Letters from my grandfather

My grandfather, Jorge Silvio Polack, left Córdoba, Argentina for San Francisco, California on the 11th of March, 1968. After securing work, he sent for wife and kids, who came a couple of months later.

He sent several letters throughout March, informing his family of his progress; the first was written 42 years ago today. Below are scans of his typewritten pages (in Spanish), and a translation beneath.

I plan to post the rest in the coming weeks. It would be nice if I could post each on the anniversary of its writing, but with my teaching schedule they probably won’t be on time. At least the first will be:

San Francisco
March 14th, 1968

Dear all:

Here is the news you expected.

The following are to receive copies of this letter:
1) Copy 1 – Tere, Jorgito, Muni, Sandi and Javier [note: this is my grandmother, father, uncle, aunt, and great-uncle]
2) Copy 2 – Peter, Don Pedro, Chocha, Julia Elena, Pedrito and Patricia [note: this is my grandmother's family]

What follows is the narration of the events since I left my house at 7:00 on Monday, March 11th.

Monday the 11th–

I traveled to Santiago on Aerolineas Argentinas. Departure at 8:15, I arrived at Mendoza at 9:00 and found Peter and exchanged packages. I departed at 9:30 and arrived at Santiago at the same time but my watch said 10:30. The crossing of the mountain range is something worth seeing; luckily I filmed it and hope that it has been captured well in the movie. Santiago is an important city and of much movement, but it is not lovely and I did not much like what I was able to see. I walked a lot, changed pesos for escudos (5000 pesos for 94 escudos).  I spent about 50 escudos and kept the rest and I don’t know what to do with them in the U.S.  I had lunch at 11:30 under the strange look of the waitress because it was very early, but I was guided by two clocks that told me it was later: my watch with the Argentine time and my stomach. I walked a bit more along Alameda and Avenida O’Higgins and, tired and hot, I went into a theater with air conditioning and saw the movie “Los Farsantes” [The Fakers], quite good; I left the theater and continued walking until 7:00 in the evening (6:00 in Chilean time), drank mote con huesillos (mote and not mate), a drink made with peach juice and a cereal or something like that, and bought a book: Birth Control, a very instructive subject, and I went to Aeropuerto Pudahuel (a new airport in Santiago for domestic use but being used temporarily for international flights), the same where I had arrived in the morning (this machine doesn’t have ñ) ["mañana" just having been spelled "manana"]. I waited while I read the book. My luggage weighed 30 kilos, so I paid for the excess weight between Córdoba and Santiago (they allow 20 kilos) and none from Santiago to San Francisco. Aerolineas Peruanas allows one or two excess kilos but you have to be careful because from Santiago they charge 5.14 dollars per kilo (or about 1700 pesos). One man had 11 kilos in excess (bottles of wine) and they wanted to charge him 57 dollars (18,000 pesos!).

He sent them as freight, payable at destination, insuring them for 100 dollars, hoping that they would break and thus to collect rather than pay, and he was lucky: three bottles broke! We departed at 9:00 Santiago time (10:00 by the Argentine clock) in a Convair 990 A Fan Jet with beautiful Peruvian stewardesses dressed in the typical uniform and very nice; they served dinner and later we landed in Lima, where they have a stunning airport, modern, gigantic, and automated, with walls of polarized glass, bathrooms with chrome, revolving luggage checker, etc., a real anticipation of what I later saw in the USA. This airport was built, as the one in Chile, with funds from the Alliance for Progress.

Our plane continued on from Lima to Miama via Panama, and we changed planes for another, also a Convair 990 A Fan Jet (they announced it so many times that I already knew it from memory) that went via Guayaquil, then Mexico and to Los Angeles. From Lima to Guayaquil I slept a bit though I felt sick with a bad headache and was very tired; I asked the stewardess for an aspirin and with this it got a little better. We arrived at Guayaquil at 2:30 (4:30 by my watch), I got off the plane and four Argentines reunited in the hall of the airport: myself, newly off to settle; another, who worked for Johnson Waxes and on a business trip; and two others, settled in Los Angeles, one a machinist, the other a jeweler (this was the one with the wine bottles), both very happy with life in the U.S., and telling me a lot of propaganda for Los Angeles and disparaging San Francisco. They said that in L.A. there are many more opportunities and a better climate such that you can go in the water at the beach all year round, and that in S.F. it is cold and it rains a lot (this appears to be true; I will tell you shortly). It was remarked that the Ecuadorian Indians are barely civilized, and, all of sudden, I felt lost in the world, thinking that I was there, in Guayaquil, a short distance from this people in a remote part of the Earth. But later we departed, for Mexico, a long leg of the trip, and I continued sleeping, more comfortable since I alone occupied a place with three seats and I discovered that the arm-rests were removable, and it suited me very well also using the three pillows. We arrived at Mexico at 5:00 in the morning (Mexican time) (8:00 by my watch). The airport is nice and important, but not very modern. We departed from Mexico at 6:00 and the sun was already starting to rise, so I didn’t sleep, and I entertained myself looking at the land from 10,000 meters up. On each leg of the trip the stewardesses gave explanations on the use of the life-jackets and the oxygen masks. Additionally, on each leg the authorities of each country ask for all the documentation so you have to have them handy since all the formalities are done in a hurry, even when you have to wait a while until the plane departs.

