Homes and Friends of My Youth - Part 1

I was born in Compton, California in late 1947. At that time we lived in a small one-bedroom house located 2030 Stockwell Street, not far from Watts. We lived there about three and a half years or so after I was born and moved from there when my mother became pregnant with her second child.

I have many, many memories as a little kid at this house, believe it or not. My earliest recollections revolve around friends, playmates, neighbors and relatives. Our neighbors to the west were a Hispanic family that used to baby-sit me when my mom and dad both worked at Grant Apparel in downtown Los Angeles. Mom was a seamstress and my dad was a clerk in their administrative offices.

The Mexican family next door fed me beans and tortillas and talked to me in Spanish while they babysat me. I used to eat, or rather chew on sticks of sugar cane I found in their kitchen drawers. I am convinced this is where I picked up my instinctive ability to learn Spanish in my later years, and became so fond of the Mexican cuisine, and even the people.

I also have some memories of Grant Apparel, too, because sometimes on Saturdays my dad had to work and he took me with him. I can also remember a party that was once thrown there for the company and even some of the songs they danced to.

Anyway, back to Stockwell Street. As I said, it was a tiny one-bedroom home. I slept in my parent’s bedroom in a crib until my dad bought me a rollaway bed that he would set up for me each evening in the living room where I slept.

I remember that I broke the crib, I think, because I remember I could let myself out by swinging the side out and sliding off the mattress to the floor. Apparently one end of the crib side had broken free of one of the vertical slide bars and the side could then swing on the other slide as if it were a hinge. Maybe that's why I got the new bed, or maybe it was just time for me to move out of my parent’s bedroom.

We had a fireplace in that house with a ceramic tile firebox. It had a gas valve in it, so my dad put an open-flame, free-standing gas furnace in it they had purchased at Phillips furniture store in downtown Compton. It was a cool furnace because it had a row of ceramic pieces in front of the flames to keep kids like me from reaching into it. Sometimes they would glow from the heat.

We bought a television about 1949. It was a black and white (of course) Admiral. I remember my parents loved to watch Doyle Dell's western music variety show down at the Big Red Barn live on KTLA channel 5.

Mom and dad kept chickens in a chicken coop they had made in the back yard so we ate fresh eggs and dad would butcher a chicken or two now and then. One day my dad was butchering some chickens with the help of my uncle David. He was about twelve or thirteen years old then. My dad had David hold the chicken's feet, while dad tied the chicken's neck to the chopping block with a piece of string. Down came the hatchet and lopped off the bird's head.

The neck of the bird began to flip around wildly slinging blood everywhere. My uncle David let go of the bird and it jumped to its feet. So did David and he started to run. To his horror, the chicken followed him, seeking revenge he thought, and followed David's zigzagging course as he fled the pursuing bird. After about ten seconds, the bird flopped over. I think David was about to do the same thing. I wonder what David dreamed about that night?

My first and most favorite playmate was my uncle Leon who was born six moths after I was. Whenever Leon and I got together you could count on some shenanigans worth at least a spanking or two. I’ll elaborate on some of the naughtiest ones in another blog.

I remember one time we got dirt clods from the freshly tilled flower beds next to the kitchen and tossed them into my mom’s freshly scrubbed kitchen through the small pass-thru door the milkman used to set the delivered bottles of milk in. That netted us a good paddling.

In that same garden were these little critters kids today call rollie-pollies, or in other words, sow bugs. We used to take them out and play with them so we could see them roll themselves up into little balls. I don’t know how he did it, but Leon got one of them up his nose. It took my mom a long time to fish it out with a pair of tweezers. It was trying to go deeper into his nose as my mom went after it with the tweezers. Leon ended up with a sore and bloody nose.

Leon and I had twin tricycles and we would ride them in the driveway of our house, and beyond if we could escape. Our driveway was straight off the city street to the garage. It had two concrete ribbons that ran parallel to each other. The tires on the right of the car would drive on the right concrete ribbon, and the left tires on the left ribbon. Between them was grass.

The ribbons were wide enough to run our tricycles on. So, we would race down one side and turn around on a slab near the city sidewalk and go back up the other side and turn around on the garage slab. I mention this because just the other day I looked up this old house on Google Earth. They had a magnificently clear view of that old house, and, too my amazement, the yard, driveway, house and all are still as I remember them today! 54 years ago we left that place and it hasn’t changed a bit, right down to that old style driveway!!!

We didn’t have a refrigerator in that house. In those days we had an ice box, which looked just like a refrigerator except you put inside of it daily deliveries of blocks of ice. It had a hole in the bottom of it to allow the melting ice to drain out into a pan below. This kept my mother busy, and made leaving home for visiting, etc nearly impossible. To resolve this problem, my dad drilled a hole through the floor below the icebox and attached a drain hose to the refrigerator’s drain then passed it through the hole in the floor. Voila, instant drainage! Mom thought my dad was so smart for having concocted this resolution.

