James Coit

The Elsbrees' new home. We needed the separation of rooms it offered to accommodate our eight-year-old son, 12-year-old daughter, and our separate hobbies.

Newcastle disease is not limited to our feathered friends; it affects people too – at least when the new castles are moderately priced condominiums for sale in Ocean Beach, an area of our city conspicuous for small cottages, tiny lots, and high, high rents.

So it came about that, in the last week of February, 76 people began to lineup, on a Wednesday morning, for 56 Sea Colony condominiums not slated to go on sale until eight a.m. the following Saturday. I was ninth in that line. But for chance, I might have been 76th.

My husband and I had inspected the models, selecting 4-A as our first choice, and had been told the time and date of sale. Vaguely, we planned to put the necessary $1,000 deposit in our checking account on Friday afternoon, then turn up for the sale comfortably early – say about seven a.m. the next morning.

That strategy was shattered when, at 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, while driving some friends past the development, I saw a bunch of cars lined up outside the office. I hurried home to tell my husband the news.

“I think they’re in line for the houses.”

He laughed unbelievingly. “Look, hon, it’s only Wednesday.”

I called the company office. Nick, the courteous agent with whom we had talked so many times, confirmed my suspicions; moreover, he told me two people had arrived within the past half hour.

That did it. We needed the space the condominium could give us. More than square footage, we needed the separation of rooms it offered to harmoniously accommodate our eight-year-old son, 12-year-old daughter, and our separate hobbies. We had been in Ocean Beach six years, five in a house too small for us, and the only possible alternative we had located in the past year was 30 years old, cost $65,000, and required a bigger down payment than we could handle.

So Phil sighed and started for the bank, and I called my friend Beth to ask if she would trade, for the duration, her van for our Volkswagen bug. Beth echoes Phil, “But it’s only Wednesday!” But she agreed to the exchange, she also volunteered to drive the van to the Sea Colony so she could see what we were up to.

So, by four-thirty p.m., seated in Beth’s van with a bag of sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, and a sleeping bag, I took my place in line behind eight other prospective buyers. Although I didn’t know it then, one of the strangest learning experiences of my life was about to begin.

Looking back, I think the most preposterous thing was the cavalier attitude toward money which fell over us like a Point Loma fog. We were all people who, if told by a supermarket clerk that the coffee we had just put in our shopping basket would go up 20 cents before we reached the counter, would firmly and unhesitatingly put that can back on the shelf. Yet here we stood, each with a $1,000 check (representing borrowed money at least on our part), waiting anxiously to buy something we knew would cost “in the neighborhood of” $46,000.

One of the people just a little down the line from me turned up missing. I argued he might be sick, some emergency might have come up, we should wait till we heard from him before definitely crossing him off. But no one agreed.

James Coit

That “neighborhood,” we had been warned, might change before the actual sale took place. It did. Our particular model was $2,400 higher when the sale opened. Yet none of us seemed worried about the cost. We might have been fugitives from a country at war, desperately bartering for a seat on the last plane out. Paranoia was in the air we breathed, and it led to some strange, and at times, unneighborly things being done.

To begin with, there was the List. This absolutely necessary and much revered document was a sign-up sheet, devised by the early arrivals after they learned that the Sea Colony office wanted no responsibility for keeping track of who came first, second, or at any other time. They did say they would honor any list the group established, and as a further expression of good will once removed, they provided a key to the bathroom in the recreation center just across the street from us.

Each new arrival signed the list opposite the next available number; no one argued about it. Still, by evening an uneasiness had begun to run through the line. People wondered aloud if a list in which their names might not appear, would somehow be substituted on the day of the sale. This worry was placated when someone collected 15 cents from each person in line, and the group chose one man to go to the post office to make photocopies for everyone. But of course there was even some speculation as to whether this one man could be trusted. However, he did return with copies. We all found our names in the proper places, and settled down, a little easier in our minds, to consider the rest of the “rules.”

These rules, like the List, had been thought up by those first in line, but they were sensible enough and no one challenged them. The first rule was that the person who was signed up for a model, or his designated representative, be “on the premises” at all times. On the matter of representation, the rules were surprisingly lenient. A person could represent only one number, but even a child could serve as someone’s stand-in. The teenage children of an ex-supervisor were there in a van, and besides offering hot coffee and a friendly game of rummy, they were kind enough to assume responsibility for numbers (at $100 each). My daughter, Anne, stayed with me and earned $75 by reporting at roll call for a stewardess, number 13 in line, who had to go out on flight, and son Paul, eight, made $20 for an eight-hour stint. Also, since the phrase “on the premises” was construed to to include some units already built and occupied, persons living in those units could stand in for friends.

Checking as to whether people actually were on the premises was a little stickier. It was decided that volunteers along the line would take turns guarding the Master List (and the very important restroom key) for three-hour shifts. These persons were permitted to call roll at any time and as often as they desired, during their tour of duty. Because the restroom was some distance away and it was necessary to use the key to unlock first the gate and then the room, a 15-minute grace period was allowed on each roll call.

Wednesday night roll was taken during hours of darkness, but no one had to get out of bed; the person with the list just walked down the row of cars and knocked on the windows. We answered with our name and numbers and were properly checked out. However, as the list moved down the line, it reached persons who had more to gain by eliminating those ahead of them, and tempers got tighter.

