253 South Oak Street, Orange, CA, June - December 1959

Backdrop

Ann and I sat amidst some of our family's possessions on the covered front porch of the house at 13222 Foxley Drive, waiting for the old moving van to arrive and haul those possessions away.  On a sunny summer's day, with school newly over, our friends were out of doors and playing in the neighborhood.  Not only did I recall feeling sad at our permanent departure, I felt totally separated from the home and that neighborhood we had lived in from June of 1954.  Dad had gotten custody of the two of us during a legal process we were not a part of in any way, and now he was spiriting us toward a new future we were not consulted about.

After the moving van got loaded and was on the road behind us, dad pulled over before we headed onto a freeway (probably the Santa Ana) because the slow-moving van was not keeping up.  Dad expressed his disappointment that he believed the driver was deliberately driving slowly so as to demand more money for the move, charging him by the hour. 

I have no memory of our arrival at the apartment complex on Oak St that day, nor taking my cat, Tiger, with us.  (I had tried to bring him along on one of our weekly visits to Willene and her kids, but a couple of miles from the house, terrified, he peed on me.   We took him back home, and I changed trousers.)  But we all moved into the two-bedroom unit, with Grandma Sanchez soon joining us there.  Dad and I shared one bedroom while Ann and Grandma shared the other. 

Tiger was allowed to roam a new neighborhood.  The only three memories I have of him there is of dad allowing Tiger into the apartment as I was awakened to my buddy padding his way over my bed toward me.  Another was that I entered the kitchen one afternoon after Grandma had left a package of hamburger out on the countertop to thaw but Tiger had clawed through the clear wrapper and was devouring some of the contents raw.  Another morning I noticed that Grandma Sanchez had left cooked oatmeal in a bowl outside for Tiger to eat, though--not surprisingly--it remained untouched.  However, some time that fall, dad gave me the ultimatum of what day he would take Tiger away and dump him in some field. 

Drowning the kitten in the coffee can the year before, disposing of the two white kittens a year or so before that, and now this ultimatum were clearly the results of either peer pressure or my Grandma's refusal to let me have another kitten.  I am convinced that it was Willene, dad's fiancee, who issued the demand to him this time that I could not move into the triplex being built for the combined family with Tiger.  Neither of her two kids had pets.  In the years ahead, she would exhibit a consistent meanness that confirmed her role as the wicked stepmother who treated Ann and me badly.  (Only decades later would we learn from our stepsister, Pam, that Willene treated her poorly, especially after we were gone.)

In retrospect, had her demand been made before we moved from Whittier, it would have been better to have just abandoned Tiger in our backyard there.  He knew the neighborhood and the neighbors.  Someone might have adopted him after we left and fed him.  But since we took him with us, I suspect Willene waited to make this demand after we had moved to South Oak St and not long before their impending marriage after the first of the year, 1960, right after dad's divorce from mom was finalized.       

Mom
 

The above is the only photo I have of any of us at 253 South Oak St.  With the divorce to be finalized by year's end, mom seemed to have been allowed to visit us several times that summer and fall.  I remember once waiting for her on the sidewalk out front of the apartment complex.  As soon as I saw her blue, fast-back Buick turning the corner, I ran to meet her.  She opened the driver's door and scootched over to let me sit next to her.  She would often take us to breakfast, frequently paying by check, something that few merchants or restaurants ever take as compensation in recent decades.  We would also visit a married friend of hers and that woman's family in Tustin on our infrequent days with her.   

Dad

Besides his dumping Tiger who knows where, I mostly remember that dad began to collect original cast recordings from a record club.  I would listen especially to THE MUSIC MAN.  For years to come, I would enjoy musicals, likely based upon dad's collection.  

At some point, he took us to the home of a family that we used to know in Santa Ana.  I played with them in the mudpuddle they'd created in their back yard.  Unfortunately, there were nails hidden in the ground, likely from when their house was built.  I got stabbed on the bottoms of both feet which dad bandaged in the bathroom on S. Oak St after we got back.     

Bad Day at S. Oak St.

The following is context, not excuses, for my reckless behavior that infamous day:  

I had no friends in this new neighborhood during the long summer of 1959, before attending Palmyra Elementary School.  Of course, dad worked during the week and was not around.  Mom did not live with us, and they were getting divorced, of which we were told very little.  While Grandma Sanchez, my sister and I would play card games some days, I don't recall watching much television or reading that summer during the day.  I had become occasional buddies with a much older woman who lived in the end apartment on our side of the complex, but she was my only other regular contact outside my family.  No other kids our age range lived in the complex or nearby whom we knew.  I was likely frequently bored.  Most significantly, I was 8 years old with too much time on my hands and not much to do.

It was a bright, sunny day when I began a distracted walk across the parking spaces in front of the garages that fronted the complex between the sidewalk and the single-car garage doors.  Some renters parked in these spaces instead of always parking within their assigned garages or their guests could park there while visiting since parking spaces on the street were limited.  (One renter owned a red and white 1957 Ford Fairlane hardtop convertible which he parked in his outdoor space.)  No cars were parked in those spaces that day, so it was likely a weekday morning.  I don't believe I deliberately walked through a thick oil puddle in one of the spaces but did leave a few oily footprints on the concrete before I realized what I was doing and wiped my tennis shoes on the patch of grass next to the parking spaces.

At some point, I also walked through a muddy patch near the swimming pool within the complex and left muddy footprints on the sidewalk beside the older woman's apartment.  Seeing the mud on my shoes, I sat down beside the pool and stuck my shoes into the deep end, to get rid of the muddy residue.  (Google maps now shows that the swimming pool no longer exists in that complex.)

Eventually, I headed back into our apartment, oblivious to the ruckus that was about to explode throughout the complex as a result of my irresponsible morning stroll through oil and mud, the crime of the summer if one was to believe what was about to result.   

I was lying on my bed in dad's and my bedroom when Grandma Sanchez and Ann entered.  Grandma asked that I surrender my tennis shoes so that they could confirm if the telltale oily and muddy footprints discovered in those two places of the complex were mine or not.  Shocked that my actions were now being thoroughly investigated, I realized the jig would be up, and I was going to get nailed for this vandalism if my shoes were compared to the telltale prints.  I began loudly crying that I was being accused unfairly.  Grandma calmly explained that they only needed to borrow my shoes to prove I had not done these despicable deeds and to prove my innocence.  However, I refused to surrender them, still crying loudly that I was guiltless, though I knew that to give them up would convict me.  (I suspect that I also could not believe that my oily or muddy footprints had generated such a kerfuffle, but I was now definitely feeling hugely guilty.) 

By the late afternoon, I also learned that a few residents also realized that someone had left muddy residue at the bottom of the pool, so my entire number of capital crimes had been fully revealed.  My older woman friend glared at me as I found her methodically hosing off the now-dried prints from the sidewalk by her apartment.  She clearly knew they were mine and was none too happy with me, and she may have been the one who told me about the speckles of mud discovered at the bottom of the otherwise pristine pool.                        

Palmyra Elementary School

Ann and I began school at Palmyra in the fall of 1959.  I was in the 5th grade; she in the 4th.  Unfortunately, we would only attend that single semester before moving on.  For the first time I had a male teacher.  (I don't even recall that there were any male instructors at Laural Elementary School in Whittier.)

The school was only a couple of blocks away from our apartment, so we walked back and forth each day, crossing the busy S. Tustin St at the stoplight.  I never made any close friends, the kind one would invite home or one who would invite you to his or her home.  But the others were generally friendly toward me.  I recall during one recess that I got laughs for singing, "We three kings of Orient are, tried to smoke a rubber cigar/It was loaded/It exploded...."  The boys certainly laughed.

Unlike Laural, Palmyra had a broadcasting speaker at the front of the class, just below the ceiling and above the ubiquitous letters of the alphabet.  Once a week, the school tapped into a broadcast that verbally described a national park such as Mount Lassen or California natural attraction such as Mount Whitney.  We were then required to create a visual representation using crayons of what we had heard described.  We had to use our minds because we got no photographs or videos of these sites.  I always got a "B" or a "B+" but never an "A".  I finally asked the teacher why I never got a higher grade.  He pretty much explained that I often produced the same picture of a mountain with pine trees partway up the slopes, no matter if it were Lassen or Whitney or any other similar peak.  He had a point.  

We went to lunch out of doors as a class on wooden tables.  Two of us were required to guide the wooden cart with wheels out to the lunch tables--this was where our lunchboxes or bags were stored after we got to school each morning.  One noon time I was to guide the cart out with one of the girls in the class.  She, like a few of the other girls, was taller than most of us boys at this age.  Unfortunately, rather than staying in line (I was at the front of cart), she swung her end parallel with me, to disastrous results when we hit a crease in the concrete.  I tried to warn her but too late.  The narrow cart pitched over and some of the lunchboxes were spilled upon the sidewalk.  One girl's lunchbox broke open and the Thermos of milk inside shattered.  I was adamant that I was not going to pay for a replacement since it was her fault.

Some Like It Hot

I remember pouring through a newspaper one day and came across an ad for the Billy Wilder, Roaring 20's film, starring Marilyn Monroe.  Dad apparently was at work.  And I don't remember Ann going with us.  But Grandpa and Grandma Sanchez and I drove to a huge, old-fashioned theater in Long Beach to see it.  Grandpa parked his Studebaker on the street with a meter, realizing that he would have to leave the theater a couple of times during the movie to feed the meter.  I was enthralled the whole time and likely laughed frequently.  Even at the time I wondered if either Grandparent thought the film a bit too racy for their conservative tastes, but neither said anything.  I am not certain that it made the Catholic Legion of Decency list of films good Catholics ought not to see, or especially take their impressionable Grandchild to see.        

Christmas Vacation 1959

At some point after the school term ended for Christmas Vacation 1959, we moved from 253 S Oak St to the front half of a duplex on East Lomita, across the street and slightly down the block from the almost-complete triplex that we would occupy for the next 3 1/2 tumultuous years with Dad, Willene, Freddie, and Pam (and the 1961 arrival of half-sister Lorri).  Two of the principle players, Willene and Fred, would show their true colors now that dad was about to be hogtied in marriage to Willene and her brood.

The following is a picture of a present I received that Christmas, a Remco Movieland Drive-In Theater that showed short B&W film strips from the projection booth:

In addition to the theater, I had received a car carrier with three cars on the trailer (see the box next to the Movieland box in the photo above).  However, since it was cheaply made, the three cars only remained on the trailer by three rubber bands that came with the set.  Freddie had gotten some rubber/plastic soldiers.  Just a day or two in, and the three rubber bands went missing.  Mysteriously, Freddie had three rubber bands that he was now using to keep his soldiers together.  It did not take me long to realize that Freddie had swiped the rubber bands I needed and that he really did not need.  I started to complain, possibly loudly, at this obvious theft.  Suddenly Willene, who had been listening to my rant from the kitchen, walked out to the living room and smacked me on the side of the head, hard.  She then lied and said that the rubber bands Freddie had were ones she had given him.  (The fact that no additional rubber bands existed in the entire house further indicated that she was lying.)