The icebox was a place I would often get myself into trouble as a toddler. I would pull open the door and start tossing out all of the fresh vegetables. (Reminds me of my grandson Mitchell). One day my mom caught me in the act. “Michael Frederick Harrington, you get out of there!” It startled me so bad I tossed the tomato I had in my hand back into the icebox and shut the door and scurried off. My mother loves to tell this story.

About February of 1952 Mom became pregnant with my first sibling, Ellen Marie. I was four years old and wasn’t interested in having any brothers or sisters. After all, I had Leon, and that was all I needed.

We had to leave the house on Stockwell Street, and look for a house with another bedroom. In the interim, we had to live in my grandparent’s garage on Bahama Street while escrow closed on a house nearby. It was like tossing Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch, so to speak. I would have been perfectly content to have lived out my entire youth there since Leon and I were together now 24/7, but I doubt if my mom and dad, (and our bottoms) could have endured the shenanigans.

To Mom and Dad’s relief, escrow closed and we moved in to one of the most beautiful houses I had ever seen. The best thing about it was it was only a few blocks west of Bahama Street and Leon. I had my own bedroom and it was so cool! On my bedroom floor my mom and dad and put down linoleum. It had squares in it with different illustrated nursery rhymes in each one. I could read them all by then: Hey Diddle-Diddle, Old King Cole, Sing a Song of Six Pence, Jack and Jill Went up the Hill, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, and so on.

On my bedroom walls Mom had placed other colorful nursery rhyme characters made of laminated paper about a half of an inch thick. I felt special. They were colorful and made for a cheery bedroom.

I even had my very own record player which really wasn’t much bigger than an overnight case. Considering the evolution of music media these days, do I need to explain what a record player was? It was about 12 inches square and 5 inches thick with the lid closed. You could close it with latches and carry it just like a small case with a handle like a briefcase. it played 78's and that's about it. For you new kids, 78's were a record's speed. It meant 78 rpm's. There were no 45's yet.

I had a lot of children’s records with (you guessed it) nursery rhymes. Some were just musical stories. I can, to this day, quote you verses from one about a boy who painted his wagon green without a paint brush, so he used his bare hands and smeared it on.

Aside from my cool bedroom, we had an awesome enclosed patio with a built in barbeque grill, and cool patio furniture complete with swing and all. The backyard was green and lush with arbors of grapes. The vines seemed to be everywhere like a jungle. Also everywhere were huge, and I mean HUGE spiders which seemed to me to be as big as my hand. Their webs were like steel nets.

Now that I was getting older, my mom assigned me chores. The one I remember was having to put away the ‘silverware’ after my mom had washed the dishes. It never seemed an opportune time to do my chores as it would interrupt my favorite pastime, watching television. Sadly, I was addicted to the boob-tube from an early age. I mean, what kid wouldn’t be addicted when there were so many neat shows for us?

I always had to watch Sheriff John’s Lunch Brigade at noon, and in the late afternoons I had to see my favorites, too. Those would have been Wild Bill Hickcock, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, Superman, and Red Ryder. All were sponsored my sugary breakfast cereals made by Kellogg’s of Battle Creek. They were Sugar Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, et al. all of which made a lot of dentists rich, I am sure.

But my all-time favorites were the Hal Roache’s Little Rascals/Our Gang characters whom we watched on Saturdays mornings. They were timeless. They looked and acted like me and did things like Leon and I would do to get our tails spanked.

I couldn’t comprehend it when my mother had told me they weren’t little children anymore. They were all grown up like her.

Next best were the classic slapstick comedians, Laurel and Hardy. To this day I revel in their genius comic antics. No one has ever come close to approximating their films for sheer hilarity.

I always had cowboy holsters and cap-guns strapped to my side whenever I went out to play, it seemed. Leon and I rode stick ponies and rounded up the bad guys together. Other times we were the bad guys whenever we got into Dutch, and that was more often than I can remember. On more than one occasion we got into someone’s garage and got into things we had no business touching. It always came back on us, and we got our fannies tanned as we should have.

Summers were warm but never so hot as to need air conditioning, especially in the evenings. I remember those cool coastal breezes that kept it so nice, especially in the evenings. We were less than fourteen miles from the ocean and it made summers quite bearable.

Trips to the ocean were common, but I remember being petrified of it when I was very young. My mom was really upset with me one day when they wanted to go to the beach and sit on the shore near the waves as they lapped up onto the sand. She literally had to drag me as I screamed, “Why does it keep flushing?” In later years I outgrew my fear of the ocean. Even so, I am sure I ruined more than one outing over that phobia.

