In my very first job as a paralegal, more than thirty-five years ago, I was given an old desk in a corner of a small office occupied by a very ancient legal secretary who had started her career before my mother was born.
I was 22 years old. I could barely tell the difference between a plaintiff and a defendant. I had no idea what I was doing, and the only other paralegal in the office thought I had been hired to replace her, so she refused to help me. I found that out about a year after I started. I was lucky though, because Miz Mac and the other secretaries took me under their matronly wings and taught me how to be a paralegal that first year. I will always be grateful to them. They knew everything about their jobs, my job and most of the attorney’s jobs.
Miz Mac was a character. She stood about 5’0 and weighed maybe 80 lbs. soaking wet.
She scared me.
The first thing she said to me was “Don’t call me Miz Mac, call me Edith, like we’re girlfriends. Miz Mac makes me sound too OLD.”
I was dumbfounded. Miz Mac was about 75 or thereabouts, as near as I could tell. In my 22 year old mind I thought, Doesn’t she know she is ANCIENT?!?
Miz Mac had a stapler on her desk that belonged in a museum. It looked like a prototype of the first stapler ever made. It could have been a murder weapon. Her letter opener would have suited Crocodile Dundee just fine.
She used a typewriter that weighed more than she did, a huge electric thing. There were no computers in the office. She constantly complained about her typewriter. It caused typos. [Note: they bought her a computer about the second year I was there, and she refused to use it. She made them bring back her typewriter.]
Life as the office mate of Miz Mac was something.
She got to the office at 7 a.m. When I came in at 8:30, I checked her eyebrows. She had shaved them off sometime in the 1940’s and they never grew back. If she was in a foul humor, they would be drawn on crazily, giving her the look of an elderly jack o'lantern. If they looked fairly normal, I was relieved.
If she had nothing to do, she would fall asleep at her desk, then awaken shouting "I WAS NOT ASLEEP!"
She liked to stand up from her desk about mid afternoon and announce, “I gotta go to the bat'room but maybe I waited too long. I drank too much coffee. I don’t know if I’ll make it,” and she then tottered off to the bathroom, which was down a long hallway and half a flight of stairs. I always prayed she would make it.
Miz Mac worked for a young attorney whose dad and grandfather had worked in the firm before him. His family name was on the firm. I think she had been the secretary to his grandfather. Fortunately, in the days before email, many of his letters were one or two sentences. She complained bitterly, nonetheless, and said he was long winded. He ignored her grousing and they worked well together, which amazed me.
She brought her lunch in once a week -- a loaf of white bread, and a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly. Sometimes she would notice the younger attorney she worked for skipping lunch. She would lecture him about it, and make him a sandwich. He always dutifully ate his sandwich. One day she went into the kitchen at lunch and heated up homemade red beans and rice, and one of the law clerks wandered in and paid her extravagant compliments. He got a free meal because she didn't want to eat too much and get fat.
My father worked in the bank in the same building and would often pop in and see me. He knew all the attorneys so he would just wander back, ignoring the receptionist. Miz Mac would smile and preen like a debutante when Dad came in. He was a handsome man and women were always drawn to him. He always greeted her with a big smile and asked how she was doing. He teased her. She flirted back. He would leave and she would “whisper” (very loudly) “Your daddy is such a handsome man!”
Miz Mac also worked for a very elderly attorney whose office was right next door. I’ll call him Mr. F. He had pretty much retired but he still liked to come into the office every morning, read the Wall Street Journal, go out to lunch at the diner down the street, come back to the office and take a nap on the ancient leather couch in his office. Mr. F left around 4. His desk was piled high with papers, some of them yellowed with age. He refused to use a Dictaphone, so he would call Miz Mac to come in a take dictation, and type up his letter, which was always to one client, Mrs. Baker. Her son was somewhat famous, a senator. She wanted old Mr. F to handle all her business and he did so until shortly before he died.
He would bellow “Miz Mac would you come in here please and take a letter?!”
Miz Mac would totter into his office muttering about how she had too much work to do to write down his stupid letter. She sat opposite him. He was a huge man, about 6’3. She was tiny. It looked like a Great Dane lecturing a very irascible teacup poodle. He spoke very slowly. I could have written down every word. However, Miz Mac complained bitterly.
“You’re going too fast!” she would bellow. He was hard of hearing.
He would talk even.more.slowly. She would scribble down a few words. He would begin again.
“You’re going too fast!” she would bellow again.
He would slow down again.
And on and on.
One day after he dictated a letter Miz Mac came back into the office and threw her steno pad on the desk and said to me -- with great malevolence -- "I HATE Irene Baker!"
I prayed Mrs. Baker would never come into the office.
One day my entire family came in, to take me to lunch and see “my” office. When we got back from lunch everyone stayed a few minutes and chatted cordially with Miz Mac and then left. Miz Mac looked at me.
“Your brother, he’s a very handsome man. He looks just like your father.”
“Yep.”
“Your sister-in-law, she’s a pretty girl.”
“Yep, we think so,” I agreed.
“And your mother. She is beautiful!” she gushed. "Like a movie star!"
“Yep.”
I waited. She didn’t say a word.
I waited some more.
Finally, she looked at me and said “And you have nice skin.”
Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
She was one of a kind.
[right, a photo of me and my parents around the same time I've written about]
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