917. It marked the passing of the very last bit of San Francisco real estate from the families of original Mexican land grantees—the Californios.

The area south of the Mission including Bernal Heights was not platted until after the Civil War. At that time the lack of transportation infrastructure made lots hard to sell.

Large sections of southern San Francisco fell into the hands of the real estate developer François Louis Alfred Pioche. Pioche platted and developed much of southern San Francisco. A French financier, Pioche is described as a suave and cultured European who introduced fine French wine to San Francisco’s elite, an influential player who lived openly with his male lover and business partner, L.L. Robinson. No one is sure why he committed suicide in 1872.

Bernal Hill in 1875. Photo: Carleton Watkins, courtesy of California State Library

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) was one of the most famous outdoor photographers of the American West. He also made many pictures of the growing city of San Francisco, like this one taken in 1875. From around Silver Avenue, looking north to Bernal Heights, the bare grasslands of southwest Bernal are revealed with the Mission District and the town of San Francisco in the distance. The prominent enclosure nearby is the site of St. Mary’s College. It faced Mission Road (now Street), the principal route at the time. College Hill Reservoir is the flat area near the center of the picture. The fenced circle denotes Holly Park, donated to the city in 1862 by the silver mining baron James Graham Fair. On the extreme right is the top of Bernal Heights. My house would be just to the right of this picture near the east edge of Holly Park.

Building 386 Richland

When we bought 386 Richland, the place was a mess. The most recent owner had “remodeled” by covering the walls and even wood window trim with quarter inch sheetrock. I’m an electrician. Trying to solve an electrical problem, I discovered live bare wiring between the sheetrock and tongue and groove finish wall in the kitchen of the lowest unit. This was very disturbing but I didn’t have time to demo the walls. That would have to wait 20 years until I retired.

One day I drilled a hole in a closet wall to pull some low voltage wiring. I used a four-inch hole saw and was surprised that when the saw got through a layer of sheetrock, it hit wood. When I finished I pulled the four-inch-round block of wood out of the saw. It was inch-thick redwood. I turned it over and found newspaper pasted to the inside, a primitive type of insulation. It was a racing form dated 1893. Well, that was a clue.

The San Francisco Call applied directly to redwood for insulation. Photo: Molly Martin

Someone told me the San Francisco Water Department records had been kept in a safe and survived the 1906 fire. All you had to do was ask at the headquarters. The clerk stepped into a big safe and brought out a single piece of paper, a Xeroxed copy of the permit, which said water was provided August 1, 1893. It was signed in a clear hand by the owner, G. Shadburne.

The document contained several other clues. The Spring Valley Water Company (we didn’t yet have a publicly-owned water department) supplied water to what was then a single-family building of 825 square feet. The property owner paid $10 in gold coin. Listed were two wash trays, one wash basin, one bath, one water closet and 30 square yards of irrigation. E. J. Fisk of the water company had charged for two cows and then apparently been convinced to erase them along with some other notes. Were the cows just visiting? Had a family been living at 386 Richland without running water? It would have been possible; there were several active springs on the hill and many early homes had been built without indoor plumbing. But while Shadburne could have bought the property earlier, all evidence points to 1893 as the year a building was first erected here.

George David Shadburne during the Civil War

From the census record I learned that the house’s owner in 1900 was George David Shadburne, a lawyer originally from Texas who had moved to San Francisco in 1868. He did all right for himself in San Francisco, well enough to be published as a person of note in the city’s blue book in 1894-95. He never lived at Richland Avenue, which he developed and rented out to poorer tenants. He lived instead in a tonier neighborhood on “California Hill,” and his business address was 429 Montgomery in downtown San Francisco, a building which he owned.

Shadburne might have been the original slumlord.

Once I had his name, I went to the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library main branch where helpful librarians point you to volumes of historical data. Even though building department records were lost in the earthquake and fire of 1906, the history room contains a wealth of other supporting historical documents. I learned about the Sanborn insurance maps (most every city has them) and found that my neighborhood had been surveyed in 1905 and 1915.

A Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing the Holly Park tract in 1905

386 Richland is part of the Holly Park Tract. Development in Holly Park had only just started in 1905. Except for a small addition that was added to the rear of our building in 1961 (there was a building permit), the footprint is the same as today. It was still a single family dwelling then.

Sanborn map in 1915

By 1915 our neighborhood had been fully developed. Along with five neighbors I published a pictorial book about Bernal Heights history: San Francisco’s Bernal Heights. We learned that Bernal saw its greatest surge of development after the earthquake and fire of 1906. Some people moved earthquake shacks here and some built homes. By this time 386 had been turned into two flats, 386 and 386 1/2. Rather than a D, the map says 2F meaning two flats and adds the ½ to the address.

Deconstructing

Barb Schultheis building a shoring wall after we discovered that there were no studs in existing walls. Photo: Molly Martin

It wasn’t until the year 2000, 20 years after my original collective had bought the building, that I had the time and inclination—and also a partner who wanted to get her hands dirty—to begin to open walls and really see the structure. My then-partner Barb Schultheis and I started just a little kitchen remodel in my unit on the third floor. We opened one wall in the kitchen, pulling off many layers of finishes including sheetrock, oil cloth, and newspaper. What we found was worse than anything I’d imagined. Underneath it all was one-inch coarse sawn redwood planks, some as wide as 20 inches, and under the redwood was cross bracing and nothing else: no studs in this part of the third story apartment. And there was another story on top! The redwood was structural. We quickly built a shoring wall.

I’d never seen this building method. My carpenter girlfriend in New England called it a plank house, a more common style of building there in the 1800s.

Our demolition progressed to the front room of our unit. Here we found another construction method, more common in today’s buildings–platform construction. The walls had 2×4 studs 16 inches on center and the finish was lath and plaster.

As we deconstructed the building, we kept wondering why it is so oddly shaped, why construction methods differed from floor to floor and room to room, why floors were different heights in adjacent rooms, why floor and ceiling joists sometimes went north and south, sometimes east and west, why when wall coverings were removed we could see sky through cracks in the exterior walls.

Another clue: the staircase had been open and was closed in to create a third unit. Photo: Molly Martin

Then one day when I was standing across the street looking at the building I had an epiphany. Our home was never a plan in some architect’s mind. The different construction methods told us that these were different buildings, constructed at different times and later nailed together. It was a collection of buildings set on top of one another, cut off, pushed together, raised up, and without benefit of removal of siding, spiked together with a few big nails. Suddenly all the mysteries we’d cataloged made sense.

The old house had been turned so that its side, not the front, faced the street. Houses were often moved at the turn of the century. A builder would build a single-story house and later raise it up to add a second story. There were few systems like electrical and plumbing to disconnect as there are today. I believe this building was moved from another location where its rounded entryway faced the street. I propose that the three buildings were given to Shadburne or sold to him cheap.

Illustration of my “many buildings” theory

In this drawing I removed the double stairs to better see the different parts. I had always thought the oldest building, the yellow part, was the first house on the lot, but the square footage didn’t add up. Then I realized that the original 825 square foot house is the pink building turned so its side faces the street.

Here we can see three different buildings built with different construction methods: the yellow building had planks joined with square nails and no studs, insulated with 1893 newspapers. The pink building had modern platform construction, rolled nails (invented around the turn of the 20th century), and lath and plaster finish. The blue building below had old fashioned balloon framing with 4×4 studs 24 inches on center, also finished with redwood planks, but with rolled nails.

Our remodel progressed to the garage where we demolished a shelving unit made of old doors and metal pipes attached to a wall of sheetrock with no studs. Barb and I were standing at the base of a four-story building. We were right under three stories of kitchens with heavy appliances. We looked up to see the floor above bowing toward us. We rushed to build another shoring wall. That’s how we figured out that the bearing wall under all the kitchens had been removed! My search for building permits had uncovered a 1917 project to raise the building and add a garage. I believe the bearing wall was removed then. The building inspector didn’t notice. The building had been slowly falling down for a hundred years! So, with help from carpenter friends Carla Johnson and Pat Cull, we dug up the garage floor, poured a footing, jacked up the building, and built a new bearing wall.

Retired union carpenter Pat Cull oversaw our project and taught us much about carpentry. Photo: Molly Martin

Another shocking discovery resulted in more unplanned structural work: not one but two bearing walls had been removed to make way for the garage in 1917. Engineer Marg Hall helped us to understand the physics of load bearing (one test: have your girlfriend run up to the floor above and jump up and down) and did calculations required for the permit. I drew plans and waited in line at the Dept. of Building Inspection. This second un-wall we rebuilt as an engineered glue lam wood beam on posts.