Our little piece of heaven didn’t last very long, and I never had the chance to finish kindergarten with my beloved Miss Miller. The complexion of the neighborhood was changing and my mom and dad said we had to move. It was traumatic for me to leave the beautiful little city we lived in. Little did I know that would all soon evaporate anyway.

So, off we moved 45 miles to the east into a rural part of Riverside county shortly after Ellen was born. I think she was only 4 months old when we made the move.

End of part 1

School Daze

For the most part, I enjoyed school. I remember my very first day in Kindergarten in Pioneer Elementary School, Compton, California. I was not yet five years of age. It was September of 1952, and I was still an only child. We lived on S. Cairn Ave. west of Central and south of Rosecrans.

The school was located at 1104 E. 148th St., just around the corner from my home. It's now called Harriet Tubman Continuation High School. It is still exactly as I remember it except for the name. Good internet investigation revealed all this.

My teacher was a beautiful young lady about 22 years of age. Her name was Miss Miller. I fell in love with her. She lived a couple of streets west of our house, as I recall, with her parents. I remember telling my mother I wanted to buy her a nice gift, a “nice slip, or something". I think I even said I would like to marry her. What a cad I was at only 5 years of age.

Her assistant was old enough to be my grandma, or so I remember thinking. Well, next to Miss Miller, anyone looked old! (Except my mother who was probably the same age).

I remember the assistant telling us at naptime if we didn't be still; she would be cross with us. It puzzled me by what it meant to be cross with anyone. How did you do that, I wondered? Was she going to lay down on me across my chest thus making a cross? Funny the way kids think, huh? I had never heard of that terminology before.

Just after I turned five our school had a costume parade for Halloween. I dress in a costume that had a plastic face mask with some character painted on it. I think I was Raggedy Andy. Anyway, the mask got twisted, so the eye-holes shifted and I was walking blind.

It didn't take long for me to run off course and I began to stumble over the folding chairs that were set up around the play yard we were marching in. I must have been a spectacle because everyone began laughing at me. I am not sure if I even knew why I was blind! All I remember was my mother coming to my rescue and asking me why I didn't adjust the mask before I started to crash into things. That's easy! I couldn't see, I told her! DUH! I was mortified! I remember crying.

One day my dad came home with sad news. His employer, Grant Apparel, was closing down. (My dad worked in the garment industry in downtown Los Angeles). We were selling our house and moving to Riverside, California. I was never so sad, and really never recovered from the disappointment of having to leave our beautiful home and neighborhood, and my Miss Miller.

I finished Kindergarten in a rural community called Mira Loma. In one felled swoop I had changed from a city slicker to a country bumpkin. Life was never the same for me after that.

The school was Troth Street Elementary School. The teacher was Miss Morgan. Miss Morgan was the opposite of my beloved Miss Miller. She was so obese she had folds of skin hanging from her elbows. Every morning during roll call when our name was called, we had to stand up and answer, "Good morning, Miss Morgan". I fell ill one day in class and Miss Morgan confidently announced that I had the measles. She was right. I spent the next two or three weeks at home sick as a dog.

We lived there in Mira Loma for only a few months as I recall, and moved in late August to another Podunk neighborhood in another rural community called Glen Avon, only a few miles away. My parents had found and bought a house with a huge half-acre lot on Avon Street.

Since this is about school, I will refrain from telling any other details or events about my life in Mira Loma or Glen Avon.

Glen Avon Elementary school was pretty much a nice school for me. My first grade teacher was Miss Salter. (I thought that was funny that Miss Salter taught the first grade and Miss Pepper taught Kinder there.)

Miss Salter was a very nice teacher. She was young, but not too young. I did well under her tutelage. I quickly became an outstanding reader, which really amazed a lot of adults, for some reason. I got excellent report cards from her.

In second grade my teacher was Mrs. Woodard. She was a sweet old lady of small stature, and had a squeaky old lady's voice. I can't recall too many things from her class.

Third grade was Mrs. Thaller. Now Misses Thaller was an enigma to me. She had dark hair and spoke with an odd accent. She was in her late forties, I guessed or maybe early fifties. She knew a lot about the Mexican culture and the missions of California which were established by the Catholic priests way back when California was a Spanish possession. She wore her glasses around her neck on a string of beads, which distracted me for some reason.

Each morning after the Pledge of Allegiance/Flag Salute was repeated, she would drag out a large easel with The Lord's Prayer printed on a large paper or cardboard. She would then lead us as we repeated it. I soon memorized it.

Now, you just cannot get away with things like that in any school these days. I don't know who in our class was catholic, but I do not remember anyone refusing to participate in repeating the prayer. About the only thing about it I do remember was I repeated it at home one day at the dinner table to my mom and dad. My mother said that it was not a correct rendition of the prayer as it was contained in the King James Bible.

