JIM CHILES
I moved to Sacramento sometime after graduating in the Winter 1973-74. I needed to pay a little more rent than what was charged at Baggins End so, I got a part time job in a Bottled Water plant and eventually became salesman. I got married and lived in downtown Sacramento not far from Gerry Brown and Squeaky Fromme. Gerry eventually vacated the governor’s office and Squeaky was put away for trying to assassinate Gerald Ford in Capitol Park.
My first marriage ended not long after it started – no correlation with Squeaky or Gerry – and I moved to the SF Bay Area.
I worked with Pat Hanlon and Lynn Marchand under the most excellent carpentry tutelage of Lynn’s brother, Roger Marchand. I continued working in construction and got my California General Contractors License. I liked the work but didn’t really care for running a construction business. I moved to a canyon on the Malibu Coast in ’83 and commuted to a six-month computer programming school in the mid-Wilshire/Hancock Park area of LA. Worked as an employee in IT departments in the LA area, Walnut Creek, CA and then on to New York City for several years. I lived in Southern Connecticut and returned to the wonderful world of entrepreneurial endeavor as an independent consultant. I spent a year in Chicago traveling around the mid-west writing, peddling and teaching technical course material.
Returned to the northeast, continued consulting and got involved in several technology startups. Startups can be very high-risk. Then, corporate America discovered an exotic land loaded with hungry young programmers called India and, the high paying world of independent IT consulting became a lot more competitive and a little less lucrative. I soldiered on but got tired of the hours and decided I would like a job that required a basic forty-hour week with weekends off, holidays, paid vacation, medical insurance, a small pension, 401K match, annual bonus, etc. – Yes, I drank the cool-aid, bought into the corporate farm and took a full-time job with a former client in upper Westchester County, NY at the age of 53.
A little before that, I remarried – this time to what the NYC Tri-State Area folks call an “island girl” – Long Island that is, not some tropical paradise. We met skiing in Vermont, I bought some real estate and we settled down in Stamford, CT about 45 minutes from mid-town Manhattan.
I retired from full-time employment in 2016. My wife, Ruth and I are now both retired and get confused as to what day of the week it is. We travel a couple of times a year but mostly split our time between Stamford, CT and Killington, Vermont where we enjoy winter sports and gorgeous summers in the Green Mountains. I still have a large extended family in the SF Bay Area and Nevada County. I come out to family reunions in Pt. Reyes, CA. Unfortunately, my annual week or two in No. California never seemed to coincide with Domie Reunions.
After retirement I discovered that I really wasn’t very good at golf. So, I brushed off my Shakespeare and showed up for an audition for a local community theatre’s annual outdoor Shakespeare production. After getting a supporting role in The Bard’s “As You Like It,” I started auditioning for community theater productions regularly and have managed to land roles in a dozen or so plays and musicals. I’m finally putting my BA in Dramatic Art to good use. If the roles are big enough, I make a full-time job out of cramming lines into my long-term memory as I seem to be getting a bit forgetful these days – so, I am in good company with many folks who have circled the sun for at least 73 years. Now where was I? Ah yes, once upon a time…
Jim Chiles – Things I remember from my time in the domes 1972 – 1974,
– The look of horror on the Chancellor’s face when he walked back into a conference room after a lunch break for a UC Regents meeting only to find a gang of disheveled students setting up an overhead projector ready to make a presentation to The Regents of UC. “We would just like a few minutes of your time, sir.”
– Listening to a Peruvian socialist (at least he was at that moment in time) trying to inspire us with tales of Peruvian oppressed people’s land grabs.
– Learning how to pour and finish concrete in 100+ degree heat for 14 dome floors.
– Learning how to become a shade seeking animal.
– Learning that it’s OK to wear goofy looking hats to keep the sun off your head.
– Learning that metal gets very hot when left out in the summer Sacramento Valley sun.
– Learning how fierce the wind could be as it roared down the Valley.
– Learning just how amazingly good a cold beer or cold anything could be at the end of a work day.
– Learning how to meet a construction schedule.
– Learning that leading a team and meeting a schedule doesn’t make you all that popular
– Learning that an apology after almost decapitating someone with a shovel doesn’t necessarily count.
– Learning how to hang solid core doors (the first one took 6 hours, the second 4 hours, the last one 20 minutes.
– Savoring the taste
of tree ripened figs taken from the old orchard across the empty field near the old Rec Center.
– Planting bare root fruit trees paid for by myself and other Domies and seeing that most of them grew into mature fruit bearers.
– Watching cut worms devour entire tomato plants in two days.
– Watching gophers pull tomato plants and anything else they thought might be tasty into their burrows.
– Trying to negotiate with another Domie after I established a compost pile near his front door.
– Using that very same compost around the Domes with amazing results.
– Going to the rice drying elevators to pick up rice hulls for aerating the soil.
– Breaking up dog squabbles and stepping in their poop at very inconvenient times.
– Experimenting with food Co-ops and the organizational effort they entailed.
– Sitting on the raised platform at the edge of the community and watching the sunset with convivial companions.
– Sharing the, at one time, prohibited substances and pot-luck dinners with the very same convivial companions.
– Liberating some of the apartment complex swimming pools on hot summer nights.
– Feeling a tremendous sense of accomplishment throughout the 50 years since leaving the community. We pitched in with others and helped to build a dream.