All the terrain is mountainous from Mexico to Los Angeles and before arriving you travel over the Gulf of California, or rather over the water with the coast of Mexico to the right and the coast of Baja California to the left, and at a certain point you see the depth of the Gulf and the mouth of the Colorado River (the famous one, that in its course forms the Grand Canyon). Finally at 8:30 in the morning (Pacific Time in the U.S.) (1:30 in the afternoon on the 12th, by my watch) I arrived, at last, on North American soil, and disembarked as an immigrant. Before getting off the plane I filmed the airport and the landing (I forgot to say before that in Guayaquil I paid 7.40 dollars (they accepted U.S. money) for an 8mm, color, daylight movie roll for the camera) In the U.S.A. it’s worth 3 dollars. In Argentina, 6.50. I also changed pesos for dollars in Guayaquil, at a rate of 400 pesos per dollar.

In Los Angeles I presented my visa, an immigration officer attended to me very kindly and gave me advice and instructions on things to do since I am settling here, and even shook my hand and wished me good luck. The customs officer asked me if I was bringing meat, vegetables or fruit or new things as gifts, I told him no, and he barely looked at my bags and let me pass. But the flight should have arrived at 7:00 (local time) and arrived at 8:30, and we missed the planned connection that was for Western Airlines to San Francisco. So they put us on a United Airlines flight that departed at 9:15. To get there, inside the Los Angeles Airport, which is enormously big, from the departure gates of the planes of one company to the other (each company has an entire building, separate, its own, with several departure corridors that lead to the different planes and that adjust like bellows to the plane’s door) you have to take a little bus that covers all the companies and carries the passengers (note! each ticket costs US $0.25 = 90 pesos). A beautiful final trip to San Francisco in a Boeing 707 Jet and we arrived at 10:30 Pacific Time (3:20 Argentine time!) I did not find anybody there (Fred Belcher was waiting for me and didn’t see me, nor I him), so I found out at the counter what was the cheapest hotel in downtown San Francisco, and they told me that it was one that had partially burned a short time ago, and that, if I had no problem I should go there, the cheapest that they have, U.S. $8 per day to sleep (note! approximately 3,000 pesos per person). They told me that a taxi to the city would cost me 8 dollars (3,000 pesos) so I asked if the bus carries luggage and they said yes, and I went by bus.

The ticket cost U.S. $1.10 (about $400), it was 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the airport to downtown and it drops you at the bus terminal, two blocks from the hotel that I had reserved: the Franciscan. One believes that in the U.S. everything is modern, but no. The Franciscan Hotel is some 50 years old, with old doors with thick frames and an air of general antiquity, even when it is well maintained, with wall-to-wall carpets, abundant and very warm water, television in the bedroom, telephone, private bathroom, etc. The bathroom was hilarious: the pipe for the shower was not in the wall but ran from the end of the bath to above, suspended by some iron rails, and with the 50 years you can imagine that it was a little crooked and had lost its elegance; plus it measured 1.64 meters while I measure 1.65 and each time I bathed, I stuck the tip of the shower-head a centimeter inside my head.

But, although ancient, it was clean and pleasant and it was right in downtown San Francisco on Geary Street. When I stepped off the bus it started to rain (although the pilot of the plane had announced beautiful weather for San Francisco and it was true at landing) and, loaded with bags, I had to ask a porter to carry the bags to the hotel (two blocks = US $1 = 400 pesos, at the current rate of peso for dollar in the U.S.). Until then, as you can see, I managed alone, without help. From the hotel I called the Belcher house but the number I had written down was wrong and the place I called told me they didn’t know him. Then I called Rafael, a person to person call, and Dora answered and they asked her for Rafael, who by chance was home, although for a problem of earache, and I spoke with him and he didn’t want to believe that it was me and that I was here. He came for me promptly with the car and took me to his house, but on the road we stopped to eat something (it was 2:00 in the afternoon) and then we went to Burlingame, which, I didn’t know then, is past the airport, so that had I known I would have saved the trip downtown and back, but in any case I was already checked in at the hotel. I saw Dora and the kids, all very well, Rafaelito had gone alone to school and came later, Cecilita very cute and also Maria Dolores and Juan Francisco and I even noticed Alejandro was much improved. Rafael, very well, told me that he had written not so long ago, and Dora the same. All are doing magnificently and they have a beautiful house in a good residential neighborhood on the outskirts of San Francisco, on the Peninsula. While I was there, it was pouring rain all afternoon, without stopping a moment. Dora bought some excellent steaks and made a very good dinner, and Rafael brought me back downtown in the car and it kept raining. Having arrived at the hotel, I went to bed and slept soundly, terribly tired, while it rained all night. All this happened on Tuesday the 12th.

Wednesday the 13th I woke up, and I left by myself to the bus station, found out where to take the bus for Oakland, and there is one that goes directly to Kaiser Center crossing the Bay Bridge (a bridge of 8 kilometers, suspended, that crosses San Francisco Bay, and which has two levels, each level having one way of traffic, back and forth), on one side of which is San Francisco and on the other, Oakland. $0.50 ticket (200 pesos). Once I had arrived at Kaiser Center, a very beautiful building, modern, extraordinary, on the banks of an artificial lake, Lake Merritt, I went to the 25th floor to see Ernie Jones (for those who don’t know who he is, he was my boss in Córdoba and later the big boss from Buenos Aires) but he had gone on a trip. On that floor Irene Belcher saw me, but I didn’t know that she was there and I went down to the 13th floor where I looked for and found Robert Salazar, who was very happy to see me and told me that Irene had called to see if he had news of me since Fred had looked at the airport the previous day without finding me, and he supposed that I hadn’t traveled. So Salazar called Irene right away and we went to the cafeteria of the Kaiser Center building, a marvelous place (out of a movie), with enormous picture windows overlooking the lake, a great modern room, and we sat there and talked a bit and had coffee that Salazar bought. From there I looked for John Burns and he saw me immediately, very happy that I had come and right then he called Ivan Strayer and John Crncich (I met all of them last June in Buenos Aires) and invited us to lunch at a restaurant outside, and of course he paid, to the great happiness of my fearful pocket. I told them that I was looking for work and that I had come to settle in the U.S., and he immediately put me in touch with the head of personnel for Kaiser Industries and I filled out an application (although later the problem arose of a clause in the contract of sale of Ika from Kaiser to Renault, which prohibited Kaiser from hiring people from Ika without previous agreement with Renault). In addition, he called long-distance to Phoenix, Arizona, where Ernie Jones was, and told him of my arrival and that I was looking for work, and I have an interview with Ernie tomorrow, Friday, at 9:00. I also have interviews with two executive hiring agencies. In the meantime I returned to talk with Irene and was in Gutierrez’s office, her boss who was absent since he had gone to Guatemala (how they travel!), and we were chatting and she offered that I go to their house in order not to pay for a hotel, since Patricia’s room was empty because Pat is working in a “lodge” in the mountains. So I accepted and left the hotel and Fred came to get me with the car and it rained quite a bit again. In the afternoon it was very nice and from the window of Gutierrez’s office you could see the park and Lake Merritt and the mountains, all very pretty, but by nightfall the weather had gotten bad again and we arrived with Fred at their house in heavy rain.

Now I have Patricia’s room in the apartment they rent in Mount Diablo–Lafayette. Lafayette is one town of the very many that form the conglomerate of people of San Francisco, Oakland and surroundings. The distances here are very big and there are very few buses as everybody has a car, but the joke is on whoever doesn’t have one; the cost of some things like transportation is prohibitive, and for example, to go over the bridges and cross the bay you have to pay “toll” of US $0.25 each time that a car crosses (100 pesos) and parking costs US $0.50 per hour (200 pesos). Yesterday I ate two hotdogs and a Coca Cola and spent one dollar (400 pesos). A good salary, in dollars, should not be less than US $800, in order to be profitable and to live reasonably well, but it is not easy to get such a salary. Healthcare is very expensive even when you can get insurance with affordable premiums; but what is incredible is the lack of domestic service, which is decidedly impossible to get here for a middle-class family, only millionaires can afford this luxury.

Rafael told me that in the next year he and Dora and the kids are thinking of returning to Argentina since, although they are okay here, Dora is tired of dealing with the five kids and expects the sixth (did I not tell you?) and can’t do it all alone, even though Cecilita already helps her with the littlest kids. The helpful automatic home appliances do exist, but it costs to buy them and not everyone has them, plus you have to make them run, fill them, supply them, maintain them, etc. Tere, if you want to come you should bear in mind that you will have to manage taking care of the kids. Plus I don’t see that it is very easy to get a good job if I don’t get the one at Kaiser, at least in the beginning. This country is wonderful but it also has its problems and you have to think about it well. Okay, no more, hugs and until the next time.

UPDATE: The video footage mentioned in this letter has been posted here.