Postcard found in the ceiling, maybe from 1903. Photos: Molly Martin

When Barb and I opened the ceiling above unit B, the third story, we found a crib full of about a ton of plaster that had been discarded when the buildings were tacked together (no wonder the ceiling was bowing). We had to remove it by hand, scooping it into buckets to take to the dump. This was the most disgusting job of the whole project. This postcard was in there. I asked Ancestry buffs brother Don Martin and cousin Richard Juhl for help researching this. They found John Hargens at this address in a 1907 city directory. He was an immigrant from Germany, born about 1868. His wife Minnie was also German which might account for the florid cursive. They lived at 386 in 1907 with their five children but moved to Santa Marina (a nearby street) in 1908. Did they move because of construction on 386? How did this postcard get into a pile of plaster left in the attic?

Some of the objects found in the walls, dating back as early as the 1800s, gave us clues to the tenants in different eras. Coffee can metal (bottom right) was used to patch holes in the fir floors. Photos: Molly Martin

Demolition was like an archeological dig and while we didn’t find anything valuable, we uncovered lots of clues about the building of the house. When I finally saw the wiring inside the walls, I couldn’t believe the building hadn’t burned down. In my time as an electrician and inspector I’ve seen the insides of a lot of walls in San Francisco but I’d never seen such hazardous wiring. Much of the building was wired with the equivalent of zip cord.

Thanksgiving 2000 was our last dinner party in my old apartment B. By Christmas I had moved up to Barb’s penthouse apartment and moved all my stuff out to the shed we’d built the year before, clearing room for the remodel. We spent the last days of December pulling apart my kitchen. Our four-story, three unit building required near complete rebuilding, a far more difficult task than simply constructing a new building from the ground up. If only I’d known what we were in for, I’d have sold the building. But there’s probably a real estate disclosure law requiring truth telling, so once we started, we had to forge ahead.

Rebuilding

In those first two years of destruction and construction of the lower two units, Barb and I did all the demolition, carpentry, and electrical work ourselves, with the help of many dear women friends. Scores of women helped us on this years-long project. We couldn’t look at the whole big project or we’d get depressed at the overwhelming amount of work ahead of us and think of suicide. Instead, we focused on each small project and celebrated whenever we finished framing a wall (virtually all the walls had to be reframed) or laying a subfloor in one room.

Carla Johnson jackhammers for new footing

In November of 2002 we celebrated having gotten the house closed up for winter and ready for sheetrock. Barb had taken off a couple of weeks in October and we’d worked our butts off replacing siding, installing new windows, patching, caulking, weatherproofing, and painting the back and west side of the building and rear stairs.

We knew the building was funky—the three-story utility “shed” which enclosed bathrooms had been added on at the turn of the 20th century with no foundation, so it had gradually separated from the main building over four inches near the top. Bad carpenters and handyman homeowners had been plugging the gap for 100 years. But we figured 21st century caulk might buy us a few more years. We decided we would tackle rebuilding the back of the house after this remodeling project was complete.

The rear side of 386 Richland before the storm; all of this work had to be torn down. Photo: Molly Martin

Then in mid-November 2002, the winter’s first storm hit. The four-story wood frame building had always moved in the wind. You’d lie in bed in a storm and feel it shimmy and buck on any floor (I’ve lived on all three and lying in bed in the bottom unit I could tell when the couple in the top unit were having sex), but especially on top. I figured it had survived a century and two big earthquakes probably because of its profound flexibility.

That night of the storm it felt like the building was on the verge of falling down. Of course! We’d removed all the many layers of wall coverings and completely gutted the two floors below. Like scotch tape and gum, the interior finishes had been holding us up. Upstairs in the top unit, lamps were swaying and everything was moving. We could see the glass in our living room windows bow in the wind and worried they might shatter. So we closed the blinds and finally went to bed, though I don’t think either of us got much sleep.

The storm caused plenty of damage in San Francisco and the area. Folks in some places were without power for weeks. I guess we were lucky. The only thing we had was water in places it didn’t belong—lots of water. One corner looked like a waterfall, and of course had been leaking for years. Only now with all the walls open could we see it. For Barb and me, this was the lowest point. It seemed as if the project would never end.

The upshot is we spent the next year tearing off the whole back of the building, including deck and stairs, and rebuilding it. All the new windows and doors we’d hung and trimmed (making casing by planing the salvaged redwood) had to be taken out, projects we’d sweated and cried over for hours and redone time after time as we learned the rudiments of carpentry.

Contractor John Burton reframing the roof. Photo: Molly Martin

To demo and rebuild the back of the building we hired a contractor, my old friend John Burton, who I’d worked with to remodel the People’s Cultural Center on Valencia Street in 1978.

We recycled the redwood stairs, reusing them as stairs when we could and building planter boxes with the rest. Barb and I bolted the foundation, put in hold-downs wherever we could to hold the various parts of the building together. Then we sheared all the open walls in the front of the building with plywood. The new rear walls have been sheared on the outside. Afterward in a windy storm I laid on the bed slightly disappointed that the house hardly moved at all.

My Local 6 electrician sisters and I showing off our tools. We were some of the first women to get into our trade. Photo courtesy of Molly Martin

With help from my women electrician sisters from International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 6 and Local 617 I rewired the building and installed a 200 amp four-meter electric service. The job was signed off by city electrical inspector Sylvia Montiel, who had worked with me when we were electricians wiring high rises back in 1981.

The building’s plumbing–water, drains, waste, gas, and venting had to be replaced. I calculated the size of piping and drew plans. We installed on-demand water heaters in all the units, as well as heating systems. The two chimneys were demo’d and the tons of bricks recycled. We replaced all the windows, keeping only the existing old growth redwood sills.

Our remodel (perhaps it should be called a rebuild) took nearly a decade. The San Francisco Building Department granted us a building final and certificate of occupancy in 2009.

Legacies of 386 Richland

I didn’t learn much more about the house’s original owner, G. Shadburne, until the Internet made researching so much easier. He was a Confederate soldier, a captain who had been wounded, had spied for the Confederacy. During the summer of 1864 Shadburne became one of Wade Hampton’s notorious “Iron Scouts,” who hid along the Blackwater River just two miles from Grant’s lines near City Point, Va. Wearing Yankee uniforms, they skillfully eluded capture while they killed and captured Union pickets and couriers and interfered with wagon trains and telegraph lines. Shadburne also helped lead the Beefsteak Raid, stealing 2,500 head of Union cattle, Union supplies, and capturing 304 Yankee prisoners. Shadburne was captured on March 6, 1865, near Fredericksburg. He was sent to Fort Monroe, Va., then to Wallkill, a Union prison barge at City Point. Charged with being a spy, he faced hanging, but escaped on March 10th and returned to the Iron Scouts.

After the Civil War, like other Confederate slaveholders, he considered relocating to Brazil where slavery was still legal, but that didn’t work out. In 1868 Shadburne and his wife arrived in San Francisco where he opened a law practice. He gained a reputation as a bulldog litigator who never gave up until the last appeal failed and who was not above resorting to physical violence or verbal attacks on his opposing counsel.

The back of an 1858 appraisal of Shadburne’s property lists the names of his 20 slaves and their values. Image: Xavier University of Louisiana

Then I found an appraisal of Shadburne’s property from 1858 in Louisiana in the online archives of Xavier University of Louisiana. It lists the land he owned as well as his 20 slaves. What happened to them? When Shadburne moved to San Francisco slavery was illegal. I could find no evidence that he brought any of them with him. Tracing the lives of enslaved people is made difficult because only their first names and ages are recorded, sometimes with a note saying “cook” or “lame.”

Many of California’s settlers were Southerners and slave owners who sought to make California a slave state. Shadburne, who founded the Southern Society and immersed himself in civic projects, certainly contributed to the culture of San Francisco. He presented himself as a Civil War hero. He lived in San Francisco until his death in 1921.

Various owners followed Shadburne. Some actually lived there. But the property remained a rental, at least in part, in the working class neighborhood of Bernal Heights until my collective of four lesbians bought the building in 1980.

Lenders didn’t know what to do with four unmarried women buying a building together. Women had only just won the right to our own credit. We were tenants in common, not very common then, but now a common way for unrelated people to buy property together.

