The stuff of dreams in August of 1987.
I was headed to Sacramento to oversee all the video purchasing and distribution for Tower Records as the new Video Product Manager.
How did this come about?
That thought was on my mind a lot during this period of time when the nation had a President Ronald which rhymes with Donald and the country was embroiled in one political controversy after another. The time stamps on the USA clocks indicated this was Iran-Contra time. The days and months when President Ronald was funding secret military efforts through illicit & illegal arms sales to Iran in an effort to overthrow the Sandinista leftist government in Nicaragua by the Contras, who were operating in Honduras causing mass migrations northward. The Savings and Loan institutions were collapsing under the weight of the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volker, and his ramping up the discount interest rates the banks charged to other banks for borrowing purposes to halt the high inflation leading to almost a third of all Savings and Loan institutions to be closed in a decade's time. And if that were not enough, 138 Ronald Reagan Administration officials were ultimately investigated, indicted or convicted for their "public service" in the 1980s. The figure remains the highest conviction rate total on record for administrative members of any United States President.
Up to this 1987 point on the historical flow chart, I'd recently worked for nearly six years at two Tower stores. I started as a clerk and moved up to assistant manager status before I found myself managing the video store on San Antonio Road. I worked under 3 managers Randi, Kenny & Kevin) during this period, one of which was a Regional Manager for the San Fransisco Bay Area Tower Records stores. I'd been part of the fledgling A-team crew setting up new stores on the video side in the mid-1980s. At this time, I was living in a two-bedroom condo in Mountain View with my wife and two young boys aged 5 and 2 as a Tower Video store manager when Jennifer interviewed and hired me for the open position at the Tower corporate offices in West Sacramento, CA.
My wife at the time was the big bread earner while working in Silicon Valley as a risk management statistician. I had the fun job, and was determined to make a success of it at Tower's headquarters. Thus began an uneasy alliance between us as partners/parents/spouses that would unravel for period before finding the yarn to piece the relationship back decades later.
I've been very lucky.
If you want to hear how lucky? Here is podcast interview I did with Bob Zimmerman in the fall of 2022 for his Oral History of Tower Records project. Interview.
We'll be back in a few weeks time with an update or two. See you.
