Chapter 3

The next morning we got into more of the peculiar SSA terminology. Officially, the claimant wasn't called a claimant, but rather a "WE or SE person," the WE and SE standing for "wage earner" and "self-employed." For every fiscal quarter in which the WE earned more than $250, he received credit for one "quarter." A person needed a certain number of quarters to qualify for Social Security -- 40 in 1978, but it increases each year on the assumption that since the system has been in effect since 1936, it should be easier to rack up the required number of quarters as each year passes. The CR's job in a retirement case consists of helping the WE or SE person in filling out the rather elementary form, look at some proof of his or her age and request to DRTs to ask the computer in Baltimore for a copy of the claimant's wage record. This is a fascinating little yellow printout which lists one's income (or at least that part of it the Government knows about) for every year since 1936. The wage record is used to determine if the person has earned enough credits to receive Social Security payments and what the "high three" wage-earning years were, which is used to calculate the amount of his or her payment.

Dave adopted his "important information" tone and we all leaned closer. "There is a big misconception about Social Security among the public. Somehow, people have gotten the idea that Social Security is some sort of pension system, that if they are covered by Social Security they don't need another pension. This is not the function of Social Security. Title II was developed at a time of tremendous economic upheaval in this country, when 30% of all Americans were not only out of work but actually starving to death. Social Security is a supplement, a tiny monthly payment to keep the wolf from the door. It is not a pension. The absolute saddest part of this job, believe me, is when a person comes in here, after putting in 40 years or so on some hard, back-breaking job, to find that the Government, on the average, will pay him $284 a month. The looks on their faces when you tell them that will give you nightmares. The Government has spent the last 42 years telling people what I'm telling you now, but there are some misconceptions that will not go away. For instance, most people who come in here are firmly convinced that federal workers don't pay any income tax. It's true that we don't pay any Social Security tax, because we're not covered by it, but we pay almost twice as much in civil service retirement taxes. Believe me, they don't want to hear any of this, but it's our job to go out and tell it to them. It ain't easy."

There were several exceptions to the "quarters" requirements, the main one being that people born before 1896 -- that is, people who were already 40 years old when Social Security went into effect -- didn't need any quarters to be covered. Since the youngest person under this rule was 82 years old in 1978 and probably already getting his checks, we were told not to worry about this rule too much.

Just before lunch, Dave explained briefly about widow and widower benefits. If a person who otherwise would have been eligible for Title II payments -- over 62 and enough quarters -- dies, his or her spouse is entitled to the monthly payment, whether or not they were already receiving a benefit. We were given copies of the forms used in these transactions -- a red SSA-1 for retirees, a green SSA-2 for spouse benefits -- and told to hang onto them for future reference.

"Oh, by the way," Dave said as we scraped our chairs out to leave for lunch, "you have probably noticed the bookcase full of binders behind each chair. That is the Claims Manual, or CM. It contains all the regulations you need to know to be a Claims Representative. Don't let the fact that it's 13 volumes long intimidate you in the least. Have a nice lunch."

I had struck up a bit of an acquaintance with the two guys who sat on either side of me, and I drove them to a Ponderosa down the street for lunch. One was Steve Potter, a tall, open-faced bearded guy with a quick smile and an infectious laugh. He was from Peoria, where his last job had been with the local welfare office as a clerk. He gave off an air of easy camaraderie and a smooth idea of how life worked. I had trouble even getting out the door in the morning, while Steve seemed to be on speaking terms with everything fate had in store for him.

The other guy was Dave Norton, whose last job had been as an aircraft assembler with Beechcraft in Salina, Kansas. On first glance, Dave appeared to have watched too many episodes of Kung Fu, his eyes almost physically slanted by the effort of trying to look inscrutable and enigmatic. There was, however, no impression of affectation or effect about him -- it was just simply not his nature to say very much, but make everything he said count. This economy of expression must have struck a lot of people as unfriendly, since as a defense he sported a constant sly smile. As a person who tended to mumble and joke when silence was called for, Dave's control of the moment -- his refusal to say something for the sake of saying something -- impressed me almost as much as Steve's seeming mastery of his situation with his bonhomie and good thoughts. They were an interesting pair to sit between.