Dyke-collective Lesbians-Against-Police-Violence.jpg

Lesbians Against Police Violence. Photo: Ruth Mahaney

My collective household was part of a movement. The collective living movement developed from a critique of the nuclear family and patriarchy. We sought to build alternatives. We envisioned a world without war, police violence, discrimination, imperialism, capitalism, and private property. We protested. But we also worked to build new institutions and new ways to live. For nearly 40 years of its 130-year history the building was a center of lesbian and women-centered culture and activism.

386 Richland after the remodel. Photo: Molly Martin

The lesbian collective slowly dissolved, but with numerous refinancings, 386 Richland helped the partners finance more woman-owned houses in San Francisco. I moved out of the building in 2018; today is a new chapter in Bernal history. The neighborhood, colonized by Californios, then working class immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and European countries, Communists and leftists, Mexicans and Latin Americans, and lesbians, is now being taken over by techies. The neighborhood of Bernal Heights has never been static since Europeans invaded.

As citizens and historians we don’t want to forget our own part in history. We all play an important part in shaping the culture of our neighborhood and our city.

A Sister’s Murder Sparks Action

Black, Lesbian, or Just a Woman?

Tradeswomen Respond to Workplace Violence

Carpenter apprentice Outi Hicks was working on a job in Fresno, California in 2017 when she encountered continuing harassment from another worker there. She didn’t complain and no one stood up for her. Then her harasser attacked her and beat her to death.

We don’t know whether Outi (pronounced Ootee) was murdered because she was Black, lesbian or just female. But we do know that being all three put her at greater risk. Outi was 32 and a mother of three.

In response, tradeswomen organized Sisters Against Workplace Violence and worked with the Ironworkers Union (IW) to launch a program called Be That One Guy. The program’s aim is to “turn bystanders into upstanders.” Participants learn how to defuse hostile situations and gain the confidence to be able to react when they see harassment.

“Outi Hicks’ murder hit me hard,” says Vicki O’ Leary, the international IW general organizer for safety and diversity. “Companies and unions need to change the focus of their harassment policies and need to get tougher with harassers.”

Often the victim of harassment is moved to a different crew or jobsite in an effort to defuse the situation. But such a response actually punishes the victim and not the aggressor, who remains unaffected and may continue to harass other workers.

O’Leary says one of the most important parts of the program is when participants take the pledge:

“It only takes one guy to talk to the harasser or to file a complaint with the crew boss. It’s even better when the whole crew stands up together to end harassment, and we are now seeing this happen on job sites around the country,” says O’Leary. She tells of an apprentice who was being harassed by a supervisor. Seeing the harassment, everyone on the crew began to treat the supervisor the same way he was treating the apprentice. His behavior changed in a day.

The IW is rolling out the program through their district councils. They want to share it with other unions and, says O’Leary, they’re hoping general contractors will jump on.

Another anti-violence program started by tradeswomen and our allies also is specifically tailored to the construction industry.

ANEW, the pre-apprenticeship training program in Seattle, created its program, RISE Up, to counter the number of people, and especially women, who leave the construction trades because of a hostile work environment. ANEW director, Karen Dove, developed the program after meetings with contractors who would say “women just need tougher skin.”

The program focuses on empowering workers and employers to prevent and respond to workplace violence. It offers a range of services, including training sessions, risk assessments, and support for workers who have experienced violence.

Training sessions are designed to help workers and employers identify the warning signs of workplace violence and take proactive steps to prevent it. The training covers conflict resolution, de-escalation techniques, and the importance of creating a positive work environment.

The program is concerned with psychological well being and is now working with a union to develop mental health services for Black workers.

RISE Up also offers risk assessments to construction companies, which help them identify areas of their workplace that may be at higher risk of violence.

Marquia Wooten, director of RISE Up, says the program is designed to change the culture of construction. Wooten worked in the trades for ten years as a laborer and an operating engineer. “When I was an apprentice they yelled and screamed at me,” she says. She notes that men suffer from harassment too. “The suicide rate of construction workers is number two after vets and first responders,” she said. “Substance abuse is high in construction.”

ANEW partners with cities, public entities, unions, schools and employers. “They do want change in the industry,” says Wooten. Less workplace violence is good for the bottom line.

But training workers is not enough. Union staff needs training in how to respond to harassment as well. Liz Skidmore recently retired as business representative/organizer at North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters. They created a training to help union staff members know what to do when a member complains.

“New federal regulations require that every person on the construction job who comes into contact with apprentices go through anti-harassment and discrimination training,” says Skidmore.

“Most of corporate America requires annual training about sexual harassment, but most trainers don’t know the blue collar world,” she says. Trainers can be classist. “To be effective, the trainer has to like these guys.”

While tradeswomen have long been virtually invisible on the front lines of the Feminist and Civil Rights Movements, we still are the ones who daily confront the most aggressive kind of sexism and racism in our traditionally male jobs. For going on five decades now we have been devising strategies to counter isolation and harassment at work and to increase the numbers of women in the union construction trades. Now we are working to educate the construction industry about how to end workplace violence. Women in construction are still isolated and often the only woman on the job. We need our brothers to act as allies.

As with women in construction, queer and transgender folks must depend on allies to stand up to bullies. We can’t do this by ourselves. The anti-violence programs developed by tradeswomen are programs that we queers can adapt to protect our communities.

Sometimes you just have to say something.

Postscript 2025: Another sister has been murdered on the job by a coworker. Minneapolis. He killed her with a sledge hammer. Story on 19th: https://19thnews.org/2025/11/amber-czech-welder-murder-tradeswomen-demand-action/

June 1 Biggest Best Pride Ever!

Reporting from Sonoma County CA

Our celebration took place in Santa Rosa, where we live, a city of 177,000. My honey, Holly (L), and I watched the parade with a group of friends. Afterward we checked out the booths and music at the town square. This year saw more marchers and watchers than ever. And if there were haters (as there have been in past years), I never saw them. The vibe was joyful.

The theme this year was Heroes Sheroes and Queeroes. So there were lots of superhero capes among the marchers. The Sebastopol (a nearby small town) Senior Center volunteers made 60 capes with messages, and they won the Best Overall Float prize.

I think maybe there are more old dykes in Sonoma County than anywhere else in the world! We were well represented at Pride. A new organization just started called Senior Lesbians in Community (SLIC). I’m also a member of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC) and Lesbian Reunion. The village of Oakmont, a retirement community, has its own lesbo contingent.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence has a big congregation here in Sonoma County. They fundraise to support the comunity with fabulous parties, bingo games and campaigns. The Sisters were the sponsors of Gay Pride for many years when it was in Guerneville, a resort town on the Russian River.

So many queers, so little time!

The Democratic Party always shows up at Pride. They sponsor postcard writing parties to help get out the vote for Congressional races around the country. In California we are working to turn red districts blue this year.

Honoring Native Americans

Reinventing Some Holiday Myths

Dear Friends,

As we construct our ofrendas for Day of the Dead, decorate our yards for Halloween and celebrate the pagan holiday Samhain, I’ve been thinking about two other holidays we celebrate this time of year–Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Thanksgiving. This is a story about how the meaning and celebrations of American holidays can evolve to reflect new understanding of our history.

As we learn more details about our history, in the last few years Americans have been rethinking the stories connected with Thanksgiving and Columbus Day.

My generation of students learned to recite, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” We learned about the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and that Christopher Columbus “discovered America.”

In elementary school in the 1950s I participated in those Thanksgiving pageants in which you were either a Pilgrim—boys with black buckled hats and shoes, girls in long, aproned dresses and bonnets—or an Indian with feathered headband and tomahawk. The story we enacted was a peaceful meeting and feast between Indians and pilgrims just off the Mayflower. It was the beginning of a happy long relationship between settlers and Indians.

Sadly, almost all of what we were taught was incorrect and incomplete; the myth conveniently left out the parts about genocide, slavery and land theft.

It turns out that Christopher Columbus was a homicidal tyrant who initiated the two greatest crimes in the history of the Western Hemisphere–the Atlantic slave trade, and the American Indian genocide. It’s not dissing Italians to say we no longer venerate this colonizer. Over the last few decades, Columbus Day has evolved into Italian Heritage Day in many locales.

And we are witnessing a movement to honor Native peoples on Columbus Day. It originated in 1989 in South Dakota during its “Year of Reconciliation,” in an effort to atone for terrible history.

The phrase “merciless Indian savages” is written into the Declaration of Independence. That says all we need to know about how the founders of our country viewed the indigenous people in this land.

