It's part of southern culture to be friendly toward strangers. And for those first few days at John Tyler High in January of 1970 I was a still a stranger so everyone was pretty nice to me...
When I showed up at the office that first morning they didn't know quite what to do with me. It was a couple of weeks before the end of the semester and they weren't accustomed to students showing up out of the blue... But the main problem was that they didn't offer French, Precalc (or Calculus), Economics or Astronomy (and PE wasn't required) so except for English and Drafting they had to figure out a whole new schedule.
They did the best they could and after a bit of shuffling I ended up with English, Government, Sociology, Debate and Physics... I did take Drafting for couple of weeks but it didn't work out - more on that later... But my schedule was a mess for those 2 weeks until the semester ended - I was stuck in study hall part of the time...
I was surprised to discover that John Tyler was "open campus" and during lunch one of the guys (Lonnie) in my English class asked if I wanted to run to a convenience store with him and his friends... Now - I've always avoided getting into a car with someone until I figure out if they are a raving lunatic or not - but for some reason I had my guard down that day... Big mistake :-)
I lost count of how many times my life flashed before my eyes during that short trip... There was an easy way to get where we were going but that's not how Lonnie rolled. He preferred tearing around on back roads at twice the speed limit... The first "eye opener" was when the car in front of us stopped to make a left turn. There was no place to go and Lonnie wasn't slowing down. At the last moment he drove his car up onto the grass embankment at about 45MPH - fishtailing and swerving before he finally wrestled it back on to the road in a shower of gravel... There were other "off-road excursions" and I lost count of how many stop signs and red lights he ran - after looking both ways, of course :-)
We were almost back to school when he ran a red light right in front of some Texas State Troopers and got pulled over. As the troopers walked up to the car Lonnie briefed me on proper etiquette when dealing with Texas law enforcement. Basically - no sudden movements, tell the truth and show as much respect as possible : -) The stop didn't last long. One trooper took Lonnie aside and ticketed him while the other one slid into the driver seat and questioned us a bit...
The troopers looked exactly like I expected - with smokey hats and mirror shades... The one who got in the car took one look at me and said "Where you from, boy??" I guess it was pretty obvious I wasn't from around there :-) I don't remember much else about the stop but I do recall that the troopers were wicked sharp - they didn't miss anything. I was quite impressed... They quickly concluded that there was nothing going on but stupid driving and let us get on our way back to school.
The main thing I remember from that afternoon is Drafting class. There were 2 reasons:
First - the instructor looked more like a pig than any human being I had ever seen and for some reason (probably because he was a stupid redneck) he took an instant dislike to me :-)
Second - there was another guy in the class with long hair... Now - I should point out that when I say long hair I don't mean long. I just mean over the ears and collar. That was all it took to cause "shock and awe" in Tyler back then... Anyway - his name was Wayne Fleming and he would become one of the best friends I've ever had... More on that later...
I also recall that upon discovering I was from Southern California the kid behind me in one of the classes said "They gotta lot of wetbacks there, don't they?" Now - I'd never heard that term before (there's no river separating Mexico from California) and when I asked for clarification he threw out enough other derogatory terms for me to get his drift... That's when I really started wondering what we'd gotten ourselves into :-)
Finally - I noticed that there were guys in blue FFA (Future Farmers of America) jackets everywhere. Little did I realize that they would become the bane of my existence...
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
200 and Counting
The title of this post has nothing to do with the story. According to Blogger this is my 200th post... So - I'll toss a bit of virtual confetti and continue with the story as best I can... I'm not sure how well I'll do, but here goes:
At the start of January 1970 our landlord got mom a job in a nearby diner but that only lasted for a couple of weeks. Apparently she got tired of covering for the other waitresses while they were busy providing "additional services" out in the parking lot... But at least mom made enough to tide us over until the next support check arrived...
BTW: I do recall having a quick flash of anger when I found out mom had quit... It seemed like if she really wanted to provide for us she could have put up with a bit of unpleasantness. It was one of the very few times I remember being frustrated with her. Yeah - I was constantly irritated, but rarely frustrated :-)
But one of the good things about Tyler was that the cost of living was significantly lower than in Escondido. And since we no longer had any car related expenses we soon realized that we could actually get by on dad's child support payments. It was really tight - but doable. And it's not like you have to have a car in a town that size...
The other thing that happened right after New Year is that I started attending John Tyler High School. It was one of three public high schools in Tyler and it was located west and a bit north of downtown out on loop 323. Most of the students came from working class or rural homes.
The other 2 schools were Robert E. Lee and Emmett J Scott.
R.E. Lee was at the south end of town. That's where most of the white population was. The student body was mostly middle to upper middle class and (rightfully) regarded John Tyler students as a bunch of hicks. The school also had what was reputed to be the 2nd largest confederate flag in the world (next to Ole Miss).
E.J. Scott was the all black high school. It was located north of downtown and was pretty close to John Tyler High.
Before I go any further I should mention that I'd had black classmates as far back as 1962 and when I rode the bus to John Tyler High that first day I had no idea that integration was still an ongoing issue anywhere.
We turned off the main road into a part of town I hadn't seen before. There were dirt roads, no sidewalks and everything was in disrepair. And that's where we picked up a handful of black students who (much to my surprise) went to the back of the bus... (So that's why nobody else was sitting there...)
I have to admit it was all a bit strange... I immediately noticed that there seemed to be some sort of unwritten dress code among the male teen population. The white guys wore plaid shirts, cowboy boots and Levis . And the brothers wore plain white shirts, black boots and rolled their jean cuffs way up. Although these two cultures existed in the same place and time it was clear that they did not coexist...
Aside: I'm fairly certain that I owned the only pair of purple corduroy bell-bottoms in Tyler at the time. I usually wore them with paisley shirts. Yeah - I didn't quite "blend in"...But I digress :-)
I soon found out that those students at the back of the bus were volunteers. The school system was trying to avoid forced integration by giving the E.J. Scott students the option to attend white high schools. But there weren't very many who took the offer - not more than 120 of the 1700 students at John Tyler were black... I have to admit I had a tremendous amount of respect for them. I can't imagine subjecting myself to that sort of hostility on a daily basis...
OK - I guess I did subject myself to daily hostility but it's wasn't the same thing... Having long hair was a choice. Being black wasn't... My issue was stubbornness. Theirs was constitutional rights. No comparison...
Still, the look of mistrust in their eyes when I smiled or said "Hi" was hard to take... I guess I shouldn't have been surprised what with me being a honky and all. I just wasn't used to it...
BTW: What was even harder to take was the servile attitude of the older blacks. I had not done anything to merit being called "sir" by a 70 year old man. It was kind of sad... But I digress (a bit).
Epilogue:
1970 was the last year of voluntary integration in Tyler... Emmett J. Scott High was shut down and the next year John Tyler High was 38% black...
In the 40 years since I left Tyler the population has almost doubled. Most of the whites who lived north of Erwin St. migrated south and an influx of Hispanics filled the void... Tyler (as a whole) is now 60% white - but whites make up less that 8% of the students at John Tyler and 50% at Robert E Lee. The rest are in private Christian high schools...
