Okie Without Borders

Where would we be if this hadn't happened?

2012-03-08T11:07:00.000-06:00

March the eighth 1941 a small vessel pushed off for places never before explored. Never explored by the seven passengers of the noble land craft(a green 1937 Ford four door sedan). A passenger craft filled with people expecting new hope and adventure. People anticipating a fresh start on life. Perhaps finding new opportunities and a better way of life.

So, a few days later in late winter March 1941 , Carl and Odessa Ayers arrived in Los Angeles County. Driving over paved roads for the very first time on their long dusty gravel road adventure. Arriving with no certain place to sleep that night. But minor inconveniences never worried real adventurers like Car and Odessa. However, to many these days, embarking such a long and dangerous trek would be equal to flying to the moon. Especially to we timid moderns. Afraid to leave home without a cell phone and GPS. Oh dear!

None the less, they did it, quickly settled in and made a new life for themselves and their young family. In less than a week Carl had full time permanent work. Work with health and retirement benefits. Certainly something far removed from road gang work back in Oklahoma for the WPA. Road work paying a dollar or two a day. Proving risk and adventure can pay off. Plus, in a few short years own a little adobe home in the suburbs. What a change from the dusty parched red dirt farm from wince they came. A third world existence traded for L A’s rush and potential opportunities. How cool!

Now, all you children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and others. Ask yourself this, where would you be if Grandpa and Gramma Ayers had not left Oklahoma? What would have transpired if they never left Wilson Ok. What would have happened to you and your children? Especially growing up in a dusty rural Oklahoma environment. Who would you be. Where would you be living. Would you be speaking with a funny Okie accent? Maybe wearing flour sack clothes and pumping water from a well. Hmm. Think about it. Thanks Mom and Dad. Good decision.

My Dad at 100. He knew work.

2012-02-18T12:00:00.000-06:00

Here is an Okie Without Borders posting I scripted a few years back before my dad passed away. And let me mention here, coming up March 5 of this year will be the one hundredth anniversary of his birth date. He was born March 5 1912in Antlers, Oklahoma and died in Montebello California back in 2007. None the less, the point I want to make is He was a role model for Okie hard work and he exemplified sterling ethics. Now, the following is what I had written back in 2005.

As I have mentioned before, my Dad is 90-something. He grew up in a world most unlike our own. Almost third-world to add perspective here. No running water. No electricity. No indoor toilet. Chopped wood fueled their heating and cooking.

Back then, politics was most different. No social network to rely on. No welfare. No hand outs. There were different expectation altogether. Including different ethics and morals. His little country church he attended was the only source of people helping each other. The state of Oklahoma was not in any position to help anybody.

So, work and responsibility came to him at an early age. Adulthood came to him over night. His baptism in fire came when at the young age of fifteen his dad had suddenly died. Leaving my father the sole manager of a scruffy little red dirt farm in southern rural Oklahoma. Consequently, he had to leave school while in the eighth grade and sadly give up his love of playing baseball with his school friends.

But determined to make the best of it, he took charge of their small family farm just before Wall Street crashed in 1929. A time when millions were out of work and poverty was sweeping the nation. Never the less, he and his mom’s family managed to survive the horrific effects of the depression as well as survive the relentless Oklahoma Dust Bowl wind of the 1930s. It was just him, his mom and several younger siblings working the parched dry farm located just north of the Red River. And to say the least this was no time to goof off and glide the rest of the way. One had to work extremely hard or suffer starvation and homelessness. So, as a teenager, my dad gave up his personal life and rose to the challenge of supporting his family.

So in the final analysis, If I were to choose a word that described his character, the word would be WORK. He knew what work was. And I say, “was” because today we have little knowing of what real work was and is. Few of us know what work is or rather what it should be. Work is a lost art.

Ever since my Dad was a child, he and his siblings were expected to work. He and his brothers and sisters grew up helping their Mom and Dad run a small sharecrop farm. A farm that was completely self-sustaining. Plus sharing farm produce with other less fortunate than they.

My Dad’s father expected, without excuse, all occupants of his small farm family to pitch in. Do most of us even know what the definition is for Pitch-in? Anyway, all shared in the responsibility of running the farm. Plowing the ground. Planting seed. Feeding cows, pigs, chickens, etc. Harvesting, cutting, milking, splitting, stacking, hauling, etc.

All worked. All pitched in. All family members, including my Dad. He knew how to work and when to work. This is not to say there were moments of play. Occasional Baseball and infrequent Saturday movie matinee did exist back then.

Nonetheless, this sense of responsibility and commitment stuck with him all his working life. And for my dad, Being employed and on the job was certainly Job-One. For thirty-plus years after migrating to California from Oklahoma he worked only for one employer. My dad was committed to his company and his company was committed to him as well. From day one his employer knew my dad could work. Sounds almost utopian. A concept from another planet perhaps.

From the fruits of his work, he provided a good living for his family. We never missed a meal or went barefooted. My siblings and I all had reasonable educations. We certainly had grown up in a good moral and religious environment. We were safe, secure, and loved. Never mind the spankings we deserved.

My Dad never told us kids we had to work. Just his example and action spoke volumes. His sense of responsibility didn’t go unnoticed. Just follow his lead and one learns more than any textbook could ever teach. Work begets work. You see it. You do the same.

So, how do you define work? The answer is taking a good look at my dad. He knew what work was and what to do with it. It was evident in his physical being during his prime. Tall, strong, hard bodied, and not afraid of W-O-R-K.

Happy Birthday Pops. We need more like you. God bless our late dad, Carl Houston Ayers.

Okie Barberism was not for me.

2012-02-01T15:05:00.000-06:00

It was February 1964. Hundreds of barbershops suddenly go out of business. Shut down almost over night. My goodness why? Did they run out of ‘Butch wax?’ Holy cow, or did the barbering schools shut down leaving no available recruits to replace the aging and retiring barbers? Well then, what?
Pleas, please tell me why!

Just hold on! I will cover that important point in just a moment. But, let me mention this first. As an Okie child growing up in Los Angeles, I go way back to the first time I could possibly remember anything. Back to the first time My Okie dad started cutting my brother’s scruffy Okie hair and mine. I had never visited a real barbershop up until I was age 12. Yes, I had not witnessed the insides of an authentic men’s hair cutting salon up until that time. And, that time was 1956 back in Wilson Oklahoma north of the Red River.

My hair was professionally cut for the first time during a whirlwind summer trip back to Wilson. My mom and dad’s Okie hometown and birthplace. But anyway my dad took me to a local barber on Main Street.

So after all was said and done, my haircut and neck shave back then cost “six-bits.” Yes, the white frocked, mustachioed, and tobacco chewing barber asked me for six-bits as payment in full. Six bits? Having never done business with a real Okie barber, I looked to my dad for clarification. Son, here, give the man seventy-five cents,” my dad advisedly grumbled. Certainly was a big important lesson in barbershop protocol. After all, my only hair cutting experiences had been limited to conscripted backyards clippings and salad bowl over the head trimming. Certainly an event I never volunteered for. “Son, let’s do this now while I have these clippers in my hand. Sit now!” Kerr-plunk!

However, as time slowly passed, once I had ventured through the horrific initiation of home barbering, I graduated to a new level of “Hair styling.” I gladly went on to our nearby East L A hair cutting shop. I began to appreciate the touch of a professionally trained hair-cutting guy. So, after that point in my barbering experience, it was all over but the clipping. I was hooked on real barbershops. It was a magical, mystical passage in to a new world of reality. So, what brought me back again and again to the barbershop? Well, besides paying closer attention to teen girls, it was definitely the curious looking and alluring barbershop magazines. Colorful, slick back publications of anatomical and scientific intrigue. I read magazines of adventure and mystery. Such as Argosy, Field and Stream, Popular Mechanics, and some other magazines I wish not to discuss here. Well, My goodness, why else risk skin puncture or razor cut if typical barber shop magazines were not on site. Nonetheless, It was a veritable library of boys would be boy’s fellowship and secrecy. No girls were allowed. It was an all male cave.