After some investigating, my mother eventually told me that the version I was repeating was from the Catholic Bible, and was, therefore, different. But, I was never forbidden to continue the daily prayer in Mrs. Thaller's class. I was taught the correct rendition from the KJV, and it was left at that.

As a Mormon boy I certainly don't remember any religious confusion or pressure wrought on me by these experiences. I didn't lose any sleep, I didn't abandon my religious convictions, and I certainly didn't suffer undue stress. I knew what I believed, and that was that.

My parents didn't rush to the school to lodge a complaint, or run to the court to file a petition. Confident that they had taught me well, they left these things alone. As Joseph Smith once said, "I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves." Times were certainly simpler back then. Our court's judges must have been very bored.

Speaking of the Pledge of Allegiance, I remember one girl named Sandra who never participated. She would stand up but never put her hand over her heart, or say the pledge. This went on for years, and one day I finally asked her why not. She said her parents said she didn't have to because it was idol worship.

It turns out that was a lie they had to concoct. The truth was she was a Jehovah's Witness who don't believe in honoring or pledging allegiance to any earthly government, or serving in the armed forces. Remember, we were baby-boomers; children of WWII veterans, and not saluting the flag was tantamount to spitting in the face of those who served and died for that flag. So, the idol worship thing was a safer ruse. In later years, Sandra admitted the truth, and explained she was a JW as if that announcement cleared it all up. I didn't know JW's didn't recognize any governments.

Years later I was able to identify Misses Thaller's accent as Hispanic. She was also a Catholic, hence our daily repetition of the Lord's Prayer, (Catholic version), and the excellent lessons on California Missions. She had apparently married someone of European decent.

In Fourth grade, my world was turned upside-down. I had a mean teacher whose name was Miss Marietta. Miss Marietta was not young, but it was stressed by her that she was a miss to us. She was a stern woman who never smiled or laughed. Her look was cold, and she struck fear into my heart. She wore her hair short, wore black-rimmed glasses, and never ever seemed like she had any compassion. Miss Marietta was also Catholic, and to top it off, she was a retired nun who used to teach in catholic schools. Bingo! (No pun intended)

Although she never made us repeat any prayers, she did bring one thing over from her teaching in catholic school. It was called a yardstick, and I had seen her use it many times on 'slow' boy students. Either all the girls in class were good students, or she disliked boys intensely. The girls never tasted the wooden rule.

I did manage to win her over one day, however, in an unplanned moment of wit. She was seated at her desk doing whatever in a book while we were all silently doing some kind of class study or test. The peace was shattered when she looked up from her books and caught a boy student staring at her. "What are you staring at!?!?" she demanded in a loud voice. (I think the boy peed his pants). Anyway, where the courage came from I know not, but I blurted out, "Maybe he's staring at you because he thinks you are beautiful, Miss Marietta!" Realizing I had just spoken out of turn, which you just didn't do in her class, I almost peed my pants. I waited for the dreaded stick.


To my utter amazement, I could see Miss Marietta's face brighten, if but for a moment. I actually had flattered the old stern woman, and I think for a moment she enjoyed it. I wasn't even scolded! I remember she said something after that which was akin to an agreement. I know for a fact this left an impression on her. A few weeks later she shared that moment with my parents during a teacher-parents conference.

Our class motto was the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". No doubt a remnant of Miss Marietta's Catholic school days. It was printed on a gold colored poster made to look like a ruler hence: Golden Rule. She kept it pinned all year to one of the cork boards on the room's south wall. We had to know it, explain it, and live by it. Too bad it didn't apply to her and that wooden rule.

Speaking of that, I will never forget the day when one of my boy classmates, Steven Anders, was punished for his stupidity. Just not able to get it, even after Miss Marietta just explained it to him, (whatever that was) she whacked him over the back with her infamous stick. I recoiled in shock, pain and sympathy for Steve, almost before I saw an amazing thing. The yardstick splintered into pieces, like a major league bat! I had to suppress a cheer! The tyranny was over! (Not!)

Oh, my grades in Miss Marietta's were the best ever: All A's and B's. Goes to show what a great motivator fear is.

The fear was real, not just on my part, but on others as well. I remember one friend, Tommy Smith, who was an in-active LDS boy (which I never knew until he started going to church when I was in High School), who was also intimidated by her. In Miss Marietta's class you just never ever raised your hand in class to be excused unless you wanted the wrath of God to rain down upon you, and be humiliated by her.

So, Tommy didn't. Instead, he quietly, (and I am sure, humiliatingly), wet his pants and sat in it until we left. I remember looking down on the floor behind the desk Tommy was sitting at and seeing a large puddle of urine spread as it spilled from his seat. Poor Tommy. He and I never spoke of that day, ever. I really knew what he had gone through. He didn't come to school the next day.