When class resumed, Dave discussed what "proof of age" entailed. "All of you, I imagine, have birth certificates, and know where you can get your hands on them when you need them. Well, anybody retiring this year, if they are 62, was born in 1916. Record keeping in 1916, by our standards today, was incredibly slipshod. Only the largest cities had any kind of birth record bureau, or central depository of birth data. Everyone else made do with just family knowledge of their birth date. But SSA requires proof. This means baptismal records, family bibles, marriage certificates, military records, employment records -- anything written before the person turned 30, since there is usually little reason to lie about your age before then. As much as you may want to accept someone's word for their age, we need to get some proof. Even if they're not lying with some ulterior motive, you'd be surprised how many people have simply lost track of how old they are."

We looked surprised.

"I had a guy come in here last year who figured he had just turned 65, and wanted to start getting checks. We searched around for some proof of age, and finally got a certificate from the Veterans Administration which said this guy was born in 1904. He was 73 years old! And we don't pay retroactive benefits." He shook his head sadly. "If you'll pull out the first volume of the CM, we'll go over the proof of age requirements."

At 4:30 we were released, and we all dashed to our cars to check out our new apartments. I wandered around the complex for a while, trying to find the address the manager had given me -- 6828 Schroeder Road, Apartment 11 -- but found myself sliding around dangerously on hilly, iced-over roads which snaked through the complex. I passed a tennis court covered in two feet of snow and finally found it -- a brown wood building with inset balconies -- and parked in one of the parking spaces laboriously hacked out of the ancient drifts.

It was a secure building, and I had to unlock both the outside door and an inner one before I could get to Apartment 11. I slowly opened the door and peeked inside.

It was huge. The door opened into a living room at least 20 feet long, made even bigger by the sparse furnishings -- a couch, two end tables, a few lamps. Off to one side a dining set filled a niche by the kitchen, which was small but fully equipped.

My own apartment! Jesus! I dramatically threw my coat and scarf in the middle of the room and spread-eagled myself on the floor, staring at the ceiling in amazement. It's all mine! I was seized with a desire to do something to symbolize my new freedom, but couldn't think of anything. After a while, I got up and explored further.

Big sliding doors led to the balcony. It was small and ankle-deep in snow, but it faced south and the near-constant sunlight almost made up for the fact that the heat units -- low metal counters against the walls -- were not turned on. The view across the snow-locked parking lot to the Verona hills in the distance was stunning. I breathed the frigid air and studied the view for a while, then went back in.

The bedroom was also large, and the sliding window looked across to the next building about 50 feet away. There was a dresser, but the bed was only a mattress with a note pinned to it: "Frame out of stock. Will deliver tomorrow." The bathroom was utilitarian. A large walk-in closet next to it completed my tour. I wandered back to the living room.

During the day, we had formed up into carpools and went to the downtown offices of Wisconsin Bell to get telephones. For some reason I ordered two bright red ones, a wall model for the kitchen and a desk unit for the bedroom. I quickly ducked down to the car and hooked up the kitchen phone. Getting a reassuring dial tone, I called my mother in Virginia. My first phone call on my own phone.

She was delighted to hear from me, of course, and I told her about my first few days in Madison. I hadn't realized that I missed my mother as much as I did, and the enveloping feeling of closeness as I talked to her caught me by surprise. It was a comforting call, but when I hung up, the apartment suddenly looked barren and foreboding. I tried to shake it off by calling my best friend, an Alexandria fireman named Mike Coffey. Mike and I had gone to high school together, and had one of those relationships with its own indecipherable set of buzzwords, private jokes and hidden meanings which made us sound like mental patients in each others' presence. I caught him at work at a radio dispatcher, a job which alternated four days night duty, four days off and four days day duty. I had written down his schedule before I left so I could call him at the firehouse. Because of his schedule, he spent all his other time sleeping.