The last time I visited Tyler (early 2007) the north (minority) side had not changed much since 1970 but the south end was absolutely unrecognizable - that's where all the growth was...
I'll defer talking about my first day at school to my next post. I'll close this one by mentioning that I did manage to find the right school bus for the the ride home but I had no clue where we were most of the time. The other kids on the bus thought it was freaking hilarious when I asked if we were anywhere near where I lived. As it turned out we had already passed my stop but only by 5 or 6 blocks... Like I said - it wasn't a very big town :-)
At the start of January 1970 our landlord got mom a job in a nearby diner but that only lasted for a couple of weeks. Apparently she got tired of covering for the other waitresses while they were busy providing "additional services" out in the parking lot... But at least mom made enough to tide us over until the next support check arrived...
BTW: I do recall having a quick flash of anger when I found out mom had quit... It seemed like if she really wanted to provide for us she could have put up with a bit of unpleasantness. It was one of the very few times I remember being frustrated with her. Yeah - I was constantly irritated, but rarely frustrated :-)
But one of the good things about Tyler was that the cost of living was significantly lower than in Escondido. And since we no longer had any car related expenses we soon realized that we could actually get by on dad's child support payments. It was really tight - but doable. And it's not like you have to have a car in a town that size...
The other thing that happened right after New Year is that I started attending John Tyler High School. It was one of three public high schools in Tyler and it was located west and a bit north of downtown out on loop 323. Most of the students came from working class or rural homes.
The other 2 schools were Robert E. Lee and Emmett J Scott.
R.E. Lee was at the south end of town. That's where most of the white population was. The student body was mostly middle to upper middle class and (rightfully) regarded John Tyler students as a bunch of hicks. The school also had what was reputed to be the 2nd largest confederate flag in the world (next to Ole Miss).
E.J. Scott was the all black high school. It was located north of downtown and was pretty close to John Tyler High.
Before I go any further I should mention that I'd had black classmates as far back as 1962 and when I rode the bus to John Tyler High that first day I had no idea that integration was still an ongoing issue anywhere.
We turned off the main road into a part of town I hadn't seen before. There were dirt roads, no sidewalks and everything was in disrepair. And that's where we picked up a handful of black students who (much to my surprise) went to the back of the bus... (So that's why nobody else was sitting there...)
I have to admit it was all a bit strange... I immediately noticed that there seemed to be some sort of unwritten dress code among the male teen population. The white guys wore plaid shirts, cowboy boots and Levis . And the brothers wore plain white shirts, black boots and rolled their jean cuffs way up. Although these two cultures existed in the same place and time it was clear that they did not coexist...
Aside: I'm fairly certain that I owned the only pair of purple corduroy bell-bottoms in Tyler at the time. I usually wore them with paisley shirts. Yeah - I didn't quite "blend in"...But I digress :-)
I soon found out that those students at the back of the bus were volunteers. The school system was trying to avoid forced integration by giving the E.J. Scott students the option to attend white high schools. But there weren't very many who took the offer - not more than 120 of the 1700 students at John Tyler were black... I have to admit I had a tremendous amount of respect for them. I can't imagine subjecting myself to that sort of hostility on a daily basis...
OK - I guess I did subject myself to daily hostility but it's wasn't the same thing... Having long hair was a choice. Being black wasn't... My issue was stubbornness. Theirs was constitutional rights. No comparison...
Still, the look of mistrust in their eyes when I smiled or said "Hi" was hard to take... I guess I shouldn't have been surprised what with me being a honky and all. I just wasn't used to it...
BTW: What was even harder to take was the servile attitude of the older blacks. I had not done anything to merit being called "sir" by a 70 year old man. It was kind of sad... But I digress (a bit).
Epilogue:
1970 was the last year of voluntary integration in Tyler... Emmett J. Scott High was shut down and the next year John Tyler High was 38% black...
In the 40 years since I left Tyler the population has almost doubled. Most of the whites who lived north of Erwin St. migrated south and an influx of Hispanics filled the void... Tyler (as a whole) is now 60% white - but whites make up less that 8% of the students at John Tyler and 50% at Robert E Lee. The rest are in private Christian high schools...
The last time I visited Tyler (early 2007) the north (minority) side had not changed much since 1970 but the south end was absolutely unrecognizable - that's where all the growth was...
I'll defer talking about my first day at school to my next post. I'll close this one by mentioning that I did manage to find the right school bus for the the ride home but I had no clue where we were most of the time. The other kids on the bus thought it was freaking hilarious when I asked if we were anywhere near where I lived. As it turned out we had already passed my stop but only by 5 or 6 blocks... Like I said - it wasn't a very big town :-)
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Next Nightmare
I'm going to do my best to describe Tyler, Tx as we found it in December of 1969. It's going to be tough because I still have mixed feelings about the time we spent there... So here goes:
The population of Tyler was around 50,000 at the time but it felt much smaller - I could swear everyone knew everyone... In many ways it was a typical southern town. There was a center square with a courthouse and a 4-lane "main drag" named Broadway where thousands of teenagers cruised on Saturday nights. There were brick streets with the occasional "revival" or antebellum style home. There was a Baptist church on every corner. Well, not really - it just seemed like it. And there was (is) a beautiful rose garden on the west side of town that often served as my "fortress of solitude"...
Now - I should note that Tyler was in a dry county. If you wanted a drink you either had to join a "private club" (basically any restaurant) or drive to one of the liquor stores or taverns across the county line out hwy 31 east... BTW: It was a really good idea to steer clear of that stretch of road on Friday and Saturday nights.
Of course, teenagers had to go to Louisiana to buy booze. The drinking age was 18 there but a lot of places didn't check IDs... Yeah - the whole "dry county" thing seemed pretty hypocritical...
Tyler was solid working class - built on oil, agriculture and manufacturing. No need to know anything else... Most people who were born there died there. No need to go anywhere else. They worked hard, loved God and country - and voted Republican. No need to do anything else...
And by late 1969 everything they knew and loved was being threatened...
It had been a mere seven years since the commies tried to put all those missiles in Cuba...
Six years since the Feds forced George Wallace to allow "negro" students to attend the University of Alabama...
Five years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act...
Four years since Malcolm X was assassinated, the race riots raged in Watts, and the Voter's Rights Act was passed...
Three years since the Black Panthers were founded, the NY Times asked if God was dead, and Masters and Johnson published an explicit book on sex...
Two years since the Supreme Court upheld interracial marriages, and those long-haired commie junkies in San Francisco were talking about free love and protesting the war in Vietnam... (Hey - that war was the only thing stopping the rest of the world from falling to Communism.)
It had been less than two years since the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy, the raised black fists at the summer Olympics, and the musical Hair opened on Broadway.
And it had only been a matter of months since the Manson murders in LA - and that commie hippie thing up in Woodstock...
So there was communist inspired rock music everywhere, X rated movies in the theaters and race riots and war protests all over the country... Yes - America was going to hell in a handbasket and the good people of Tyler wanted no part of it...