In the Fifth grade my teacher was another elderly woman. Unlike Miss Marietta, Misses England was a grandmotherly figure who exuded maturity. She had silvery-gray hair which she wore twisted up on her head in a bun. She stored her pencil in the bun, too. Misses England was an adored schoolmarm in the truest sense. She was in her mid 60's, and dressed just like my grandmother right down to the plain black pumps the older women wore.

In the sixth grade I had my first experience with a male teacher, Mr. Green. He was about 33 years old and single, and had served four years in the navy. He was raised in Riverside on a citrus ranch. Mr. Green was odd. It wasn't anything I could identify at my age but later learned what it was.

All I knew was when he spoke he sounded strange and blinked slowly as he did so. When he walked he rocked on his feet as if he were trying to keep a book balanced on his head. He had dark red hair, and adored Cadillac’s.

He asked us to give him a birthday party on his birthday, which we did in his classroom. He relished the attention. I later learned Mr. Green was gay, or maybe even a pedophile.

He had challenged a friend of mine named Dean K. (I'll not mention his surname here) to meet him behind the backstop after class was over at the end of the day. I think he said he was going to pants Dean for some reason and Dean bet he couldn't do it. Dean didn't come back to school for the next four or six weeks. No explanation was ever given by anyone. When he finally did return, he was a different boy from then on. Mr. Green never teased him or conversed with him after that as he was wont to do previously.

Later, when I was about 18 or so, Dean and I met up when he was a clerk at a local liquor store where I bought my HOT ROD magazines. He confirmed Mr. Green had molested him. It was hard for Dean to even mention it, so I never got into why Mr. Green wasn't fired. I found out from other male students older than I that Green was a queer, in the jargon of the day.

In Mr. Green's class I won the spelling Bee, and was the class hero with the boys, as it was a boys vs. girls event, so to speak. No doubt a theme dubbed by Mr. Green.

All through my years at Glen Avon, I attended school with various ethnicities. We had Mexican-American students, who didn't live in large barrios, but right up the street from each other and amongst us, and we had Japanese-American students as well. Needless to say the Japanese-American students were serious in their education, and worked hard after school in their family truck farms. I admired them.

I was infatuated with a young Mexican-American girl named Gloria Sanchez. Gloria had beautiful brown skin and long black hair. She had features for her age that other girls envied, and brought a lot of attention from the boys. In later years I saw her get into a fight with another girl. She was a scrapper. End of infatuation.

Her face was cherubic, with sparkling brown eyes. Years later, looking at old class photographs, I was surprised to see that Gloria wasn't lean. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't fat, it's just that by today's standards she would not be considered attractive. Today's standards are out of whack with reality, I hasten to add.

In school we used to have annual Christmas programs where we all sang Christmas Carols in a chorus led by our music teacher Mrs. Wheeler. (Mrs. Wheeler was the music teacher my entire time at Glen Avon school.)

Every year before Christmas, Mrs. Wheeler would come to our class and do try-outs for the school's Christmas program. She would stoop at our desks and ask us to repeat a part of a song or carol she would sing for us. Try as I might, I couldn't sing it the way Mrs. Wheeler wanted. My friend, Jimmy Wyly, got the part every time. So, he got to play one of the Three Kings and sing on stage while I had to be content to sing anonymously in the chorus.

We did the whole thing with the Wise Men, and Baby Jesus, and the search for an inn by Mary and Joseph. It made Christmas, well- Christmas! On the night of the program, all the students and parents would gather and watch the show. Try that these days. Tell me our nation hasn't lost its moral compass.

Our school had a cafeteria where the tables and benches would fold up into the walls. During lunch hour we filed into the lunchroom, the brown-baggers in one line, and the kids who bought theirs in another. We sat segregated with the brown-baggers on one side and those who bought lunches on the other. In my early years I carried my lunch to school in a Red-Ryder lunch box with a Red Ryder thermos of milk. Every school year I got a new lunch box. I am sorry to say I cannot remember what all of them were like. I only remember we all had different ones according to who our hero of the year was. Davey Crockett, Red Ryder, and so on.

I always thought the ones who had to bring a lunch were poor while those who ate lunches purchased at the cafeteria were rich. And it was the same ones year after year. There were the ones whose dads were airline pilots, or business executives, or the like that bought their lunches, while those of us whose dads were steel mill workers, or mechanics, and other blue collar stuff ate what we brought from home.

To look on the bright side, those who ate out of the cafeteria all ate the same meals, while we who brought our own lunches all ate different things and different desserts. But even there I was different. My desserts just didn't seem to have the appeal the other brown-bagger's had. Every day my friends would pull out Hostess Twinkies, or Hostess Cupcakes, or Mallow Pies, etc. On the other hand, I had to eat my mother's homemade cakes, or cupcakes, or graham crackers with frosting on them. What is it about kids who prefer crap to good ol' home cookin'?