Not only was I shocked at her sudden physical attack upon me--and I did start to cry aloud--dad was perhaps even more startled that his once-docile fiancee had just assaulted his son over three stolen rubber bands and then lied about it to defend her thieving son.  This would not be the last of her outrageous defenses of Freddy over the years.  

A couple of days later, I also came down with some bug that made me deathly sick to my stomach, requiring a mad dash to the bathroom down the hall to throw up.  At one point while in the living room, my stomach rapidly began turning, I took off in my socks, desperately trying to reach the bathroom in time.  I immediately slipped on the wooden floor and crashed against the wall, landing in a heap and, adding actual insult to injury, I puked on myself.  As I lay there, embarrassed, I started slowly sobbing.  This was only the start of the agony and pain that both Ann and I would soon endure at 1745 E. Lomita Avenue after Willene got her hooks into dad permanently.     

Death

 My best friend of 57 years mentioned a week ago on the phone that he increasingly thinks about death and dying.  We are both now 73 years old.  More and more in the news we read about our cultural icons dead or dying, some of whom are either around our age or younger. 

With the death of Jerry Lee Lewis, nearly all of the most famous music icons from the 1950's are gone (Tony Bennett is one of the lone survivors).  Nearly all of the well-known bands from the 1960's, groups we knew and loved whose singles and albums we regularly bought, have lost more than one member (the Beatles, the Stones, Jefferson Airplane), sometimes only one member survives (Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & Papas).  The TV shows we watched then seem to have been even more devastated of cast members as the years roll by. 

In the 1970's, I read Raymond Moody's LIFE AFTER LIFE and a few books by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the death and dying guru.  Regardless of cultural or national background, the experiences of those who have clinically "died" but came back seem strikingly similar.  Their consciousness (or soul, if you prefer) leaves their bodies.  If hospitalized, they are often able to see and hear, and later accurately describe what they experienced, from those who are not even in their hospital rooms.  In varying combinations, they are thrust through a tunnel and appear on the other side where friends and relatives who have gone before are there to greet them.  They quickly meet a "being of light" who reviews with them the course of their lives, though without judgment.  They are often made to realize that acquiring knowledge is a significant aspect to life on Earth.  (The ancient Greeks believed that sin was a lack of knowledge.)  After they return, they never fear death again because the experience was altogether quite pleasant.

The actor from HAROLD & MAUDE, Bud Cort, told a story about a painful car accident he endured.  He was told by a voice on the other side that he could return but it would be painful.  He did come back, and his injuries were exceedingly painful. 

My own mother, during her second open heart surgery, experienced an extreme reaction to the anesthesia and could have died had the anesthesiologist not recognized her reactions and countered the crisis.  She later told me that she felt she had died but there was nothing but blackness on the other side.  Nobody was there to greet her.

I have been put under anesthesia three times in my life:  when I had my tonsils out at 40, when I had double hernia surgery, and a couple of weeks ago when I had prostate surgery.  I only remember slowly coming to after the anesthesia wore off.  Never was I ever aware of being conscious of what I was enduring.  I was totally out.  Had I died during any of these three surgeries, would I have even been aware of the transition, or would I have simply ceased to think or come out of the surgery?

Does the electrical activity in our brains simply cease and that is all there is of us?  Is death, as A.E. Housman describes in one of his poems, "Night and no moon and no star upon the night"?  I do not know for sure.

I have thought of the W.S. Merwin poem, FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH, when he ruminates, "Every year without knowing it I have passed the day/when the last fires will wave to me".  Each of us will, someday, die upon a single day of the year.  Most of us know the anniversary of our birth; but we have no idea, generally, what day will represent the day we die.  Whether we silently slip away or make a huge splash as we depart, that day will come and go.       

I have always thought that death was like high school dodgeball in gym class.  If the day in Southern California at South Gate High School was persistently rainy, the P.E. classes during each hour would gather in the gymnasium instead of going out of doors.  The ball would be tossed to one side or the other, to be forcefully hurled at members of the opposing team, picking them off one by one.  Our good friend Richard Meyers would always just stand there and allow himself to be taken out of the game as quickly as possible.  He could then contemptuously sit on the sidelines and watch the rest of us scurry from side to side as a disorganized mob, to avoid being taken out for as long as possible.  Everyone but the one winner on one side would eventually be eliminated, and the ball usually stung when it struck any part of your body because our most aggressive classmates were strong and did not hesitate to hurl the ball forcefully.

As this point in the history of our nation, all of the survivors of the Civil War are gone.  The Spanish-American War likewise.  So, too, those of the Titanic disaster.  And then WWI.  Soon enough, no survivor of WWII will exist on this plane.  So many of us Baby Boomers are making our way toward the exits.  By 2040 or 2050, we, too, will likely have departed.  Those who opposed integration or burned their Beatles albums when told to by right-wing media or fled to Canada to escape military service. 

So, Mike has a right to think about death these days. 

Once when we were on the phone back in the very early 1970's, just before Nixon's draft lottery came into being and he was far higher than I (he was 315 and I was 119), he contemplated avoiding military service.  Discussing our impending college graduation when we would finally be vulnerable to the draft, he coolly explained, "A lot can happen in a few months.  I could lose a limb.  I could die in a car wreck.  I'm optimistic."  I have never laughed so hard or for so long at such an unexpected observation.
          

13222 Foxley Drive, Whittier, CA, 1954 to 1959

 

Foxley Drive was a somewhat insulated cul-de-sac with eleven houses along our side of its extended length and twelve houses on the opposite side of the street.  Beyond the wall at the closed end was Painter Avenue, running north and south.  Shoemaker, parallel to Painter, crossed the open end of our block.  Our street and a couple of the others such as Dunton Drive to the South and Danbrook to the North of Foxley, one block over on either side, were part of a brand-new development.  Many of the new houses were quickly occupied by families that had already begun producing offspring elsewhere but moved there, likely when their personal finances had improved sufficiently to buy a new home. 

We moved to Whittier in the Spring or early summer of 1954, from a modest 3-bedroom, 1-bath tract home on Broadway in Santa Ana, CA, after dad got a job at the Fuller Paint Store in Whittier.  This move apparently was to provide him with a much shorter daily commute.  We did leave a few friends behind, primarily three siblings who lived in a big, old, clapboard house around the corner from ours where we would go to play most days.  Once, when our negligent mom was on the phone and left Ann and me naked and playing in the tub, we slipped out of the bath and headed over there, totally in the buff, thinking nothing of it.  Soon, their mom called our mom, to let her know where we were and that we had arrived without any clothing.      

While I have several photos of those times and that house in Santa Ana, indoors and out of doors, taken by our parents when we lived there, I have few memories, except of one significant event.  A little girl who had lived on the next block of Broadway, and whom we knew, like the two of us pre-Kindergarten, died of diabetes while we lived there.  I remember being at the viewing.  We young ones were provided with a wooden step, in order to view her body.  Her small form in quiet repose lay in a pink-gauze-covered casket.  She looked so peaceful with her eyes closed that I don't recall any of the adults, including our parents, discussing her tragic death with us, or death in general, except that she had died of diabetes.   

I also have no memories of either of us kids being told that we were moving from Santa Ana to Whittier or why.  I just remember being put to bed one evening in a brand-new bedroom, with the door left ajar and the hall light left on so we could find the new hall bathroom during the night.  The next morning, I got up, went out of doors, and realized this new neighborhood was packed with baby boomer children around our ages (Ann was 3, going on 4, and I was 4, going on 5 that September), most of us pre-Kindergarten, at least those first months living there that first summer.

Historical Context

None of this was apparent to us kids at the time, but the Korean War had only ended the year before, on July 27, 1953.  As far as I can remember, none of the fathers on our block had served in that war.  WWII had been their conflict.  However, dad had still been in the active-duty Air Force while we lived in base housing at George Air Force Base, near Victorville, CA, as late as 1951.  At some point during the Korean War while we were at George AFB, dad was sent to Japan.  He had been a bombardier in WWII in B-24 Liberators.  His unit participated in a Ploesti oil field bombing raid in Romania, likely in 1944, not the deadly raid of August 1943.  Their aircraft was shot up badly enough by antiaircraft fire that they were not going to make it back to their base in Italy.  One by one, the crew bailed out and were separated on the ground.  From what I have learned over the years (dad never spoke much about the war), he was soon captured by the Germans and taken to a POW camp in Southern Germany where he spent more than a year until the war was over and the camp liberated by Allied troops.  Now that he was in Japan in 1951, faced with the prospect of participating in yet another war where he might be killed this time instead of just captured, dad resigned his commission and returned to civilian life and the family he had had to leave behind.  This was likely the reason we moved from George AFB to the house on 1915 S. Broadway in Santa Ana, built in 1947, according to Redfin.   

Here are the only photos I found with the two of us just outside the door to our house in George AFB and on a sled in the skanty snow:  

Our Neighborhood

Our neighborhood in Whittier was, certainly by 1950's standards, solidly middle class.  I never knew or met any Latino, Asian or Black families or kids in the neighborhood, or especially when I started attending school in the fall of 1954, as I was about to turn 5 years old.  In those days, the school year did not begin until after Labor Day.  Our house was likely typical of all of those on our block:  two bedrooms, one bathroom with a tub and another, smaller one with a toilet and shower, a den in the back, leading to a cement patio, a dining room, a kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace.  In the first year or two, we had party line phone service, meaning that at least one other family somewhere shared the phone line with us.  In the backyard were two objects you never see any more, for good reasons:  one was a furnace to burn trash (adding to the accumulating air pollution in the L.A. Basin), and a built-in, metal clothesline behind the garage.  Again, with increasing air pollution, outdoor clotheslines were generally abandoned, but not during the first years we lived on Foxley.  The detached garages might have had two spaces; however, nobody I knew along our street had more than one "family" car in those first couple of years.  In 1957, dad got a brand new '57 two-tone Ford company station wagon from Fuller Paint, either when he was made a manager or a salesman.  Mom acquired a 1950 Buick at some point later in the decade.  (Before the Ford, I remember dad driving a green, early 1950's Chevy.  I was in the back seat on one afternoon drive when the fabric lining beside my head started to burn.  I now realize that it was probably because dad sometimes drove and smoked a cigar, and some smoldering ash must have landed on the fabric.)    