Now I don't mean to imply that they were somehow stupid or evil... Far from it... They simply lived in a monoculture - they had never experienced anything other than what they had always experienced. And at the time the possibility of a violent minority uprising or a communist takeover seemed very real... That kind of fear causes all sorts of irrationality.
As an example - most people in Tyler wouldn't hesitate to give the shirt off their back to a stranger in need - that's the kind of community it was. Yet the mere sight of a young man with long hair sent many of them into an almost homicidal rage... It made no sense at all.
Here's another thing that didn't make sense to us (at first):
Shortly after we got there we were having breakfast at a diner and quickly realized that the old white couple at the next table were extremely upset that there was a black family eating there too... But everyone working in the kitchen was black... So - how can you be that bothered by a black family sitting twenty feet away while not caring that the food you're putting in your mouth was touched by black hands??
It took us a while to realize that most of the racial tension was rooted in fear rather than hatred... It was more about placism than racism... And interestingly enough, older blacks were just as afraid of change as older whites. The whole thing was both fascinating and disturbing...
I guess the point of all this is that "culture shock" does not begin to describe what we were experiencing.
And having set that backdrop I'll continue with the story in my next entry.
The population of Tyler was around 50,000 at the time but it felt much smaller - I could swear everyone knew everyone... In many ways it was a typical southern town. There was a center square with a courthouse and a 4-lane "main drag" named Broadway where thousands of teenagers cruised on Saturday nights. There were brick streets with the occasional "revival" or antebellum style home. There was a Baptist church on every corner. Well, not really - it just seemed like it. And there was (is) a beautiful rose garden on the west side of town that often served as my "fortress of solitude"...
Now - I should note that Tyler was in a dry county. If you wanted a drink you either had to join a "private club" (basically any restaurant) or drive to one of the liquor stores or taverns across the county line out hwy 31 east... BTW: It was a really good idea to steer clear of that stretch of road on Friday and Saturday nights.
Of course, teenagers had to go to Louisiana to buy booze. The drinking age was 18 there but a lot of places didn't check IDs... Yeah - the whole "dry county" thing seemed pretty hypocritical...
Tyler was solid working class - built on oil, agriculture and manufacturing. No need to know anything else... Most people who were born there died there. No need to go anywhere else. They worked hard, loved God and country - and voted Republican. No need to do anything else...
And by late 1969 everything they knew and loved was being threatened...
It had been a mere seven years since the commies tried to put all those missiles in Cuba...
Six years since the Feds forced George Wallace to allow "negro" students to attend the University of Alabama...
Five years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act...
Four years since Malcolm X was assassinated, the race riots raged in Watts, and the Voter's Rights Act was passed...
Three years since the Black Panthers were founded, the NY Times asked if God was dead, and Masters and Johnson published an explicit book on sex...
Two years since the Supreme Court upheld interracial marriages, and those long-haired commie junkies in San Francisco were talking about free love and protesting the war in Vietnam... (Hey - that war was the only thing stopping the rest of the world from falling to Communism.)
It had been less than two years since the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy, the raised black fists at the summer Olympics, and the musical Hair opened on Broadway.
And it had only been a matter of months since the Manson murders in LA - and that commie hippie thing up in Woodstock...
So there was communist inspired rock music everywhere, X rated movies in the theaters and race riots and war protests all over the country... Yes - America was going to hell in a handbasket and the good people of Tyler wanted no part of it...
Now I don't mean to imply that they were somehow stupid or evil... Far from it... They simply lived in a monoculture - they had never experienced anything other than what they had always experienced. And at the time the possibility of a violent minority uprising or a communist takeover seemed very real... That kind of fear causes all sorts of irrationality.
As an example - most people in Tyler wouldn't hesitate to give the shirt off their back to a stranger in need - that's the kind of community it was. Yet the mere sight of a young man with long hair sent many of them into an almost homicidal rage... It made no sense at all.
Here's another thing that didn't make sense to us (at first):
Shortly after we got there we were having breakfast at a diner and quickly realized that the old white couple at the next table were extremely upset that there was a black family eating there too... But everyone working in the kitchen was black... So - how can you be that bothered by a black family sitting twenty feet away while not caring that the food you're putting in your mouth was touched by black hands??
It took us a while to realize that most of the racial tension was rooted in fear rather than hatred... It was more about placism than racism... And interestingly enough, older blacks were just as afraid of change as older whites. The whole thing was both fascinating and disturbing...
I guess the point of all this is that "culture shock" does not begin to describe what we were experiencing.
And having set that backdrop I'll continue with the story in my next entry.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Christmas of 1969
As we drove from Corpus Christi to Tyler in December of 1969 Karina was not feeling well. And that evening she started running a high fever and throwing up. There was no way we could travel until she got better. We were hoping it was just a 24 hour bug but that turned out not to be the case.
We had expected to arrive in Virginia Beach with just enough money left to rent an apartment. But staying in that motel in Tyler for four days waiting for Karina to get better put a serious crimp in our plans. If we got back on the road again we'd end up in Virginia Beach flat broke. We'd already done the "arriving flat broke" thing in Corpus Christi and wanted to avoid a repeat performance so we started looking for a monthly rental with an immediate vacancy with the intent of staying in Tyler just long enough to replenish our finances.
It didn't take long to find a reasonably priced unit in the Hollandale Terrace apartments just a bit southwest of downtown. BTW: There's a street named Bois D'Arc nearby. The locals pronounce it "Bodark". We were pretty amused by that...
Money was really tight at that point. I recall mom selling our vacuum cleaner to help pay the rent... Then there were some significant additional charges on the U-Haul trailer because we'd kept it longer and drove further than expected. Luckily, there was a discount for dropping it off in Tyler - that's a non-premium destination :-) But we still ended up having to pawn our watches to pay the difference. (I recall the pawnshop being on Erwin St just east of downtown - it doesn't seem to be there anymore...) So by the time we finally got settled in it was almost Christmas and we were flat broke - again...
Aside: As we were walking into the apartment complex a couple of guys were flocking a Christmas tree on the balcony above us and some of it drifted down and landed on mom. Karina yelled something like: "Hey! You got some flock on my mom... You mother flockers!!!" ... They didn't think it was funny at all... Some people have no sense of humor :-)
We had to decorate for Christmas so Mom got hold of a green garland and we thumb-tacked it to the living room wall in the outline of a tree. Then we made some paper ornaments and taped them to it. I kind of wish we'd taken a picture... It was quite lovely :-)
By Christmas Eve we didn't have any food left and were wondering what to do when we remembered there was a box of pennies stashed somewhere among our possessions. So we dug around in the moving boxes until we found them and went to the bank together to cash them in - and on the way home we used the money to buy a dozen doughnuts for dinner. That was quite a treat :-)
BTW: The bank teller asked mom for her name and address (said it was bank policy). We didn't think anything of it at the time but that's how the creditors found us... Yeah - I guess a mom and 2 children coming in with a box of pennies was a bit out of the ordinary...