On a rare occasion, I got to buy my lunch, and became an interloper among the higher in society. I felt so out of place with my home sewn shirt, and old brown shoes. It was a dead give-away I didn't belong. But I pretended I did belong and enjoyed the moment as long as it lasted.

Home sewn shirts? Oh, yeah. Didn't I mention my mom was a seamstress schooled also in the homemaking arts as were all LDS women of the day? Every so often she would lay out the materials and pin shirt patterns to them and make me a new batch of shirts. I thought she did this because we were poor. But, the truth was, aside from the fact money, indeed, didn't grow on trees, (as my father would always remind me), my mother loved to sew for us.

At school one day, while in the first grade, I was sent to the cafeteria to bring back the class's milk for snack time. The women working in the cafeteria fawned over my home-sewn duds, amazed that my mother was so talented. I never knew it took talent to do those things.

Speaking of my mother, there were occasions, and I can't remember why, she attended my class just to observe, I guess. I remember she came exquisitely dressed, and all made up. She didn't stay very long, perhaps an hour or two, but when she left all the girls in the classroom had to know who she was. "She's my mother" I explained. "Oh, she's so beautiful!" they said. I think, too, some were surprised to learn she was my mother and not my big sister.

When it came time to leave Glen Avon Elementary, it was tough. I was leaving behind my whole youth; it seemed, with all its memories. From the fire-drills when we got to go outside and pretend we were fleeing a disaster, to our 'duck-and-cover' exercises where we would toss ourselves under our desks to protect ourselves from the effects of an atomic blast. From the Safety contests to the Essay Contests; from P.E. with Mr. Seeger, to the Square Dance lessons from him, too.

From Arbor day, when we planted a tree near the school office, to Valentine's Day when we all brought silly little "BE MY VALENTINE" cards and distributed them to all in the classroom.

Yes, those were the real school days!

Basic Training: The Ultimate Culture Shock

Having outsmarted Uncle Sam's draft by enlisting in the US Air Force in December of 1966, I soon enough found myself winging my way to Lackland AFB, in San Antonio, Texas on February 7, 1967. To keep me out of the draft my recruiter enlisted me in the reserves for 90 days. They called it the DEP (Delayed Enlistment Program).

Let me start with my induction physical, which was back on December 7th of '66. We were put on a bus in Riverside and sent to the induction center for all armed services on S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. The induction center was in a building built back in the 1920's. It looked old and smelled old.

Since we had to be at the induction center at 6:00 am, we were sent the afternoon before and spent the night in a flea-bag hotel (which appeared to be as old as the induction center) on Spring street just around the corner.

We were awakened at 5:00 a.m. rudely by a nerve-jangling telephone wake-up call. At least they could have warned us. The bell volume was set to wake up the dead, or at least the drunken bums outside in the alley way.

We were rushed downstairs to eat a complimentary breakfast of hot cakes, syrup, and scrambled eggs. Little did I know this crap would taste good compared to the future meals we were to consume a few months later. Ugh!

After breakfast was over we were marched from the hotel to the induction center where we were all stripped of our (pride, dignity, and) clothes. We went through the whole humiliating process mostly naked, but sometimes with a little towel to save us some form of dignity. Thank heaven for small favors. We were shuffled from one room to another and one floor to the next where an army of doctors and nurses inspected us like so much horse flesh at an auction.

At last we came to the last station where we were apprised of our physical status. To my surprise my name was called out and I was sent back to have my blood pressure re-checked. I was told at that point that my reading and heart rate were too high. Small wonder! Let me parade you around here in a room full of strangers buck-naked, letting people poke you in places you can't mention and see if you don't get a little nervous!! HAH! (Well, I didn't say it but I was thinking it loudly enough).

Anyway, after about the second attempt they made me lie down on a gurney to get me settled down. It worked! I was in. Boy, I had the chance to beat this and it never occurred to me! How dumb is that?

Back to a room where we all put on our clothes back on then on to another room where we were sworn into the appropriate branch of service en masse. Relieved it was over I was ready to go home. Yeah, Right! Standing in front of the exit door was a smartly dressed Marine sergeant that looked mean enough to eat raw meat.

"Gentlemen", he barked in a raspy voice, "men in Vietnam are dying and bleeding on the battlefields. We need your blood!" Sheepishly I volunteered mine. We were whisked off to the local Red Cross chapter to offer our blood to them. Turned out it wasn't so bad after all. At last we went home on the bus. It was a long day to be sure. We arrived in Riverside well after dark.

In February our recruiter set us up on a flight to San Antonio Texas on Braniff Airways. We landed at the airport where we were met by blue air force busses and taken to the intake center at Lackland Air Force Base. We arrived around midnight.

It was cold and frosty but I didn't need that to make me shiver, though. I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I would never hear my first name again. I would never know what privacy was again.