Here is what dad's station wagon looked like:



The House

Our kitchen was typical.  Nobody owned a dishwasher.  Microwave ovens did not exist back then.  Most families did have what looked like a very primitive, top loading clothes washer; but it was always kept in the garage and not in the house--no such laundry room existing in our neighborhood.  Nobody had a clothes dryer, hence the clotheslines.  So, wives hauled the washed laundry out of the garage to the permanent clothesline behind the garage.  Doctors did make house calls in those days; I remember one showing up with his black bag when my sister and I were both sick with some cold or flu.  Whenever Ann and I had colds, a Vicks Vapor Rub device would spew out soothing vapors in the bedroom as we hacked away and tried to sleep. 


Unknown woman, Ann and Mom.  This is the other woman's kitchen but typical of that era.


Ann in front of the fireplace in the living room, dressed for her First Communion.

One morning, that first summer, I was standing in the driveway.  Dad and Mr. Hofeldt, the neighbor next door, were also there.  All of a sudden mom flew out the back door, shrieking.  She carried a bag of bread in her hand from the bread drawer, crying out that there was a mouse in the bag with the bread.  She tossed it at my father's feet, he grabbed a shovel from the garage and smashed the bag, the bread and the hapless mouse flat.  We ought to have expected that a mouse would have found its way into the house when the neighborhood was so recently a large, empty field. 


Ann and I in the small dining room for a birthday party.

The back patio that first summer was uncovered. But soon enough, they built a pergola to provide some shade in summer.


Me and Ann on the back steps to the patio.


Ann and I are holding cakes.  Mom is in the center in back.  You can see the pergola covering us.

Being in Southern California, we were able to visit Disneyland very soon after it first opened.  One of my few memories was of walking through the Sleeping Beauty castle, squashed amid so many other mesmerized attendees.  I remember seeing some of the rides like the Stagecoach that soon disappeared because they weren't very comfortable.  We also went to Knott's Berry Farm when they had a vintage train shop to which dad sold his childhood Lionel train that I had previously played with even though it never functioned.  (I suspect that he needed the money.)  Entrance to Knott's was free in those days.

Visiting relatives

That first year, we had visits by a few of mom's relatives.


Uncle Hap (mom's Brother-in-law and Aunt Doris's husband), dad, Uncle Robert (mom's brother) on the back patio.  The small window was to the smaller bathroom with just the shower, sink and toilet.  The window to the right was to the den.   


Aunt Doris (mom's youngest sister), Uncle Robert, me, mom and Ann.

The Neighbors                   

Our parents became friends with the Hofeldts, Don and Louise, who lived next door.  We became friends with their two daughters, Pam and Carol, our ages, and their much younger brother, Donnie.  The parents occasionally played badminton over the metal fence that divided our two driveways.  The Hofeldts were from Nebraska or Iowa, I no longer remember which.  He was an engineer, part of that pre- and post-war movement to build dams across many American rivers, to provide electricity to so many expanding towns and cities, primarily in rural areas of the West. 


Me, Donnie, Don Hofeldt, Louise, Carol, the oldest daughter.  Louise is barely in frame.

Across the street lived the Tiptons, Tom and Sylvia.  He was a sheriff for the Whittier Sheriff's Department, a big, handsome man with a crewcut.  Their daughter, Cynthia, and son, Tommy, were also our friends.  Sylvia Tipton was, like all of the female spouses on our street, a housewife only in those early days.  No wives, at least in the beginning, had jobs outside the home.  I believe that Sylvia had been a native Hawaiian, and Hawaii is where Tom Tipton, likely in the service at the time, met and married her.  Obviously, we had a Hispanic last name; but I never remember experiencing any prejudice even though all of us on the block were white.  (One family might have been of Filipino descent, but more about that later.)



Tommy Tipton, a year younger than I, Cynthia Tipton, my age, and me on our covered porch.


Back row:  Tom Tipton (?), Sylvia Tipton, Louise Hofeldt, Don Hofeldt.
Front row:  I have no idea whom the three to the left are.  Mom is to the right. 
This was probably the Hofeldt's living room next door.  (The man sitting next to mom might have been Tom Tipton.)


Laural Elementary School

Laural Elementary School is only six blocks away, though we almost never walked but rode the school bus each morning and afternoon.  After I started Kindergarten, I have three distinct memories of that first year of school.  We always took naps at some point during the day, though I am not sure how much most of us actually slept.  Second, one day mom brought my sister, one year behind me, to class as they observed our activities.  Ann, left to explore on her own, got tangled up in some of the domestic utensils in the miniature kitchen in the classroom, causing several items to fall, which in turn led to her crying profusely because the noise scared her.  All the while she carried on, her cries deeply embarrassed me in front of the other students in my class.  The third memory is of our teacher one day creating military caps for each boy and sunbonnets for each girl out of colored construction paper.  However, when she got to me, the right size paper to make another military cap ran out.  Without thinking, she started to make a sunbonnet for me instead.  I stopped her and said I had no intention of accepting a sunbonnet that the girls were wearing.  I am not sure how she did it, but she was able to find and make a boy's cap for me.  I was then able to joyfully rush out to join my classmates, each one of us in our proper gender-appropriate head gear.

I was able to attend First Grade at Laural, and Ann Kindergarten; but the following year, when I was supposed to have one of the nice teachers at our school, Grandma Sanchez insisted that we attend Catholic School at Pope (now Saint) Pius X Elementary in Santa Fe Springs, CA.  She paid for that year of religious education, so that we had a much longer bus ride each morning and afternoon.  But this experiment in religious education ended, probably because it was expensive, and our parents were not going to foot the bill after Grandma's interference for one year (mom was not Catholic anyway).

For Third Grade, I got to go back to Laural.  However, as mom was escorting me to my class, I suddenly, and embarrassingly, decided I did not like the classroom or the teacher or something else I have no memory of.  Soon, I have the horrid recollection of mom, and then the teacher, and then both of them, trying to drag me into the classroom as I was screaming and crying and resisting.  Total meltdown using today's terminology.  Somehow, probably from shear exhaustion on my part, they finally tugged me into the classroom where I was placed at a round table in the back, with several of my new, bewildered classmates staring back at me as I sniffled and shuddered by myself.  To this day I have no understanding as to why I suffered such a humiliating crisis or what set me off. 

Looking back at the three photos I have of myself and my classmates from those years of the 1950's at Laural, I am struck by two facts:  we were all white kids, not one black, brown or Asian face to be found; and those class sizes were nearly, or over, 30 students each year.  This was the Post-WWII Baby Boom generation on full display.  We're all in our 70's now, those of us who have made it this far; and our significance to the nation's experience and consciousness is finally beginning to wane.  But for decades we certainly impacted the cultural history of the nation in many ways. 

                  

                                            
                                            
                                            

I also have a few distinct, additional memories of attending Laural that I still carry with me:

Somewhere along the line we learned to square dance. 

On one ride home, a fellow student blocked my path from leaving the school bus at our stop.  Rather than fight over it, I sat back down and patiently waited.  Finally, when the bus was empty of all of the other students save me, the frustrated female bus driver wondered why I had not gotten off at a stop.  I explained what had happened.  She chided me for not letting her know but drove me back to my stop and let me out.  

Once, while I was walking outside of class during recess, my teacher approached me and told me that I needed to report to the school doctor.  (I have no memory of a doctor being permanent or rotating between schools in the area, though we did have a school nurse.)  When I got there, he told me to pull down my trousers so he could check my testicles.  I was slightly more embarrassed because I had neglected to wear undershorts that day, but I certainly had no idea why he was checking my testicles in that era.  But he checked, I must have done OK, and that was that.

One year, the school put on a carnival.  I was proud to see my dad working one of the booths.

I only remember the name of one fellow student, not a neighbor, from my time at Laural:  Don Angel. He is on the far left in the top row of that last photo.  He is the second student from the right in the bottom row of the middle photograph.  Once, when we were in the Cafetorium (cafeteria/auditorium) with the lights out and something being shown on a movie screen, he unzipped his trousers and showed me his dick. I thought that was amazingly bold.  

I also remember one evening with my father and me in the Cafetorium where one of my fellow students and his father brought a Minora and provided us with information about the Jewish faith.  Given that this was only a decade after the Holocaust, this kind of outreach was important.  

Movie star and TV personality Montie Montana (born Owen Harlan Mickel in 1910) and his horse Rex once visited our school and did several rope tricks on the blacktop playground.  For decades he rode Rex or other horses during Tournament of Roses Parades in Pasadena, CA.  His biography says he starred in several John Wayne movies.  All we cared about was that he was a celebrity and had an impressive horse and we got to go outside during class time.  

My favorite teacher is in the third photo above, Mrs. Heisler.  On our last day of school, we had a raffle to give away several of the school projects, including a couple of beautiful dioramas that the class created, one was volcanic for dinosaurs before they died out.  Disappointed, I didn't win a diorama; and at least one of them got passed on because the winning student could not get the heavy thing home.  I had stayed late to say goodbye; and while hanging around, I noticed that we had not raffled off one of the plastic dinosaur models.  I mentioned this to Mrs. Heisler who inexplicably yelled at me to put it away when I held it up to show her.  I was crushed as I walked home that afternoon with no idea why she had been so angry with me.   

Nineteen Fifty-nine was our last year at Laural and the last year of our lives in Whittier.  But more about that later. 

Summer

Throughout the 1950's, our neighborhood was visited by the inevitably joyous sounds of an ice cream truck.  Since our street housed so many of us Baby Boomer kids, the driver could be overwhelmed.  Mom would also brew up a batch of Kool-Aid and fill a metal ice tray with the sugary fluid.  Sticking popsicle into each cell, we had instant popsicles.  If we could wait for the contents to actually freeze.   

Pope (Now Saint) Pius X Parish

Besides attending the school there for one year, we had to go to catechism classes every Saturday morning and church services every Sunday morning.  One year a family from "Newaluns" (New Orleans) would drive me to catechism and then back home, along with their own kids.  Somehow, they left me there one Saturday at the end of the year.  I kept waiting and waiting out front of the school for someone to pick me up and take me home (it was much too far to walk home).  One of nuns eventually saw me standing out front in the early afternoon and asked why I was still there.  I explained that I had been left behind and, for whatever the reason, apparently no one in my family was coming for me.  Even armed with my plight, she would not let me use the Parish phone to call home.  At least not initially because she was worried about the expense even though our family had each donated money every Sunday.  So, I continued to wait...and wait.  It was now getting to be late afternoon and, obviously, the family must not have been aware of what had happened to me.  The nun finally took sufficient pity on me and allowed me to use the phone.  Dad answered and soon explained that they had thought I had gotten home and gone out to play with friends.  Several minutes later, he arrived and drove me home but was obviously unhappy with the family they had counted upon.

