Summer 1960.
My irascible aunt Elsie and I finally arrived in Wilson, Oklahoma. Elsie went on to her cousins and I checked in at my Grandmothers. Never the less, After arriving at my grandmother’s house in Wilson and all we dozens of cousins were settled in, we were assigned our sleeping spot. My cousin Jacky Paul and I were to sleep out on the front porch beneath the stars on a roll-away bed. That was okay but the street lamp across the street was a bit bright. However, the two of we teen boys tried our best to throw rocks to put it out but we couldn’t hit the broad side of a red barn if we had to. So we gave up on breaking the big clear light bulb.
None the less our days consisted of walking from our Grams house about a half mile to main street and visit the local pool parlor. A place that smelled like a chewing Tabacco spittoon. Up near the front window and always in their places were four older gentlemen playing dominos. I had never seen dominos played so fast. Slap slam boom. Game over. And that went on all the time Jacky Paul and I had visited the Wilson house of billiards.
But now, Pool games were only a nickel. I had not played much pool up to that time so I had lots of scratch cueballs. Almost embarrassed to play but I forged ahead. Then other boys came and played. The rules were loser pays. And again, each set up and game was just one nickel. Five cents. I had a pocket full of nickels and maybe a few dimes. I got to the point I would just place a nickel on the pool table side rail and the pool hall manager came and picked it up. Even though I lost most games, well, I lost all games. I considered this cheap lessons on how to play pool. Snooker, rotation, color and stripe, and whatever.
Then once in a while our girl cousins would peer in the front door and watch a bit. Girls were not allowed in this charming palace of billiards. Not sure why. Never mind the horrendous chewing tobacco smell. It all was for boys only.
Then Jacky Paul and I were in the billiard hall one evening when a cigar smoking kid, who said he was eleven and was allowed in the gentlemen’s recreation room and smoke. My cousin mentioned to the little boy he looked a bit green around the gills. Oh no, he said. But then without excusing himself he suddenly dashed out the back door and threw up out in the alley. Many interesting events happened at the Wilson Pool Palace. Just try not to step on the dark brown blobs around the heavily stained spittoon.
So this is what Jacky Paul and I did for several days. This and go to the ten-cent movie. A movie theater that was COOL inside. But that is part of another story from the Summer of 1960. Fade to black.
Think Snow.
So it’s Christmas.
We rode with my friends parents to downtown Los Angeles to Pershing Square. On the ground level was a landscaped park with normal variety of trees, bushes, and mowed grass with a paved common area for gatherings and political speeches. However we were just looking for the underground parking entrance. Once we found a parking space we made our way back up to the park level and started walking towards Clifton’s Cafeteria. Down a block or two and around the corner.
It was just about Christmas 1956 and all the downtown L A department stores display windows were festively decorated with toy scenes with trains, Christmas trees, reindeer and with mechanical dancing dolls. Dolls like those observed singing and dancing in the Disneyland ‘It’s a Small World.’
Stretching from street light to street light was garlands of green plastic wreathes of holly and big translucent lighted red bells. All about every hundred feet or so.
We quickly made our way to Clifton’s, a favorite eating place for we kids. Inside the decor was jungle bushes and waterfalls with lots of bird and jungle sound effects. Once we strolled through the cafeteria line and made our selections we would head for a table surrounded with plastic jungle foliage with dripping rain water in the background. Not so Christmasy in the cafeteria though
But later when walking around the streets in front of the department stores looking in the decorated window displays you get the sense something is missing. Even though on display is Santa rocking in a rocking chair and little wiggly elves busy making toys. It just ain’t Christmas. What was missing was snow on the ground. How could you have Christmas without snow. It was southern California, 65-degrees outside with a thin presents of smog. Certainly not a picture of Christmas as depicted on many Christmas cards with a little house in a field of snow with smoke coming from the chimney. But if the good folks in Australia can celebrate Christmas in Summer, so we in L A also can celebrate Christmas in a semi-arid climate. Merry Christmas. Hand me that bottle of sunscreen.
Don’t be chicken
Fried chicken was the main event on our Sunday after church dinner table. It was a team effort between my mom and my dad. At our residence in East Los Angeles we raised dozens of chickens in our middle yard. Dozens of Rhoade Island reds. We probably raised about forty or fifty hens and two or three roosters. Just enough rooster to hen ratio to supply plenty of fried chicken and scrambled eggs.
When my dad went to the feed store to buy another fifty pounds of chicken feed he was given another 25 baby chicks. In order to keep them warm or incubated we placed the little fuzzy yellow chickadees in a wooden orange crate and kept them inside in front of our small gas heater. Never mind the baby chick smell. We got use to it.