I was assigned to the 3706 BMTS (Basic Military Training Squadron), Flight "B". Our training Instructor (T.I.) was Airman McGee. He was, without a doubt, one of the most unlikable men I have ever met. He was skinny, and only had three stripes. He didn't have a commanding appearance due to this, but he sure knew how to spit shine those shoes. His voice was nasal, and he just did seem like he should have been a T.I.

Basic training was a real cultural shock for me. I was an un-sophisticated kid from the rural parts of the county (hick from the sticks). I wasn't used to having people yell at me 24 hours a day! Half of our flight (a flight was a part of a squadron) was made up of men from California, while the other half was from mostly Pennsylvania. The guys from Pennsylvania didn't like us Californians. I never heard before the things they would say to us. Claiming they weren't sure of our sexual orientation, they warned us they were sleeping with one-eye opened.

They all talked like they were salty sea-dogs raised in the local taverns of Pennsylvania. And, they played pool like it, too. Heck, no one could beat them. I never saw so many guys smoke like they did, either. Smoking was forbidden in the barracks and was only allowed during patio breaks, or whenever the T.I. said you could.

I grew sick and tired of their endless Californian jokes. I found out from them I was from the land of the "whispering bushes". Huh? "Yeah, you know-- whenever you pass buy a bush a voice would whisper from inside 'hey, buddy, come here!'..." I never laughed with them.

At night after lights-out, I would finally have a little peace and quiet. It was a good time to pray.
Being in the habit of prefacing every thing we would say to the T.I. with "Sir", I immediately fell into the same routine when addressing God in prayer. Believe it or not, it was a hard habit to break!

Inspections were a daily routine also. They had them more than once a day, too. Our rooms were inspected for proper order, as were our closets, shoes, beds and anything else you could think of. We had latrine inspections where you couldn't let a spot of water be found on a sink or shower wall.

In the closets all our shirts and coats had to be hung with the left shoulder to the outside, and two fingers of spacing between each hanger. Our hankies had to be folded in four folds with the closed end of the fold facing the left side of the drawer. They had to be stacked one atop the other without any one sticking out on the side. Our razors had to shine like chrome, as well as our belt buckles. We bought a lot of Brasso!

Because in recent years a couple of airmen recruits had died from meningitis, our rooms had to be totally dust free. The Venetian blinds had to be wiped down constantly, and not only that, they had to be opened at a forty-five degree angle. This was checked by inserting a pencil between the blinds and allowing it to hang on its own so that the pencil rested on front edge of the lower slat, and the back edge of the slat above it. The pencil had to be parallel to the floor, proving that the blinds were opened to the requisite angle.

When we dressed, the edge fold of our shirt front had to be in perfect vertical alignment with our pants fly edge, and the belt buckle had to have the right edge of it in perfect alignment to that. They called it a "gig line" and if it was off even the slightest, you got "gigged". (written up)

Our shoes had to be spit polished so well the T.I. could comb his hair in the reflection of his image. Let me tell you how boots are spit-shined. You get a clean white hankie; dip it in bootblack, then spit on it or the boot as you rub it into the leather. As you build up the layers of polish, the shine begins to become mirror-like in appearance.

Once this technique was mastered, it became our 'badge of honor' in basic training. As we strutted our stuff around the other men in the group, we would take surreptitious glances at their boots as we passed each other. We were like peacocks comparing ourselves to each other.

Our beds had to have a white collar as wide as a paper dollar is in length. And the covers had to be pulled over the bed and tucked in with a hospital corner with the fold at a 45 degree angle. The blanket had to be so taut that a 50 cent piece could be bounced off of it.

Our shoes and boots had to sit under the bed and in perfect descending order according to height, and in perfect horizontal alignment with the tips of the toes aligned with each other as well as an imaginary vertical line from the bed's support bar to the floor. You would kill anyone in the room who bumped into them.

Our towel had to hang folded on the end of the bunk railing with the fold to the left and the last four of our service number showing in the lower right hand corner. The ink-stamped number also had to be in perfect alignment with the towel's right edge and bottom edge not favoring either edge, by the way.

We were given an ink stamp with the first initial of our last name and the last four numbers of our service number carved in it. My number was H-2637. It became our official laundry number and had to be stamped in everything we could wash or wear, even the tongue of our shoes or boots. Heaven help the man who stamped anything crookedly!!

P.T. was a drag. (Physical Training) When called we had to fall out in full PT gear in five minutes. And you had better hang anything you took off according to the rules. If we were late, the entire flight had to fall out again, but in full uniform. Then P.T. was called again, and we had to do it all over until we could do it in the allotted time.

The easiest part of P.T. was the sit ups, the most difficult was the mile run. I failed my first test and was set back two weeks in training and had to do that part all over again with a new flight. At least I had gotten rid of Airman McGee.