One other time, I recall being given a religious medal, probably by Grandma Sanchez.  Dad took me back to the rectory, to have a priest bless the medal for me.  When we entered the door, I was rather perplexed to see the priest and a couple of altar boys on their knees on the floor, pouring through the haul of cash and coins in a huge pile, separating them out by denomination as well as opening up the donation envelopes.  (We kids always put our dimes in those small envelopes before dropping them into the collection basket.)  The priest whom we knew got up, walked over to us, blessed the medal and then returned to the pile of money.  I suppose I was taken aback that anyone so holy actually had to wade through such a pile before the church could take the donations to the bank.                  

Magic City Bus  

A boy who lived one block over from Foxley on Dunton Dr. invited me to accompany him to the downtown Whittier library on a bus.  We were both very young at the time, perhaps only 6 or 7.  Yet he knew how to reach the library via a city bus.  He met me at the corner of Oval Drive and Painter Avenue one Saturday morning.  I cannot say for sure this late in life whether it was 5 or 10 cents to ride each way.  But I carried in my jean's pocket the necessary change that he advised me to have.  Soon, a green and white city bus pulled up to the corner and stopped.  I cautiously followed him up the bus steps after the door opened and deposited my coin into the receptacle as I watched him do.  We made our way to one of the several empty seats and were on our way.   I thought the entire experience was quite magical.  We handed over coins and were allowed to ride a bus all the way to downtown.  At the library I was also introduced to the notion of having a library card and being able to check out books.  My buddy had at least one book he was returning, and he picked out another from the maze of shelves and was able to check it out at the front desk and carry it out the door.  I don't remember ever taking the bus again or checking out a book, but it was an adventure I treasured at the time.   

     

Television 1950's

From 1954 through 1957 at least, life was idyllic living on Foxley Drive.  Hula Hoops and Betsy Wetsy dolls and Western holsters with shiny cap pistols, even Spud guns were all the rage as toys for us kids.  We all road bicycles around the neighborhood.  The parents played Bridge and listened to Mitch Miller records, maybe even singing along with Mitch.  We had an old fashioned 78 RPM record player in the living room, and a black and white TV in the den.  Ann rushed home one day from a friend's house to announce that a new show for kids was airing any moment now, The Mickey Moust Club.  Mom helped us find the channel and we sat, mesmerized at the visage of all of the Mouseketeers, close to our own ages, singing and dancing along with Jimmy Dodd and his jolly sidekick, Roy.  For the first two weeks we were treated to a limited series about a boy and a girl chosen to complete either pilot training (for the boy, of course) or stewardess school (for the girl--this was the mid 50's, obviously) for TWA.  They would eventually serve on a TWA Constellation, flying from New York to Los Angeles. 




Ann and I in the backyard, the sand box with a leg of the swing set barely visible.

This might be the time to mention that Whittier lay in the preliminary flight path into Los Angeles Airport from elsewhere around the country.  Constellations, Douglas piston aircraft and the earliest jet aircraft (in the later 1950's) could be seen flying above us, heading West.  Dad had been given a small, solid-resin model of an American Airlines 707 which he kept on the mantle in the den.  One afternoon, when one of them flew over, I told a friend what type of aircraft it was.  He didn't believe me, so I had to take him inside the house to show him I was correct. 

The television event of the decade was VICTORY AT SEA, the multi-part series about the naval battles of World War II, 1952-1953.  I remember it well, but I suspect those memories are from a later, possibly daytime, broadcast rather than when it aired in prime time.  In fact, most of the movies or television shows we watched were during the day rather than at night.  I do remember watching WHIRLEYBIRDS, about two men in 1957 who solved crimes and rescued people using their Bell Helicopter.  In fact, with two Laura Scudder mayonnaise labels and $1.00, I was able to order a replica of that helicopter.  It seemed to take forever for it to arrive--who has much patience as a kid--but when it did finally arrive, it was as wonderful looking as I imagined. 

Returning to the naval theme, I remember watching one show at night about four crewmembers trapped in a sinking aircraft carrier during the war.  Their rescue was taking a long time, so they started playing poker to pass the time.  Eventually, the rescue crews had to abandon their efforts because the ship was sinking too fast to get to them.  Resigned to their fate, they continued to play poker until the sea waters drown them.  Months later, a sister ship was completed and given the same name as the sunken carrier.  Two crewmen were walking past the similar compartment in the new ship where the earlier men had met their doom.  The two sailors heard the sounds of an illegal poker game being played.  They opened the door, but nobody was inside the compartment.  The episode haunted me so badly that I could not sleep that night.  Dad bundled me up and took me for a ride through downtown Whittier until I was tired enough to go to sleep when we got home.  

The two military academies at the time (the Air Force Academy was just starting out in the mid-1950's) were featured in two series lasting but one season each, MEN OF ANAPOLIS and WEST POINT.  Fodder for daytime television, along with HIGHWAY PATROL, OUR MISS BROOKS, OH, SUSANNAH! and others.  Our daytimes at home did not lack for sufficient television shows during the day.  And, of course, one of my favorite shows was SUPERMAN, with George Reeves.

Movies

We went to the theater to see most, if not all, of the Disney films re-released to the theater during our time in Whittier:  BAMBI, SNOW WHITE, FANTASIA, OL' YELLER.  I also remember seeing JET PILOT, the Howard Hughes's delayed loopy film.  Mrs. Tipton took several of us friends of her son, Tommy, to the theater in downtown Whittier to see the Japanese film, THE MYSTERIANS.  We thoroughly enjoyed his birthday gift to the rest of us.  

Girls

I did have a surface attraction for Cynthia Tipton across the street.  I remember one Christmas Eve thinking myself so sophisticated by kissing her hand and arm.  That was the extent of my romantic attachment to any girl. 

A better example of my awkward relationship with girls involved a girl who lived down the block.  I was riding my bike toward the closed end of Foxley.  Suddenly, this girl bolted from her lawn to run across the street right in front of me.  I instantly braked so as not to hit her.  She stopped two feet from me and did not budge.  I gestured for her to continue since I had gallantly stopped to let her pass.  She refused to move, so I got back up on my bike to continue my ride.  Surprising, she started to bolt in front of my bike a second time.  Again, I braked.  Again, she froze.  Once more I gestured for her to proceed.  She again refused to move.  This standoff became frustrating.  I finally got back up on my bike and started to peddle, but she ran in front of me, and I hit her.  I had not hit her hard, but she started crying.  Her mother flew off their front porch and angrily ran toward us.  When she reached her daughter on the blacktop in front of my bike tire, she began yelling at me that I should not be allowed to ride my bike on the street.  I slowly turned my bike around and forlornly headed home, crushed. 

I got home and started crying when mom asked me what was wrong.  I told her what had happened and how the girl's mom reacted toward me.  Mom was immediately sympathetic and calmly explained that we owned the street as much as they did, so I had just as much right to ride my bike down the street as anyone.  I could not get my head around her statement that we owned the street.       

These Boots were made for Tripping

 The parents bought me a pair of handsome black boots, with a chain on the outside of each.  I loved them. 

One afternoon, I entered the living room from the hallway and noticed that Ann and Pam were sitting on the piano bench.  (I had been taking piano lessons for a few weeks--mom was encouraging me to learn.)  I bolted toward the bench to show them a short piece I had learned; however, I tripped wearing the boots and fell.  My face hit our wooden coffee table and I got a cut at the left base of my nose.  Quickly, blood was everywhere.  Dad and mom realized that I needed medical attention.  They drove me to our doctor in downtown Whittier.  (He had an office on the second floor of an old building.)

The doctor gave me three stiches to close the cut.  The small scar was prominent for several years.  After more than sixty years, it's barely visible now. 

The boot disappeared after that, and I never saw them again.         
 
Various recollections

Remember that in this part of the decade, no professional baseball teams played west of Kansas City (The Athletics).  Other boys had baseball cards, but they were of players on Eastern and Midwest teams.  There were also no NBA teams in the West.  The Los Angeles Rams played to capacity crowds in the huge L.A. Coliseum, but I don't recall anyone I knew who followed professional football on our block.  We did occasionally play touch football on the Tipton's front lawn, dads and sons.  However, Tommy Tipton managed more than once to grab the front pocket of a favorite shirt and rip it completely off.  Why he would do this I still have no idea.  Touch football does not require the ripping off of shirt pockets.  Being a sensitive kid who often got a favorite shirt dismantled in that way, I would start crying and run home.  (I imagine my emotional response embarrassed dad to no end in front of the neighborhood dads.  I can only imagine what they might have said amongst themselves after I ran off.)

On rainy days, Ann and I might play hide and seek indoors.  Among all of the house floorplans in our neighborhood, ours was unique in that you could walk from the living room, thru the dining room, the kitchen, the den, the hallway and back into the living room, a complete circle inside.  What Ann never knew in all that time, and I never revealed it to her until years later, was that I would hide in the wicker clothes hamper in the hallway.  She never found me though she looked and looked.  I could see through the tiny gaps in the wicker as she passed by my hiding place, unsuccessfully searching everywhere for me.  After she would give up, I would emerge while she was in another part of the house and present myself.  It was at the point when I had gotten taller and could no longer fit in the hamper that I no longer wanted to play hide and seek.

I had been taking piano lessons, mom wanting us to share her love of music, though she was never better than a rudimentary player.  One afternoon, Ann and Pam Hofeldt were at the piano.  I wanted to show them I could play a short piece and ran toward them in the living room from the hallway.  I was wearing a favorite, new pair of black boots I had gotten but tripped and fell, hitting the sharp corner of the thick coffee on the way.  I began bleeding quite a bit from a painful cut at the base of my nose on the left side, requiring a drive downtown to the Doctor's office and three stitches.  The parents blamed the boots and took them away.  (For years, the scar was noticable; but now, with my failing vision and the passage of time, I don't really think the tiny scar can be seen.)

One of the significant aviation tragedies of the 1950's occurred over the city of Norwalk, CA, February 2, 1958, around 7 PM, not far from Whittier.  Two military aircraft, one an Air Force transport, the other a Navy bomber, collided over Firestone and Pioneer Avenues.  Forty-seven military personnel in the two aircraft were killed while a woman on the ground was also killed by falling debris.  Several days after the tragedy, as we drove through Norwalk, dad pointed out the clay pit where bulk of the wreckage of the Navy bomber crashed.  Several years later, when Ann and I were living in South Gate, CA, the son of one of those servicemembers killed, Jay Augestenberg, was in my class at South Gate Junior High and South Gate High, 1963-1967.  One kid in school derogatorily mentioned the disaster one day in a hallway, the most-deadly collision at the time over the L.A. Basin, and Jay chased him down and slugged him.       