He too was glad to hear from me, but I was shocked to find that over the long distance lines, it was impossible to carry on anything but the most meaningless of conversations. So much of our communication was based on gestures and expressions that when limited to just the voice, we sounded like complete strangers. I struggled through the call and hung up in a cold sweat.

For the first time, I realized that I really was on my own. A horrible sense of loss and of the dawning complexity of my new life utterly depressed me. I had never been a person with a surplus of friends and acquaintances, and those I had were a long time in cultivating. I was now completely isolated in this tundra. The blank walls stared at me. I felt like I was in solitary. The apartment, which seconds before had been new and exciting, now seemed like a prison.

It was getting dark. The lights of the other apartments across the way started to come on, and I dragged myself downstairs to start unloading the car. The Rambler had been packed tight with my clothes and possessions for over a week, and it took many weary trips through the three locked doors to carry each heavy load up the stairs. In the first load was my little 12-inch TV, which I switched on to keep me company as I worked. The apartment was wired for cable, but it wasn't turned on yet, and I flipped through long blank stretches of static until I found the ABC news. I turned it up loud and went on with the unloading.

A few trips later, I was stunned to see a picture of the Alexandria Federal Courthouse on the TV. Apparently another spy had been arrested, and since all self-respecting spies lived on the Virginia side of the Potomac, arraigning spies was practically Alexandria's only federal function. I sat heavily before the set. There is home -- a picture taken just a few hours ago in my hometown. I found myself on the edge of tears when the story ended. I felt like a complete outcast.

I forced myself to finish unloading the car. As I dragged my huge and awful stereo -- a combination turntable/tuner/8-track player -- from the car, my cold-benumbed fingers slipped and I managed to put a huge gash in the car's new paint job. This was turning out to be a great night all the way around.

It was 7 o'clock when I finished, and I sat through "Happy Days." It was an episode in which Richie is seriously injured in a motorcycle accident and is lying in a hospital bed near death when Fonzie makes a moving and tearful plea to God to save his friend's life. Melodramatic, yes; corny, yes; but in my frame of mind it was searing. The show was about the possibility of losing everything -- friends, family -- things one always takes for granted until the unthinkable happens. I was not in a coma in a hospital bed, but in my own mind I was as cut-off and alone as if I had been. Viewed in a dispassionate way, Henry Winkler's performance was astounding, but all I heard was his plea to set things back as they had been. By the time he broke down, I broke down with him.

Set things back the way they were! That I had exiled myself voluntarily now appeared to be the height of folly. A shuddering wave of homesickness crashed over me and I gave myself a good long cry, feeling like a complete and utter failure. The night stretched achingly before me.

In desperation, I called my old girlfriend Beth. Only desperation could explain it. I had met Beth in 1976 and we dated for eight months until her family moved to Seattle. It was an extremely strange period in my life. Beth was a big girl -- 5' 11'', broad- shouldered, amazingly well-endowed -- and neurotic as hell. We dated 108 times in those eight months -- I actually kept count -- and every date ended with her tearful plea that I never leave her or else she'd kill herself, and a little speech to the effect that she couldn't understand what a great person like myself was doing hanging around an idiot like her. After a few months, I started to wonder that myself. I hung on because 1) she was just crazy enough to really kill herself, and 2) she was the world's greatest kisser. It was with a great sigh of relief that I watched her leave town. But a year later she showed up again. I saw her a few times and we had our first and only mutual spat just before I left for Madison. I don't remember what it was about, but it took place in, of all places, a butcher shop. I hadn't said goodbye to her when I left.

The long distance lines hummed. "Hello?"

"Beth! Beth, it's me, Scott!"

"So?" Her voice was hard and brittle.

"Oh, Beth, I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye when I left but I'm so lonely and homesick (sob) I need someone to talk to for a while. . ."

"Tough shit." And she hung up.

I spent the rest of Tuesday night writing an artfully cheerful letter to my old boss at NAVSUP, obliquely asking her if I could have my old job back. I drifted into a troubled sleep on my mattress.

[ Back ] [ Next ]

Back to the Home Page | E-Mail Me | Sign the Guestbook
©1995 - 2003 Scott P. Cook
This page last updated February 27, 2008