Some nicknames are nominative: “Dusty Baker”, descriptive: “Red Adair”, others ironic: “Shorts McCarthy”. Wriggles was neither, a simple corruption of his surname, Wrigley. His father Walter Wrigley was never referred to as anything other than Walt. Even when he was in the Army in Vietnam they could not be bothered to give him something less ordinary to hang his acquaintance upon. He spent his time ‘in country’ at a special facility funded by Robert McNamara using the newest weapon of domination, an IBM computer. Walt learned to be a card operator. As he often joked at the VFW later that the biggest threat to his life in ‘Nam was a paper cut from the data entry cards.
Wriggles was his oldest son, Philip Chester Wriggles. Born 2 years after Walt got married to the first girl he dated, when he was demobbed in San Francisco. He had no thought of returning to the flat light and flat lands of Oklahoma where his family still lived. Wriggles was a happy smiley baby and the family lived in a Julie Phoenix ticky tacky house in Pacifica, down highway 1 from the city. At the end of the 60’s it was a working class community who put up with the permafog in return for single family homes on 125′ lots. Walt went off to work each morning at AAA and played with the hand of cards that had been dealt him. Computer Operator was boring but well paid and the benefits with the California Automobile Association were great. Amy, the sister of Wriggles appeared 2 years later and the family entered that state of eminence that only the USA granted to its working people, a 3 bedroom house with a garden, electrical appliances and a new car in the garage.
Wriggles was not the swiftest academically of his cohort that flowed through Elementary, to Middle School and on into Oceana High School, the “Home of the Sharks”. Wriggles surfed like all his buddies and he and his sister hung out on the beach from the moment they were allowed. As teens they graduated to the cool kids surfing Rockaway Beach, not the State Park beach, which was for long board posers and tourists. Wriggles didn’t let it get to his head and with encouragement from his Mum, Jean, he worked hard at school, never getting straight A’s but never also getting below a B.
From the beginning of the spring of ’83 until the football tryouts in Late July Wriggles grew three inches and gained 18 pounds of muscle. When the football coach Mr King, who also had coached Wriggles at Little League saw the change, he thought it was worthwhile investing some time and effort in the quiet but likable young man. So Wriggles’ days started, for the two last years of high school, no longer on his board chasing the rip but in a weight room or running the hills with a bunch of equally acne proud but burgeoning young men. Oceana was too small a school to challenge the bigger high school football programs but they played well enough to play against the best schools on the Peninsula and so Wriggles parlayed his solid B’s and his tight end into a scholarship at Cal State Fresno.
Wriggles shared his father’s disdain for the agricultural flat lands and could not wait to get back to Pacifica once he had graduated. He had an okay time at college. He played football although never a starter, drank beer, although never a drunk, he smoked some weed but never a stoner, he slept with not one but three separate cheerleaders, he tried a fraternity but was never rapey. His biggest achievement at Fresno was meeting and impressing Dawn Chambers. She thought he was cute and they were on a couple of accounting projects together where he listened intently to every word she uttered. Dawn was a business major like Wriggles but she was the daughter of the President and CEO of one of the largest cattle feed businesses in California, had grown up in 4H, County Fairs and country clubs in the Central Valley. They moved in non-concentric circles, Dawn was wealthy, preppy and going places, Wriggles was cruising through college with his BeachBoy tan and surfee slang. Dawn had an internship in Sacramento for a Republican state senator when she graduated. Wriggles got a management trainee job in San Francisco with the Gap.
A year passed by and Wriggles got bored with folding jeans in decreasing order of size in equal rows. A college acquaintance he met at a Fresno State mixer at McArthur Park one night told him about logistics, and like Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate, that one word opened up his horizons. He was introduced to the customer service manager at a large logistics business part of an insurance conglomerate in San Francisco, Mrs Debbie Kenney had an eye for a good looking young man and Wriggles pleasant manner pleased her. She recommended him to the Director for the West Coast, Bucky Keith and within 3 weeks of the mixer Wriggles was a logistics man.