As I have indicated, I never knew or saw any Black people in our neighborhood or school.  Except for the AMOS & ANDY show on TV, that was it.  But one night I was with dad, and he drove us to Whittier College, Richard Nixon's old alma mater.  As I stood several feet away where I could not hear their conversation, dad talked at length to a young black man.  I presume these days that he was a student at the college, but what dad could have been talking to him about is a mystery to me.  Recruiting him for the Air Force (dad would remain in the Air Force Reserve until retirement)?  Recruiting him to work for Fuller Paint?  It was a unique encounter that must go unexplained because I never asked him at the time what that meeting was about, nor did he ever mention it to me on the drive back home.

Being in the Air Force Reserve, dad was required to attend meetings once a month and deploy for a week or two each summer, which he usually served at March Air Force Base in Riverside, CA.  I remember waiting outside one of dad's Reserve meetings where I could see that the members of his unit were watching color film of the latest Soviet jet fighters landing or taking off, likely MIG-17's or MIG-19's, smuggled out from behind the Iron Curtain.  Dad also took me to a static display air show at March AFB.  I got to walk through a giant Globemaster transport, the one with the massive clamshell opening in the front that allowed the aircraft to carry an Army tank.  At the gift shop, an airman remarked at my wearing a slipper on one foot due to a sprain while wearing a shoe on the other.

Hula Hoops, Bowel Movements and Pulling Baby Teeth

We were definitely caught up in the Hula Hoop frenzy.  I remember seeing a bin of the round, plastic killer toys at a store, and I seem to recall that they were $1.00 each.  I believe dad thought that too expensive and made ours out of some sort of tubing.  Of course, the hula hoop craze came and it went, like so many of the fads in the 1950's.

Mom was always the source of medical information and wellbeing in our household.  If I did not feel well, I remember telling mom, and she would invariably, and curiously, ask if I had had a bowel movement that morning.  I guess if I had had one in the morning, then I was not too far gone, so to speak, and not in any real danger medically of kicking off my mortal coil.

It also seemed that in the 1950's, dentists, at least the ones we used, were convinced that since baby teeth were going to come out eventually, so why not simply pull them all out, no matter how prematurely?  Sad thing is, whether true or not, I was later told that pulling baby teeth prematurely meant that one's jaw and mouth would not develop more naturally and fully.  In the mid 1960's, mom paid dearly for my sister and me to have orthodontal work.  But in order to make enough space to get my wolvie teeth to fit right (they came in above and looked more like fangs), they had to have one tooth on either side of the top of my mouth and one on either side of the bottom of my mouth removed.  Of course, I later also had to have four wisdom teeth removed after the braces came off before and after I attended Marine OCS.        

Television appearances

One of the local channels, KTLA, to fill out daytime programming after school, had "Skipper Tom" Hatten who hosted cartoons.  He wore a tight white T-shirt, Sailor pants and hat.  He was also an accomplished character artist.  Each week he'd also provide a "squiggle".  Children were encouraged to use the squiggle to draw a figure of their own, incorporating that squiggle into the design, and submit their drawings to the show, potentially to be included in a future episode and to compete on air for prizes.  One girl in our class used the squiggle to draw a witch on a broomstick one fall.  (Your drawing lines could not overlap or cross the squiggle line.)  Her drawing was so clever and timely, she not only got chosen to be an on-air contestant; she won that day, much to our delight.  (A couple of years earlier, one of our classmates had won a day on the Chucko the Clown show on local KABC TV (1954-1962), and we all got to be on the show in the gallery.)  The L.A. TV market also featured "Engineer Bill", who focused on trains on his local show with the cartoons, as well as the "Red-Light, Green-Light" experience where he got his young viewers to drink milk ("Green Light") and stop drinking on cue ("Red Light").  Of course, we also had Romper Room, Captain Kangaroo, and Howdy Doody.       

Halloween & Christmas

Although the weather was rarely indicative of the season, Fall and Halloween, and Winter and Christmas, were an integral part of all our lives on Foxley Drive.  We could fill our bags Trick or Treating on Halloween night, come home and dump the contents onto our beds, then go out again for more.  Nobody worried about being poisoned.  Mom used to make Rice Crispy Treats, wrapped them in waxed paper, and gave them out.  At school we hiked through all the other classrooms in a Halloween costume parade.  One year, some neighbor kid convinced me that wearing costumes was for kids and not to wear one.  But I caved and showed up at the bus stop wearing my rabbit costume.  He shamed me into going home and taking it off.  He and I were the only rebels without a cause as we paraded around with only our regular clothes on that day.  The peg boards in the classroom were covered in orange and black Halloween cutouts for that holiday.


Halloween party in our garage, 1956.  In the back, Mom, Louise Hofeldt, Sylvia Tipton.  I may be the one with the rabbit face at the table.  

One evening near Halloween, when Ann and I were on the Hofeldt's covered front porch, chatting with Pam and Carol, a ghostly figure entirely swathed in a white sheet suddenly came rushing toward the four of us.  We were frozen in place, not knowing what kind of threat the sinister figured posed, whether to stand or flee.  It ran directly toward the porch but just as suddenly, just before it reached us, veered away at the last moment.  Then it headed back across the street, apparently toward the Tipton's driveway.  Remarkably emboldened, the four of us instantly decided to give chase, though the spectral figure had a significant head start.  It did disappear up the driveway.  By the time we reached the Tipton's backyard, it was gone without a trace.  Oddly, Mr. and Mrs. Tipton were working in the backyard in their garden though, mysteriously, it was quite dark out and no back porch light was on to illuminate the yard.  Out of breath, we hurriedly asked if either had seen the ghostly figure rush past them.  They assured us that neither of them had seen anything.  Defeated in our quest for an explanation or a suspect, we slowly walked back down the driveway to the street, bewildered.  Today, obviously, I am certain that the "ghost" was Tommy's dad.  Mr. Tipton likely stashed the sheet as soon as he reached the backyard, with he and his complicit wife waiting to see if we kids showed up, wondering where the spectre had gone.  At the time we decided that it was one of those quirky mysteries of Halloween that would forever remain unsolved.  

Christmas was always an idyllic time on Foxley.  Our house, with the large window looking into the living room, was ideal for displaying the Christmas tree.  Photos of the house on Broadway in Santa Ana show a scrawny, but real and small, decorated tree.  But all I associate with Foxley was a white plastic tree that dad bought at some point through the Fuller Paint Store where he worked.  Each level had a plastic branch that we fitted the bristle extensions to.  Essentially, we constructed the tree.  Early on, we used a color wheel to light the tree--very 50's and very fake. 

One Christmas Eve, I remember walking to the hall bathroom.  The parent's bedroom door was closed.  I decided to slide back the pocket door to the living room.  Beneath and all around the tree at the front window were presents stacked high.  I could not believe my eyes.  Santa had been very, very good to us that year.  Of course, we had left out cookies and milk for Santa on Christmas Eve that was gone by morning.  Our tract home did have a fireplace and chimney for Santa to descend.   



The residents of Foxley decorated the outside of their houses minimally.  A few lights strung up perhaps and that was pretty much it--I really don't remember anyone having extensive outside displays.  However, Downey, CA, not far from Whittier and slightly more upscale economically, would become a mecca for families seeking the true meaning of a bountiful Christmas lights display.  Certain blocks featured houses entirely covered in lights with elaborate Christmas displays, sometimes even mobile like North Pole trains running along tracks across the lawn or Reindeer and Sleighs on the roofs, each owner trying to outdo the others.  Caravans of cars would roll through the most decorated streets, the faces of us amazed children pressed against the backseat windows, thrilled at how beautiful Christmas could be in an affluent neighborhood.  Dads, of course at the steering wheels, had to keep their eyes on the slow-moving traffic, and search out the next extensively decorated block of houses before weariness forced the family to return home, to put the exhausted kids to bed.     

Dad knew one family that lived in Downey.  I remember visiting them one year just before Christmas.  A father, mother, two sons and one daughter, the family owned a gas station in Downey.  Their affluence was obvious at the front window.  Each member of the family had his, or her, own pink flocked Christmas tree, at the height of each one of them.  And under each individual tree were the presents for that family member.  I have never before or since seen a comparable splurge at Christmas.  This would have been in the later 1950's.  Sometime, approximately a decade later, we were riding with dad through Downey and stopped at the family's service station.  Dad asked one of the employees about how the father was since he did not see him present but was told that he had recently died.             

One Christmas, I got the classy Winchester cap pistol and holster I had asked for.  When I ran out the front door on Christmas morning, Tommy Tipton emerged from his house with a similar Winchester belt, with artificial bullets on the back of the belt, but with a holster and pistol on each hip.  Suddenly, I felt envy of his present and cheated that I only had one holster and pistol.  I guess that made me the deputy to his Sheriff.  From photos of one Christmas, I got an electric train set.   

Christmas memories also included plugging in the Royalite Santa Claus and Snowman.  They were not particularly expensive when they first were available for purchase, but now one in very good condition can command a respectable price on eBay. 

Mom

She had Rheumatic fever when she was young.  It damaged her heart.  She really should not have had any children, let alone two.  Her two sisters, Norma Jean and Doris, and her brother, Robert, each had a son.  Home life was always tough because her beloved father was not always fully employed.  Her mother worked hard, raising their four children.  According to my Aunt Jean, she hated to see her husband's relatives show up.  Mom spent much of her childhood living with her Grandmother Nuzum.  Aunt Jean spent much of her childhood living with her aunt in Wichita, KS.  She spoke bitterly late in life about how that aunt worked her hard, as if she were a servant.    

At some point, mom left White Cloud, KS, and lived in Arizona to help with her recovery.  She ended up in Pasadena, working in the Bank of America branch in Hollywood. 

When her father died of a heart attack in the summer of 1956, she journeyed back to White Cloud with her siblings for the funeral.  Frankly, I have no memory of her being gone when we lived in Whittier until she left for good later in the decade.  I do remember a bright afternoon when a friend who lived on Oval Drive took me aside and told me that mom was surreptitiously visiting his mom and that she wanted to see me. 

I recall Ann at the time mom still lived with us reciting a story of her return home on a very rainy day.  The gutter in front of our house was a river of water so wide that she could not step or jump over it.  She told me with some sense of pride that mom told her that it was OK if she stepped into the stream to get home.   

More Dad stuff         

I remember once when dad, Mr. Tipton, Tommy Tipton and I fished at a farm near Whittier.  Tommy and I had been given plastic fishing poles, likely for Christmas.  The farm had a grid of several square or rectangular man-made ponds filled with fish, trout if I remember right.  All we had to do was stick our lines into a pond and a fish bit.  Except for the one visit, I don't remember ever fishing again and I am not sure whatever happened to my plastic fishing pole.