For centuries, the American government saw Indians as the enemy, sponsoring their slaughter and “removal.” Through a series of notorious atrocities, including the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded Knee, (and in California, our own Trail of Tears in 1863, and the Bloody Island Clear Lake massacre in 1850, among others) the United States adopted an official expansionist policy of discriminating against Native Americans in favor of encouraging white settlers in their territories. This policy led to the subjugation, oppression, and death of many Native Americans, whose communities still feel its effects. Only in 1924 were Native Americans allowed to become citizens of the United States, and it took decades more for all states to permit them to vote.

But as we Americans acknowledge this history, our contemporary view of Native Americans is changing.

Congresswoman Norma Torres (D-CA) has introduced legislation to establish Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a federal holiday. Now, at least 13 states and over 130 cities have adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day or Native American Day. In 2021, President Joe Biden formally recognized Indigenous Peoples Day.

Here in Sonoma County indigenous people are well integrated into our local culture and community events. Tribes are consulted by land keepers and planners. Colleges, libraries and nonprofits sponsor classes about indigenous culture. My wife Holly and I attended the Indigenous Peoples’ Day gathering at Santa Rosa Junior College, which featured native dancing, music, drumming, food, speeches and vendors. The SRJC also has a native museum whose latest exhibit features the stories and art of local basket weavers.

As with Columbus, Americans have been taught a false narrative about Thanksgiving.

Two different early gatherings may have inspired the American Thanksgiving holiday. At the first, in 1621, Wampanoagwere not invited to the pilgrims’ feast, but heard celebratory gunshots and came to the aid of the colonists. They had formed a mutual defense pact. Once there, the Indians stayed and feasted, but the feast did not resolve ongoing prejudices or differences between them. Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, this was not the start of any long-standing tradition between the settlers and the Wampanoag tribe. The myth doesn’t address the deterioration of this relationship, culminating in one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record, King Philip’s War.

Ironically, Thanksgiving as a holiday originates from the Native American philosophy of giving without expecting anything in return. The Wampanoag tribe not only provided food for the first feast, but also the teachings of agriculture and hunting. Corn, beans, wild rice, and turkey are some examples of foods introduced by Native Americans.

The first written mention of a “Thanksgiving” celebration occurs in 1637, after the colonists brutally massacred an entire Pequot village of 700 people, then celebrated their barbaric victory, giving thanks to their god.

During Reconstruction, the Thanksgiving myth allowed New Englanders to create the idea of bloodless colonialism, ignoring the Indian Wars and slavery. Americans could feel good about their colonial past without having to confront its really dark characteristics.

**Now children you’ve got to learn these lessons whether you want to or not! Puck Maga*zine 1899.***

For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the following centuries of oppression and genocide.

Indian protests in the 1960s and 70s often attacked the Thanksgiving myth. In 1969 after natives took over Alcatraz, allies and Indians of all tribes came together for Unthanksgiving Day, a gathering that’s become a tradition, welcoming all visitors to a dawn ceremony on the island.

In 1970 during a Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, activists from the American Indian Movement stormed the Mayflower II ship and occupied it in protest. It was then that the United American Indians of New England recognized the fourth Thursday in November as a National Day of Mourning, to bring awareness to the long lasting impacts that colonization had on the Wampanoag and other Native American tribes. This year the in-person event will also be livestreamed.

Americans are told and we want to believe that we are the saviors of the world. But historical truth is far different.

Does the acceptance of Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day and the updating of the Thanksgiving myth mean that we Americans are beginning to acknowledge our country’s history of imperialism and genocide? I hope so.

This time of year, and these two holidays, Thanksgiving and Indigenous Peoples Day, give us the opportunity to reflect on our collective history, to celebrate the beauty, strength, and resilience of the Native tribes of North America, and also to conduct our own rituals.

Long before settlers arrived, indigenous people were celebrating the autumn harvest and the gift of the earth’s abundance. Native American spirituality, both traditionally and today, emphasizes gratitude for creation, care for the environment, and recognition of the human need for communion with nature and others. I hope we can incorporate these ideals into our American harvest celebrations while we as a species still live.

Whether or not we cook a big turkey dinner, many of us practice Thanksgiving rituals. My and Holly’s ritual is to get together with our exes. We introduced them at a Thanksgiving dinner 13 years ago and they fell in love. We were surprised, and also delighted. Barb and Ana have become our exes and besties. We are participating in a lesbian tradition of incorporating our exes into our chosen families.

No matter where you are in North America, you are on indigenous land. In Sonoma County we live on unceded territory of the Pomo, Wappo and Coast Miwok tribes.

Good Samhain, Halloween, Day of the Dead and Thanksgiving to you all.

Love, Molly (and Holly)

The Cop and the Communist

Dating Negotiations in the 90s

I met her as part of a couple, Anne + Judy. They were both in the first class of women to break into the San Francisco Police Department after several years of pressure from the feminist community to integrate women.

There were two sides to this story. Some feminists thought cops were unredeemable and that women should never be cops. They said women would take on the racist and repressive world view of the police; they would be sullied by the job. I was an electrician and one of those working to get more women into nontraditional jobs. I thought women deserved access to those jobs and I even suspected that women might change the culture in the PD if given the chance.

Kissing lesbians was a thing I did in June–Gay Month

Work life was tough for those first women, and they were on the front lines of the feminist movement to desegregate the workplace. They took the most shit from their male coworkers and bosses, who were almost all white back then in the 1970s. Men of color had been kept out too and the efforts of us activists to enforce affirmative action laws included all minority classes.

Being in a relationship with another woman navigating the same sexist workplace was probably a main reason Judy and Anne both stayed in the PD and made good careers. My lovers, too, were women in the trades, the only people who really understood what I was going through at work. They provided the support I needed to survive on the construction site.

I knew Judy better than Anne. She was a feminist and out on the job as a lesbian. One time when I ran into her working the gay parade, I threw my arms around her and planted a big kiss on her lips. Yeah, you’re not supposed to do that to cops when they’re working. But kissing lesbians was a thing I always did in June–gay month. I was just so happy to be out in San Francisco, I had to pass around my good cheer.

I got to know Anne better in the early 90s after she and Judy had broken up. We had a mutual friend, a mystery writer, who used us both for expert background. (What kind of electric shock will kill a person? How would a killer behave in this situation?) I think the mystery writer was hoping there would be a spark of attraction when she introduced us. She confided to me that Anne was in a secret ongoing affair with a closeted columnist who wrote for the local paper. The columnist was also in a long-term relationship with a lover who did not know about Anne.

Are you following me here?

Lesbian relationships were tangled in that era as we thrilled to new freedoms and experimented with new models. Anne was the Other Woman and I was admonished not to tell anyone. I had practiced nonmonogamy zealously but eventually came to see that being the other woman, especially if you’re in love, spells heartache. I sympathized mutely. It can’t have been easy for her.

I had never tried to romance a cop

We bonded over the internet. I had a new 512K Mac and I wanted to learn to use email. Anne, who used the internet to research crimes and criminals, set me up on AOL. It was dial up. You had to understand acronyms like POP, HTTP and some other things like hardware and software. They all confused the hell out of me, never a tech wizard. I remember receiving my very first email message from Anne. She didn’t say anything sexy, but it was exciting, world changing!

Was there an attraction? Well, sure. Anne was handsome, with shoulder-length dark hair and a muscular physique. She was handy. She had remodeled the Victorian house she owned in the Dogpatch neighborhood. I was impressed, and horny. But I had never romanced a cop. A veteran of protest marches, anti-war and anti-racism campaigns, I had been on the other side of many police barricades. I did not believe all cops were pigs as many did, but my generation of activists will never forget COINTELPRO, the police killing of Fred Hampton and so many others. Not to mention the attacks by the SFPD on our gay and lesbian bars and gathering places.

I was thinking about how I would undress her when she saw the stack of mail on my desk.

By that time I knew Anne well enough to know that we disagreed politically on just about everything. I figured she was one of those women who find it easier to not rock the boat and who identify with their male coworkers in order to survive on the job. Or maybe she’d been brought up in the 50s during the McCarthy era to hate communists. But, I reasoned, we didn’t have to talk politics. Maybe we could just have sex.

I managed to get Anne over to my house to help with AOL and I made lunch. An opening salvo. I imagined us moving into the bedroom after lunch.

I was thinking about how I would undress her when she saw the stack of mail on my desk. Right on top was a newsletter from the Committees of Correspondence, a democratic socialist group I was a member of.

“Are you a communist?” she asked, looking up.

She seemed surprised, but at that time I thought that most lesbians were leftists at least, if not communists. My friends and I were activists trying to rid the world of imperialism, racism and police violence. It wasn’t that weird.

