W Is for Wasted

the building housed, but the patrons had to have been thrilled with the facility. I asked a woman sitting at the information desk where I might find old city directories, and she suggested the Jack Maguire Local History Room on the second floor. I bypassed the elevator and trotted up the stairs. The door to the local history room was locked and empty from what I could see through the glass. I spotted a woman in a wheelchair working at a desk in the room next door.
    “Is there any way I can get in there? I’d like to check city directories from a few years back.”
    “You might ask Verlynn at the reference desk. She has a key.” She pointed to a desk halfway across the vast carpeted expanse.
    I crossed and waited my turn. When Verlynn was free, I explained what I wanted and she followed me back to the history room with her key in hand.
    She unlocked the door and opened it, flipping on the overhead lights. “The volumes you want are on that wall straight ahead. We have city directories going back to 1899 and telephone books from about 1940. Those shelves over there you’ll find yearbooks from elementary, junior high, and high schools in the area. Not every year is represented. We depend on our patrons for donations. Will you be okay on your own?”
    “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
    “Let me know when you’ve finished and I’ll lock up.”
    “I’ll do that.”
    I already knew where Dace had lived before his incarceration. I’d picked up that address from the expired California driver’s license in his safe deposit box. What I was interested in were two other sets of addresses. I hoped to track back in time to the point where Dace interacted with his beloved Uncle R. The dates on the backs of the two black-and-white photographs I’d seen were September 1941 and June 4, 1945. Something else occurred to me. My parents were married in 1935, which meant my mother might well have been with him on trips to Bakersfield. What if she was the one who’d taken the two photographs? The notion sent a chill down my spine.
    I was also looking for any Millhones in the area at that time, and for Quillen and his wife, Rebecca, in particular. If my father grew up in Bakersfield, there might be other family members still in town. I pulled the Polk and the Haines directories for 1942, 1943, and 1946. The 1941 city directory was probably published early in the year, which meant that by fall of 1941, the information might be six months out of date. The same was true of the photo taken in June of 1945. People move. They die. Couples get divorced. The constant shift in status and location far outstrips any attempt to report.
    The Polk Company has been publishing city directories since 1878, beginning with a simple alphabetical listing of the residents of any given town. In 1916, the directory was expanded to include both an alphabetical listing of residents and an alphabetical listing of street addresses, with names of the occupants included. The Haines directory, also known as a crisscross, is a mechanical reversal of the information in the phone book, its listings ordered by street names and by telephone numbers in sequence, beginning with the area code, then moving on to the exchange. If you have a street address and you want to know who lives there, you can consult either publication. If you have a phone number but no clue whom it belongs to, you start a search with the Haines and work backward to the name and address of the person to whom the number has been assigned. There are a certain percentage of unlisted numbers, but in the main you can uncover more than you’d imagine.
    In addition to the six directories I had, I pulled both the Polk and the Haines for the calendar year 1972 to see if any of the names carried over. I toted all eight volumes to the closest table and sat down. I loved having the room to myself. It was quiet and smelled of old paper. The windows were clean and the light spilling in had a peaceful quality. I reached into my shoulder bag and found my index cards. I removed the rubber band and shuffled through them until I found the address I’d cribbed from Dace’s driver’s license. I picked up the 1942 Polk and began a finger walk through the pages.
    Moving from page to page, I uncoupled my emotions, like a string of railroad cars I was leaving behind while the engine chugged on. This was about numbers and street names, which meant nothing to me. I simply recorded the information as I came across it.