At some point, dad would take Ann and me to home swimming pools in the general vicinity of Whittier.  One of the elegant houses sat on a hillside above Whittier and featured a spectacular view of the city.  We did not know the people who owned these nice homes where we swam, only that dad must have met the owners through the paint store and wrangled invitations to use their pools when no one else would be around (when we swam, it was always just the three of us).  I remember at one of the pools behind a more modest home.  Dad would stand in the middle of the pool and urge me to swim to him from the side of the pool.  I would start out paddling toward him and would soon realize that dad was drifting backwards to increase the distance I had to swim to reach him.  (This was likely well before Tommy and I would later swim with ease at the Whittier "Y," mentioned soon.)         

Sante Fe All the Way

In the Summer of 1957, dad took mom, Ann and me to the Union Station in Downtown LA so we could take a Santa Fe train to Kansas City.  One direction we road on the Super Chief, the other on the El Capitan.  The train rides seemed endless, and boring.  I remember getting off the train for a few minutes near Phoenix and looking up and down the otherwise empty platform before the train moved on.  I walked through the dome car one evening.  But most of the time we were confined to our spacious seats, quickly becoming tired of the games and books we brought to keep us occupied.  Mom's family lived in White Cloud, Kansas, north of Kansas City, almost to the Nebraska border and across the Missouri River from Missouri.  From a hill north of the town, you could also see a bit of Iowa.  The final volume of the Rainbow Arc of Fire series, OLIVE BRANCH, partly takes place in White Cloud, where my mom and her siblings were born and went to school and where several now reside for eternity.  Olive Branch is the name of the cemetery West of the town where all of the great and great-great grandparents and great aunts and uncles are buried:  Hooks, Nuzums, Breezes.  They are all up there, several with mighty impressive headstones to mark their foremer existence in the community.

Our Grandma Breeze owned a restaurant on the main street of White Cloud, against a hillside.  She lived upstairs with an outhouse out back.  Accustomed to indoor bathroom plumbing with a flush toilet, Ann and I took one look at the dark and smelly interior of the wooden outhouse and proclaimed that we would not use it.  Grandma Breeze kindly provided a bed pan for us citified grandkids to use instead.  The town still had crank telephones that connected townsfolk to a telephone operator in a building down the street who would connect you to the party to whom you wished to speak.  We got to meet our cousin Jim for the first time, fish on the river and shoot squirrels in the woods surrounding the town.

Our Uncle Robert appeared one evening and spent the night at Grandma Breeze's apartment above the restaurant, sleeping down the hall from our room.  The next morning, we scurried into his room and jumped onto the bed.  What we quickly realized was that he was not wearing any pajamas, and he was featuring a rather prominent morning wood.  The first one I had ever seen, I grabbed it tightly in my two fists, like grabbing a snake.  "You kids!" was all our totally flustered uncle could proclaim, likely unsure how to deal with this unwelcome attention.       

YMCA

All I can remember from that first night going to the "Y" was a whole mob of sons and dads getting naked and putting on swim trunks in the locker room of the downtown Whittier facility.  Was it a special event or preview night, I do not know?  But Tommy Tipton and his dad and my dad and me were amongst those getting naked and then getting dressed to swim in the Olympic-sized indoor pool.

Soon thereafter, usually my dad dropped off Tommy and me Saturday mornings at the Y to swim.  It may have cost a quarter, and we were in a specific class hour each Saturday.  One morning, however, dad had to be somewhere else early.  So, he dropped us off an hour earlier than usual.  We pulled on our swim trunks and opened the door between the locker room and the pool and stepped out, only to discover that all of the boys in the earlier class, including the one adult instructor, were swimming, diving, and splashing about totally naked.  We had no idea what to do.  This was an experience so bizarre to us that, as we slipped into the pool, we just hung on to the side of the pool and tredded water until the hour was up.  Nobody said anything to us as all of these naked bodies floated by.  We were the only two clothed members at the nudist colony and felt incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassed.  But we also were too modest and did not think to doff our own trunks and go native.  (My husband read an article that described the government's position after WWII and Korea that boys should learn to be naked in the presence of others because they would have to deal with nudity during military service, and there was a peace-time draft at the time.)

When dad showed up to take us home later than morning, we told him what had happened.  He laughed and recounted a story of when some parents were watching their kids in one swimming class when a naked boy suddenly emerged from the locker room, saw all of the adults, mothers and fathers, sitting on the bleachers observing, and instantly scurried back into the locker room, red faced. 

My Grandma Sanchez was not thrilled when she heard that her grandson was attending a Young Men's Christian Association facility.  The way she expressed the word "Christian" almost seemed like an epithet, being a devout Catholic herself.  I didn't see the distinction.       

High-strung Kid

The first time my dad had to have realized he had a weird kid on his hands was when he took me to The Quad, a shopping mall just a few blocks away from Foxley, to get my first professional haircut.  (I don't ever remember having my hair cut at home, but that is likely selective amnesia.)  I started bawling long and loudly as the barber set to work.  And the more that the men and fellow barbers inside the shop, or looking through the front window outside, laughed at my horrifying display of emotions, the louder I think I got.  That was only the beginning.

Somewhere along the way I also started wetting the bed.  In most cases, I would not wake up to go.  In a few cases, even with the bedroom door ajar, the hall light on, doors to the den, living room and parent's bedroom closed, I started to be afraid of something that might be hiding out there and about to get me should I venture forth from my safe bed.  Frustrated Grandma Sanchez, when she was taking care of us late in the decade, threatened to rub my nose in the stained sheets to cure my condition--typical of her personality.  Dad even bought a specific record player with a microphone attachment that he put under my pillow.  I would fall asleep to the tale of a young Indian brave who would wet the floor off the teepee, embarrassing himself in front of his family as well as the entire tribe.  I doubt that any of that rudimentary psychology worked on me.  But at some point, the bed wetting stopped, as it has for most boys I have since learned.  How long it lasted, I don't recall.  Maybe a year or a couple of years.  Some nights, I would actually brave the demons and scurry off to use the bathroom and then scurry back to bed.

Was any of this due to my parents impending breakup which I have not mentioned before?  I cannot say.  I don't remember the two of them ever flighting or arguing.  I don't remember any kind of conflict between them of any sort.  Mom was there for a few years, arranging birthday parties and Halloween parties or bridge gatherings with the neighbors in the living room, and then she was gone.  This was the '50's.  As I stated earlier, our parents at least almost never discussed impending events or anything else with us.  Not the moves from one house to another.  Certainly not their breakup.  Nor the secret conflicts they must have been having behind closed doors that we never even heard.  They covered their tracks well.

The only time that mom ever became angry with us is when she bought us a new Monopoly board game.  We were playing in the den.  Ann had neglectfully placed her glass of milk on the board itself, and the board was resting upon an unstable surface.  Inevitably, one of us jostled the board, spilling the milk.  Mom saw what had happened and smacked us both.  We cried.  That was it.  (One of the cheap properties was forever ruined so that you could not read what its name was going forward.)  I never remember her, or dad, hitting or spanking us in that entire decade before or after that one time.  One housekeeper we had after mom left was physically abusive, and Grandma Sanchez could be so, as well.  But that was it.  So violence or threats of any kind were mostly unknown to us.  But their were quirks.   

Besides Don Angel devilishly showing me his penis in the darkened Cafetorium, a neighbor boy who lived on the block parallel to Foxley and I used to fool around on the wide, wooden shelf that dad had built in the garage.  We were 7 or 8 at the time, so nothing consequential was going to happen.  Ann told me a story of one walk to the corner store when she and Pam saw three girls on the next block where Foxley doglegged after Painter.  They were on the lawn of a house and two of the girls were using a stick on the third girl.  None of us knew what to think of such behavior.

I don't exactly remember when, but I spent several days in the hospital after we moved to Whittier.  I really don't even remember what was wrong with me.  I did not have surgery, and nothing was broken.  I might have had a nervous stomach or something similar because dad was working on an ulcer in those days and chewing prescribed antacid tablets.  I was in the hospital for a few days, they fed me bland food; and a few days later the staff put me in a wheelchair to roll me out the front of the hospital, my parents picked me up, and we drove home.  For a couple of days, I did not have the use of my legs for some reason.  (Too much time just lying in a hospital bed with no exercise.)     

Indian Guides & Cub Scouts

Too young to join the Cub Scouts, we were able to join Indian Guides.  I am not sure we learned that much about Native American culture.  And I don't remember attending that many meetings in the homes of members of our chapter.  I did eventually join the Cub Scout chapter in our area when I was old enough.  We were to have our initiation at the Laural Elementary Cafetorium.  I proudly put on my new Cub Scout uniform and showed up backstage.  It was the YMCA naked pool experience all over again.  The other boys were only wearing their civilian clothes.  One of the other kids took one look at me and said, "You're not supposed to wear the uniform until AFTER the initiation ceremony!"  Nobody had told me.  I had nothing to change into, and with the pledge ceremony about to begin, the several of us shuffled onto the stage, held up our right hand, and took the Scout pledge.  All the while I felt humiliated that I was inappropriately dressed, and I was embarrassed that everybody must have known that I had screwed up.  

I didn't really accomplish much in the Scouts, never earned any merit badges, never helped old ladies across the street.  We had periodic meetings in a house at the end of the Dunton Drive cul-de-sac.  I am not sure why I did not, but I rarely used their bathroom before the meetings ended and I headed home.  Often, I really had to go to the bathroom as soon as I left.  I usually walked down a few houses, cut between two of them before the cul-de-sac curved, one being the house directly behind ours.  I would climb the chain-link fence of the house next to ours on Foxley and reach our house more quickly that way.  Otherwise, the long walk around, along Dunton, then turning toward Shoemaker, and finally down Foxley to our house took too much time.  One afternoon, I could not make it.  I had to go.  Badly.  I started to pee against the side wooden fence of the house directly behind ours.  Suddenly, from out of nowhere that I could determine, a voice demanded, "Don't do that!"  I looked around but saw no one.  I zipped up my pants and reached out to climb over the fence, but the voice insisted that I not do that either.  I was forced to walk the long way home that day in agony.  I suspect that that was the last time I left the meeting house without using the bathroom first.       

 Dark times

This is only speculation, but I wonder now if the Sante Fe train trip, to visit her mother (her father had died in 1956 of a sudden heart attack) in her old hometown of White Cloud was to seek advice about her deteriorating marriage to my father.  Of course, we kids were totally unaware of any of this, that our mother was no longer happily married to our father.  Only in recent years did I learn from my sister and my Aunt Jean, our mother's only surviving sibling, that ever since dad had left active duty during the Korean War, mom did not enjoy just being a housewife to a boring paint salesman.  I was also told the odd circumstances of how my parents met.

After dad bailed out and was captured and sent to a POW camp in WWII, he met a man who knew our mom.  This fellow airman, though married, had dated my mother when she lived in Los Angeles or Hollywood or Pasadena when she worked at Bank of America during the war.  I suspect that she met him at a one of those USO Canteens.  She was not aware that he was married, and he certainly did not bother to tell her.  She only discovered he was married upon hearing he was a POW when she tried to send him a package.  She was told by the postmaster that the man's wife had already sent him the one authorized package per yeat that was allowed under the terms of his captivity.