Those days after Christmas were pretty rough. I remember going to the Salvation Army to get a box of food. We couldn't help but notice we were the only white people in line. A lot of the food was bug infested but at least some of it was edible... So we survived the holidays - just barely.
And that brings me to the reason why we ended up staying in Tyler:
Back in California the Mustang had been plagued with cooling system problems (water pump, heater core, etc). And whoever worked on it last didn't add any antifreeze... That was not really a problem in Escondido but a couple of days after Christmas the temperature in Tyler dipped down to 28 degrees and the next morning we discovered that the Mustang's engine had succumbed to the cold.
Mom had it towed off for repairs (which we couldn't afford) and around the time it was ready to be picked up the friendly repo man showed up at our door. He was not amused when mom told him where he could find the car :-)
I don't know if "The Associates" paid the repair bill or if they just signed the car over to the mechanic - we never saw it again... It was just as well. Mom had originally borrowed $1200 and after making $1000 in monthly payments she still owed more than $1000 on it. With the high interest rate and all those late fees it was never going to get paid off anyway...
And that's the story of how a two day trip to Albuquerque landed us in Tyler, Tx two weeks later with no money and no car :-)
We had expected to arrive in Virginia Beach with just enough money left to rent an apartment. But staying in that motel in Tyler for four days waiting for Karina to get better put a serious crimp in our plans. If we got back on the road again we'd end up in Virginia Beach flat broke. We'd already done the "arriving flat broke" thing in Corpus Christi and wanted to avoid a repeat performance so we started looking for a monthly rental with an immediate vacancy with the intent of staying in Tyler just long enough to replenish our finances.
It didn't take long to find a reasonably priced unit in the Hollandale Terrace apartments just a bit southwest of downtown. BTW: There's a street named Bois D'Arc nearby. The locals pronounce it "Bodark". We were pretty amused by that...
Money was really tight at that point. I recall mom selling our vacuum cleaner to help pay the rent... Then there were some significant additional charges on the U-Haul trailer because we'd kept it longer and drove further than expected. Luckily, there was a discount for dropping it off in Tyler - that's a non-premium destination :-) But we still ended up having to pawn our watches to pay the difference. (I recall the pawnshop being on Erwin St just east of downtown - it doesn't seem to be there anymore...) So by the time we finally got settled in it was almost Christmas and we were flat broke - again...
Aside: As we were walking into the apartment complex a couple of guys were flocking a Christmas tree on the balcony above us and some of it drifted down and landed on mom. Karina yelled something like: "Hey! You got some flock on my mom... You mother flockers!!!" ... They didn't think it was funny at all... Some people have no sense of humor :-)
We had to decorate for Christmas so Mom got hold of a green garland and we thumb-tacked it to the living room wall in the outline of a tree. Then we made some paper ornaments and taped them to it. I kind of wish we'd taken a picture... It was quite lovely :-)
By Christmas Eve we didn't have any food left and were wondering what to do when we remembered there was a box of pennies stashed somewhere among our possessions. So we dug around in the moving boxes until we found them and went to the bank together to cash them in - and on the way home we used the money to buy a dozen doughnuts for dinner. That was quite a treat :-)
BTW: The bank teller asked mom for her name and address (said it was bank policy). We didn't think anything of it at the time but that's how the creditors found us... Yeah - I guess a mom and 2 children coming in with a box of pennies was a bit out of the ordinary...
Those days after Christmas were pretty rough. I remember going to the Salvation Army to get a box of food. We couldn't help but notice we were the only white people in line. A lot of the food was bug infested but at least some of it was edible... So we survived the holidays - just barely.
And that brings me to the reason why we ended up staying in Tyler:
Back in California the Mustang had been plagued with cooling system problems (water pump, heater core, etc). And whoever worked on it last didn't add any antifreeze... That was not really a problem in Escondido but a couple of days after Christmas the temperature in Tyler dipped down to 28 degrees and the next morning we discovered that the Mustang's engine had succumbed to the cold.
Mom had it towed off for repairs (which we couldn't afford) and around the time it was ready to be picked up the friendly repo man showed up at our door. He was not amused when mom told him where he could find the car :-)
I don't know if "The Associates" paid the repair bill or if they just signed the car over to the mechanic - we never saw it again... It was just as well. Mom had originally borrowed $1200 and after making $1000 in monthly payments she still owed more than $1000 on it. With the high interest rate and all those late fees it was never going to get paid off anyway...
And that's the story of how a two day trip to Albuquerque landed us in Tyler, Tx two weeks later with no money and no car :-)
Corpus Christi and points east
I no longer remember what motel we stated at in Corpus Christi (I don't think it exists anymore) but when we awoke that Friday morning we got hold of a local newspaper and mom started making phone calls about jobs and rentals.
For some reason mom decided not to take us along that day. She either figured we'd get bored while she was doing interviews or she didn't want us there rolling our eyes when she told her "poor widow" stories :-) So we had to hang out in the motel... For some reason I remember hearing MacArthur Park on the clock radio that day. I'd always loved the music but had never paid attention to the lyrics before... I was stunned at how idiotic they were. Metaphor or not - singing about leaving a cake out in the rain is just plain stupid :-)
And while I'm digressing: It was sometime during that trip when Karina took the book out of the dresser in one of the motels and said "Look! It's the story of Holly Bibble!" She explained that Holly had once been a famous Hollywood starlet but time had passed her by. She had been all but forgotten when one of her greatest fans - a wealthy man named Gideon - took it upon himself to travel all over the country leaving copies of her biography in motel and hotel rooms so that future generations would know of her greatness... Have I mentioned that Karina had a strange imagination?
When mom returned to the motel that afternoon she was pretty discouraged. The economy in the area was apparently stagnant at that time and she hadn't had any luck either finding a job or a reasonably priced apartment. That created something of an issue because we already didn't have enough money to pay the motel bill. We spent Saturday exploring the town and trying to decide what to do - and finally concluded that we must be in the wrong place...
There are few things I remember about that Sunday.
First: Mom, Karina and I walked down to the seawall (a few blocks away). It was deserted except for one young man who was going through the same thing we were... No job, no home and no money... We commiserated with him for a while before heading back to the motel.
Second: We had to call dad and see if he would advance us the next month's child support. We knew he wouldn't talk to mom and I sucked at whining so it was up to Karina to make the call. She really didn't want to do it but we didn't have any choice. I remember all of us walking to a nearby payphone where Karina placed the (collect) call. Dad was pretty pissed off (to say the least) but finally agreed to wire the money to the Western Union office downtown. (It was about the only place open on Sunday.)
Third: Mom decided that the best thing for us to do would be to head east to the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach. She figured that her psychic abilities would be appreciated there and they would help us get established and life would be good :-)
Aside: Less than 8 months later Corpus Christi was hit by hurricane Celia. The 160MPH wind gusts destroyed or damaged almost 70,000 homes. If we had stayed we would have almost certainly been affected...