Bucky was a Kiwi. A big bluff man whose ample frame and bright eyes hid the many ailments that tormented him and ultimately killed him tragically at 52. He wore white button downs in winter and short sleeve button downs in summer, he explained to Wriggles that it was the sign of a man without a plan to roll your shirt sleeves up. Bucky was a fun mentor and happy to have his team of young Californians, even if sometimes their respective slangs left the other scrambling for clues. He got to work sometimes on projects with Carl Newgarden, the VP Rail, he was a bit of a jock and enjoyed coaching Wriggles on the esoterica of shipping stuff. Wriggles enjoyed being part of a team and found his niche arranging trucking around the country, making friends with the folks at the truckers who liked the low key surfer dude in San Francisco.
There was obviously one thing missing from the picture and that was a future Mrs Wriggles. The girls at work were not what he needed or wanted for various and unique reasons. The most likely match was a former tennis scholarship girl at Cal Poly but he found her robotic, the others were equal mismatches. He had moved back in with his Mom and Dad in Pacifica while Amy, who was one of the swiftest in her cohort, was down in LA at school at UCLA, studying to be an optician. She didn’t even come back for the summer as she knew now what it was like to surf in the sun rather than the fog and even though the water is hardly balmy off Santa Monica pier it at least does not give you the chills of NorCal. The years in the swell at Rockaway also meant she could surf most of what was available down there with her eyes closed and even the most nazi of the surf rats grudgingly knew she was for real.
Dawn Chambers’ post graduation experience was a whir of Sacramento life. Its an odd city, lurking at its heart herds of wild political animals and their handlers surrounded by suburbs full of the mundane and middle class. Unbearably hot in the summer and liable to the odd frost in winter it is still quintessentially Californian with apple orchards and citrus farms broken up by freeways and sprawl. The American River roars through in the spring and later meanders into the delta where the good burghers of the Capital float the waters and nearby lakes on pontoon boats. She roomed with a sorority sister in a fading old Victorian on T street by the park. They seemed at times to be out of a different era, from when Eisenhower was in charge and America was content and the fading patina of the house reflected their own slow slide into subtle irrelevancy. She had thought she was made, even bred for this life of cocktail parties in smoke filled grand buildings and powerful men, making deals, making stuff happen, making a difference. Dawn was smart enough to see through the smoke screen and see that these old sweaty men were actually on the make, making themselves rich, making a mess and making pass after pass at her and every other woman in their rarified orbit. When the Senator’s brother, a frequent visitor always in need of a favor for some company needing to get round the inconvenience of restraint, legal or customary, grabbed her tits for the third time she decided commerce might be better for her sanity than a life in politics.
Newly arrived in San Francisco in 1988, staying with a different sorority sister in yet another fading Victorian on Hayes Street she was invited to the Cal State Fresno Alum mixer that was being held at Benningans at Fisherman’s Wharf. She liked the city and the sense of freedom that being by the sea brought, for a Valley girl the change was up lifting. Dawn did not miss the feedlots and steamy summers, nor Sactown’s smug corruption. The City had its own corruption but that was small beer and everyone just accepted it as they accepted the drugs, prostitution and seediness that surrounded the Civic Center. She had had a couple of Tequila Sunrises and was listening, half not listening, to a guy she knew from Bakersfield talking about his swell office overlooking the city from the BofA building and thinking that his suit made him look like an animated wardrobe rather than the champion of Wall Street he obviously thought he was. As he boasted about his early starts to be up and in the office as New York’s markets open as some badge of honour, she just knew he would have a Black Mont Blanc pen the size of a dildo in his jacket pocket. As she was slipping into that half space between panic and anger thinking how could she escape his claustrophobia of the desperation to impress, someone tapped her on the shoulder as he was mid sentence.
Wriggles had been in the non-smoking section of Bennigans nursing his Amstel Light. He drove up from San Bruno after work in his Bronco and had to drive home after to Pacifica so he was making that 10 ounces last.
As he scanned the booming room of the young and shiny fellow alums he spotted through the palms and brass rails the blonde hair, neckline and right shoulder that he had stared at for two years in accounting classes. He was so happy to see her he didn’t get time for nerves nor to take in the Master of the Universe who was in mid lecture. Dawn was so glad to see him and escape that she didn’t even think of excusing herself from class. They moved to another part of the bar and leaned in, both starting to talk at the same time.
Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy 