Adventures in Palm Springs, California (fiction) - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

From the web site:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Springs,_California
(a fictional short story)

          When Susan first visited Palm Springs, California, it was in January 1983, a couple of months after her second wedding, for her honeymoon.  She had become divorced from her first husband, Paulo, in early 1981.  Soon afterward, she’d moved to Calgary, Alberta to start a new life and, in the process of getting her life set up there, she would meet her second-husband-to-be.  Meeting this man would change her life in ways she had never before imagined. 

          Susan had obtained a temporary assignment (one of many, as it happened) at an office building situated in one of Calgary’s many industrial parks.  At that time, Calgary was growing at an unprecedented rate.  People were moving into the city much faster than they were moving out.  The oil industry was largely responsible for this rapid growth in the Canadian West.  This move was the biggest one she would ever make in her life.

One day, Susan met a man named Trevor. They worked at the same place—a company called PPG Industries, which manufactured windows. He worked in the accounting department, and she worked as a temp, a temporary office assistant. Susan found Trevor charming and nice, but she was not overly attracted to him. To her, he was too short and somewhat stout, plus he had thin, reddish hair—definitely not the kind of guy she usually went for. But she supposed that he liked her a lot because after she’d left her temp assignment at PPG Industries, he called her at home several times to ask her out.

Susan would reply, “No, Trevor, I’m way too busy with other things in my life to consider dating anyone right now.”  But, the truth was she didn’t want to go out with him.  He seemed harmless enough, but she really wasn’t interested in dating, or in him.  This statement was strange coming from her because she had regularly dated men for many years before and after her first marriage.  Taking a break from that racket seemed a prudent thing to do while she was still trying to find her feet in this new city environment.

          Susan was a very hard worker who had gone all the way through university and earned a bachelor of commerce degree with high honours (80 percent average). Her heart was in the business world, where she wanted to make it strictly on her own merits. To this end, she’d gotten many opportunities to work in different jobs requiring different responsibilities. None of these jobs was all that challenging, but she took what she could from each job and built up an impressive repertoire of business experience. Regardless, no one seemed to take her abilities seriously, including her usually male bosses and associates, her predominantly female coworkers, her boyfriend of three years, and her family. It just didn’t make any sense. Why did they all have this anti-feminist attitude? She was just as good as anyone else at work, yet the pervasive attitudes persisted and she was getting more and more frustrated as time passed. After all, she was approaching 30 and still hadn’t found her niche in the world of work. Susan resolved not to quit trying though, since that would have played right into their hands. She was no quitter; she knew that if she quit, she would never win, and she intended to win in life, come hell or high water.

Nevertheless, her male bosses and associates relentlessly hit on her no matter where she was working. There wasn’t a week that went by when some man wasn’t flirting outrageously with her. She thought it was because being a woman in the business world was not perceived as anything important. As far as they seemed to be concerned, the business world belonged to men—they were the ones responsible for anything significant that happened. They needed the women who worked for them, or with them, to act as support staff and “worker bees” only. Susan knew she was an excellent “worker bee”—everyone knew that. But the business leadership skills that she still craved to develop were not demanded nearly as often as her practical office skills.

So, here she was now, in a brand new Canadian city, far from her former home in Toronto, not knowing a soul and, though she’d needed to change her life completely, she still felt singularly unfulfilled.  What was the answer?  She would soon find out that there was no real answer:  after all, it’s a hit-and-miss world, which meant that if she did find what she was looking for in life, it appeared as if it was going to be more of an accident of Fate than the result of any conscious decision making.  What was she to do now?

          When Trevor asked her out, yet again, very shyly one day, she did not know what to say to him except: “Trevor, I like you a lot as a friend, but I am not looking for a relationship nor am I interested in dating anyone right now.” Looking down in embarrassment, he replied, “Okay, Susan, round one goes to you, but I’m not quitting.  I’ll try again later when you’ve settled into your new life.”  Trevor did not want her to know how persistent he could be in trying to get what he wanted for himself.

Several months passed and she was no further ahead.  So, on an impulse, she decided to give Trevor a call one day to see what he was up to.  He was still interested in her and they decided to start dating.  Pretty soon, they moved in together, renting a small house in Pineridge, a suburb in northeast Calgary.  Against all odds, she was happy living with him and he reciprocated in kind.  It wasn’t one of those fire-and-brimstone relationships that she’d so often experienced in the past, but it was nice to have a man around who appeared to care deeply for her.

          Trevor became the man she finally thought she’d spend the rest of her life with; he was good, kind and caring.  He wasn’t terrifically good looking, which she was usually accustomed to in boyfriends and husbands, but he had convinced her he truly loved her and she had eventually grown to accept him and love him as much as she could love anyone.  The day Trevor asked Susan to marry him was the happiest day she’d had in a long time and she gladly accepted his very romantic proposal.  At that point, she set about planning a wedding for the following year.  She did not want to rush into this marriage and screw it up like her previous one.  In the meantime, her plan was to work at various temporary assignments until she found a good full-time job and they could get to know each other better as a now-engaged live-in couple, as well.

About six months later, they went to a business meeting that a friend of Trevor’s, Dale, had invited them to.  Dale told them that it was “a wonderful business opportunity”.  It turned out to be an opportunity to become Amway distributors under Dale and his wife Gloria, who had already been very successful Direct Distributors in Amway for several years.  Their success was largely due to their ability to both recruit and motivate people to join their small group; to use and sell the various Amway products, which were all excellent in quality; and to go to meetings in various locales.  Susan and Trevor were so excited at discovering this new way of doing business that they joined Dale and Gloria’s group without hesitation.

About a year later, as Susan and Trevor were still actively making wedding plans for their big day, November 20, 1982, they still had given no thought to a honeymoon trip.  It was Gloria’s idea that they all travel to Palm Springs to a big Amway rally that was planned there in early January 1983.  Each couple would have to pay for their own flight and hotel, but the food and entry fees to the speeches and other events were both to be included in a package deal.  As their “up-line” distributors, Dale and Gloria would also attend this convention.

Then, Susan got the brilliant idea of asking Gloria to be her matron of honour at her wedding.  In addition, she also asked two of her closest girlfriends, who were now their “down-line” distributors, to be her other two bridesmaids.  Their names were Shannon and Lorraine.  Susan wanted to remember this wedding as an event that would include all the people she liked most in Calgary – people whose friendship now meant everything to the engaged couple.  After the wedding, there would only be fond memories of each other, even if they eventually decided to stop doing business together as a group and go their separate ways.  

       One thing was for sure, Susan had never been to a place like Palm Springs, or anywhere in California for that matter, and it going to be the trip of a lifetime for her and Trevor.  She set about learning more about the climate, geography and tourism of this southern city.

Palm Springs has a mostly hot and usually dry climate, with over 300 days of sunshine and around 4.83 inches (122.7 mm) of rain annually.  The winter months are warm, with a majority of days reaching 70 °F (21 °C) and in January and February days often see temperatures of 80 °F (27 °C) and on occasion reach over 90 °F (32 °C), while, on average, there are 17 nights annually dipping to or below 40 °F (4 °C); freezing temperatures occur less than half the time. The lowest temperature ever recorded was 19 °F (−7 °C), on January 22, 1937.

Geographically speaking, Palm Springs is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley.  It is located approximately 55 miles (89 kilometres) east of San Bernardino, 107 miles (172 kilometres) east of Los Angeles, 123 miles (198 kilometres) northeast of San Diego, and 268 miles (431 kilometres) west of Phoenix, Arizona.  The population was 44,552 as of the 2010 census.  Palm Springs covers approximately 94 square miles, making it the largest city in the county by land area.

Biking, golf, hiking, horseback riding, swimming, and tennis in the nearby desert and mountain areas are major forms of recreation here.

Tourism continued to be a major factor in the city's economy with 1.6 million visitors in 2011.  The city has over 130 hotels and resorts, numerous bed & breakfast inns and over 100 restaurants and dining spots.

There was no doubt in Susan’s mind that Palm Springs was a very nice place to visit in the winter months. 

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.