In spite of my late introduction to store bought barberism, my dad still insisted he must cut my hair. But, I resisted. I didn’t like his military chair side manner. “Stop wiggling. Look down. Hold your head up straight son! The same unyielding treatment I experienced even when I wasn’t even getting a haircut. Pretty much the same handling administered to our backyard chickens. Chop and pluck.

I certainly preferred instead, the licensed and professional barber and his easy-going chair side manner. Most barbers would just gently push and tilt your head down or up as if adjusting a rear view mirror. Just point and clip. As easy as that.

None the less, as I continued my visits to our local barber shop in L. A. It quickly became apparent to me, I needed to drum up some work to pay for my expensive hair cut habit. A haircut in my little hometown back in southern California was more than six-bits. Wow! Instead, it was two times six-bits. As I suddenly discovered the four white-frocked barbershop quartette were union shop barbers. Yes, a whopping buck and a half for a cut. I’m sure that was one of the main reasons barbers went out of business in February 1964. It was too darn expensive! Well, maybe.

But not really, here is the real reason barbers closed their shops in 1964. One word. Beatles. The Fab Four. For sure the music and hair trend setting Liverpool quartet who came to America without the benefit of a decent and proper haircut. Moppy, floppy hairstyles. A hair-do that swept the nation like hair on fire. A hair presentation lacking in moral rectitude. Just a shameful display of too many tresses on the noggin and not much good judgment.

Yup. That was the reason for sure. Long disgraceful flyaway hair. Need I say more? Barbering has never been the same since. Now a days, it is most hard for me to find a good barber. Few and far between. Super cuts just doesn’t cut it. Please bring back my magical, mystical Barber Salon. But, on second thought, I now have very few follicles for a reasonable barber to trim or arrange.

My Valentine's Day shopping.

2012-01-28T14:55:00.000-06:00

How could one young Okie kid afford Valentine’s Day without F W Woolworth’s? A ten-cent pack of Valentine cards would have never been bought if they were 25-cents. Certainly a price well beyond the budget of a six-year-old Okie kid. After all, Woolworth (or as we Okies mistakenly called it Woolsworth) was just a five and dime store. And nothing else. Got a nickel? Got a dime? Get it cheap. Get it now.

Many a Saturday morning back in the early 1950s, I would have been seen holding my mom’s hand shuffling down the sidewalks of Whittier Boulevard headed for “Woolsworth.” We would have just come out of the Mayfair market with a paper wrapped package of fresh sliced baloney and a couple cans of spinach. Our “Five and Dime” purchasing list may have look like this: a spool of white sewing thread, a spring loaded mouse trap, and of course a pack of Valentine Cards which includes small envelopes. And since we may have over spent at the super market, we would have to buy my roll of popping caps for my cap gun next time, maybe.

Nonetheless, Valentine’s Day cards are on their way home for signing, envelope licking, and disbursement. The lion’s share of the cards would go with me to my second grade class V/day party on the 14th of Feb. My mom would sign my name (Charles A.) and it was left up to me to write in the appropriate girl’s name when at school on the fourteenth. The remainder of the ten cards and envelopes would go to my sisters. And for sure against my will. Giving a V/day card to a sister is like Roy Rogers kissing Benito Mussolini. Certainly something to avoid at all costs.

Back then, I never remember seeing anybody giving flowers or chocolates. Not my mom. Not my dad. Where did this extravagant and seen only in the movies custom come from anyway? Perhaps I should have gone to Sears in East L A and to the Sears candy counter and asked for ten cents worth of peanut clusters. On the other hand, probably not enough chocolate covered nuts to make it home without being sampled by the nearest Okie hands. Maybe my own. But then, I would not have enough Valentine’s Day money to buy Valentines Day cards as a result.

Better yet, why don’t I just forget it all and go to Miller’s market near our house and buy a five cent Three Musketeer chocolate bar. Then eat it all myself. It would be so simple. No fuss. No muss. Finally, leaving five cents to purchase a couple of Valentines Day cards for my obnoxious Okie sisters. Sounds like a great idea. I’ll do it!

My first New Year resolution

2011-12-30T12:25:00.000-06:00

Never once had I embraced the notion of a New Year resolution until I was a senior in high school. Okies never have such deliberate idealistic resolve. It’s been tough enough just keeping one’s hand me down faded blue jeans clean and knees patched up. Let alone toss out to your close friends, “I’ll never again spit on the sidewalk” and expect to keep the New Year resolution. Believe me, it wasn’t easy growing up Okie in East L A.

But as radio and TV became our major source of information and socialization, we Okies finally caught on to the current year-end trends. My first resolution was to stop cussing around girls. But I quickly discovered girls cuss more than boys. So, there goes my first resolution. Gone away in a blur of expletives from a small pack of fowl mouthed Amazon teens. “Resolve THIS,” as they stuck a finger in my face.

However, I was exposed do this New Year resolution thing by school peers. High school guys wanting to impress their girlfriends that they could easily stop smoking and start brushing their teeth. All done at the same time. All combined into one simple packaged resolution. Tossing aside one bad habit and taking on a new and better one. Two for the price of one. How cool.

So then, I decided to try another New Year resolution and see if it would possibly work. With some further thinking, I surmised it might be best to try something easier. Something I know I could do and continue to do for at least a week or two.

After taking an inventory of my bad habits, I concluded that taking a bath more than once a week could be the resolution I could handle. I got the idea from a Dial Soap commercial. The TV commercial would portray a man who just showered and got dress.

The Dial Shower man showed him being followed and pursued by Glamour magazine beauties. Remember, this was 1961 TV. Nonetheless, this is all after “Mr. Shower man” had earlier been told he had significant body odor. Certainly a bad habit. A habit I myself just might be able to stop with the same logic. Possibly by showering twice a week or more. “I know I could do this.” How much is a bar of Dial soap?

However, my next resolution was to get a job. Yes. Work for money. Gainfully employed. Working in retail at a store no less. All for the purpose of buying secret personal items. Deodorant, soap, and toothpaste. All to complete the bathing experience. Something not commonly practiced beyond once a week among we Okies.

I use to think bathing was a time waster. But as I grew to enjoy a good warm shower, I began to take longer and longer baths. For sure a time waster.

But anyway, since that one senior year I fell into a habit of bathing at least twice a week. It is most amazing how resolve and practice makes good habits. Happy bathing everyone!

Smelling is worth believing

2011-12-26T11:11:00.000-06:00

I have a second cousin or maybe he is a third cousin. Not really sure. But, anyway his name is Larry Crane. Don’t know him? Well he is a Crane from somewhere around Wilson Oklahoma. Know him now? I’m guessing he’s now about 68 or 70-years old. Still doesn’t ring a bell?

Like me, he is an Okie who grew up in southern California. He has that Okie humility but is most resourceful. Never the less, you just may have seen some of his handiwork on TV on New Year day in the past. Oh really?

My growing up in L A and being the son of a pure bred Oklahoman, one thing we learned to love, was the Rose Parade. As in the tournament of Roses Rose parade on New Years morning. Now wait a minute, what happened to Larry Crane? Well, Larry later as an adult either bought in to a small flower shop or possibly started it himself. Yes. A wimpy little flower shop located in the eastern L A County suburb of Whittier. So what you say?

Well cousin Lare parlayed this dippy little flower cart business into a thriving, trophy winning parade float building mega-business. Yes, he has built many Rose Parade floats for many southern California cities, companies, and civic organizations. And, this is no easy task. One float is certainly enough projects to last all year long starting in early January and heading for the next. Try this times two or three at once. And again, you probably saw his handiwork on TV in the Rose Parade at one time or another.

Many an early morn on January 1 our family and or friends would get up about four A.M. and head off to Pasadena just about 10-miles north of our little eastern suburb town. We would usually park somewhere about a mile south of Colorado Boulevard, otherwise known as old route 66, and start walking to the parade site. The parade rout itself is a five-mile long route. Enough mileage to give any marching band hundreds of calluses and blisters.

I was about eleven or twelve back in 1956 when I saw my first Rose Parade. As a unfocused and nare-do-well Okie kid, I was most impressed. The last Rose parade I saw was back in January of 1999. And certainly, many in between. Probably about a half dozen in all.