Another aside: After going over the time line in more detail I've realized that we must have left Escondido a week earlier than I had remembered. I've gone back and adjusted the date in the earlier post... And back to the story:
Monday morning (Dec 15th) we headed out of Corpus Christi on interstate 37. We picked up interstate 35 in San Antonio and exited at Waco. We figured it would be nice to get off the interstate for a while and we could save a couple of hours by heading east on highway 31 (bypassing the Dallas area)... Now - we had never heard of Waco before and thought it was pronounced "Whacko". We were quite amused... I remember stopping for gas on the way out of town and the only brand of soda they had at the station was Nehi. We thought that was a pretty funny name too :-)
Historical footnote: As we were leaving Waco we passed within a few miles of where a group called the Branch Davidians had recently established a new compound...
Driving through rural east Texas was rather interesting... All the towns seemed to be stuck in the 1940s or 50s... It was quite a contrast from southern California. We shot some 8mm footage that day. It looks almost like a documentary on Americana. (Unfortunately, the film is badly scratched and grainy so I'm not including any of it in this post)...
After passing through Hubbard, Corsicana and Athens we finally stopped for the night in Tyler, Tx... We were completely unaware that our overnight stay would turn into almost a year...
For some reason mom decided not to take us along that day. She either figured we'd get bored while she was doing interviews or she didn't want us there rolling our eyes when she told her "poor widow" stories :-) So we had to hang out in the motel... For some reason I remember hearing MacArthur Park on the clock radio that day. I'd always loved the music but had never paid attention to the lyrics before... I was stunned at how idiotic they were. Metaphor or not - singing about leaving a cake out in the rain is just plain stupid :-)
And while I'm digressing: It was sometime during that trip when Karina took the book out of the dresser in one of the motels and said "Look! It's the story of Holly Bibble!" She explained that Holly had once been a famous Hollywood starlet but time had passed her by. She had been all but forgotten when one of her greatest fans - a wealthy man named Gideon - took it upon himself to travel all over the country leaving copies of her biography in motel and hotel rooms so that future generations would know of her greatness... Have I mentioned that Karina had a strange imagination?
When mom returned to the motel that afternoon she was pretty discouraged. The economy in the area was apparently stagnant at that time and she hadn't had any luck either finding a job or a reasonably priced apartment. That created something of an issue because we already didn't have enough money to pay the motel bill. We spent Saturday exploring the town and trying to decide what to do - and finally concluded that we must be in the wrong place...
There are few things I remember about that Sunday.
First: Mom, Karina and I walked down to the seawall (a few blocks away). It was deserted except for one young man who was going through the same thing we were... No job, no home and no money... We commiserated with him for a while before heading back to the motel.
Second: We had to call dad and see if he would advance us the next month's child support. We knew he wouldn't talk to mom and I sucked at whining so it was up to Karina to make the call. She really didn't want to do it but we didn't have any choice. I remember all of us walking to a nearby payphone where Karina placed the (collect) call. Dad was pretty pissed off (to say the least) but finally agreed to wire the money to the Western Union office downtown. (It was about the only place open on Sunday.)
Third: Mom decided that the best thing for us to do would be to head east to the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach. She figured that her psychic abilities would be appreciated there and they would help us get established and life would be good :-)
Aside: Less than 8 months later Corpus Christi was hit by hurricane Celia. The 160MPH wind gusts destroyed or damaged almost 70,000 homes. If we had stayed we would have almost certainly been affected...
Another aside: After going over the time line in more detail I've realized that we must have left Escondido a week earlier than I had remembered. I've gone back and adjusted the date in the earlier post... And back to the story:
Monday morning (Dec 15th) we headed out of Corpus Christi on interstate 37. We picked up interstate 35 in San Antonio and exited at Waco. We figured it would be nice to get off the interstate for a while and we could save a couple of hours by heading east on highway 31 (bypassing the Dallas area)... Now - we had never heard of Waco before and thought it was pronounced "Whacko". We were quite amused... I remember stopping for gas on the way out of town and the only brand of soda they had at the station was Nehi. We thought that was a pretty funny name too :-)
Historical footnote: As we were leaving Waco we passed within a few miles of where a group called the Branch Davidians had recently established a new compound...
Driving through rural east Texas was rather interesting... All the towns seemed to be stuck in the 1940s or 50s... It was quite a contrast from southern California. We shot some 8mm footage that day. It looks almost like a documentary on Americana. (Unfortunately, the film is badly scratched and grainy so I'm not including any of it in this post)...
After passing through Hubbard, Corsicana and Athens we finally stopped for the night in Tyler, Tx... We were completely unaware that our overnight stay would turn into almost a year...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Where to Now???
There were three factors that contributed to our decision to head back south out of Santa Fe the next morning.
1) The temperature had gotten down close to freezing the previous night. Mom had developed a serious phobia about living anywhere cold during those two winters we spent in Winnipeg. Every time the topic came up she would say (in a thick Hungarian accent): "But vee don't heff any vinter coats!"... That chilly night in Santa Fe was enough to convince mom we were heading in the wrong direction.
2) We made a quick pass through downtown and it just didn't feel right.
3) Karina was still whining incessantly about going to El Paso.
So we got back on interstate 25 heading south - past Albuquerque - and once again through that 250 miles of sheer boredom down to Las Cruces - then on to El Paso. We got there in the early afternoon and exited onto a surface street heading toward downtown. It quickly became obvious why so many people refer to El Paso as the armpit of Texas... Yeah - none of us liked it...
We briefly considered going back to Albuquerque but the thought of driving through that long stretch of nothing - again - was too much much to bear. We'd come that far so we figured we might as well just keep going east. We spent the next 50 miles on interstate 10 arguing about where we were heading next. The list of potential destinations was reduced significantly when mom missed the cutoff to interstate 20 and we ended up on the road to San Antonio... C'est la vie :-)
BTW: West Texas is where the desert gradually yields to rugged plains. It might not be the most interesting terrain on earth but there was definitely something appealing about the open spaces - and it sure beat the heck out of central New Mexico :-)
Aside: The whole time we'd been on the road Karina had been amusing herself thinking up alternate interpretations for billboards and road signs. (She was the master.) And as we were heading into Texas Karina said something like "Look - there's another 'End Construction' sign. I really don't understand why so many people have a problem with construction!". I'm embarrassed to admit that it took a while for it to occur to me that she was interpreting it as a protest sign (like "End the War")... I was amused once I figured it out :-)
We stopped in Fort Stockton for the night (not a bad little place). And as we were relaxing after the day's drive we played one of our usual games: We'd pick a letter and take turns naming towns or places that started with that letter until someone (the loser) couldn't think of one... We were on the letter "P" and had gone through all the usual suspects when mom came up with "Ponto Beach"... Karina and I immediately started laughing and Karina said something like "Mom - if you're going to cheat at least make something up that doesn't sound totally ridiculous!"