Being the senior basic trainee had some advantages, the others who had not gone through what I already had looked to me for help. I found a niche!

The new T.I. noticed the men came to me for help and gave me kudos on graduation day for it. I'll never forget him. He was Sergeant Fierro. He spoke with a heavy Mexican accent, but it sounded familiar to me being from California and all. I liked him. I remember he always told us to keep our chews chiney (shoes shiny)

Many times were humiliating. Whenever we would goof up good ol' Airman McGee was there to make you feel lower than whale poop on the ocean's floor. One day the barracks didn't pass muster. He grabbed several bunks and literally turned them over. He shook Ajax all over the latrine floor and in a few dorms. He emptied closets and duffel bags and then ordered us to have it ready in one hour for inspection. I had to talk one man out of wanting to ambush the T.I.

His favorite vile directive was to "pull your head out of your ass". It implied an extreme state of stupidity, if the expression was lost on you. I remember thinking how I would like to do the opposite to him. But, I repented of that.

I was lucky to have an LDS chaplain. He was the only one of two in the entire Air Force then. We were not a recognized separate religion to the air force at that time. Now I hear we have hundreds of them and even the Air Force academy will let you go on a mission then return to finish up training at it. It was a break from the crudeness and crassness when we could attend services on base under his direction.

Our first and only pass to go downtown was given to us in our final week of training. Of course, I had no idea where to go or what to do down there, but I went anyway.

I boarded a bus at the base’s main gate and headed for downtown San Antonio. Of course we were not allowed to wear our civvies, so we went in our 1505's. The 1505 was a tan shade of uniform, not classed as classy as the "dress blues". We were required to wear the uniform to identify ourselves for the local Air Police who would patrol the bars to keep peace and arrest errant enlisted men.

Anyone caught downtown wearing 1505's and slick sleeves in a bar or drinking establishment was presumed to be an airman basic still in training and were not allowed to consume any alcoholic beverages. Still, there were those who put their future on the line and drank a few beers. You guessed it. They were the boys from Pennsylvania!

As we neared the outskirts of San Antonio, I spotted a taco stand on the corner. My heart leapt with joy! Wow! I exclaimed to another airman (I still remember his last name was Graham) who was from Ohio, I sure could go for a taco right about now!

Airman Graham's response spun my head around with incredulity, "what's a taco?" he honestly queried. The question seemed to me to be exceedingly stupid. What planet was this guy from?? "What's a taco??", I blurted out. "Man, where are you from? A taco is a fried tortilla folded in half and filled with delicious meat and cheese and a hot sauce!" I explained.

"What's a tortilla?", he innocently asked. I was flabbergasted. Then, as if a light came on he answered his own question with a question, "OOOHH!!Isn't that a Mexican pancake?" It was all I could do to keep from slapping the poor guy hopefully to bring him back to consciousness. I didn't realize there were parts of the nation who had never, but never, ever experienced the Mexican cuisine. What deprivation had this poor fellow been tortured with? I immediately considered myself a privileged soul.

No matter how I explained it, he just couldn't appreciate my fondness for tacos, and declined my offer to stop there and have one on me. Just as well, anyway...the neighborhood looked bad. We were obviously in 'their' side of town.

Once downtown, we walked along the streets aimlessly. I remember we ended up at some amusement park everybody thought was great. They called it "Six Flags over Texas". "Humph", I remember thinking to myself. "These Texans claim to have the biggest and best of everything, but this place is a dump compared to Disneyland! Now, that's a real amusement park!" Little did I know Six Flags would be flying over several states in years to come. One even came close by here, "Six Flags over Magic Mountain", which used to be just Magic Mountain.

After that we ended up at this little white fort in the middle of town called. The Alamo, it was called, was the pride of Texas. I remember my childhood hero Davey Crockett fought there. But this little place was rinky dink! Nothing at all like Hollywood (with Texas influence, I'm sure) made it look. I was so disillusioned!! Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie died for and in this dump?? I couldn't figure out why General Santa Ana wasted so many Mexican soldiers over it.

And the guide there was just dripping with Texas pride as she recounted the glorious stand-off
the Americans endured until they were finally overwhelmed by the brutal Santa Ana forces! With tears welling up in her eyes she drawled on about the glorious Texan genesis begat at the Alamo.

Well, that's it for San Antonio. Oh, the river walk was cool. Kind of like Venice.

Back at base we ended up as planned. A few days later we went on our obstacle course outing, and later our M-16 rifle training. (The best part of the whole experience!) I won a marksman medal which I was able to pin to my chest for the rest of my career!

On our last day there we were given our assignments to technical schools, etc, awarded our first stripe, and given our final paycheck--- A whopping 26 dollars! I was routed by base headquarters along with a large group of other basic grads to Lowry AFB for technical school and flew out the next day. I bid Lackland Air Force Base a final farewell, and never looked back.