Then about every weekend or so in the backyard my dad would dispatch two or three hens, ring their necks, and drop the main body into a tub of boiling water. Done so to make it easier to remove the red feathers.
Once all that was finished the featherless headless hens would be given to my mom who was expert at disemboweling each bird. Then separating legs, thighs, wings, breasts, etc. into separate parts. Making a chicken easier to fry in a big cast iron pan. Just scoop in 2 or 3 tablespoons of old bacon fat, get the pan to sizzle, and put in the chicken parts. Look at those guys fry. Boy did that smell good.
Then we got the bad news in the mail. We received a letter from the Los Angeles county health department to cease and desists. My dad was told to get rid of all the chickens which the health department determined to be a health hazard for the neighborhood. What we conjectured the whole process of rendering the hens was a bit noisy and not a pretty sight to see. Especially as observed by our next door retired German couple. They just didn’t appreciate the management of chickens and the many steps it took to process them into table food. Plus I think our German neighbors got tired of my brother trying to sell them eggs.
So, we got rid of all our roosters an hens. As a result, we had more roast beef than we had fried chicken for Sunday dinners. Its what we had to do as Okies living in Los Angeles. Just roll with the punches. Pass the mashed potatoes please.
Today’s real woman
The essence of professionalism.
Seen walking in a downtown Tulsa parking garage. A very professional looking woman. A thirty-something woman dressed in a trim blue blazer with a tan colored skirt and walking in four-inch hills. Shaded with large dark framed sunglasses sat atop a very feminine nose and modestly colored lips and cheeks. With a conservative styled quaff of blondish red hair.
As she approached what appeared to be her small Subaru SUV she started hacking up something of a large proportion and spat it on the parking garage ground landing with a loud thump. A wad big enough to be observed from several yards away.
There my friends is your professional woman.
Surely she was an officer in her organization.
The essence of professionalism.
Seen walking in a downtown Tulsa parking garage. A very professional looking woman. A thirty-something woman dressed in a trim blue blazer with a tan colored skirt and walking in four-inch hills. Shaded with large dark framed sunglasses sat atop a very feminine nose and modestly colored lips and cheeks. With a conservative styled quaff of blondish red hair.
As she approached what appeared to be her small Subaru SUV she started hacking up something of a large proportion and spat it on the parking garage ground landing with a loud thump. A wad big enough to be observed from several yards away.
There my friends is your professional woman.
I’m walking, yes indeed I’m Walking.
My kids don’t believe me.
I had walked two miles or more one way each day to and back from school. Starting in kindergarten and still walked everyday all the way through my senior year in high school. Rain, sleet, ice storms, snow, Wild fire, earthquake, barking dogs, panhandlers, and cracked sidewalks. All walking through the southern California thick gray smog. It certainly wasn’t an easy stroll. A challenge to one’s well-being and willingness to engage in serious schooling.
In high school I lived three blocks too close to ride on the school’s big yellow bus. Plus, my dad left much too early in the morning to his work for me to ride with him. So, if I have to walk, I’ll just walk. And miles of walking it was. Twelve long years and many pairs of shoes. Two miles to school. Two miles back. Everyday. It was a hardship. I should had run away from home. But my mom packed a nice lunch for me each day.
I would like to live in Disneyland.
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The best of the second ten years.
Age eleven June 1955. Our uncle who lived in Anaheim called up one day and asked if we kids would like to go with him and see this new place called Disneyland. I responded with a solid YES. Let’s go. So, a few days later along with my brother and sister and my uncles kids drove from his house just down the road to Disneyland.
To back up, I had been watching the TV program with the same name. From time-to-time Walt Disney would give previews of what to expect at Disneyland. One thing for sure was Walt’s love of old-time steam engine railroads. The first thing one sees when entering Disneyland is the Santa Fe Railroad station. But wait, there is Main Street USA, Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Fantasyland, and a few other areas of alluring attractions for kids and adults.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. What a wonderous place. So many things to see. So many things to ride on. The Jungle ride, Autopia, Mark Twains river boat, the Peter Pan ride, and much more.
You won’t believe this but it cost we kids back then only Fifty-cents to get into the theme park. However, if you wished a coupon book of rides it cost from $2.50 up to $5.00. Then sometimes you would finish the day with a few extra ride coupons which could be used at a later date. An I had many later dates. Probably about a half dozen times or so visiting Disneyland.