One of my memorable parades was back in 1966. We were sitting on blankets on the street near the inner boundary line. Almost able to touch the floats with our fingertips. Then came a low mound of flowers of every description. Yellow, red, purple, etc.

Riding on each side was one of the two Smothers Brothers. Tom and Dickey. Suddenly out of the crowd came a small five or six year old boy and ran up to Dickey Smothers and whacked him right on the arm. And the kid quickly retreated back in to the crowd. Dickey, the dumb one, had a surprise and hurt look on his face. This brought a roar from the parade spectators. Nonetheless, the float ambled on through the rest of the parade.

As an Okie boy growing up in East L A, this was one event I always looked forward to. No matter how many times you see this on TV, there is nothing like the real thing on the streets of Pasadena. HD-TV doesn’t even compare. Smelling the fresh flowers, sitting in a crowd of cheering people, and being totally astonished was worth the trouble getting there. It gives an Okie boy a real sense of awe and respect for the parade organizers. Don’t take my word for it. Just go see it for yourself next January.

Our special Okie tree

2011-12-17T11:18:00.000-06:00

Back in the early 1950s, there was this huge vacant lot at the corner of Whittier Blvd and Goodrich. Traditionally a special events corner lot providing a unique seasonal experience. Experiences like traveling carnivals with sideshows, circuses with animal act and clowns, and more importantly and above all, a Christmas tree lot at Christmas.

So, each Christmas season this empty events lot would turn in to a Christmas tree open-air tree store. It was always surrounded by clear incandescent light bulbs hanging overhead from a drooping black electric cord going from pole to pole. An outside outlet selling trees of all sizes and colors. Green, white, pink, blue, and more green trees. Flocked and unflocked. One just right for you. Maybe.

Just so you will know where this was, it was in East L A. Just across the boulevard from Jim Clinton’s men’s clothes, which was next door to Vic Tanny’s gym. Sort of the gateway in to downtown East Los Angeles. You couldn’t miss it.

Nonetheless, we Okies would visit there about a week before Christmas to choose our special tree. Choosing was not easy. Certainly we Okie kids wanted tall, broad, and a thick green pine tree. Something that commands awe and grandeur. And my dad was thinking whatever we could buy for two bucks.

So, we bought our tree, put it in the trunk, took it home, set it upright, and our mom and we kids would commence adorning the tree with decorations. Decorations of one string of eight colored lights, hanged silver pencil, a homemade string of popcorn, a string of red berries from our berry tree by the driveway, and a half dozen hanging colored glass ornaments. All set up in our front window. On display for passersby to admire and appreciate. One outside could only notice such stunning beauty and have to stop. “My oh my. Just look at that would ya.”

However, when I had observed the tree from inside the front room, I could see through the spindly tree as if it was really not there. I could see all the way through the front window as if looking through a wilting potted plant. A tree Sort of puny and thin. But, being a short 9-year old, the tree certainly had height. A good five feet tall. Wow! Merry Christmas. “Look at that would ya mom.”

A good reason to keep the Post Office open.

2011-12-03T11:45:00.000-06:00

Now, I want you to stay with me on this because there is a point to be made. During Christmases past many years ago and during a different age, my Okie mom and dad would take an old thick cotton string and hang it high overhead across the living room in our old East L A home. It was strung like a clothe line and hung on it were the many colorful Christmas cards and suspended like fresh washed laundry. Cards actually received in the mail from friends and family. Once opened and read, it would create a banner of holiday greetings for all to gleefully observe after coming into our little adobe house.

You could see various cards depicting Christmas scenes from floating candy canes to the ubiquitous little house on the fluffy snow filled prairie. And several greeting cards showing the baby Jesus lying in the manger. Cards filled with holiday verse and actually hand written greetings by its senders. Some cards even filled with a recent family narrative also hand written. Some included a black and white photo or two of their family. Of course, I loved the wacky cards with cross-eyed reindeer with holly and lights strung up in their horns.

So, Years later and carrying on the tradition, my wife would Scotch tape cards hanging diagonally down across the top of the door facing. The door going from the living room in to the dining area. And the cards would also run down lower on the sides of the facing allowing smaller readers to observe the annual greetings. Creating a holiday gallery of greeting cards. Never the less, fun at Christmas for all our visitors.

“Hmm? What is this one with the hula girl in a grass skirt with a lei made of holly?”

Now here it is. My point. With the recent trend of “E-cards,” how does one easily string E-cards across on an old cotton string or taped to a door facing? Some cards are animated video and cannot be printed off. A few are graphic with text but would look funny printed off on eight and a half by eleven printer paper. How sad.

What I will do is print off a fact sheet referring all observers to my Facebook account. Tape that to the door facing for all to read. “FYI, Go to my Facebook page and see all my lovely cards from my 1792 friends. Or, you can easily follow me and my clever greetings on Twitter. How cool. How so today. Well. Not really. How so cold and impersonal. Yuck! Hopefully this too shall pass. Now, where’s that card with Santa stuck upside down in the chimney? I’ll sign it now.

That turkey never had a chance.

2011-11-22T13:05:00.000-06:00

It was Wednesday before Thanksgiving 1959 and I had just walked in from junior high school. When I had eventually shuffled into our kitchen, I discovered my mother lathered up to her elbows in creamy butter. She was feverishly swabbing down a sacrificial 15-pound Tom turkey bought from our local Safeway. Certainly a Tom, which included large white meat turkey breasts. A turkey that gave it up for the celebration of the hallowed day of thanksgiving.

It was, however, a moment in the past when both my mom and the unwitting turkey hadn’t heard of Butterball. You know, Mom, apple pie, and Butterball. A rock hard frozen turkey with popup thermometer. But, that’s not what she was working on.

Now, with closer observation, mom was looking like she had just unloaded a shipping crate from the Mayflower. All over the kitchen counters were pumpkin and apple pies, chopped onions, cornbread stuffing, boiling potatoes ready to mash, turkey necks and giblets, etc. She was moaning and complaining like she was the only chef on the Queen Mary and feeding hundreds of hungry impatient teenage alligators. More like working like a Portuguese washerwoman toiling away in the kitchen heat. The only thing missing from her cooking and baking repertoire was a European accent and a white chef hat.

As Mom labored laboriously over slick turkey skin with her buttered fingers, her graying brown curly tresses dangled loosely over her damp furrowed brow. She was attempting but awkwardly wiping her forehead perspiration by rubbing the top of her forearm across her moist brow. Trying not to apply any butter across her already dampened forehead.

Nonetheless, my mother was ready for the next days cooking and baking. So, early thanksgiving morning as many times in the past, mom would carefully place the buttered and stuffed Tom into the oven. Carefully placed on the wire oven rack of our old O’Keefe and Merrit gas cook stove. She would make sure the cooking temperature was set correctly and then set the timer for several hours in to the distant future. Certainly a far away time we young folk could hardly wait for. However, for us kids, waiting for the thanksgiving meal to finally arrive, after such an early start, seemed like a time equal to how long it took pilgrims to cross the Atlantic. “Mom, will we be eating today?”

Either she did this year after year for the love of it or she couldn’t confront the whiny little brats that complain if thanksgiving wasn’t cooked quickly. Fortunately for all we little unpleasant children, she never missed a single thanksgiving. Over the years and in retrospection, it became more and more clear how thankful we were to have a mother who stayed home and cooked our thanksgiving meal. Plus, put up with we little starving piglets. Thank God. AND, certainly thank Mom.

Let's go to the hop!

2011-11-14T14:53:00.000-06:00

I was never a dancer. My mom and dad didn’t want me to dance. And I’m talking about dancing at school or any other “Dancing Den of Sin.” Which means no dancing after school in the gym. Dancing with…girls. Absolutely forbidden. Certainly a fundamentalist doctrinaire.

Why not dance? Well, I would be swallowed in to a fiery pit of judgment. Far beneath the surface of the gym floor. Swallowed down into a huge monstrous fire-breathing canyon of smoking black brimstone. Perhaps tumbling down just beneath the scattered pile of boys and girls shoes they tossed off. “What happened to Charlie? He disappeared I guess.”

However, against my mom’s wishes, I did once slip into the side door at a junior high dance in our school gym. And to make this clear, this was just for casual observation. Taking notes for future reference of course. This was 1958 at my junior high. So, this is what I observed from the gym bleachers:

Off up against the gym wall was a portable record player sitting atop a high stool. A record player scratching out a tinny sound of early rock and roll. Then on the dance floor was Boys and girls dancing far apart from each other but holding hands nonetheless. Dancing duos closely monitored by two first year English teachers. Teachers sliding about like referees at a hockey game. And all this noise and shuffling beneath the full power of the gym’s bright lights.

The 20-something year old woman teacher was wearing cat eyeglasses and crowned with brown curly poofy hair. She had at her side, like a magic wand, a one-foot wooden ruler. And occasionally she would approach a fox trotting couple to place the 12-inch rule between their chests. “Remember boys and girls, you must remain twelve inches apart. It’s the rule.”

The guy teacher was also youngish, tall, thin, wore a dark suit with high water cuffs, and looked just like Dennis the Menace’s father. Long pointed nose, black oily hair combed straight back, and with Coke bottle glasses that made his eyes appear like floating prunes. Both teachers giving the impression they would rather be home grading English papers instead.

Now, off to one side away from the larger group of dancers, was a lone couple hanging on to each other’s shoulders dancing cheek to cheek but with their hips at least twenty inches apart. Looking like an A-frame with feet. Seemingly dancing to one beat. No matter how fast or slow the music, this couple maintained a slow two-step shuffle. Quite strange looking I must say.

Never the less, as the dance progressed, several of the junior high kids had cajoled the two first year English teachers into demonstrating how two mature individuals properly dance. Teen dancers knowing full well each teacher was young, single, and most embarrassed to be put together in this horrific teen dance-monitoring job. Both teachers’ faces were beet red and embarrassed. However, they were compelled by teacher responsibility to demonstrate the proper way to slow dance. And again, I must say it was awkward and strange. Both holding each other like they didn’t want to hold each other. More like pushing each other away from the other. All the while teen kids were whistling, cat calling, and hooting it up. A spectacle rather entertaining.

My mom was right. I should never go to school dances. This was most ridiculous. Now you know why I am still alive today.

After the big grab we counted our Halloween treasures

2011-11-07T12:41:00.000-06:00

Trick or Treating is hard work for a couple of ten-year-old boys. Especially for an Okie kid where Halloweening does not come naturally. But, boy oh boy. We couldn’t wait until we got back home. After several hours of door-to-door Trick or Treat haunting

We headed on back home with our bags bulging with treats and candy booty. Then, After neighborhood spooking with our frightful Halloween paper grocery sacks and makeshift Okie Halloween costumes we arrived back home and spilled out the contents atop our family’s living room table. My buddy Donnie and I honestly thought we scared the bajeebers out of the neighborhood folks and tricked them in to unloading all their Halloween goodies. After all, what else would two 10-year olds have surmised? We gave them our best scare.

Then, once home, after spreading the yummy treasures over my mom’s nice mahogany table we started taking an inventory of our edible treasures. Well, I take that back. Some of our Halloween lute was sometimes money. Nickels and dimes. Maybe sometimes but rarely, a quarter or two. And all it took was one nickel and one dime to purchase 1-DC Superman comic book and 5-pieces of Double Bubble bubble gum from Miller’s market around the corner. What more could an Okie kid want?

Then we started sampling the real stuff. Candy corn. Yellow and orange chewy, sugary kernels of candy. But, not tasting anything like real garden corn. Yuck, that would be icky.

Then some of our neighbors, who were either real cheap or sometimes poor, gave out homemade balls of Carmel popcorn. And others just gave out popped popcorn. The Carmel popcorn almost always got stuck between my teeth. I hated that.

Then there were the folks who gave out apples and walnuts. Not a great treat for a ten-year-old Okie but our parents appreciated it and usually my mom or dad would eat the apples and cracked the walnuts. Willing to share in the Halloween take.

However, the big prize was a full-sized candy bar. Baby Ruth bars, Hershey bars, Three Musketeer Bars, Almond Joys and more. Unlike the wimpy bite size candies kids get today, we got the big whopper. A candy bar today you would spend at least a buck for. But, back then they would only set you back five or ten cents. And we got at least two or three. All amounting to the grand-prize. Wow!

Then there were the Tootsie pops, tootsie rolls, Abba Zabba bars, Ju Ju Bees, Milk Duds, wax lips, licorice sticks, candy cigarettes, candy coins, Life Savers, bags of peanuts, bags of unshelled sunflower seeds, bags of roasted corn nuts, and the treasure list went on and on.

Finally, there were the neighbors who handed out single sticks of Wrigley’s Double mint gum. It was okay but my sisters would abscond with the chewable. They loved to chew it and make all kinds of popping and smacking sounds. Just like the big girls did in the movies.

Now, here’s the rub. We were expected to be “Trick or Treat” compliant. One thing we kids back then had to work hard at was, was saying “Trick or Treat.” Instead of just ringing door bells or knocking, we often were required by the adult neighbors who were bound by tradition, to say ”Trick or Treat.” There was no way we could get by with just holding a bag out in front of we make-shift goblins. “Fill’er up Jack!” It was expected to say something and preferably “Trick or Treat.” It was the custom back then. “Say the magic words or get off my porch.” So, if that were what it takes to beg off candy, we would comply. Trick or Treat! Once you say it two or three times, you begin to say it even before you step on the front porch. Sort of like heralding the coming of scary goblins. However, not at all resulting in bigger candy grabs. Oh well. Trick or treat. “Have a nice day and you guys get off the front porch.”

Wilson Oklahoma, the final tour.

2011-11-04T15:03:00.000-05:00

Now to finalize our deluxe personalized tour of Wilson Oklahoma. As you recall last time we visited the firehouse, Fred Jones Ford, the Wilson Post office, Peffers Drug Store and Soda fountain, and the Wilson movie theater.

So now, we’ll make a U-turn and head back east on Main Street. Passing Sixth Street where my Grandmother and all others on her street had reside.

So, we are now driving passed the Wilson telephone office, which, by the way, is in the living room of a local Main Street resident house and Just across the street from Wilson’s best and only Snow Cone stand. A phone booth size cone stand featuring real watermelon flavoring. But anyway, Pass that street and near the end of Main Street where the road curves off to the left and back out onto state highway 70. Instead of veering left, we will turn right and quickly come to the Wilson Ice House. This is not a comedy venue in Pasadena but a real full time icehouse. A solid looking building with a broad concrete loading dock, and with a tall louvered wooden water-chilling device. The tall wooden square structure atop the icehouse is what facilitates the making of frozen water. Don’t ask me to explain.

And some of you are saying, an icehouse? What’s an icehouse? Simply stated, it’s a place where you buy ice. “Oh, I get my ice from our icemaker on front of the fridge.”

Well no, this warehouse that freezes and stores, and sells huge blocks of ice. Fifty-pounds or more in one big block of clear ice. Handled and drug about with large clamping hooks. Something like big scissor like tongs with hooks on the end. Clamp them on a block of ice and drag it off the loading dock and drop it down into your pickup or car trunk. Kurr-plunk! Very heavy and frozen solid.

So? What do you do with a huge 50-pound block of solid ice? Well for example, my dad and I would purchase a heavy block of ice and haul it off to my aunts Minnie’s farmhouse a few miles South of town. Once there my dad would quickly carry the heavy 50-pound cube of ice in an old burlap bag into my aunt’s kitchen. Once in the kitchen plops it in the bottom of her icebox. Icebox? What’s an ice box?

Well let’s just call it a refrigerator without refrigeration. A cold storage place. Something likes a Sears Coldspot but works without electricity. It works with blocks of ice instead. Whatever is near the block of ice will chill and remain cold. Remain cold as long as the ice stays solid. Never the less, my aunt Minnie and my uncle had no electricity at their prairie house back then. Consequently, no plug-in Fridgidair with icemaker.

But anyway, my aunt Minnie’s icebox was about five-feet tall, two feet wide and about two feet deep. Something likes a very large Igloo or Coleman camping ice chest set up on edge. But aunt Minnie’s icebox was made of wood and hard rubber. It sort of looks like a frozen vault with a heavy metal latch and handle. You don’t want the cold to escape. Nonetheless, her icebox was filled with glass bottles of whole milk, homemade butter, bacon, sausage, and an assortment of recently gathered brown and white chicken eggs.

Now here is the downside to an icebox. They leak. Usually leaks into a porcelain dishpan placed under the main icebox frame. But often dripping on the old linoleum floor as well as leaking inside the primitive cold storage device. Creating a constant musty odor. An odor that gives you a forever reminder where you are. You can smell your way to the kitchen. However, my aunt’s cooking often drove the mildew smell away. She would cook biscuits and sausage for breakfast on her smoky wood fired stove and oven. Certainly over compensating for the icebox moldy odors. Really now, not bad payback for going to town and lugging ice back to my aunt Minnie’s house.

And that was life out on the southern Plaines of southern rural Oklahoma. Rustic, pioneering, and a real eye opener for a Okie kid who grew up in Los Angeles. It was totally worth the experience. Each summer’s road trek from L A to Wilson had its new and unexpected adventures. Wilson, Oklahoma! Grin and bear it.

A walk through old Wilson Oklahoma. The motherland.

2011-10-14T13:16:00.000-05:00

Wilson Oklahoma continued,

Last time as you may recall we took a blueprint/utilitarian look at my grandmother’s humble home. Plus, if you recall, we became acquainted with her street neighbors living nearby. The Morgans, Banker Wilson, and the Peffers. All adding their own peculiar dynamics to the neighborhood. Just plane old hometown folks. Norman Rockwellish, homespun, and just Red earth people. As a reminder, this is important historical background for this Okie kid and his parent’s Oklahoma roots.

Now, let start our walk north to downtown Wilson. My grandma lives about a half mile from downtown. Even though there are sidewalks going downtown, it was best to walk in the street. A street that seldom saw much car traffic. However, every once in a while you might see an old farmer gentlemen with broad brimmed straw hat would ride his horse drawn wagon up the street. An old creaking wooden wagon with rubber tires and pulled by a gray sway back horse. His wagon would be filled with watermelons and an assortment of his fresh picked garden vegetables. All sitting in a bed of hay behind the farmer. Certainly a staged scene portrayed in many a Hollywood movie about the old south.

Nonetheless and as I had mentioned, it is best to walk in the street. As you approach the creek bridge near the railroad tracks, you will encounter very tall grass. Something like prairie grass. Most folk called it Johnson grass. A thick and ever present useless weed. Anyway it’s to your advantage to avoid walking the sidewalk between head tall stands of Johnson grass. You never know what critter might crawl out and give you a sudden surprise.

But anyway, after you pass the railroad tracks going north you will come upon the town’s firehouse. Just a low open garage looking structure positioned out at the sidewalk. I seldom if ever remember passing this facility without encountering three or four firemen in blue denim tilted back in cane backed chairs against the fire house wall. Leaning back while spitting tobacco and whittling. “Howdy boys,” would be their greeting. “Going to town? You could always count on some exchange when passing the Wilson firehouse. Certainly adding to the town’s unique personality.

Just north and passed the alley way at the corner of Sixth and Main was Fred Jones Ford. A retail space with large windows facing out to both Main and Sixth. I must admit, all the many years visiting Wilson, I seldom ever saw anyone in the dealership showroom looking at Fred Jones new cars. However, you would sometimes see a car in the repair garage being serviced.

Now, straight across from Fred Jones Ford on Main was the Post Office. One of the first stops for my grandmother and many other town’s inhabitants. There was no home mail delivery so Wilson citizens more than likely visited the PO several times a week. And in the process of picking up mail, town folks exchanged greetings, news, and rumors. Something like Facebook but inside a brick and mortar facility.

Never the less, my grandmother would visit the post office about three or four times a week. Gussied up in her best going to town dress and sturdy black low heel lace up shoes, she would walk about a half mile or so from her little home to the post office, to the grocery store, and back. An outing not very easy for her to walk. She didn’t own a car and as far as I can remember, never drove.

Anyway back to Main Street, going west past the Ford dealer and the post office you would shuffle down a wide swath of concrete about ten or twelve feet from curb to store front. A side walk appearing to have been laid by the WPA in the late 1930s. Moving on down the walk pass Pratt Foods a small hometown grocery store you would find Peffers Drug store. A typical Mayberry like store complete with soda fountain, magazine and paperback bookracks, a prescription desk, and numerous sundries scattered about. If you were to enter the pharmacy shop someone would immediately ask if you need help. Even if you dismiss the help, he or she will stand at attention until you either buy something or leave. Customer service beyond customer service.

Next down the way is the town’s domino and pool parlor. Smoky, smelly, and subject for a future story. On down further passed a dry goods store is the town’s movie theater. Theater complete with Marquee and waving canvas banner notifying the moviegoers it is “Cool Inside.” And to condense you of this fact the lettering on the banner was capped with frosty snow. One of the few establishments in town air conditioned by water evaporation. Pretty cool huh? A picture show charging we kids only ten-cents a pop. My cousins and myself saw the “Thing” and screamed all the way through the crazy scary flick while my girl cousin squeezed my hand blue. Ouch!

Now, this might be a good place to stop and rest so we will continue our town tour next week. Hope you are having fun. See you next time. Chuck Ayers

So, what is Wilson Oklahoma?

2011-10-07T13:48:00.000-05:00

Once you had passed over the very narrow Red River Bridge from North Texas, you will drive 20-miles north and a bit east. Arriving in the little Micropolitan village of Wilson, Oklahoma. One main street, one fire house, one post office, one Ford dealer, one drug store, one ice house, one movie theater, one set of railroad tracks, and a half dozen or so fundamentalist churches. Your typical southern Plaines Mayberryish former oil boomtown. Once the commercial hub for other smaller rural towns in the Wilson solar system. And, for the most part a slow and peaceful place to be.

As I had reported several times in the past, my parents and we siblings had traveled by car from Los Angeles to visit the red dirt homeland. Wilson, Oklahoma USA. My grandmother Ayers lived in Wilson on Sixth Street about a half mile south of Main. It’s a small rural farm and oil worker town consisting of about 1600 inhabitants and as mentioned just north of the Red River. Wilson is located just off old US 70 west of the larger Oklahoma town of Ardmore. At least in Wilson is where she had lives when I visited her in the late 1940s and up to the mid 1960s. But prior to those times she and her family lived on various tenant farms in southern rural red dirt Oklahoma.

Nonetheless, her home was a modest white wood frame house. Square, four rooms, and sizable front and back porches. The front Porch, which faced west, was big enough for cousins to sleep out on in a rollaway bed. Really the best place of the house to sleep in mid-summer. The back porch, which faced east to a broad sunrise, was more utilitarian. It had an old wringer washer, galvanized tub, and a garden hose. The hose was used to either fill the metal washtub or used to connect to the wringer washer. Plus the back porch was a great place to hand crank a bucket of ice cream. Or, just a sitting place for we grandkids to giggle and poke each other while eating watermelon.

Now if you were to draw a square on a sheet of paper and divide it into four equal quarters that would be the floor plan of my Gramma’s house as possibly drawn by an architect. Plane and simple. One living room to the south, two bedrooms to the north, and a kitchen in the back and squeezed in-between the two bedrooms was a very small bathroom. Small, compact, and very useable house by one grandmother. However, when kids and grandkids came to visit, a bit tight and compressed. But we loved it nonetheless. A modest carpet of grass and weeds surrounded her house. Certainly not to big or difficult for her to maintain. The grass was outlined by a white picket fence with front gate leading out to the sidewalk on Sixth Street.

Almost straight across the street from my grandmother’s but a bit south lived the Morgan’s. An old couple in their seventies or early eighties. Mrs. Morgan always had a smile on her bespectacled thin face and a quick tendency to talk. Mr. Morgan looked as if he was in constant pane with all facial features pointing down. Walked with a stiff leg, aided with a cane, and slanted forward. The Morgan’s would sit outside in the evenings on two old metal seat and back patio chairs while observing the activity on the street. She sat crossed legged. He sat slanted like a 2 by 4 sitting in a chair. Mr. Morgan sat that way because of a back injury and fused vertebras. Nonetheless, they were kind folk and always willing to talk.

On the same side of the street my grandma lived and south down at the corner lived banker Wilson. He own and ran the bank of Wilson on Main Street in town. He certainly lived in a larger house that faced the corner. His house was twice the size of my grams but modest. Maybe 1500-square feet or so. However, Banker Wilson was a thoughtful man sometimes even inviting we restless cousins down to his house for a snack or iced tea. He knew the benefit of establishing relationships and probably read Dale Carnegie.

Just to the north and on the same side of the street as my grandma’s lived the Peffer family. We grandkids would sometimes play with the Peffer kids. Mr. Peffer was the town’s pharmacist and was well regarded in the neighborhood. His drug store was on Main Street complete with soda fountain and shelves of paperback books. Once I had even bought the book Dr. Strangelove from their respected establishment. But, one summer years later in 1964 when I was visiting Wilson and headed back to college it was discovered Mr. Peffer lost his license to practice his trade. He lost his license because of not really having a college pharmacy degree. Disqualifying him to perform pharmacy work. However, his daughter had recently graduated from pharmacy school at Oklahoma University and took over the filling of prescriptions. So, it all worked out.

So, let us pause here. There is certainly more to this travelogue and next week we’ll pick up the travel adventure and take a walk downtown. Stay tuned. Chuck Ayers

For best costume design...the envelope please!

2011-09-28T18:14:00.000-05:00

Outfitted with a brown paper grocery sack and a white dress shirt with tails out from my dad’s closet I began to assemble my horrific looking Halloween masquerade. The final touch was the charred cork rubbed and smudged all over my face. Achieving that frightful Hobo smudged beard look of course. So now, I was ready for the annual neighborhood Halloween haunt and goody-grab. This is what this Okie kid costumed him self in for Halloween October 1953. A fearsome look I must admit.

Nonetheless, it also appeared my best friend Donnie and I had the same make-up consultant. The only difference between Donnie and me, Donnie was from Milwaukee and I was as mentioned, an Okie child growing up in East Los Angeles. Certainly Okie cultural credentials enough that would easily waive any big city sensibility. So, I’m not sure what excuse Donnie used to justify his own costuming. What a combo nonetheless.

It was harvest fall by the big fat moon 1953 and Donnie and I were in the fourth grade. However, Donnie was enrolled at Saint Alfoncis Catholic School and I at Montebello Park Elementary. But anyway, why did we dress the same? What was our excuse for the Hobo look in white dress shirts? Hobos rarely wear their dad’s white dress shirts. Shirt Sleeves were rolled up and tails hanging down to our knees. Looking like penguin turned upside down. But anyway, only teenage sisters wore their dad’s white dress shirt with tails out back then. Something’s was certainly wrong here.

Well, in spite of our questionable choice of costume we marched on. So with great resolve, the two of us headed out to Trick and/or Treat. Two neighborhood buds intent on harvesting a large booty of candy and gum. And, This was a time back when kids actually said aloud and as loud as could be, “trick or treat!” But if frightening barks and growls came from behind the front door, we quickly moved on to the next house.

Now let me mention here, these days’ big and little kids come to the door and hold out with great anticipation their orange phosphorescent plastic Halloween bags. Only to say almost nothing. No “trick or treat.” No “please kind sir, give me candy now!” However, you can hear them thinking. “Just put in a dozen Snicker Bars and let me out of here.” You can see this apparent irritation written on their heavily glittered faces. Finally turn their plastic costume shrouded bodies away to the Halloween candy benefactors and shuffle off in full retreat. Completely ignoring the real carved pumpkin face and realistic spider webs over the doorway. Something someone went to lots of trouble to decorate. Oh my. What a perverse and shameless generation.

Oh well anyway, Donnie and I back then had great fun pretending to scare most everybody. Maybe it wasn’t scary as much as it was a surprise. People coming to the door would be stupefied. “Oh my, what are you boys? Teenage girls with black beard?” Donnie and I would look at each other with rolling eyes and think, “Just load in a dozen Snicker Bars and let us out of here. Trick or Treat!

Employment by conscription. How I fought the paper war.

2011-09-12T17:07:00.000-05:00

When I needed my early morning sleep the most, my Okie brother forced me into pre-dawn servitude. Let me explain. It went something like this: My older brother had a small insignificant paper route when all we Okies lived in East Los Angeles. No, it wasn’t the smarter, bigger Los Angeles Times. And, no it wasn’t the respected afternoon Mirror or Herald Examiner. It was a small bi-weekly rag mop called the East Los Angeles Tribune and Gazette. Mostly incidental worthless neighborhood news and lots of local grocery ads, five and dime ads, and drug store ads and cut out coupons. I’m guessing it had a circulation of about two or three thousand or so. Certainly a paper void of any interesting pictures. What few photos made it in to the paper were dark and shadowy? I like lots of pictures and lots of color. The E. L. A. Trib and Gazette had no color and like I said, few good pictures to examine. I never saw pictures of my neighbors and never saw a picture of a barking dog or flying airplane. Simply a boring miserable read. Well, I take that back. I never really read it. My interest was more in looking over the fuzzy photos. After all, I was only eight years old and rarely looking for a compelling story.

Now, it was bad enough my brother delivered a dorky paper. However, the prickly rub came when I had, by parental conscription, to get up at four A.M. and help him deliver his lousy paper. A paper, I’m almost certain, no one ever read. Subscribers just ripped out the coupons and tossed away the rest. But anyway, I was often dragged out of my comfy tiny bed to help my thirteen-year-old bossy brother toss the morning rag on people’s front porch. I had to do this mainly because I was related to him. Can brothers get a divorce? But anyway all of this done on foot. No bike. No over the shoulder delivery boy bag. Not even a homemade wooden scooter. Just carry an arm full of loose papers and carelessly toss.

What made it difficult, besides just having to walk the paper route, my brother wouldn’t spring for rubber bands. Rubber bands that kept a paper from exploding in to a fly away burst of paper wadding. However, my impatient brother quickly showed me how to fold and tuck the paper in to a neat little square folding and toss it like a Frisbee. But the trick was to get to the newspaper bundle at the corner of Olympic and Fairfield and get the paper delivered before six A.M. So, to do that we had only time enough to just pick up the bundle and deliver the darn paper unfolded.

Then to add insult to bad news, I didn’t earn a dime from this enterprise. I was working pro bono. Basically I was his personal grunt boy and pack mule. If I didn’t easily volunteer to go with him my brother would whine and then launch my Okie dad’s wrath onto me. But anyway, my Dad would sometimes come in at four in the morning and say, CHARLES! Get up and help your poor brother. Of course I am thinking I could make more money collecting pop bottles and rags on the weekends. Would my brother help me with that? Noooooh. Not on a bet. But I had no sonority and had no collective bargaining voice in my brothers newspaper business.

Then one day, our parents announced we were all moving to the next town to the east and my brother would have to give up his stupid forsaken paper route. Boy, was I ever happy. I almost wet my pants. So, take this paper and toss it! We-e-e-e-e

Do I want sand and surf or oily girls?

2011-09-12T16:15:00.000-05:00

You had your choice of sun and surf. Either Huntington State Beach or Huntington city beach. Huntington state was cleaner, fewer people, fire pits, and it cost a buck to get in and park. However, Huntington city beach was crowded, noisy, and that’s where the surfers and beach bunnies went to parked their golden brown oily bodies. So, how do you choose?

If you go to the beach with kids from church, Huntington State beach was the inevitable choice. If you go with kids from school, Huntington city beach was always the coolest choice. Loud, raucous, and unpredictable.

I guess I grew up on the wrong side of the moral issue. Some how I seemed to be pointed towards the state beach. “You might like it better there,” someone often insisted. Of course, when you’re only sixteen and naïve, you do as you are told.

It was getting close to Labor Day weekend 1960, and as usual all good Okie kids head for the beach in southern California. It’s what we did before school started. Sun, sand, surf, and sanctimony. Yes, we boys and girls from church trotted off to the beach like a million other southern California kids. And certainly going to the beach with the stern admonishment of “No mixed bathing.” However, roasting hotdogs and snapping towels at each other’s butt were the main activities. Simple, busy things to occupy curious minds away from scornful desires. So, we ate and swam and ate again. We were to swim far apart from each other. Boys did not go too close to girls and vice versa. If you get too close and touch each other, your transgressions might end up in the church gossip mill.

“Please boys and girls, keep a reasonable distance from each other.” So, our only recourse was to be sure our eyes were not noticed while scanning shape and form. Curve and protuberance. You know, satisfying each other’s curiosity about human anatomy. That’s why we all wore very dark sunglasses. Eyes could not be noticed on which part of the frame the eyes often lingered. Meanwhile, we boys and girls seem to dance around the warm sand. Shuffling to and fro, from side to side, and all the while maintaining a safe distance from each other and pretending to enjoy the beach party.

Being an Okie teenager, back then, I never really knew how body things worked. From what was told me by my parents and others I could have easily ended up in deep doo doo if I leaned too close to girls. Nonetheless, I wasn’t quite sure if the girl or the boy gets pregnant first if touching too much. Certainly I didn’t want to get pregnant. What could I tell my friends at school? So I pretty much kept my distance from those of the opposite sex. And for sure in fear of this horrifying and debilitating result. Only a tattoo would be worse.

Yes, I was clueless. No, I wouldn’t know back then how pregnancy came about if I even wanted to get pregnant. How does all that work anyway? So, do you understand why I didn’t go to the city beach? Those slick oily girls get way too close and surely I would break out in to sudden pregnancy.

“Please, please. Stay away from me! Quickly start a volleyball game! Help! I’m feeling pregnant. Call a lifeguard! Oh, yuck. I have girl oil all over me.”

I never got any phone calls.

2011-09-05T16:17:00.000-05:00

A few years ago after my dad’s passing in 2007, one of the many things we siblings had to close out on was canceling my late dad’s phone number and service. Phone number and service he and our mom have had originally setup back in 1948. Their first phone service they had arranged with Pacific Bell Telephone Company and were then assigned an alpha/numeric dialing code known as a phone number.

The phone number consisted of a name and a number. The prefix was Union. Union 1-5378. The telephone company thought it might be easier back then for phone customers to remember long phone numbers if placing a named prefix in front of the numeric suffix. Thus not needing to remember a long complicated string of numbers. It was so easy. So what had to be done when dialing was just dial U N 1 5 3 7 8. Only dialing the first two letters in the word prefix. Get it?

Now Of course, where my mom and dad originally came from back in Oklahoma, all they had to do when making a phone call was just pick up the phone receiver and crank the handle. Then ask the telephone operator at the phone office in town to connect to Aunt Minnie’s residence. So the phone operator just plugged in the right connecting cord plug to the right hole and Aunt Minnie’s phone rang. But so did a half dozen other phones ring at the same time on her party line. However, Aunt Minnie had a special assigned ring. Two shorts and a long ring. Designating this call is only for Aunt Minnie. Oh, really? However that only worked if a phone system had only a hundred or two phone customers. But when my mom and dad moved out to Los Angeles, the phone numbers increased by several million. Necessitating the caller to dial multiple numbers to reach the right party. Making it more complicated. Just too many numbers to remember. Therefore coming up with the prefix/suffix system. Get it?

Never the less back in Los Angeles, when we all moved a few years’ later about three miles eastward in 1954 our phone number prefix changed to Parkview. So it was Parkview 1-5378. Or, PA 1 5 3 7 8 and keeping the original subsequent numbers.

Then when the sixties came Parkview was converted to all digits and phone dialing became a numeric system. 721-5378 had remained my mom and dad’s phone number until their recent passing. Finally saying goodbye to the old family phone number. It was so sad to see those numbers go away after being in the family so long.

Now backing up a few decades and going back to the early 1950s. Inside our little East Los Angeles adobe house on Simmons Avenue, we had one phone. A black clunky mechanical rotary dialing instrument with a large heavy hand receiver. Probably weighing about twenty pounds or so. And all attached to the wall by a six foot hard-wired fabric bound cord. It was constructed from a black primeval Western Electric Bakelite plastic. The large double bell ringer could be heard five doors down from our adobe home.

But anyway, our single phone was located in a small breakfast nook adjacent to our smallish grease laden kitchen. A place where you could either cooks while you talk or talk while you cook. Whichever. Certainly not centrally located but it seemed to work for all of us at that moment.

Nonetheless, as a naïve Okie youngster, I don’t remember ever answering or dialing the phone. Maybe once or twice but not more than that. Can’t remember. This was back at my tender age of six or seven. I was not sufficiently schooled to confidently operate the talking device. I felt it my mom’s duty to operate the phone. I would certainly back away from it when it rang loudly. Answering and dialing was above my pay grade.

Later, and without too much warning, we Okies all moved into the postmodern world. Acclimating and upgrading our social skills. Being the sophisticated Okies that we were, my mom and dad surmised it was time to relocate my oldest sister out of the second bedroom. A tiny room, which also was occupied, by my youngest sister and older brother. Three siblings in one dinky bedroom was not practical for good brother-sister harmony. By the way, I myself was bedded down at that time in a small daybed in my mom and dad’s room. Which is a story for another time.

But anyway, my parents decided to move my older sister to the breakfast nook, which was veiled off with a heavy upholstery fabric Curtin. She was rapidly becoming a teenager and needed her space and privacy. She was noticeably becoming different than my younger sister. Meaning, you could see freckles all over my older sisters body. If you know what I mean. So, she was moved to her own digs in the nook.

Now this is where trouble began. You had here teen girl, telephone arms length away, and a heavy opaque privacy curtain. What were my mom and dad really thinking? It all started with a missing movable phone taken from the kitchen counter. Took by a freckled hand and drawn quickly behind the privacy Veil. Then there were low hushed secretive pig Latin phrases separated now and then with long pauses and rapid breathing. Breathing with frequent gasps and quivering whispers. This is not to mention nervous anxious feet stuck up in the air occasionally pounding on the nook wall while steeped in unintelligible communication. And how did I know this? My younger sister and I just happened to be outside the privacy veil on a few whispering occasions. Just minding our own business of course. Yeah right.

But the big and little of it all was, my older sister’s behavior Certainly had become the prototype model for today’s mumbling, messaging, texting, twittering, facebooking, and 24/7 totally connected teenager. A teenager intent on covert communications. A teen information exchange made away from prying adult ears and eyes. Yes, my older teen sister started it all.

“Tell mom about this today and you’ll be chicken fried snake tomorrow,” I’m sure my sister said back then to me. lol & grins 4 all. Thanks for calling and goodbye. Click! Buzzzzzzzz.

Summer would finally end with that back to school shopping craziness thing.

2011-08-27T19:08:00.000-05:00

Well, there was just one more thing to do after our summer vacation and before Labor Day weekend came. Back in the early 1950s prior to returning to school we Okie kids were always rounded up like a flock of red chickens, loaded into our family’s Ford, and mindlessly driven to Sears and Roebucks. Sears near the L A River in East Los Angeles.

Nonetheless, We were taken there for our annual fall fashion-shopping fling. And I casually say that width my tongue planted firmly in my Okie boy cheek. Never the less, yes, our back to school autumn outfitting. And, I just might add, moments for all to cherish. It’s not easy to forget early life suffering events.

Back to school shopping was a unexplainable Okie event. But first, just to clarify and give perspective, Sears in our little East L A town was nestled neatly in to the blue collar Boyle Heights neighborhood at Olympic and Soto Street. Just north of the famous Vernon meat packing district and the Union Pacific rail switching yards. One of my favorite parts of town. You can smell it before you can see it.

But anyway, The Sears building was a 10-story white art deco L A ancient icon that housed the Sears west coast catalogue distribution center and retail outlet. And by the way is now on a historical registry. But continuing on, it was aesthetically surrounded by more Sears’s big box warehouses and huge crowded parking lots. A place where I had later worked during my college years. One Christmas in the toy warehouse and one summer in the shoe warehouse. Boy what fun! I just couldn’t escape the place.