“Well, yes,” I said. “Communist with a small c.”

“I could never be with a communist,” she sputtered.

“But,” I said, “you wouldn’t have to BE with me. We could just have sex.”

The look of horror on her face conjured the pain of the long-term other-woman relationship that I wasn’t supposed to know about. And probably she really did hate communists. She was a cop first and a lesbian second.

My disappointment didn’t last long. It never would have worked out. I hoped Anne would find the right woman, and I wondered if she would tell that woman about her own secret affair with the columnist. I never found out.

Solstice Came Early This Year

Winter Solstice 2022

My Regular Pagan Holiday Missive

Years ago my wife Holly and I invented a solstice ritual we named the Twelve Days of Solstice, starting on the solstice, December 21, and ending with New Year’s day. We made up our own daily rituals and customs, observing the natural world and the changing of the seasons.

Our invention was aimed at supplanting the christian holiday. We are both ex-christians, she tortured by a more evangelical denomination than me by my pale protestant presbyterian sect.

My antipathy has been mostly aimed toward catholicism, a particularly misogynist, patriarchal, racist, and homophobic cult whose latest endeavor is covering up its sexual abuse of children. It is only the most powerful example of christian horror, but there are many more worldwide who hide behind religion to perpetrate evil.

We want no part of this and so we eschew the trappings of christian holidays. However, we do feel the need for tradition and ritual in our lives and so must invent our own. This year in the wake of a worldwide fascist assault on democracy I was feeling a bit depressed in mid-November and sought holiday solace.

“Let’s start celebrating solstice early!” I entreated.

The festive custom of tree decorating is not owned by the christians. It was stolen from pagan religions and so I feel very good about reclaiming this pagan tradition. The term pagan was historically used by christians to refer to everyone not christian, so it includes all of us non-christians.

I checked around and there were no trees nor boughs to be bought until the day after Thanksgiving. So, after considering and rejecting cutting our own, on the morning of November 25^th we drove directly to Grandma’s tree farm a few miles out in the country. People had already stormed the farm, a magical place with a huge old barn decorated to the rafters for the season. There was hot chocolate waiting, a flocking room, a real antique sleigh for kids to play on and all the ornaments and boughs and trees of every size.

We bought evergreen boughs for the mantle, adorable bird decorations and, of course, a tree, cut and carried by an agile worker who told me he has a landscape company in other seasons.

For the next couple of days we decorated the tree, taking all the time we felt like because why should we be in a hurry? One point of invention is to overcome all the obligations that make this holiday stressful. Like shopping. We are made to feel like we will be responsible for the U.S. economy failing if we don’t spend tons of money. Retailers depend on this holiday to bring in 40 percent of their annual revenue, an unsustainable economic program that bankrupts the poor and does not fit well with our effort to consume less.

With a much longer holiday schedule than usual, we were designing rituals for a month of celebrating instead of just the 12 days of solstice. Ok but no pressure. Instead, I decided to just appreciate the revelatory events that happened to me daily.

Nov. 24 As I planted 40 daffodils in the front yard, I thought bulb planting must be added to our annual constellation of solstice rituals.

Nov. 30 It froze! Contemplating the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, we acknowledged the wilting of the big flowers in our yard. The tree dahlia, which at nearly 20 feet tall had only just started blooming, died. And the huge marigold that had appeared late in the fall, maybe from a wildflower mix, froze. We appreciate that nothing is truly perfect or permanent.

Dec. 1 Then it stormed! We got an inch of rain. We invoked Tefnut, the Egyptian goddess of rain and moisture, responsible for maintaining life, as we watched the bright leaves fall from the trees.

Dec. 3 As I picked the first oranges from our tree and made juice, I called in Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and the harvest. When her daughter Persephone returns to Hades each winter, the plants die, only to be reborn when she returns in spring. The orange, one plant that the gods apparently overlooked, produces fruit all winter.

Dec. 7 I’m witness to a supernatural event at 5am while I soak in the hot tub. The sheet metal cap on the chimney glows with an amazingly bright light. I feel this is like seeing the virgin Mary on a slice of toast–positively spiritual. The cap continues to glow and I wonder what the universe is trying to tell me. It was so bright I couldn’t imagine what the light source could be. Could the light be coming from inside the house? Of course, it was the setting full moon shining at a direct angle, but so otherworldly that I wanted to take a picture to let someone else in on my religious experience. Who would believe me? Will I be the Cassandra of Hylandia?

I can find no goddess of chimneys nor sheet metal nor chimney caps, so I’ll have to decide whether to check in with one of many goddesses of the hearth. Or perhaps the moon was communicating with me through the chimney cap, in which case I can consult any number of moon goddesses like Selene, the Greek personification of the moon.

The universe is definitely talking to me.

Dec. 8 We spent a lovely couple of hours walking at the ocean with Holly’s brother and wife and afterward I happily consumed the sacred molluscs, oysters. Is there a seafood goddess? Maybe not exactly, but Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, was born in an oyster so she knew something about them.

Then on our way back from the ocean we hit only green lights on Guerneville Road. A total miracle! I didn’t even have to invoke Asphalta, the goddess of roads and highways, because I know that she is watching over us, especially when we look for parking. We recite the prayer “Hail Asphalta full of grace, help me find a parking place.” Then we rub the sacred crystals which are pieces of asphalt adorned with the yellow line, enclosed in an orange bag that hangs from the car’s mirror. Asphalta’s priestesses are the flag women of the highways. The goddess was invented by my friend Morgan Grey for a book called Found Goddesses and so fits right in with our effort to invent rituals.

Finding the sacred in my everyday life has definitely improved my spirits. It’s worked so well that I might have to continue this practice for the rest of the year.

Happy solstice my friends, however you choose to celebrate it.

My Mother’s Lesbian Affair

Chapter 6 My Brother Finds Pictures

Group photo at the 1937 conference. Is that Eddie leaning against Flo (center)

Lately I’ve been walking around with my head in the 1930s.

I’ve been thinking about my mother and what her life was like as a young person. Mom was born in 1913 and graduated high school in 1929. She came of age in the 1930s. Born in 1949, I came of age in the 1960s. They were two very different worlds.

I thought I’d gone through all the evidence we’d found of our mother’s dalliance with another woman. Love letters we discovered revealed attempts at seduction, but there was nothing to prove that they had been lovers.

Then my brother called me. “I found pictures!” he said.

In an envelope in a forgotten file cabinet, Don found a slew of photos of my mother and her friends in the 1930s. Some were clearly pictures of the YWCA meetings in 1937 and 38 where our mother, Flo, met and roomed with her lesbian admirer, Edna Lauterbach (Eddie). Maybe Eddie is in the pictures! Of course Eddie is in the pictures!

I’m posting some of the pictures here and I hope readers will weigh in. I think these photos are from the 1937 conference where Flo and Eddie first met in Chicago. I’m pretty sure Eddie is in one of these photos, but which one is she? Here is what we know: Flo was 24 and Eddie was 37 in 1937. I know from the census records that Eddie’s father was ethnically German. I would love to know what she looked like.

Flo on the left. Are her two handsome companions a lesbian couple?

The photos show groups of women, many with their arms around each other, hands on legs or shoulders. My mother had her hands on several of them. These women seem way more physically affectionate with each other than my generation of female friends ever were in public. Were they all lovers?

In her seminal book Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, Lillian Faderman posits that women in “Boston marriages” and “romantic couples” did not necessarily have sex. She writes that “romantic friendships” between women were accepted in the Western world up until WWI. After that, as women’s status in the culture changed, these friendships started to become less accepted. Today girls and women are not encouraged to hold hands in public or to enter into romantic friendships, presumably because they might turn lesbian. Today if there’s not a sexual component, we don’t take the relationship seriously. But Faderman argues that in the past these relationships were as serious as those between men and women.

By the 1930s American culture was changing, but close physical friendships between women were still more accepted than they were in my youth. My mother couldn’t understand why my generation was so focused on co-ed activities. She told me she had much more fun with her girlfriends than she did with boys. Mom maintained life-long friendships with women. She even named me, her only daughter, after her best girlfriend.

Society was much more permissive by the time I was coming up than it was when Mom came of age. By the late 1960s, sex had become a hot topic. We thought about and experimented with sex all the time. For one thing, we had the birth control pill. For another thing, we had women’s and gay liberation. In three decades, our culture had changed. Women were now free agents. But women were no longer free to be so physically affectionate with each other in public.