What I have learned is that this man must have told dad that he ought to look up my mom when he returned to California after the war, which he actually did.  Unfortunately, in the process of meeting her, he lied to mom when she asked how her former boyfriend was doing.  Dad told her the man had died in the POW camp.  At some point after they had met and dated a couple of times, dad was stationed in Tampa, Florida.  The Sanchez grandparents bought her a train ticket, and she accompanied them to Florida.  She later told me that she partly married dad because she felt guilty about his parents buying the train ticket and felt obliged to follow through and marry him.

OK.  So, you have a terrible and unnecessary lie from one party, and a guilt trip from the other party as the basis for marriage.  Not a healthy combination to begin "'til death do us part".  But dad was a miliary officer, and mom spoke fondly of those years before and after we kids were born when they were stationed a various military bases around the country and she was married to an Air Force captain.  If the Korean War had not gotten in the way, dad might have stayed indefinitely in the active-duty Air Force because of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. 

But when dad got out of the service and eventually got a job at the Fuller Paint Store in Whittier, I believe she became terribly bored.  Being a housewife in Southern California suburbia, married to an essentially boring husband in a non-exciting job, wore very thin, rather quickly.  A couple of years after dad died, I was given a booklet that was from dad's training days in the high desert to become an Army Air Corps bombardier.  When they describe him under his squadron photo, they talk about him telling long-winded, seemingly pointless stories even then.  Who knows?  He might even have been boring in bed.    

Mom told me that she was not sure in the early days of her marriage that she wanted to stay with dad forever and secretly employed birth control to keep from getting pregnant.  They were married in 1947, and I was not born until 1949.  As a teenager in White Cloud, mom had contracted Rheumatic Fever, very dangerous to the heart.  She recuperated in Phoenix, AZ, eventually moving to Southern California after that.  Because dad was Catholic, I am sure the pressure was on her to produce children.  They were stationed at McDill AFB in Tampa when I was born in '49 and my sister in '50.  (Each of her three siblings would have just one son and no daughters, while she produced one of each.)  I was later told that mom really should not have had even one child because of her weakened heart.  But she had accomplished her wifely duty and produced two kids and that was it. 

After the summer trip to Kansas in '57, at some point, and I do not know when that was except it was well enough before the end of the decade, possibly in 1958, mom left.  I have no memory of her leaving.  I have no memory of the two parents arguing or fighting before she left.  In her absence, dad engaged a succession of three house keepers.  A couple were nice.  One was awful.  I think she was someone who believed in "Spare the rod and spoil the boy."  She was probably in her 50s and a bit plump.  I was always being spanked or sent to my room because I had done something that ran afoul of her many rules.  (One time, knowing I was going to be spanked, I stuffed toilet paper down my underwear in hopes of lessening the pain.  But she quickly realized what I had done, removed the toilet paper and probably spanked me even harder.  Thank goodness she left at some stage--maybe dad finally put his foot down and dismissed her for being so cruel to a child who was not even her own--she never was mean toward my sister as I recall.) 

One of the nice housekeepers was a thin, sweet, older woman from Arkansas.  I suspect she was homesick and soon left us, drove her late-model car back there, and we never heard from her again.  She had promised to scour the Goodwill Store back home and send me an erector set if she found one.  However, one never came.  But she left us with a cute, calico kitten, though I would soon wish she had not.  The other nice housekeeper came to a sad end in our service.  At some point, fiery mom returned.  She was angry and, basically, told this nice woman to get out of her house.  I loved mom and I very much liked this housekeeper, and this yelling and packing late at night was traumatic for me as they verbally fought in what had once been our den and became the bedroom for the series of housekeepers.  Teary eyed, I begged them to stop arguing, but the racket only ended when the housekeeper was packed off for good.

If it has not been made clear already, most kids in the 1950's were not told much about what was going on with a failing marriage.  My sister tells the story of dad, in the department store in the nearby Quad, asking her what she wanted for Christmas that year.  When she revealed she wanted a Betsy Wetsy doll, dad grabbed one from the stack and put it by the cash register to buy.  She pleaded with him that she wanted Santa Claus to bring it at Christmas, but he would not listen.  My experience involved mom telling me that she was at the house of a male friend who had fallen asleep, and she could not wake him when she realized that a private detective had followed her, in a sort of film noir cuckold.  (I think we can assume that she was having an affair with this guy, the two had probably been drinking, and he had passed out.)   Apparently, dad had engaged this private detective to follow mom, and she had been followed that night to the house of her boyfriend.  My only recollection with dad on their potential divorce was him asking me, "If you had to choose to live with either your mom or me, which of us would you pick?"  Shocked and perplexed by the question, I naturally replied, "I want to live with both of you."  He made it clear that was not going to be an option. 

I suspect that dad was facing the potential situation where we kids might be hauled before a judge and asked which parent we would want to live with.  Everyone these days is surprised to learn that dad was awarded custody of the two of us.  All I can imagine is that dad's detective provided the lurid details of her affair and that that was enough to sway the judge that she was not a suitable parent to live with.  To me, this was the real start of the darkest period of my life and my sister's.  When it was obvious that mom was not coming back, and the housekeeper experiment was at an end, Grandma Sanchez moved in to help raise us.  A worse choice could not have been made.

Whether this was before or after a detective was on her trail, on one occasion, negligent mom took me on a drive with her in the 1950 Buick.  We stopped in front of a house I did not recognize.  She left me in the car while she went inside.  I never saw who answered the door, male or female.  She never told me whom she was visiting, and I did not ask.  But I was left in the car for what seemed like hours.  At some point I really had to pee.  But mom did not emerge from the house.  I did get a sense that I would not be welcomed if I went to the door and knocked, explaining that I badly needed to use the bathroom.  Finally, when the discomfort became excruciating, I peed on the passenger side rubber floor mat.  Then I opened the door and dumped the sloshing contents into the gutter.  Several minutes later, mom finally emerged without explanation, and we left.  My only hope at the time was that she did not notice the smell if there was any residue.     

Mom after Foxley                                

Being baptized as Catholic, we had Godparents.  I never knew whom my God father was, but my God mother was named Lucette.  She had a lovely French accent because she was from France.  Perhaps she was married to a G.I. and came to this country after the war.  But the only time I remember meeting her was when mom took Ann and me to visit her was when Lucette worked at a Hollywood Five & Dime that featured a lunch counter.  She worked behind the counter serving food.  When we arrived that first day, she asked if I would like a grilled cheese sandwich.  But with her accent, to me she sounded as if she were asking if I wanted a "green cheese sandwich" which I did not even want to contemplate.  The misunderstanding cleared up, we had a pleasant meal while she and mom talked.  Mom promised to buy us each a toy, and the store did have a toy section, in back and up some narrow, circular stairs.  But a sign strung across the steps indicated that that section was closed.  It was still closed for the next two days.  We finally asked why.  Lucette told us that some kids had gone up there one day and totally trashed the toy department.  She led us up to the space overlooking the main floor below and, just as she'd indicated, the place was all wreckage as if a tornado had blown through.  Not much seemed to have survived the destruction.  (I presume that the kids involved were apprehended.)  Lucette told us we could have a single toy each if we could find something salvageable amidst the rubble.  I actually fished out an undamaged metal Greyhound bus.  Ann found an acceptable girl's plastic makeup case.

But after mom had moved out for good, she roomed with two other women, one younger and one older, who lived and worked in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles.  On two occasions, we stayed with her there.  The first time the younger woman told us a story about a couple who had contracted leprosy and were abandoned on a South Pacific Island.  The way she told it gave us nightmares.  The next time we visited, she had been told to avoid telling us scary stories.  We also attended a movie downtown in an air-conditioned theater, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. 

Later in the decade, I remember staying with mom when she lived by herself in a furnished apartment in what would have fit nicely into a film-noir movie.  She took me to Pacific Ocean Park, a nautically themed amusement park that, however briefly, gave Disneyland some competition. 

Mom also seemed to know a finely dressed, much older man who drank gin, was named Bela, and who lived in a stylish apartment in Hollywood and owned a foreign car.  We visited him on two occasions, but I believe the two of them were just friends.  Who he was or how mom had met him, I have no idea.  When mom was several years younger, in the early 1940's, she lived in Pasadena and worked at the Bank of America in Hollywood.  She was often required to meet with movie stars on various movie lots, to have them sign contracts on loans made through the bank.  She had a professional photograph of herself with Ginger Rogers and one with Paul Enreid.  I believe she briefly flirted with becoming a film star herself.  She told us we each had had opportunities to become child actors, though she said she turned down those offers.  (Mom had pictures of Ann in early beauty pageants--at least one where she won a trophy--when we lived in Santa Ana.)  She might have known Bela from those earlier years in Hollywood, a decade and a half before, but I really do not know.
             
The results of these limited visits with mom ought to have made it clear to us kids that she had established a permanent life for herself away from Foxley Drive and was never coming back.

Cats & Other Pets

We had a few cats when we lived on Foxley but probably should not have had pets.  I don't recall anyone ever consulting a vet or taking a pet to a vet.  We never even had a litter box in the house, so most of the cats had to fend for themselves out of doors.  I don't remember either parent mentioning having pets when they grew up during the 1920's and 1930's.  With the Depression and the War, having pets was likely almost a luxury when many Americans went hungry.  

The first cat I remember encountering was a feral female that gave birth to a few kittens in a box in our garage.  But all I remember is that the kittens did not survive.  I found one on the cold garage floor, dead, as if dragged from the box.  Dad may have mentioned that the male cat may have tried to kill the kittens.  But I do not remember the details except that I had to have been pretty young at the time, perhaps 5.

Not too long after that, Mom had taken Ann and me to visit friends who lived in a big, old house with a dirt driveway.  They gave us two white kittens.  We put them in mom's old Buick, but when we got back to the house, we could not find them.  Eventually, I looked under the front seat and found the two of them curled up asleep.  The next thing I remember is a woman neighbor, chastising me as she cleaned the eyes of one of the kittens because it was infected.  Maybe I was 6 at the time, and I had no idea what it took to adequately take care of a kitten.  But soon, while we were forced to attend 2nd Grade at the Catholic School in Sante Fe Springs, CA, instead of Laural Elementary because of Grandma Sanchez, the kittens gave Ann, the two Hofeldt girls and me ringworm.  This is where my memory gets rather murky.  We never saw those two kittens again.  I suspect the menfolk disposed of them.  Again, no thought of taking the kittens to a vet to cure them of the ringworm.  I missed a couple of days of Catholic School because of the unsightly ringworm on my face.  