We teased mom mercilessly for months over that one - and all the while mom kept insisting that there really was such a place. (This was decades before such questions could be quickly answered by Google.) Karina even made up stories about the "Ponto Beach Ant Hill Patrol" - a brave group of young men who went out every night wearing goggles and flippers to make sure that no ants were nesting on the beach... Yes - many ballads had been written to honor those legendary heroes - they had even been awarded presidential medals for their tireless efforts to keep the beach safe for sunbathers... (Karina had a strange imagination.)
Epilogue: In August of 1972 Karina and I were on an extended road trip (another long story) and as we passed through Encinitas (on highway 101) we saw the "Ponto Beach" sign... Needless to say we apologized profusely to mom when we got back to Dallas... But I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
Before we left Fort Stockton in the morning we took a long look at the map and decided that the Gulf Coast might be nice (despite the potential for hurricanes) and set our sights on Corpus Christi.
There's only one incident I recall remember from that day's drive: We stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and went to the restrooms and when we came back out the station attendant said "Did ya know y'all got a flat tire???" And sure as heck - one of our back tires had sidewall damage and was almost flat. Luckily - the guy happened to have a tire that fit the car - and we marveled at how lucky we were that the tire didn't go flat until after we stopped in the station...
Yeah - it wasn't until years later that it dawned on me that that we'd probably been scammed :-)
We bypassed San Antonio on Loop 410 blissfully unaware that a mere 3 years and 2 months later I would undergo Air Force basic training less than a mile from that loop... And after 4 days on the road we pulled into Corpus Christi flat broke and seriously in need of rest...
1) The temperature had gotten down close to freezing the previous night. Mom had developed a serious phobia about living anywhere cold during those two winters we spent in Winnipeg. Every time the topic came up she would say (in a thick Hungarian accent): "But vee don't heff any vinter coats!"... That chilly night in Santa Fe was enough to convince mom we were heading in the wrong direction.
2) We made a quick pass through downtown and it just didn't feel right.
3) Karina was still whining incessantly about going to El Paso.
So we got back on interstate 25 heading south - past Albuquerque - and once again through that 250 miles of sheer boredom down to Las Cruces - then on to El Paso. We got there in the early afternoon and exited onto a surface street heading toward downtown. It quickly became obvious why so many people refer to El Paso as the armpit of Texas... Yeah - none of us liked it...
We briefly considered going back to Albuquerque but the thought of driving through that long stretch of nothing - again - was too much much to bear. We'd come that far so we figured we might as well just keep going east. We spent the next 50 miles on interstate 10 arguing about where we were heading next. The list of potential destinations was reduced significantly when mom missed the cutoff to interstate 20 and we ended up on the road to San Antonio... C'est la vie :-)
BTW: West Texas is where the desert gradually yields to rugged plains. It might not be the most interesting terrain on earth but there was definitely something appealing about the open spaces - and it sure beat the heck out of central New Mexico :-)
Aside: The whole time we'd been on the road Karina had been amusing herself thinking up alternate interpretations for billboards and road signs. (She was the master.) And as we were heading into Texas Karina said something like "Look - there's another 'End Construction' sign. I really don't understand why so many people have a problem with construction!". I'm embarrassed to admit that it took a while for it to occur to me that she was interpreting it as a protest sign (like "End the War")... I was amused once I figured it out :-)
We stopped in Fort Stockton for the night (not a bad little place). And as we were relaxing after the day's drive we played one of our usual games: We'd pick a letter and take turns naming towns or places that started with that letter until someone (the loser) couldn't think of one... We were on the letter "P" and had gone through all the usual suspects when mom came up with "Ponto Beach"... Karina and I immediately started laughing and Karina said something like "Mom - if you're going to cheat at least make something up that doesn't sound totally ridiculous!"
We teased mom mercilessly for months over that one - and all the while mom kept insisting that there really was such a place. (This was decades before such questions could be quickly answered by Google.) Karina even made up stories about the "Ponto Beach Ant Hill Patrol" - a brave group of young men who went out every night wearing goggles and flippers to make sure that no ants were nesting on the beach... Yes - many ballads had been written to honor those legendary heroes - they had even been awarded presidential medals for their tireless efforts to keep the beach safe for sunbathers... (Karina had a strange imagination.)
Epilogue: In August of 1972 Karina and I were on an extended road trip (another long story) and as we passed through Encinitas (on highway 101) we saw the "Ponto Beach" sign... Needless to say we apologized profusely to mom when we got back to Dallas... But I'm getting ahead of myself :-)
Before we left Fort Stockton in the morning we took a long look at the map and decided that the Gulf Coast might be nice (despite the potential for hurricanes) and set our sights on Corpus Christi.
There's only one incident I recall remember from that day's drive: We stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and went to the restrooms and when we came back out the station attendant said "Did ya know y'all got a flat tire???" And sure as heck - one of our back tires had sidewall damage and was almost flat. Luckily - the guy happened to have a tire that fit the car - and we marveled at how lucky we were that the tire didn't go flat until after we stopped in the station...
Yeah - it wasn't until years later that it dawned on me that that we'd probably been scammed :-)
We bypassed San Antonio on Loop 410 blissfully unaware that a mere 3 years and 2 months later I would undergo Air Force basic training less than a mile from that loop... And after 4 days on the road we pulled into Corpus Christi flat broke and seriously in need of rest...
Monday, February 14, 2011
To Albuquerque - and Beyond
The fog we encountered on Interstate 15 heading south out of Escondido cleared by the time we got to Interstate 8. And although I'd spent a lot of time in the desert prior to this trip I still clearly remember how lovely it was heading east out of San Diego on that December day in 1969.
I remember being surprised at all the vegetable fields in the Imperial Valley around El Centro. (That's supposed to be desert...) And the sand dunes on the east end of the valley were instantly recognizable as the "Sahara" from all those Hollywood movies... Then we crossed into Arizona... We'd never been there before - the southern Arizona desert can be indescribably beautiful in the winter...
We eventually stopped for lunch at the Space Age Restaurant in Gila Bend. The decor was classic early 1960's kitsch - aliens and spaceships everywhere. It was a flashback to the days before the interstates - when the journey mattered as much (or more) than the destination... There aren't too many things I get nostalgic about but sometimes I almost cry when I remember traveling the highways back in the day... (Our house in St. Louis was less than 2 miles from Route 66.) We threw away such an amazing part of our heritage just to get there quicker... Total bummer... But I digress...
We passed through Tucson just before rush hour and it was starting to get dark when we got to Lordsburg, NM. We headed though town on the "business loop" but didn't see any place we particularly wanted to stay - it was all rather dusty and a bit run down... So we headed on to Deming and that's where we spent the first night.
OK - This isn't particularly relevant - but: I was in change of making sure everything was OK with the trailer whenever we stopped and there was a bit of an issue. The trailer hitch was a "universal" type that clamped onto the back bumper. But the bumper on a 65 Mustang isn't particularly strong so every time we stopped I found that the clamps had deformed the bumper slightly more and needed to be re-tightened... We didn't have any problems with the trailer but by the end of the trip that bumper was in pretty sad shape...
We were awfully tired after that first day and didn't get a particularly early start the next morning. And that's when it started getting weird... Karina had never been particularly excited about our intended destination, and as we headed east out of Deming she started lobbying for going straight to El Paso. I have no earthly idea where that came from. I don't know if she thought El Paso sounded cool or if she just wanted to be close to Juarez (drugs?) or what... But mom said we needed to a least have a look at Albuquerque before making any decisions so we turned north at Los Cruces.
It's almost incomprehensible just how little there is between Los Cruces and Albuquerque. I remember driving past the signs for Radium Springs and Truth or Consequences but never saw anything nearby. I don't recall where we stopped for lunch - maybe a Stuckeys? ... There sure weren't any sizable towns along the way :-)
We got into Albuquerque at around 6PM. It was already dark by then and as soon as we got off the highway and headed toward downtown it "hit the fan". There had been a major accident - traffic was backed up for miles - emergency vehicles everywhere. And after 15 minutes of stop and go we decided it must be a "message" so we turned around and went back to the freeway. I seem to recall we had intended to head south but mom ended up going north. We decided maybe that was a sign too so rather than turning around we continued on to Santa Fe and stopped for the night.
You know - mom never did call the prospective employer to tell him she'd changed her mind. That bothered me for a really long time... But regardless - that's the story of how we ended up not living in Albuquerque :-)
I remember being surprised at all the vegetable fields in the Imperial Valley around El Centro. (That's supposed to be desert...) And the sand dunes on the east end of the valley were instantly recognizable as the "Sahara" from all those Hollywood movies... Then we crossed into Arizona... We'd never been there before - the southern Arizona desert can be indescribably beautiful in the winter...
We eventually stopped for lunch at the Space Age Restaurant in Gila Bend. The decor was classic early 1960's kitsch - aliens and spaceships everywhere. It was a flashback to the days before the interstates - when the journey mattered as much (or more) than the destination... There aren't too many things I get nostalgic about but sometimes I almost cry when I remember traveling the highways back in the day... (Our house in St. Louis was less than 2 miles from Route 66.) We threw away such an amazing part of our heritage just to get there quicker... Total bummer... But I digress...
We passed through Tucson just before rush hour and it was starting to get dark when we got to Lordsburg, NM. We headed though town on the "business loop" but didn't see any place we particularly wanted to stay - it was all rather dusty and a bit run down... So we headed on to Deming and that's where we spent the first night.
OK - This isn't particularly relevant - but: I was in change of making sure everything was OK with the trailer whenever we stopped and there was a bit of an issue. The trailer hitch was a "universal" type that clamped onto the back bumper. But the bumper on a 65 Mustang isn't particularly strong so every time we stopped I found that the clamps had deformed the bumper slightly more and needed to be re-tightened... We didn't have any problems with the trailer but by the end of the trip that bumper was in pretty sad shape...
We were awfully tired after that first day and didn't get a particularly early start the next morning. And that's when it started getting weird... Karina had never been particularly excited about our intended destination, and as we headed east out of Deming she started lobbying for going straight to El Paso. I have no earthly idea where that came from. I don't know if she thought El Paso sounded cool or if she just wanted to be close to Juarez (drugs?) or what... But mom said we needed to a least have a look at Albuquerque before making any decisions so we turned north at Los Cruces.
It's almost incomprehensible just how little there is between Los Cruces and Albuquerque. I remember driving past the signs for Radium Springs and Truth or Consequences but never saw anything nearby. I don't recall where we stopped for lunch - maybe a Stuckeys? ... There sure weren't any sizable towns along the way :-)
We got into Albuquerque at around 6PM. It was already dark by then and as soon as we got off the highway and headed toward downtown it "hit the fan". There had been a major accident - traffic was backed up for miles - emergency vehicles everywhere. And after 15 minutes of stop and go we decided it must be a "message" so we turned around and went back to the freeway. I seem to recall we had intended to head south but mom ended up going north. We decided maybe that was a sign too so rather than turning around we continued on to Santa Fe and stopped for the night.
You know - mom never did call the prospective employer to tell him she'd changed her mind. That bothered me for a really long time... But regardless - that's the story of how we ended up not living in Albuquerque :-)
Saturday, February 12, 2011
A Job Offer
Some time in late November of 1969 my mom spotted an ad for a job with a small publishing outfit in Albuquerque, NM. and after a few phone conversations she set up a meeting with the owner during his next business trip to L.A.
Karina and I went along for the interview - there was no way mom was going to meet a strange man at a hotel in L.A. without "backup" :-) But the main reason I remember the trip is that riding with mom in L.A. was always a trip.
Aside: I was the navigator... Maps had always fascinated me. Starting at the age of 8 or 9 when we went on road trips dad would give me a map so I could follow along. By the time I was 10 I was fully qualified to navigate - and I knew how to fold a map properly. Honestly - it's not that hard. But now that everyone uses GPS I guess map folding is a lost art :-)
As I've mentioned before, any time mom drove in or near L.A. she was in total panic mode. She sometimes stopped on the on-ramps - she always seemed to be in the wrong lane and couldn't get over (unless she wasn't supposed to). And no matter where we were trying to go she always managed to end up on the Ventura Freeway. Then we'd have to take the next exit and try and figure out how to head back the other direction. It was both tragic and comical :-) To top it off, this particular trip was at dusk and it was raining hard. Given how rarely it rained in SoCal we rarely changed the wiper blades and could barely see where we were going. I also recall that the convertible top on the 65 Mustang was dripping from where it met the windshield. But we did finally make it to the interview - a bit late - but in one piece. Once mom was sure the guy was legit she sent Karina and I down to hang out in the hotel restaurant and - long story short - mom agreed to start work in Albuquerque shortly before Christmas.
Now - all we really knew about Albuquerque is that's where Bugs Bunny should have taken that left turn... (I wonder if future generations will know what that means??? I'm sure it'll be on the internet.) But that didn't bother mom... We prepared for the move in the usual way. We sold a bunch of things we still owed money on (including the furniture) and managed to reduce our worldly possessions to what would fit into the trunk of the Mustang and a 4x6 U-Haul trailer.
We left Escondido around the 8th of December. That was well before school let out for the holidays and we didn't tell anyone we were leaving. We were behind on the rent (as usual) and we didn't want to alert the manager to our imminent departure so we picked up the trailer right before the rental place closed (at 11PM) and loaded it up (as quietly as possible) around midnight. We slept on some blankets on the floor that night and hit the road about 4:30AM.
We had considered heading north up to Interstate 40 but mom was worried about bad weather in northern Arizona and New Mexico (plus she didn't like going anywhere near L.A.) so we headed down Interstate 15 to connect with Interstate 8 in San Diego instead.
The main thing I remember about that morning was the fog. I've never seen it thicker. There were times we couldn't see the lines on the road. Luckily there was almost no other traffic and we made it through without incident...
And thus started one of the strangest journeys of my life...
Karina and I went along for the interview - there was no way mom was going to meet a strange man at a hotel in L.A. without "backup" :-) But the main reason I remember the trip is that riding with mom in L.A. was always a trip.