From the moment we discovered the love letters, my question has been: Did Flo and Eddie have sex? From Eddie’s letters we know that she was crushed out on Flo. If any of Flo’s letters to Eddie existed it might be easier to determine how she was feeling. But even then we might not know whether they engaged in sex. Faderman uncovered letters throughout history in which women in nonsexual romantic friendships declared undying love for one another.

It’s not as if sex wasn’t going on. There were definitely lesbians involved in the YWCA, unions, and progressive organizations in the 1930s. Eleanor Roosevelt’s inner circle included women in Boston marriages, and Eleanor herself carried on a closeted affair with her press attache, Lorena Hickok. We know from their resurrected letters that they were deeply in love with each other, but there is no evidence that their relationship had a sexual component.

Flo (left front) with hands on two others

By the 1960s, physical closeness between women had become suspect. I have a lesbian cousin, Sandy, who is ten years older than I. That’s a whole generation in the gay universe. I’ve depended on Sandy to school me about her older gay generation. She was closeted. She worked for the YWCA in Seattle in 1963 and told me there were many dykes there. They all knew each other and they were all closeted. You had to be if you wanted to keep your job. Sandy had affairs with a couple of them. They did not feel so free to show affection in public as my mother’s generation of women did. They worried about being outed.

My guess is Eddie knew what she was doing when she wooed Flo in 1938. She wanted a lover. But, at least in the beginning, I believe Flo was oblivious. I believe she thought Eddie just wanted to be friends. Eddie may have been the first lesbian she encountered in her life. She was probably shocked when Eddie came out to her.

Eddie was a good romancer. She managed to lure Flo to New York City from Yakima, Washington in 1941. She bought Flo gifts, took her out to dinner and the theater, and squired her around the city. And that is when I imagine Eddie came out to her and declared her love. At least, had I been in Eddie’s shoes, that’s what I would have done.

1937 group photo. Can you spot the lesbians?

A small town gal, Flo was pretty green when she first met Eddie at the YWCA conference in Chicago. She may not have even known what the word lesbian meant. By the time they met up in New York, Flo was no longer so young or naïve. She was 28 and had traveled to cities across the U.S.

I just had an epiphany. What if I’m culturally biased?

I see now that I’ve been evaluating my mother’s generation through the lens of my own. My generation thinks the word lover describes people who have genital sex. Maybe I need to redefine the term lover. Perhaps we should expand the definition of lover to include what Faderman calls “romantic friendships.”

My mother and her friends were activists in women’s organizations who enjoyed working and playing together. Maybe being lovers then was not all about sex. If we expand our notion, then we can imagine a culture in which physical affection extended to all. It’s fun to contemplate an army of female lovers.

Maybe for women like my mother the defining factor in a relationship was not sex. Maybe there’s a third choice: romantic friendship. Maybe I should stop asking whether they had sex. Maybe I should start with love.

Chapter 1: https://mollymartin.blog/2016/09/03/my-mothers-lesbian-affair/

Who Was My Mother’s Lesbian Admirer?

She came of age in New York City in the 1920s

Did My Mother Have an Affair With a Woman? Chapter 4

After I discovered love letters from a woman to my mother in an old scrapbook from the 1930s, I endeavored to find out as much as I could about my mother’s admirer, Eddie. Who was she and what was her story?

Over a couple of years my brother Don and I uncovered some answers. A big breakthrough came when we discovered her last name in a letter stuffed in another scrapbook. Once we had that we looked her up in census records where we learned more details. She was Edna Lauterbach, born in 1900. She lived in Brooklyn with her family including two sisters. She worked in advertising and she was active in the Business and Professional Women’s group within the YWCA. She had encountered my mother, Florence Wick, at conferences in Chicago and Columbus in 1937 and 38 where they roomed together.

The letters convinced me that Eddie was at least a self-acknowledged lesbian who had a serious crush on my mother. There is so much more I want to know about her. Did she remain a closeted lesbian all her life? Was she part of a lesbian subculture? No doubt the environs of New York City afforded more possibilities than those of smaller towns. We know that, as in Berlin, gay culture flourished in the 1920s in New York City, the epicenter of the “Pansy Craze” and the accompanying “Sapphic Craze.” Eddie came of age at a time when gay and lesbian characters were featured in pulp novels, stage plays, radio songs and (before the Hays Code) in movies. Born at the cusp of the 20^th century, she would have been just the right age to experience this flowering of gay culture in New York.

Did she frequent the lesbian and gay gathering places in Manhattan during the 20s and 30s? We know Eddie worked in advertising, though the census doesn’t tell us which firm she worked for. But we can assume she traveled daily from her home in Brooklyn to her work in Manhattan. My mother, Flo, was a small town gal from Yakima, Washington. But I imagine Eddie, who grew up in New York, to be far more citified and sophisticated. Maybe she taught my mom some things.

Did she know Eve Adams, the notorious lesbian café owner who was arrested in 1926, jailed, and later deported, and sent to Auschwitz where she was murdered? Eve Adams is a Jewish radical lesbian foremother, but I had never heard of her until I read her biography by the gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz. The New York Times recently included her obit in its Overlooked No More obituary section and she was profiled in the New Yorker.

Eve Adams (a taken name alluding to Adam and Eve) was friends with anarchists Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Ben Reitman. In New York she mingled with the likes of Margaret Sanger and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Adams came to the US in 1912 and spent four years hitchhiking around the country before settling in New York. I learned from Katz’s book that one of the places she visited was my hometown of Yakima. What drew her there at the height of the nativist backlash in 1922? I’m still trying to find out.

In 1925 Eve Adams published the first American book with lesbian in the title, Lesbian Love. In that year she opened a café in Greenwich Village called Eve’s Hangout, which became a destination for New York’s bohemian contingent.

Did Eddie visit Eve’s Hangout? I bet she knew about the place. She may have been afraid to visit, especially after Eve was arrested in 1926 by an undercover policewoman for “disorderly conduct,” a charge that referred to her alleged sexual advances and for having written an “obscene” book. But if I had been in New York in 1925 you can bet I would have checked out Eve’s Hangout.

Gay culture flourished in the Roaring Twenties in New York. Then in the 30s with the Great Depression and the end of Prohibition, a backlash began and gay culture went underground. By the time Flo and Eddie met in Chicago in 1937 you were taking a chance going into a gay gathering place, if you could even find one. I speculate that Eddie’s two sisters may also have been lesbians. The 1940 census finds them all still single in their 30s and still living in the family apartment on 88^th Street in Brooklyn. I bet Eddie and her sisters had fun together in New York. Flo traveled to New York to visit Eddie in 1941 and, whether or not she met the family, I know she met one of the sisters, Gertrude. The three women saw a Broadway play together, the antifascist play by Lillian Hellman, Watch on the Rhine.

Was Eddie involved in the blooming lesbian feminist culture in the 1970s? She would have been 70 in 1970, but there were plenty of older women who joined the feminist movement, including my mother. Did Eddie continue to be active in the YWCA? The YW may not have harbored anarchists, but my mother and Eddie did rub shoulders with a progressive element who wanted to change the world. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI went after activists in the YW, calling them communists, but the attacks never stuck, maybe because of the Christian in the name or because they were allied with wives of industrialists. Researching the YW for this series, I am impressed with all the organization accomplished, and the stance it took against racism, even in its early years. It is a fascinating history, yet to be compiled into a book. I believe my mother’s progressive anti-racist politics were formed in the YW, and my own world view benefitted from activism in the organization.

The YW was at the forefront of the most critical social movements including women’s empowerment and civil rights. The activism of Flo and Eddie set the stage for my generation’s second wave of feminism and our gay rights movement.

I thought I had reached the end of my Eddie research and speculation. But now my brother has unearthed a batch of photos of our mother and her YW pals. We’ve been able to place them at the conferences in Chicago and Columbus. So in a final chapter of this story I’ll ask readers to weigh in on the possibilities.

To be continued.

Chapter 5: https://mollymartin.blog/2022/08/04/my-mothers-lesbian-affair-2/

When a Sister Is Murdered

JOURNAL October 24, 1983
Pacific Heights Woman Strangled

I see the headline, then discover to my horror the woman was Sue Lawrence, a fellow electrician. Back home with Sandy gone to class and after a day full of questions from men at work I’m terrified at the prospect of my own victimization. That “nude body face down on the bed” could be mine. What if, as in some Agatha Christie plot, the murderer is going after all the female electricians in the city? Will I be next? In the shower, a most vulnerable state especially with a head full of shampoo and eyes closed, I imagine Ruth pounding on my door to be him. Panic strikes. I manage to wash shaking limbs.