Therefore, if I were to take my grandkids somewhere special, it would be to Disneyland. But wait, the cost has gone up quite a bit. If you were to fly a family of four to California, rent a car, secure hotel accommodations, eat out and enter four people to Disneyland; you would be looking at several thousands of dollars. But yes, it is one of the Happiest places on earth. Go for it. Never mind exotic islands and faraway places. Kids and grandkids will love Disneyland. Trust me. I’ve been there.
So this is real radio
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Oh I forgot, there was this in the first ten years.
There were dials, buttons, and switches. All up and down the walls. Reels of tape were whirling and stopping. Bouncing Needles on dials were whisking back and forth plunging into the red zone. It all looked like the control room of a Flash Gordon space ship. High on the wall above all this was a big clock indicating it was eight-o-clock straight up. And that what was on the other side of the big glass window. Plus sitting at a desk on the other side of the big glass window was a man wearing headphones pointing at our preacher on our side of the big glass window.
It was 1952 at a radio station in Long Beach, California. The radio station was called KFOX mostly a country and western music station. But this was Sunday morning and earlier that morning my dad asked me if I wanted to go with him and our church’s preacher man to watch him deliver his Sunday morning homily at a radio station. If I did I had to promise to never ever say anything while the preacher man read his words. So, I agreed. And I didn’t say anything. My eight-year-old eyes were too busy panning back and forth over the reels of tape, microphones, bouncing dials, and twisted knobs.
So it is all of this that what comes out of our single speaker on our Sears AM Radio/record player console? It’s an awful lot to squeeze through a small three-inch radio speaker. Boy Howdy what a morning this was!
Left holding the bag.
Air travel, kids, and throwing up.
I will not name names but both daughters have upchucked more than once either before flying or inflight. And I say this because some other kids while flying seem to be okay with air travel. Meaning not throwing up.
But there was this one time at about 25K feet up when my daughter alerted me she was not feeling so great and about to barf. So, we go into counting backwards from 99. 99, 98, 97, etc. Are you following me? If she skips and number or repeats a number then she must go back to 99 and start over again. Got it? Hopefully taking her mind off puking. In the past it sometimes worked and sometimes not.
However, on this one flight we seemed to make a landing without grabbing the airline supplied barf bag. But it was just one stop away from our L A destination. One more takeoff and landing. We had about a twenty-minute stop before taking off again.
Therefore, we were feeling much better while grounded. Then the kindly flight attendant ask daughter if she wished to go with and three other kids her age and get some pizza out in the waiting area. So, she gladly went and enjoyed a nice pepperoni pizza and then they all returned moments before taking off again.
In retrospect it was the take offs and landings that prompted wobbly stomachs.
Then it started again on lifting off at the end of the runway. ‘I don’t feel so great” indicating to me she might certainly bring it all back up. When she begins to moan and groan I know something is about to happen. Then I grabbed the convenient airline logoed barf bag, open it out, and placed near her groaning mouth. Plus, the same flight attendant grabbed a larger plastic garbage sack and placed just behind the paper barf bag. And sure enough all that free pizza came back up and well captured by myself and the kindly flight attendant. The very same attendant who suggested to go get some pizza in the first place. Thank you very much Ms. Southwest.
Waiting for snow in L A.
Oh yes, then there was this in the first ten years.
East Los Angeles 1949.
It was a chilling cold and near freezing January morning. In retrospect, a bit cold for southern California. I was in kindergarten at Montebello Park Elementary school and this was the only time I was at the same school my oldest sister Peggy attended. She was in sixth and again I was in kindergarten.
None the less, somewhere in my mother’s collection of photos kept in a fruitcake tin is a black and white photograph of my sister Peg and a friend tossing snow balls. The photo was taken out front on a grassy area of our elementary school. Mr. Steelman, the school principal, allowed we kids to play in the sparsely accumulated snow up until it melted. Knowing this is a rare occurrence and he proclaimed let’s have fun while the snow lasts.
Based on my own witness this snow was the first and last snow I had experienced in L A proper. Before that event I’m not sure if I knew what snow was. Since then, there were maybe two or three days reaching down to 32-degrees but no snow for decades. At least up to the time I had left California back in 1972.
To play in the snow after that rare 1949 event we had to drive miles to the east to a mountain southern Californians called Mount Baldy. The official name of this 10K foot peak was Mount San Antonio. A mountain peak during the winter season would be covered in snow. Certainly, a favorite place to take your 4-man toboggan and sled down until one became sick of it all.
Before more houses were built around us and smog became a factor one could see Mount Baldy from our back yard. Our backyard was about fifty miles from the icon peak. Snowball fight anyone?
Chuck the Blogger Guy 