So, after several 'drafts' over the recent months today's can be short and get posted the same day.
34 years ago, this very day of the week, Monday, November 2, 1981, I was winding down my first full day in what would become my "career" with San Bernardino County Animal Control. It didn't get the "care and control" tagline added to the department name until the late 1980's to look more public 'friendly'.
Every November 2nd I can't not remember the job I did for just under 25 years. There is just the specialness, to me anyway, when the days line up to days I actually was there.
I was thinking this anniversary of trying to remember what it was like when I walked in as a new employee to the then office at 350 N. Mountain View Street in San Bernardino, California.
The building was, and still is, a "U" shaped building with the "U" towards Mountain View and most of the building then was for public health nurses and health programs, which is what Animal Control was and still is also, a public health department program. The straight north 'wing' of this 'U' building was all the Animal Control offices.
You walked in through a step up and entry door at the North East corner of that North wing.
As you came in you saw a long counter on the right with several desks behind the counter for the clerk staff. Looking straight ahead from the entry door and with the counter on the right you'd have seen the glass windows of the small dispatch room. A very small room, it had sliding glass windows so the dispatcher could open it up to talk with employees or the public if necessary. Small for one and tight for two.
If you worked there you'd walk to the dispatcher's area and through a swinging gate kind of thing to get towards the hallway that led to the offices. Those offices were various supervisor offices, the 'squad room' where the ACO's and field personnel would meet in the mornings after getting to the office. Not very many computers around yet in 1981, so the squad room was primarily just long tables against the walls with chairs for employees to still while doing, paperwork! Or while looking up information with the printed out license records of dog licenses.
The first few years that's what the Animal License Checkers, like I was then, had to refer to and haul around, very large, heavy, dot matrix printed out and loosely bound volumes of licenses and owners throughout the county. They always had blue semi hard card stock covers filled with folded over printed pages so there would be two sides.
This first day was a short "welcome to the county" orientation day. Then, starting the next day, Tuesday, November 3rd, 1981, I started my 2 weeks of office training. While a lot of it was trying to stay awake reading the very boring Procedure Manual, I did get real training from my direct supervisor, Lynda. Learning the 'script' I'd use while going door to door and literally 'checking' to make sure all the dogs we came across were currently licensed. What to watch for and what to be careful of. What to look for in going in yards with dogs in them or tell tale signs that you might get ambushed by dogs that would be lying in wait hidden until you'd get too far in a yard to get away without getting bitten!
One of the reasons I got the job, as I was told later, was my background with different kinds of animals. I still needed to learn a lot though!
I was one of the first departmental employees to be hired directly for the department. Many of the field people, and even my supervisor and all of the other license checkers had started out as temporary employees through a program the state had in place at the time called the CETA program.
After I'd been a few months I found out that several of the current employees were really upset I'd gotten hired and were concerned they'd be let go, but it turned out that they all stayed on and became county employees themselves. They still had seniority though because the county used there CETA starting dates as their county start dates.
I got my first unpaid day of work too with Veteran's Day holiday being Wednesday the 11th that year and since I'd just started not having any kind of leave time built up to fall back on. Oh well.
In trying to remember what else it was like way back in fall 1981.
I had to buy my own uniforms, shirts, pants and jackets along with shoulder and flag patches which started what became a long line of expenses for me for the department.
Although talked about we were never were able to get uniform allowances in our 'General Services' Contracts like the Sheriff's department did for their guys in our contracts with the county.
Nobody had any rapid communication devices, no portable radios, only the radios in the cars and trucks. There was one almost a foot long and at least 2 pound "Handy Talkie" and that was given, along with the 'pager' to the "On-Call" officer in the "valley" even back in 1981.
This was back when the time changes were more linear, being 6 months of each I believe, standard and daylight savings time. The 7 month and 5 month split it is now wasn't in place yet, although I do recall when it was tried once to keep Daylight Savings Time all year long. Obviously it didn't work!
Another "License Checker", Sara, was hired at the end of November '81. She also worked her way up the ladder but didn't get past ACO and was an 'area officer' in the Hesperia and High Desert areas for many years. Sara also retired several years ago. It's almost 10 years retired for me, will be 10 next February.
As far as I can find out there are none of the crew that was around in those early to mid 1980s when I started and worked there. All retired, some deceased, but seeing what life after Animal Control would be like for them.
