The news that Western Union has transmitted its last telegram brought memories back to me in a rush. When I went to work for Western Union in the late 1950s ( my first full-time job out of high school ) , I couldn't have known that it would be the catalyst leading me to Chicago's lesbian sub-culture and my first 'domestic partner.' There were few jobs outside of nurse or secretary open to unskilled women in those days—and none since the end of WWII allowed women to work overtime, unless in an essential industry. Returning servicemen got the good-paying labor opportunities, and postwar women were expected to return to home and hearth. But I was 17, on my own and wanted to go to college; I needed all the money I could muster. Western Union ( WU ) offered the chance to earn exponentially with night differential, overtime rates and double-time holiday pay.
I had learned touch typing while waiting after classes for my high school lover. Her homeroom nun taught business skills and as an aspiring writer, I cadged a few lessons. Knowing how to type ( and having short fingernails ) got me the job at WU. They trained me; I became a commercial telegrapher and joined the union. WU, I was to learn, was home base for many other women like myself who were self-supporting; it was inevitable that some would be lesbians.
I was working as a relief operator at a WU office on Roosevelt Road just east of Kedzie when the woman assigned as relief night manager burst in, saying she had just had a rock thrown at her windshield and caught a few racial epithets. While she was calling the main office to say she wasn't going to work in that neighborhood, I checked her out. My 'gaydar' went off. In those days before slacks in the office, she was professionally coiffed; sported a puffy D.A. ( we used to call them 'duck's ass' ) haircut; tailored shirt and skirt; penny-loafers; and a pinkie ring. The only discordant note: a slash of obligatory red lipstick, a shade or two brighter than mine. This was my first meeting with Donna Stevenson.
Not too many days later 'Steve,' and her then-partner, an ex-B girl, came around to my apartment to check me out. We met a few times after the midnight shift for beer and steaks at the Europa House just east of Riverview. They decided my jeans, flannel shirts, and Oxfords had to go if they were going to take me around to 'their' bars. They took me shopping for coordinates: polyester slacks; print or plaid shirts; and a blazer or two. You could land in jail if you were caught in jeans and articles of 'men's' clothes in a bar raid. [ In 1973, I was one of the law students who assisted attorney Renee Hanover in her successful attempt to have the cross-dressing portion of Chicago's municipal code declared unconstitutional. ]
Steve and Mary were 'south siders' so my first dyke bar was The Club on State Line Road in Calumet City. We left our ID under the car mat in case of a raid and just carried money and our cigarettes. It had a long bar and booths on either side of a small dance floor. A big butch was on the door, and a classier cross-dresser named 'Sox' was in residence most weekend nights. A few years and a new lover later, Stevie and her pal 'Rene would buy the bar and change its name to Our Place. Steve and her then-partner Hilda bought a home in Dolton and I had my first glimpse of the possibilities of a 'normal' life. Years later, I heard Steve moved to Atlanta and was in real estate. The last time I saw 'Rene she was shooting pool in the old Sue & Nan's on Lincoln Avenue just off Iriving.
For a while Steve had rented a room in the home of a divorcee who worked at the WU office on Fullerton just east of Pulaski. I got to know Dot when I \worked that office on relief. She was straight when I met her, but she partied with our bunch. When we didn't go south we saw the drag show at the Blue Dahlia or hung out at a black-light, Tahitian-type show lounge on Milwaukee Avenue run by a Polish gal and her Filipino husband. A few years later, she partnered with a gregarious blond butch and I went to my first, what I guess could be called, 'committment ceremony.' Ro and Dottie had a house full of friends to witness their vows and start their new life together.
I started exploring my options for 'domestic bliss' and fell in love with a young woman from South Dakota who was working at the WU office across from the Aragon Ballroom when I met her. I courted her when we were both working at a WU office on Milwaukee west of the Sears at six-corners. I bought a black trench coat on credit there to butch-up my image, and took flowers to the office to impress her. Twenty-five years later Greta Schiller would use a 1960 photograph, in that coat, as one of the two stills of me in her now-classic video, Before Stonewall.
With all the pay differential, I saved enough for a semester at DePaul, got on the dean's list, and proved to myself that I handle it even though my deceased Dad had only finished high school and Mom had been pulled out of grammar school in rural Iowa. While finishing school, I continued to work the four-to-midnight shift for WU at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, and at the old Union Station before it shrank from remodeling. The girl from South Dakota became my partner for eight years. After college I quit WU, and was working for a law publisher when I found Mattachine Midwest, Bill Kelley and Renee Hanover. But my 40-year fate as a lesbian activist was already sealed on the day I sent my first telegram.
Copyright 2006 by Marie J. Kuda
