San Jose—Santa Clara Valley
San Jose was in the Santa Clara Valley. Signs on the edge of town lists its population at 6,000, but if you consider the small towns that are its suburbs, the population exceeds two and a half million.
In the mid-sixties, the valley was experiencing a boom. Northern California was ingesting a thousand people a day and the Santa Clara Valley was hardest hit. This great migration caused a shortage in housing, concomitantly the existing rental rates sky-rocketed.
I was one of the immigrants, forced to live in one of the shabbiest parts of town because I didn’t have money or skill to land a fancy job. My days were long and difficult. I’d find the San Jose Mercury News and study the want ads. The jobs that were available were technical, i.e., electronics or mechanical drawing or tool and dye work, nothing that I could handle. Yet, everyday there would be certain jobs that called for little if any experience, and I would circle these ads in the paper and find their location on the city map and I would set out to find them. It wasn't unusual for me to walk ten or fifteen miles for a job interview. When I got to the interview I was usually worn out, and I don't make very good first impressions anyway and usually I was politely told that the job had already been filled by someone who had a car. I would check the paper again and the map and find my next interview. Again unsuccessful. This routine persisted for several months. My father would send me money to keep me alive. I’ll always remember those long walks to distant portions of town and more vividly, I’ll remember the walks home and the disappointment I felt on not being able to succeed in the world on my own. I didn’t realize when I was in high school that this was the kind of world that existed.
Too many Horatio Alger stories.