Thursday dawned bleak and foreboding. The night had been cold; rain fell intermittently all morning; everyone was stiff, miserable, and inclined to think the worst of his fellow man. When I got my turn at the list, one of the people just a little down the line from me turned up missing. I tried to find him. I argued he might be sick, some emergency might have come up, we should wait till we heard from him before definitely crossing him off. Finally I suggested a vote. Everyone said cross him off except one — my daughter Anne. At 9:30 a.m. he became the first of seven persons eventually eliminated; people above and below the man were looking at me with less liking, and I whispered to Anne, “Do we really want these people for neighbors?”

The day wore on. Instead of developing camaraderie, the people in line seemed to be drawing away from each other. I had recently read Ralph Keyes’s book Is There Life After High School? In which he discusses the “innies” and the “outies” in the adolescent structure. None of us were adolescents, but we too had our “innies” and “outies” by now. The “innies” were the young and mostly good looking stewardesses (at least five of the first eight in line fell into this category) who waited comfortably in their Winnebagos, served cocktails to visiting friends and entertained the “innie” men (distinguishable by their jogging suits and the cocktail shakers and wine glasses they carried as they moved from one Winnebago to another.) The “outies” were the rest of us — inhabiting ordinary vans or cars, feeling dirty and unkempt, but doggedly set on getting through this ordeal one way or the other.

Ocean Beach has few black families, and there were none in our line. There was one oriental family and one “brown” man who might or might not have been chicano. This man, after entering the office just in time to hear one of our group make a racial remark to another, disappeared and did not, to my knowledge return.

Late Thursday afternoon the first-in-liners were joined by a man who, although he did not sign up, immediately assumed authority over a lot of what had happened. For some reason, he also assumed custody of the List. When the name of one woman was called at roll and she did not appear in the 15-minute grace period, he announced she was being cut off. Some of us protested. We suggested she might be one of the persons who lived in one of the occupied homes, or at least that she might be represented by such a person. When he paid no attention, another man wrested the list from his hands and checked it. We had been right – she was represented by a unit on the premises. Her name was restored – a small victory for the “outs” – and some of us were now looking at each other with definite signs of anger.

Very early Friday morning, some man started calling roll. When he knocked on my window, I called out “nine,” and Anne, still sitting in for our stewardess friend, yelled “13.” We snuggled back into our blankets; then I became aware that people were walking past our van, apparently heading for the roll-call area.

“Anne, I think he expects us to get up – right now – in the middle of the night!” “Oh, mom,” groaned Anne.

But two condominiums were at stake, and one was ours, so we managed to get dressed and out – just in time to hear him announce that we had been eliminated. Seeing us, he said grimly, “I’ll put you back on, but the next time I call you, step lively!”

Up earlier than we wanted, we shuffled around in the cold, drinking lukewarm coffee from our thermos bottles, munching on stale potato chips and crackers, feeling bad. The line had grown longer since dawn broke, and I felt sorry for those people who were too far back to have much chance at anything. One of the things that I really marveled at, when I thought about it afterwards, was that no one tried to break the line. Neither did anyone, so far as I know, contest the validity of the list, or suggest that it be abandoned in favor of an “auction” system in which late-comers would have an equal chance.

Finally Nick and Bruce, the agents, arrived for work. They had with them the morning’s Union. In it, on the building page, was a story about our vigil. Somehow, we all felt better after we read it. At least people knew we were here, and had some idea why. A little later, the television people came out. Although the person who gave the chief interview was the one person not on the list, we got a lot of footage.

Nick and Bruce, obviously impressed, suggested we view the evening news in their office. The publicity, which praised their condominiums as a “great buy,” evoked more favors. They sent out to a delicatessen for sandwiches and cold drinks, and opened the recreation center so that we could sit comfortably at the tables to eat. Later, we played cards there, Anne and I.

That evening Phil and Paul arrived. Phil brought coffee and sandwiches for himself and a lunch sack for Paul and Anne, nothing for me. “I want you to go home for the night,” he said. “Get a bath and a good sleep and be back here before the sale starts. Paul, Anne and I will take care of things here.”

I went home and took a warm and wonderful bath. But I couldn’t sleep; I kept worrying about a midnight roll call. When I had mentioned that to Phil, before leaving, he answered, smiling, “I’m not going to let anyone get away with that.” I kept thinking, what if they did call Phil and he refused to get up and we got knocked off the list.

By 5:30 Saturday morning I was dressed. By six I was back on the site. The stewardesses and the woman who had paid Paul to finish out the night for her were also there, evidently suffering from the same misgivings. But we needn’t have worried. Late the evening before, the company had brought in beer, chips and soft drinks. Everyone had stayed up late. There had been no night roll call. When the call finally did come, around seven, everyone emerged groggily. We stood around in small clusters, waiting for the door to open. We all had our checks in our hands; our ordeal was ending and our mortgages were about to descend.

Promptly at eight a.m., Nick and Bruce threw open the office. “As we promised, we’re honoring your list,” they told us. “Will numbers one through ten on that list please step forward?”

And suddenly there we were, among the first in line. Half an hour later we were the new and proud owners of a Model 4-A condominium.

As we walked away, past the people who would soon be owners, past the people who wouldn’t make it this time but would probably turn up for the next sale when and if it came, we found ourselves smiling. Everyone smiled back, even the losers.