The Treasury Ladies

During my college years 1974 - 1978 I was fortunate to be able to have employment with the federal government for summer jobs because I was a veteran. There was a large government center nearby on Wissahickon Avenue that housed Veterans Administration and Treasury Department offices in a group of buildings across the campus. It was nice for me because I could walk to work.

At different times I worked at both the VA and the Treasury and sometimes on different shifts. During the summer of 1976 I was working in one particular unit of the Treasury department at a computer terminal as a records management clerk. There were fourteen people in a relatively small space.  with each sitting in front of a terminal arranged around the room. Actually we were in a massively large room that was subdivided into smaller spaces using room dividers that half way up to the high ceiling but it felt tight and close. In our work group there was one another college student about my age who was a veteran like me and black. All of the other 12 people in the room were middle aged black ladies.

After a day or so of many probing questions and continuous grilling I was deemed OK in their eyes because I grew up in the neighborhood. They especially liked when I told them I lived across the street from a black church and enjoyed sitting on my porch listening to the gospel music. I didn't mention the pot smoking that went along with the music. 

The ladies would talk among themselves and after a while they would forget about me and the other guy were in the room. They would go on with their regular loud and boisterous conversations about their families, their neighborhood, their churches and their shopping. I learned a lot more about black life that summer and what it was like to be a church lady.