***

I was not the only one terrified by Sue’s murder. Other female electricians in the city had the same thought. There were so few of us since union apprenticeship programs had just recently opened their doors to women after years of pressure and lawsuits. We were in the minority. We were not welcomed. We were scorned. We already felt vulnerable as women in an all-male work environment. Now this murder had us all freaked out.

Sue’s memorial was held at the Episcopal church just off Diamond Heights Blvd. We met Sue’s parents and heard a minister recite a rote speech, but we learned very little more about Sue than we already knew, which was not much.

Afterward we repaired to Yet Wah, a Chinese restaurant on the upper floor of the shopping center across the street. There the women electricians of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 6 gathered to celebrate the life of our sister. We were joined by two or three tradeswomen from other crafts.

We had been working on construction sites that day but, as construction workers say to each other outside of work, we cleaned up pretty good. You couldn’t look at us and tell that we were electricians. I wore my only “good” outfit, a sports jacket with sleeves rolled up bought at Community Thrift, the gay secondhand store on Valencia Street. Paired with black jeans and a white shirt I could go anywhere.

My roommate Sandy was a fashion plate and took this opportunity to wear a dress, a fifties number with a pencil skirt. She had a tiny waist and large butt so she had trouble finding work clothes that fit. Manufacturers didn’t make work clothes for women. Away from work Sandy took refuge in skirts. She had always wanted to work in the fashion industry but couldn’t find a job there. She felt she didn’t fit in construction, but the money was a powerful incentive.

Others dressed in black funeral attire.

“Sharp,” said Alice when she bumped into Dale, who was wearing a suit and tie. “Very avant garde.”

Ten of us were seated around a big round table with a lazy susan in the middle for family style serving. As big plates of Gung Pao chicken and mu shu pork revolved, we collectively decompressed.

I had worked out of the Local 6 hall for a couple of years, but I had never encountered any of my sisters on the job. We were isolated and alone when at work. Our active support group of Local 6 women gathered monthly to share stories and to support each other. The sisters’ gatherings helped us feel not so alone. We had been pushing for a women’s caucus in our union local, a caucus with the union’s endorsement.

“So I got a cease and desist letter from the union,” said Sandy, whose thick Boston accent left us westerners chuckling. “They said if we don’t stop meeting they will kick us out. We are not an authorized caucus, and there’s no easy way for us to get authorized.”

“Are they serious?” said Joanne. “Would they really do that?”

The business manager kept a tight rein on the local. We heard those who attempted to challenge his leadership had been blacklisted, but it was hard to imagine the local disenfranchising its handful of female members. We had only just made our way in. At that time there were fewer than ten of us in the union local. We decided to keep meeting. But it was a clear message—the union was not our ally and we should not seek support there.

Sue Lawrence had entered the IBEW apprenticeship when she was only 18. She was about to graduate from the four-year program when she was raped and murdered by the stranger who broke into her parents’ house.

I knew Sue only from the sisters’ meetings. She didn’t talk much. I didn’t even remember having a conversation with her.

“She was weird,” said Dale. “A newspaper reporter called and asked about Sue. I didn’t know what to say. I think she was suffering from manic depression. But, hey, we all know you have to be a little bit crazy to go into the trades as a woman.”

Nods around the table. We all felt a little bit crazy.

“I know she struggled during her apprenticeship,” said Jan. “You know she started right out of high school. That’s rough. Younger women get more harassment. But she made it through and she was just about to turn out as a journeywoman.”

“The last project she worked on was that big housing complex at the ocean where Playland at the Beach used to be,” said Dolores. “She was the only woman working there.”

“I think she was struggling with her sexuality,” said Alice.

Sue was an enigma to all of us. Had any of us been there to support her? Maybe not to the extent we should have been.

Sue lived with her parents in the house she had grown up in on Green Street. I had driven by it just to see where she came from. It was a rich part of town that none of us frequented. Her parents had some money. Maybe Sue hadn’t fit into the box prepared for her. She was an unlikely electrician, but I knew several of them—women whose parents were doctors and who rebelled against parental expectations by going into construction.

Tradeswomen can’t get together without talking about discrimination and harassment we experience on the job. No one else really understands or wants to listen to our complaints.

“Can I be honest,” said Lynn. “Since Sue was murdered I haven’t slept well. I’m scared. Was Sue attacked because she was an electrician? Are we at risk of being attacked?”

We looked at each other. I hadn’t slept well either. We didn’t know anything about Sue’s killer. What was his motive?

Jennifer told us how she had been attacked and raped in her own house the year before. Sue’s death had been hard on her. The only female on her job, she couldn’t shake the thought that her coworkers might be abusers and rapists. She had stayed off the job and was terrified to go back to work where she felt profoundly unsafe. She confessed that she didn’t know how much longer she could stay in the apprenticeship.

“Maybe I have PTSD or something,” she said. “Whenever I think about going back to work I get the cold sweats. I’m starting to think I just can’t go back.”

Pat, who had started in one of the first apprenticeship classes of Local 6 women in 1978, complained about being dyke baited.

“One of the guys called me a bulldagger the other day,” she bellowed. Pat had a mouth on her. Maybe that’s how she survived.

Pat was married to a man and they had two young children. I had seen a picture of her at her graduation from the apprenticeship. She was standing next to her tuxedoed husband and dressed in a fancy gown made of filmy blue material like women might have worn to any other graduation ceremony. Even in that gown Pat looked like the butchest bull dyke we knew. She kept her hair short and had a stocky body. On the job in her work clothes and tool belt Pat radiated authority. How sad to have to put up with dyke baiting when you’re not even a dyke!

“Pat should officially be an honorary dyke,” I said. “She gets dyke baited just like us lesbians, maybe even more.”

And we all agreed. Dale stood and, pretending to wield a magic sword, touched Pat on both shoulders and declared, “Pat, I now dub you an honorary dyke. Your ID card will be mailed to you.”

And it was then that I truly understood that dyke baiting was not as much about lesbians as it was about ensuring that we all meet certain stereotypes of what men think women should look and act like. Dyke baiting on the job affected all of us, gay and straight.

The conversation turned to tradeswomen organizing. We had been making an effort to hire childcare for our meetings and conferences but it was a struggle. We had no budget so we resorted to passing the hat to hire a childcare worker. The dearth of childcare meant that some of our parent members had to bring their kids to meetings or stay home. The only woman at the table with kids, Pat supported a childcare initiative.

“But you’ve got a husband,” said Alice. “Why can’t he stay with the kids.”

“Yeah I’m married, but you’ve got a partner too,” countered Pat. “This is just discrimination against mothers. Do you want us in the group or not?”

Samantha, sitting across the table, sent me a look. We had been flirting for weeks. She was so damn cute, curly dark hair framing a round face, a small woman with a muscled frame. We had been lifting weights together at the Women’s Training Center on Market Street.

It was a period in my life when attractions proliferated and sometimes the attraction could not be ignored. Sam’s look required follow up. She politely excused herself from the table and I waited a moment before heading in the direction of the women’s room.

The bathroom had two stalls. I entered the one nearest the wall. Sam was close behind, gliding in and locking the door. Smiling, I caressed her firm delts. I knew how much she could bench. She was so hot. I gently pressed her back up against the door and lowered my head slightly. The kiss—long and soft—weakened my knees.

Others crowded into the bathroom.

“Hey, can I have some of that too,” called Dale, looking under the door at our four feet.

Busted!

We walked out with sheepish grins to a line of sister construction workers waiting for the stall.

“Get a room,” someone yelled.

They were taunting us but they were all laughing. And then we were laughing too, a practiced survival tactic.

***

JOURNAL October 27, 1983
Sue’s memorial service and dinner with the women electricians afterward inspires me to see these women as my sisters in struggle. I feel our collective rage and hurt and vulnerability. When I tell them I imagine a plot against women electricians, all admit the same horrible fantasy. Jennifer who survived being raped and strangled in her own house last year is hardest hit but others tell of their terror at staying alone at home.

***

Though I conflate these events in my mind, it wouldn’t be until six years later that we would witness a mass killing of women who deigned to study what had been “men’s work.” On December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine entered a mechanical engineering class at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and separated the women, telling the men to leave the room. He said he was “fighting feminism” and opened fire. He shot at all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, targeting women. He slaughtered eight more before turning the gun on himself.

That guy had a motive.

