I’m not going to spend much time on the jobs I had while living in Glendale and working in the L.A. area because let’s face it … I don’t care what company you work for, accounts payable is still accounts payable, and I found that even though the environment in one place may have been more exciting than another, it’s still the same boring old work! I hated it, but it seemed like it was the only thing I could get most of the time because it was the only work I had any kind of experience in.

In the three years I lived in the Glendale area, I’ve worked at Union 76 (or Unocal) and then added Taco Bell as a second job. I later quit Union 76 and worked at Associated Hosts Inc. because it was very close to Taco Bell so I could increase my working hours by having two jobs close together.

While at Associated Hosts, I processed customers’ credit card transactions for various lines of restaurants. I discovered that most of the people I worked with in our department were of the Jewish faith, and it was there that I learned a lot more about that religion, and I was always asking questions. Even though I didn’t agree with a lot of the teachings, I respected their right to worship how they wanted. I was content with asking questions and learning what I could.

After I finished working there for the day I’d drive from Wilshire Blvd up to Beverly Blvd to start my night shift at Taco Bell. It may have been just a fast-food joint that barely paid minimum wage, but you know, that was the most fun place to work. The night shift was a great bunch of kids. We were all between the ages of eighteen to twenty-two, except for the fryer who seemed older and was kind of strange.

In fact, he was downright weird.He started stalking me and one day … brought his TV set and camped out on my front porch for about a week until my apartment managers finally threatened him and made him leave.  I had called the police, but they said that they couldn’t do anything until he actually broke into my apartment! Oh, what a brilliant law that is! The schizo even followed me to San Diego one day. My mom came out and yelled at him and said she was calling the police, but he had run off before they got there. Thank goodness he never did anything dangerous like pulling out a gun or worse! He finally left our store … probably got fired.

Since our store was located on Beverly Blvd. in Beverly Hills, celebrities would often stop by for a fast-food meal just like anyone else. I met and talked with people from TV shows such as Eight Is Enough, the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew series, Brady Bunch, and so forth. They didn’t affect me one bit and were just like any other person you’d talk to.

One person who made my heart flutter though, was Ricky Nelson (from Ozzie and Harriet), and when he and his family came up to the window one day, I asked a co-worker, Randy, to take their order and asked him to get Ricky’s autograph for me while I did the dishes in the back. Afterwards, I was handed a piece of paper that said, “To Dee, with love, Ricky Nelson” and underneath his name was signed, “Kris Nelson.” I still have that autograph tucked inside my copy of Ozzie Nelson’s biography. Somehow after receiving his autograph, I overcame my star-struck phase over him and was able to take his order and talk to him after that.

While working at Taco Bell I made some great friends. One of them (whom I’ll call Blake) was like a brother to me. Another girl, Maria, was also a good friend and she would invite Blake and me to her apartment where she would cook her native Costa Rican meals for us. She was Catholic and one day she asked me to go to church with her. I had never been to a Catholic church before so I accepted out of curiosity.

It was an old church somewhere in downtown Hollywood. I remember being impressed by the architecture on the outside, and at the fine décor on the inside. As we sat through the service, however, sadly to say, I didn’t feel a bit inspired. There was this huge cross of Jesus all bloodied up with an expression of agony on his face. It wasn’t very well-lit inside and there was a lot of getting up and down as you went from sitting to kneeling, and kneeling to sitting several times during the service, which was nearly all in Latin except for on a few rare occasions. During these times, people would make the sign of the cross and look as if they were scared to death. No disrespect intended, but the whole atmosphere seemed sort of dark and gloomy to me, and it felt like people were there out of fear instead of celebrating the joy and thankfulness for what Jesus had done for us. One of the things I’ve found is that a lot of churches seem to focus on the death of Christ rather than on the joy of his resurrection.

While I’m grateful for the experience, it was not one that made me feel good inside. When I asked God about it that night, it was as if He wasn’t listening again. No answer, no feelings, nothing. And as I always did now, I once again asked Him if His church was really out there somewhere to please guide me to it.

I later left my job at Associated Hosts and went to work for ABC Records in … you guessed it … their accounts payable department. While the job itself was boring, we did get some pretty good bonuses and freebies. I came home with tons of free promotional albums and album covers, and occasionally we got to meet some of the artists. Before leaving the Glendale area in 1980, I had also worked at MGM Records as a receptionist, which I didn’t like because they made you lie when people called or came in and wanted to talk to someone. So I went from there to Casa Blanca Records, and finally, my last job there was with Kemper Insurance. It was while I was working at ABC Records in 1978, however, that I found that which I had been searching for my entire life!