Aside: I was the navigator... Maps had always fascinated me. Starting at the age of 8 or 9 when we went on road trips dad would give me a map so I could follow along. By the time I was 10 I was fully qualified to navigate - and I knew how to fold a map properly. Honestly - it's not that hard. But now that everyone uses GPS I guess map folding is a lost art :-)
As I've mentioned before, any time mom drove in or near L.A. she was in total panic mode. She sometimes stopped on the on-ramps - she always seemed to be in the wrong lane and couldn't get over (unless she wasn't supposed to). And no matter where we were trying to go she always managed to end up on the Ventura Freeway. Then we'd have to take the next exit and try and figure out how to head back the other direction. It was both tragic and comical :-) To top it off, this particular trip was at dusk and it was raining hard. Given how rarely it rained in SoCal we rarely changed the wiper blades and could barely see where we were going. I also recall that the convertible top on the 65 Mustang was dripping from where it met the windshield. But we did finally make it to the interview - a bit late - but in one piece. Once mom was sure the guy was legit she sent Karina and I down to hang out in the hotel restaurant and - long story short - mom agreed to start work in Albuquerque shortly before Christmas.
Now - all we really knew about Albuquerque is that's where Bugs Bunny should have taken that left turn... (I wonder if future generations will know what that means??? I'm sure it'll be on the internet.) But that didn't bother mom... We prepared for the move in the usual way. We sold a bunch of things we still owed money on (including the furniture) and managed to reduce our worldly possessions to what would fit into the trunk of the Mustang and a 4x6 U-Haul trailer.
We left Escondido around the 8th of December. That was well before school let out for the holidays and we didn't tell anyone we were leaving. We were behind on the rent (as usual) and we didn't want to alert the manager to our imminent departure so we picked up the trailer right before the rental place closed (at 11PM) and loaded it up (as quietly as possible) around midnight. We slept on some blankets on the floor that night and hit the road about 4:30AM.
We had considered heading north up to Interstate 40 but mom was worried about bad weather in northern Arizona and New Mexico (plus she didn't like going anywhere near L.A.) so we headed down Interstate 15 to connect with Interstate 8 in San Diego instead.
The main thing I remember about that morning was the fog. I've never seen it thicker. There were times we couldn't see the lines on the road. Luckily there was almost no other traffic and we made it through without incident...
And thus started one of the strangest journeys of my life...
Monday, February 7, 2011
French and Stuff
Before I get started on the French 4 topic here's a picture from 1969. It's one of my favorites of my sister Karina (even though you can't tell it's her):
This was in the living room of out apartment at Fountain Estates in Escondido right by the sliding glass door that faced west (into the setting sun). I seem to recall that she had been out the night before, slept most of the day, took a shower and then passed out on the couch...
And how about that couch?? We're talking orange and gold floral vinyl cushions... Mom picked it out... Yeah - just because she was a brilliant artist doesn't mean she had good taste. I guess the colors appealed to her. And yes - there were matching chairs :-)
Now - on to French...
The French 4 class at Orange Glen High in 1969/70 was "distracting"... It consisted of 3 boys (including myself) and 26 girls.
The teacher was new that year - a Frenchwoman in her late 30s to early 40s... She was finding it hard to maintain contact with the students at the back of the room, so shortly after the start of the school year she split the room down the center and turned the desks on each side to face each other. That way she could walk up and down the newly formed center aisle and interact with us as she lectured. (I seem to recall that she was annoyingly excited about teaching French...)
The center aisle thing solved the teacher's problem but it created one for me: My desk was now facing 13 teenage girls in miniskirts... Yeah - we're back to that topic again...
Now - sitting with your legs together all the time may be proper but it's not very comfortable. So it's not surprising that almost all of the girls had frequent moments of comfort... Heck - there were some who stayed comfortable pretty much all the time... It made things really tough. I tried not to stare (this was less than a year after that incident at La Jolla High), but that just made it harder not to notice :-)
So I did what I usually do. I kept statistics (in my head, of course). Colors and styles - average number of "events" per hour, etc... But there was one girl in the front row (almost right across from me) who always maintained proper position. It didn't take long for my OCD to kick in and I found myself watching her out of the corner of my eye all the time - figuring there had to be a momentary lapse eventually... It was driving me nuts... Finally after 2 months it happened - she got comfy for a few seconds. Plain white cotton - mystery solved - and I could finally relax :-)
Yeah - I know that's totally creepy... But hey - I was 16 years old. That's pretty much all guys think about at that age (even the ones without OCD)... Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or "playing for the other team" :-)
Despite mom being unemployed and living in those run down apartments I was feeling OK at the time... No girl friend yet - I still couldn't bring myself to talk to one (panic disorder). But I was playing guitar and there were people I hung out with from time to time so it was all good... Obviously, that had to change. :-) And I'll start on that topic in my next post.
This was in the living room of out apartment at Fountain Estates in Escondido right by the sliding glass door that faced west (into the setting sun). I seem to recall that she had been out the night before, slept most of the day, took a shower and then passed out on the couch...
And how about that couch?? We're talking orange and gold floral vinyl cushions... Mom picked it out... Yeah - just because she was a brilliant artist doesn't mean she had good taste. I guess the colors appealed to her. And yes - there were matching chairs :-)
Now - on to French...
The French 4 class at Orange Glen High in 1969/70 was "distracting"... It consisted of 3 boys (including myself) and 26 girls.
The teacher was new that year - a Frenchwoman in her late 30s to early 40s... She was finding it hard to maintain contact with the students at the back of the room, so shortly after the start of the school year she split the room down the center and turned the desks on each side to face each other. That way she could walk up and down the newly formed center aisle and interact with us as she lectured. (I seem to recall that she was annoyingly excited about teaching French...)
The center aisle thing solved the teacher's problem but it created one for me: My desk was now facing 13 teenage girls in miniskirts... Yeah - we're back to that topic again...
Now - sitting with your legs together all the time may be proper but it's not very comfortable. So it's not surprising that almost all of the girls had frequent moments of comfort... Heck - there were some who stayed comfortable pretty much all the time... It made things really tough. I tried not to stare (this was less than a year after that incident at La Jolla High), but that just made it harder not to notice :-)
So I did what I usually do. I kept statistics (in my head, of course). Colors and styles - average number of "events" per hour, etc... But there was one girl in the front row (almost right across from me) who always maintained proper position. It didn't take long for my OCD to kick in and I found myself watching her out of the corner of my eye all the time - figuring there had to be a momentary lapse eventually... It was driving me nuts... Finally after 2 months it happened - she got comfy for a few seconds. Plain white cotton - mystery solved - and I could finally relax :-)
Yeah - I know that's totally creepy... But hey - I was 16 years old. That's pretty much all guys think about at that age (even the ones without OCD)... Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or "playing for the other team" :-)
Despite mom being unemployed and living in those run down apartments I was feeling OK at the time... No girl friend yet - I still couldn't bring myself to talk to one (panic disorder). But I was playing guitar and there were people I hung out with from time to time so it was all good... Obviously, that had to change. :-) And I'll start on that topic in my next post.
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