Call Her by Her Name

Al and I first met when I walked into the open door at Summit pump station. He was kneeling on the concrete floor painting one of the pump motors that supply water to the city of San Francisco. When he saw my figure standing in the doorway he jumped back, like I was there to assault him. That gave me a little jolt of power—that a man might be startled by me. Yeah, I thought to myself, I’m a big strong woman and men flinch at the sight of my form. But there was a safety issue. The pump stations are situated in remote parts of the city. And I wasn’t supposed to be there. Or, in reality, no one knew where I was at any particular moment. As the one electrician responsible for all the stations, I kept my own schedule, responding sometimes to complaints or work orders and sometimes just checking to make sure the electrical equipment was working.

“Hey,” he said, squinting at me in the sun glaring through the open door. “Who are you?”

“I’m the electrician. Who are you?” I answered. But I knew he was a stationary engineer. Painting motors is part of their job.

The corps of engineers worked out of the Lake Merced pump station where they reported to the chief engineer, Joe. I thought I’d met all of them at one or another pump station. But Al was a retiree just filling in for a coworker who was in rehab. I figured he was about three decades older than me, a small redhead still with a good bit of hair left. He reminded me of a leprechaun—little and cute. We liked each other immediately and over the course of a few months we became friends. Not the kind of friends who see each other outside of work. But we would share personal information that we might not share with others.

There was one other engineer I was tight with, Jesus, and he would sometimes meet up with me and Al at lunch break. Jesus was transitioning from male to female and had been taking hormones for a few months. He had saved up enough money for the operation and was in the process of scheduling it. Al told me Jesus had announced to their fellow engineers that he now wanted to be called Rosa.

“How did they react?” I asked, thinking that must have taken some courage.

“They looked at their hands and didn’t say anything,” he said. “Just some snickering.” Knowing that he was planning to transition, his coworkers had ignored Jesus and refused to talk to him. Now that he was Rosa, the treatment would be no different.

Jesus told me he had known he was really female from the time he was a child in Mexico. A generally happy person with a positive attitude, Rosa was positively delighted to finally be female, to be herself. I thought she radiated serenity.

I wish I could say the transition was seamless for me, that I found it easy to switch from Jesus to Rosa, but I found it difficult. I had gotten to know this person as Jesus and now it was like I was having to start all over again. The pronoun thing confounded me. Back in the day we feminists had pushed to rid the English language of male and female pronouns, but the idea never took hold. I dearly wished for those genderless pronouns whenever I screwed up, but Rosa was forgiving.

I was suspicious of most of the men at work. Let’s just say they didn’t welcome me, the lone female, into the fold. I tried to give them as little information about myself as possible, assuming it would be used against me. I knew that I could not be friends with these men. But I had begun to feel differently about Al and Jesus.

I learned that Al was married to a French woman, that they had no children. I learned that he had been around the world as a seaman. Like many of the engineers, Al had learned his trade in the Merchant Marines. I knew some things about the Merchant Marines—that the celebrated San Francisco Communist Bill Bailey had been one and that he was not the only commie. I knew that the mariners had performed a vital service in World War II, risking their lives to supply materiel to the fronts. I knew that, while they weren’t part of the military, the merchant navy had suffered a higher casualty rate than any branch of the military. Their boats were always being torpedoed. Then, after the war, they were attacked and denied any benefits because they were all branded as communists, which of course most of them were not. They were just civilian patriots willing to risk their lives to protect the lives of others.

I knew enough to gain some trust with Al before asking but I had to ask, “Were you a Communist?”

All I got was a wry smile, enough to let me know I should stop asking questions.

But that was enough for me. I call myself a communist with a small c, more of a new leftist. I’m always delighted to meet up with the old commies, for whom I have great regard. They don’t always want to admit past affiliations. Most of the Reds were disheartened by knowledge of Stalin’s murderous legacy. Many were hounded for years by Hoover’s FBI. Jobs were lost and lives ruined.

Now it was 1985, the depths of Reaganism, which made all of us minorities jumpy and skittish and gave our detractors permission to be openly hostile. The AIDS epidemic was ravaging San Francisco’s gay men’s community while Reagan refused to even acknowledge the disease. Women—feminists–had come under attack along with anyone who didn’t fit into the back-to-the-fifties scenario. Immigrants, transgender people and communists too. Maybe that’s why the three of us gathered, just to know we weren’t alone.

Jesus, now Rosa, had begun presenting as female, letting her hair grow and wearing women’s clothes. But she didn’t really look that different than before. We all wore work clothes. My work outfit consisted of boots, canvas work pants, a T-shirt with a flannel shirt over the top, and when it was cold a wool-lined vest or jean jacket. A hard hat was not required on this maintenance job and I didn’t have to wear a tool belt. I carried my hand tools in a leather tool bag. And I drove a truck painted Water Department colors, Kelly green and white, in which I carried wire, pipe, benders and all the other tools and material I might need. Rosa, when dressed in work clothes, looked like me.

Me in my San Francisco Water Department truck

Rosa was the first transgender person I got close to, but I was not completely naïve. Ire had been raised in the tradeswomen community when we learned of a transgender female carpenter in our midst. She had transitioned after working as an already skilled male carpenter. She was getting work while we were frozen out because we were women. The contractor got to count her as an affirmative action hire. It didn’t seem fair. Then there was a continuing dustup in the lesbian community about a transgender sound engineer who worked for Olivia Records, the women’s music company. She had been trained while still male. We women wanted to do everything ourselves, but we didn’t have the skills because we couldn’t access the training. It’s possible that when the engineer, Sandy Stone, was hired, there were no other female sound engineers. Some lesbians were quick to attack the individual, but most of us understood that our real enemy was the system that discriminated against women.

At lunch one day Al told us some war stories. He said he had survived a torpedo attack where some seamen had died. I tried to imagine his life on those ships. I’d heard the gay historian Allan Berube’s lecture and slide show about sailors and soldiers during the war. They were all having sex with each other, especially the sailors. I knew Al wasn’t gay but I suspected he’d participated in gay sex.

I had allowed myself to relax a little with Al and Jesus. I came out to them. We talked politics. We all hated Reagan. I had started to feel comfortable with these guys.

Then one day while Al and I worked together he confessed that his wife no longer wanted to have sex with him and he was super horny. Did I want to have sex with him? It wasn’t as if men at work had not come on to me before. This was the typical way they did it; they would complain about their wives and that would be the opening. But I was shocked to hear this from my friend Al. I’d been solidly in the friend category I thought. Suddenly I was in the gal toy category. Or was it the whore category? Weird.

I said, “Al you know I’m gay. I’m not attracted to men.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I’d lived much of my life as a practicing heterosexual.

“Well, maybe you have friends who might want to have sex with me,” he said. And for a moment I actually considered the question. I definitely had horny friends. But who might want to have sex with Al? What would his personal ad look like? “65-year-old leprechaun seeks sex with any female. Age not important. Nothing else important.”

Then I was grossed out thinking my friend Al wanted me to pimp out my women friends. Then I was disappointed that our friendship was not what I had thought it was.

“So you only have sex with women?” Al asked.

“Well yeah. That’s what being a lesbian means. Maybe I’m not as sexually fluid as you. I know what y’all did on those ships.”

No response except that wry smile again.

That interaction changed my relationship with Al, but he may not have even noticed. Like many men he lacked a certain amount of sensitivity. On the other hand, his size and his politics—his minority status in the world of men—engendered more empathy than most.

So now I started thinking Al was like all the other guys. I stopped feeling so safe around him. Not that he might attack me. No, I was pretty sure I could take him in a fight. I was bigger and I practiced karate. It was more that he didn’t value me, didn’t see who I really was, and so might not understand the need for discretion. I did know that just because someone is or was a Communist does not mean they are not sexist as hell.

For a while I didn’t cross paths with Rosa. I still saw Al out in the field and he would fill me in on Rosa’s transition. The surgery had gone well and Rosa was back at work. She was happy, even as her coworkers continued to give her the cold shoulder.

“I’m having trouble re-learning Jesus’s name,” I confessed. “I’m just not good at it. I get all confused with the pronouns and I keep saying him instead of her.”

This time Al’s response was sharp and I realized he must be doing his best to protect Rosa from harassment by the other engineers.

“She is Rosa now,” he said, “and you’ve got to call her by her name.”

It was an admonishment and I took it seriously. Al was worldly wise and maybe had known other transgender people. He knew how to be an ally. Could I really be learning something from this old white guy?

I guess everybody’s got something to teach.

	Minerva Haddad on Crossed Off
	Anonymous on Crossed Off
	Anonymous on Crossed Off
	jessej63 on Crossed Off
	Frances Fuchs on Our First Dyke March June 21,…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: