Social Security Cards
July 16, 2008 (Wednesday)
I’m still looking at the picture from atop the JPMorgan Chase Tower, and, a few blocks away is a building I can’t forget. It used to be the Federal Building, located at 201 Fannin Street at Franklin Avenue. The building is still there, but is no longer the Federal Building. I don’t know what its present function is, but it is probably still being used for public purposes of some kind. I think it was built in 1938.
In 1943 it housed the Social Security offices, so Troy Conner and I rode the bus downtown and went there to get our Social Security cards. I had been hired as delivery boy for a drugstore at Quitman and North Main, and Troy was an independent business person, working a paper route every day for the Houston Press. We found the building and took an elevator to an upper floor, where we found ourselves the only people there, other than the lone person behind the counter. He was very friendly to us kids, and took our information, getting the paper work under way for our cards.
My visits to Social Security offices in recent years have presented a very different picture. The offices are crowded with patrons, doing business with the government agency for various reasons. I went to see them when I retired, and again when Wanda died. I recall having to take a number and wait. When my turn came, I was escorted through a sea of desks, each occupied by somebody hidden behind mountains of paper work. Each time I was interviewed by a very nice person in the office, who tried their very best to make it as pleasant an experience as it could be.
The first Social Security cards were typed in Post Offices and began to be issued in November, 1936. The first official record in Baltimore, where earnings have been recorded, was that of John D. Sweeney, Jr., 23, of New Rochelle, N.Y. and his number was 055-09-0001. Troy and I got our cards less than seven years later.