I don't even remember when or how I got Tiger.  He was a gray Tabby, and I loved him.  But when he was in the house on occasion, he crapped on the carpet in the living room behind the couch because we did not have a litter box.  The woman housekeeper from Arkansas had gotten a Calico kitten when Tiger was a kitten.  When she left, she gave the kitten to us though even today I wish that she had not.  One afternoon, we were playing in the Hofeldt's backyard and heard some terrible animal noises coming from our backyard.  For a few moments, we ignored the screeching.  Then I ran, realizing that it might be the kittens. At that time, we had one of those 2-foot-deep wading pools with the metal support ring around the sides to hold it up.  The sight that greeted me was terrifying.  Someone had tossed a wooden stool into the pool and Tiger had his front paws on the stool to keep from drowning and was crying.  The sweet, beautiful Calico kitten was not so lucky.  She was floating on her side, her mouth open, fully taking in the pool water. 

I grabbed her almost lifeless body and pulled it from the pool, laying her on the grass.  I was then able to grab Tiger and pull him out.  What we soon were to learn was that Pam and Carol's younger brother, Donny, had tossed the two kittens and the stool into the pool.  When asked why he threw the kittens in the pool, he said, "Kitties wanted to go swimming."  When asked why he tossed the wooden stool into the pool, "Kitties wanted something to sit on."  Again, nobody thought to take the Calico kitten to a vet.  We put the two of them in the small, corner bathroom between the kitchen and den and had a heater running to keep them warm.  The Calico kitten died during the night, nobody even trying to get the water out of her lungs.

Later, Grandma Sanchez was living with us after the succession of housekeepers.  Mom was gone.  I was perhaps 8 or 9 at the time.  A friend who lived a couple of blocks away had a cat that had given birth to three kittens.  They offered me one if I had permission to take it.  I pretended to have asked my dad if I could have another cat in addition to Tiger.  I lied and told the friend and his mother that it was all right if I took her.  I brought her home and stashed her in our bedroom closet.  Unfortunately, Grandma Sanchez found her immediately after and was furious that I had brought the kitten home--she hated pets.  She must have confronted dad who gave me an ultimatum:  I had to take the kitten back or there would be dire consequences.  I did not want to face my friend and his kind mother and admit that I had lied to them about getting permission to accept another pet.          

I was too young to know that dad had so many issues at this point.  His wife had left him, likely never to return.  He would soon be in a custody battle and divorce proceedings with her.  His mother, who had no business helping to raise us at this point, was not a very nice person and who obviously did not give a damn about pets.  He apparently did not want to appear weak in front of his domineering mother.  He gave me that cruel ultimatum:  either take the kitten back, regardless of my embarrassment at being caught in a lie to a friend and his mom or he would dispose of the kitten.  I pleaded with him that I could not take her back.  He then took the kitten from me, as well as a large coffee can, behind the garage and proceeded to drown the kitten while I was in the den, looking out at him methodically committing this horrible deed.  I can still hear her pathetic cries in my thoughts as I wept uncontrollably that afternoon.  He was being a monster.  To what purpose?  To teach me a lesson?  To show his domineering mother that he was sufficiently manly enough to deal with a son who did not obey his demand?  To deal with the anger and humiliation of being abandoned by his wife?

Even to this day, I realize that he could have helped me come up with a face-saving excuse for returning the innocent kitten to where I had gotten her.  He was the adult.  I was still a kid.  He could have told me to take the kitten back, tell the friend and his mother that it had been fine with my dad that I got another cat but that, since our grandmother had come to live with us, it was she who strongly objected to having to help care for yet another pet in addition to Tiger.  But, of course, he did not even try to help me come up with a solution.  He was going to teach me a lesson.  I am certain even then that I had no idea he was capable of such a horrendous response to kill an innocent kitten.  

I have carried the guilt of my part in her murder for so many years now.  And my anger at my father for what he did that day is still present, deep down.  Was this how the adults had dealt with the two white kittens who had given us ringworm?  Had they simply disposed of them?  Probably.  Did dad have anything to do with the deaths of the kittens born to the feral cat that gave birth in our garage?  I do not know. 

At some point, a neighbor kid offered me his white rat (no telling from whom he inherited the poor creature that he was pawning off on me for free).  I thought a white rat was a cool pet, for about two days.  Very soon, I was able to offer him to Tommy Tipton   In no time at all, Mrs. Tipton let me know she was very unhappy with the transaction, but that was the last I saw of that unfortunate pet. 

Willene, Pam & Fred

 I am not sure when dad met, and began courting, Willene Creed.  He was a salesman at this point, presumably of wallpaper for Fuller Paint.  He must have been required to visit several of the paint and wallpaper stores in Southern California.  She worked in the office at a paint and wallpaper store in Tustin or Santa Ana.  A single mother with two kids of her own, Pam, a month older than I, and Fred, a month older than Ann, she had to have been looking for any stable man who would support her and her two kids.  As far as I recall, her ex-husband had basically abandoned her and their two kids, no longer even paying child support.     

The three of them lived in a modest tract house in Santa Ana, CA.  Oddly, their street number matched ours, 13222.  I don't recall when or how we were introduced to them by dad.  But for many months, dad would drive us to Samta Ana, to spend a day with them at their house on weekends, probably on a Saturday, or on a Sunday after church.  I don't remember that we ever spent the night there, and I do not believe they ever came to our house in Whittier, possibly for obvious reasons.  You are divorcing your wife for cheating on you and hoping to make the case that she is an unfit mother to get custody of your two kids, but now you are courting another woman in a different town while you are divorcing said wife.  Perhaps you don't want the neighbors to be aware of what is going on until the divorce is final.  Foxley Drive was an enclosed street where everyone likely knew one another's business.

What none of us realized at the time of this extended courtship was that Willene specifically, and Freddie to a lesser degree, were being on their best behavior when we were around.  Once she had dad locked down, her true nature would finally be revealed.  To put it mildly, she was not a nice person, and she was an even worse parent to be raising four kids.  She was not kind to Ann or me for sure, and she was not really nice even to her own daughter, Pam.  Freddie was the only one she doted upon, made excuses for, covered for, or cared about.  And that attitude did not help Freddie's development one bit.  Eventually, we discovered he could be a dishonest, nasty monster.  But that was all in the future.  On these days we spent in Santa Ana (I don't recall the six of us ever going anywhere together or doing anything beyond staying at their house), everything was fine, even pleasant.  All of us seemed to get along well.  We would have dinner with them--Willene always seemed to serve mashed potatoes no matter the main course--and then we would head back to Whittier.

At some point along the way, dad must have decided that Willene would make an acceptable wife and mother.  I don't recall him ever telling us that they planned to marry.  But extensive plans were set in motion.  Dad's divorce would come at the end of 1959, and the two could marry after New Year's 1960, in Vegas.  Soon enough, I would realize that the bad housekeeper and a difficult, cranky Grandma Sanchez were just training for enduring the wickedest of wicked stepmothers and the accompanying three and one-half years of hell she handed us.  And dad would do very little to make our lives with her bearable.                       

Leaving Foxley

Eventually, we moved away from Foxley Drive after the end of the school term in 1959.  I remember Ann and I sitting on the front porch as the neighbor kids were at play, our friends for so many years, as we waited for the moving van to arrive and cart our belongings away.  Dad was definitely going to marry Willene, with her two kids, and we were all going to live together in a triplex built with the financial help of Grandpa Sanchez.  But first we were to live in an apartment a few blocks away from Lomita Street until dad's divorce was final and the triplex was completed.  Ann and I would attend Palmyra Elementary School for the fall of 1959.  My cat, Tiger, went with us to the apartment complex.  He would roam the neighborhood since he was not often allowed into the apartment.  Grandma Sanchez sometimes put out oatmeal that dad had left after finishing his breakfast, but Tiger would not eat it--even I knew cats would not eat oatmeal.  One day, dad came to me with yet another cruel ultimatum--forced by another domineering woman, no doubt Willene, his future wife--that I could not keep Tiger when we all moved in together into the front unit of the new triplex being built on Lomita. 

He never really explained why I could not keep Tiger, but he said he was going to be working the next day in a more undeveloped area of Orange County where Tiger could live out his life in the fields, hunting mice.  Dad was just going to dump him, and my only choice was to let him do it the next day.  If not, Tiger would get dumped in a much worse area, he explained.  I was offered no other choice.  Just like the white kittens before him, Tiger was suddenly gone.  A few days later, dad told me a lie that ought to have been so obvious at the time.  He claimed he was again driving through the area where he had dumped Tiger a couple of weeks before and saw him in a field with a mouse in his mouth.  Tiger looked healthy and was doing fine, dad said.  Maybe I believed him at the time because I wanted to imagine that Tiger was all right.  Were there pet shelters in those days where he could have been taken as an unwanted pet?  Who knows?  But Tiger was taken away and dumped in a field, and I never saw him again.    

In retrospect, we should never have had cats back then, or any pets for that matter.  Not one of them came to a kind or gentle end.  Thinking about them all now makes me sad and feeling guilty.  Like the baby chicks we got at Easter that did not survive more than a few days.  Or the two parakeets we had that must have gotten killed by Tiger who pulled each one's wings through the bars of their cage, each dying horribly.  We were too young to responsibly care for any of these pets, and the adults in that era were not at all helpful, and often hurtful, when it came to their apparent attitude that pets were disposable.      

Those early years living on Foxley Drive were some of the best years of my life, with the family all together, with fun friends and neighbors all around.  But the later years of the decade were unpleasant and hurtful, though 1960 through 1963 would be even worse.  Dad took us back at some point to Foxley, and we visited with the Hofeldts.  The Tipton's had installed a pool.  Ann and I drove by the old home on another occasion in the late 1980's, when the house sat vacant, likely in anticipation of fixing it up and selling it.  We were able to look in the front window and into the backyard.  Yes, the cliche applied:  the living room looked so much smaller than what we remembered.  The pergola patio cover was long gone.  The sandbox dad created for us showed no trace of ever existing in the backyard.  The dichondra dad had planted for a lawn back then was nowhere to be found.  We could not see in back of the garage, but I can almost guarantee that the outdoor furnace and even the clothesline were not there had we been able to explore the grounds more extensively.

The last time we drove by 13222 Foxley Drive, Ann, my husband, and I were on the way to the funeral of a friend's mom at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Whittier in 2019.  The house looked much the same as it had in 1989.  Except for my sister and I, nobody who had ever lived there when we did--our parents and housekeepers--or who had visited us there--the aunts and uncles and grandparents--were still alive.  We were the only two survivors of that house when it was new and were young.  How much that house and those who lived there, or how much that neighborhood and those friends and neighbors, shaped who we became, I cannot say.  We moved in with our parents in 1954, mom would have been 32 and dad, 33; we lived there for five significant years, and then we moved on.