Never the less, on occasion on a rare clear and smogless 1950s day, the tower could be seen four miles away from our little adobe home. That is if you walk down to Olympic Boulevard and looked west. However, if you look west these days on Olympic, you almost might see the traffic light a block away. Yes, the smog has gotten worse.

Now, if the Chamber of Commerce were to describe the East L A Sears tower, it would go like this: A whitewashed building overlooking the majestic and mostly empty L A concrete river. The little known backdoor to the near downtown Los Angeles manufacturing and warehouse district. Come witness the splendor of this ten-story white squarish retail mountain. In the 1950s, the Sears tower was one of the tallests building in all of L A (for whatever that’s worth).

But back to my school shopping story. Our annual shopping spree would start something like this; Son! Put that down! Don’t touch anything. Don’t touch that either. I told you to stop handling everything with your reckless hands. Go over and stand by your dad

Now the end result of all this crazed madness would end up in buying a few incidental school items. Finally purchasing a pair of Roebuck jeans, some striped T-shirts, a pair of black sneakers, one pair brown lace-up Sunday shoes, and a less than satisfying hasty visit to the popcorn and peanut counter.

Now, it was at this juncture where the real story starts. It was at the Sears candy and nut counter, where dozens of parents and their busy chattering children crowded. You could sense the anticipation. Parent and child alike squeezed around the warm lighted glass displays nut bins. We small kids would be pressing noses and fingers against the warm salty display glass hoping for the best. However, at the peanut counter was where we Okie kids learned our mathematical fractions and division. Plus some sociological protocol. Why bother going back to school when mathematics and sociology 101 were right there at the cash register? And, for sure, mathematics that didn’t work in my favor.

“One-quarter pound roasted peanuts please,” my mom would mumble to the person behind the display counter. I’m almost certain she had never ever bought a whole pound of anything. Especially a whole bag of expensive roasted peanuts. Well, they seemed expensive to me. I would have to collect three-dozen pop bottles to pay for such a purchase.

Now, here’s where the mathematics worked against me. Someone might ask, how do four starving Okie kids share a quarter pound of roasted peanuts? Well, did you ever see four squealing piglets rooting at a feeding trough? First come. First serve. All in a pecking order. And, naturally, me being the youngest, I was last to dip in my smallish hand resulting in major disappointment. Barely coming up with a fraction of a fraction of the salted roasted peanuts. Most likely, one tiny peanut morsel. Once again proving nice guys always finish last. Certainly a study in family dynamics. If not statistical probability.

So, we would take our back-to-school treasures stuffed hastily into Sears brown paper sacks and head for the family car parked way out in the furthest parking space. Then all we kids would noisily climb up in the back seat and claim our rightful places. I would be shoved to the middle, doors would slam, and we all headed back to our little East L A adobe home. Often wondering why it took so much time to buy so little.

Oh well. There is back to school to think about. Another new schools year and another new teacher. In the fourth grade it was Mrs. Gregory. A slim trim fifty something smiling mostly kind woman. Certainly a great softball pitcher. Obviously interested in we recalcitrant children. Why? I do not know. Nonetheless, I liked her and she treated we kids well. But anyway, I hope the year goes fast. Come on Christmas! Can’t wait for that Sears Christmas catalogue. Come on Santa.

My fammily's annual blissful August vacation

2011-08-18T17:05:00.001-05:00

Where my Okie dad worked near downtown L A, August was his month to take off on our family’s vacation. And it was usually the first two weeks in August. My dad would have taken his vacation earlier in the summer but he was low supervisor on the sonority totem poll. Even after being on the job for twelve plus years, he still was low man. Mainly because his company had very little turn over. So to say the least he was still the bottom guy. Last one to go on vacation.

Never the less, our turn always came. We planned our trip, my mom fixed up and fried up all the traveling food, and we started packing. After everything was stowed and packed tightly in the trunk of our 1950 ford sedan, we backed out of our driveway and headed on the road to our parent’s motherland of Oklahoma. My mom, dad, my two older sisters, my older brother and myself were compress tightly in to our out of town bound car. A dull gray 1950 Ford four-door sedan. Heading for our annual Oklahoma reunion with the relatives and old friends back home.

For we kids, our seating arrangements were fragile and sometimes volatile. There was a pecking order we younger kids had to follow. My older sister and brother had first rights to any back seat windows. But first we kids must understand clearly the law and order of the road. My dad especially didn’t want any hooliganism coming from any part of the car. “You kids don’t touch each other, ya hear!” So, needless to say, I gladly sat on the front seat between my stern jaw dad and my soft arm mom. Easily falling asleep when the occasion presented itself. Just tell me any old story and I would conk out. Boink. I’m gone. Fade to black.

So this left My sisters and brother in the back seat wedged in-between paper sacks of baloney sandwiches, potato salad, and fried chicken. But since my oldest sister had sonority, my brother had to ride with the thermos jug of water under his feet. Leaving my older sister with lots of legroom.

Now, Quickly in to the car trip, my older brother and sister assumed there hard fought for positions. Leaving my youngest sister, hopelessly stuck in the middle. Which often resulted with her receiving many older sibling complaints and a few arm bruises.

Nonetheless, our traveling tribe of Okies would leave Los Angeles just after sundown Friday evening. Driving through the lower central California desert valley at night in order to avoid the sweltering desert heat. But, the net result with all windows rolled down would be mostly sweltering heat and sweat leaving our cotton summer clothing clinging to the plastic seat covers. Not to mention Okie kid’s skin sticking to each other. Remember, car air conditioning had not yet been invented. At least not yet for low end Ford cars.

The year was 1953 and Ford automobiles had only windows to cool down the hot car interior. They did have hand-cranked windows that rolled completely down. Down enough so that arms and feet could dangle out and catch the wind. Plus a few flying bugs. Ouch! Also, there were two air vents in front regulated by hand and always wide open.

So, at the outset of our annual trip, we would catch route 66 north of where we lived going east. We drove through Pomona, San Bernardino and then head southeast off Route 66 and headed southeast towards Yuma, Arizona. The southern rout to Oklahoma. Passing Palm Springs, Indio, the El Centro valley, The Saltin Sea, and cross the Colorado River in to Yuma by midnight. Arriving just in time to witness southern Arizona’s monsoon season. Rain by the buckets. Rain up to our hubcaps and beyond.

Not only did we drive through lots of rain but huge bursts of lightening. Lightening that constantly lit up the sky and ground in all directions. Striking almost everything with in twenty or thirty feet of our rolling ford. How it missed us, God only knows.

We also drove through blinding dust storms, shallow creeks, gravel roads, over very narrow rickety wooden bridges, through blistering desert sun, slippery muddy back roads, and seldom if ever stopped. My dad was a “drive-thru” kind of guy. Never stopping to eat at a restaurant or stay at a motel. He drove non-stop come ruts or high water. It’s just what Okie dads do.

You might be asking yourself, what kind of vacation is this? As you could imagine, four restless, wiggling kids, and two somewhat cranky adults in one small air condition-less car. All rode almost non-stop to Wilson, Oklahoma. Only Texaco gas stations were our family’s escape and oasis. “You’ve got two minutes to drink that Coke and put it back in the coke rack and jump in the car. You hear me huh?”

To say the least, these summer road trips were occasions of Okie endurance and the will to survive. So making our way through baking deserts heat, cool foggy mountains, and slogging across the humidity laden cotton fields of west Texas, was our Okie predestination. It’s what we did year after year after year. Never mind taking the train or bus. We loved doing vacation the hard way. It’s what made we Okies tough. Yeah, right.

So here came our final Nile marker. After driving through Wichita Falls Texas, we drove north across the narrow bridge over the Red River. A bridge so narrow if you met another oncoming car, one of us would have to back up to let the other get across. But anyway, winding up driving into the homeland of Wilson, Oklahoma. A rural farm town located near gas and oil producing parts of the southern red dirt Plaines. A declining microcropolous filled with red necks, rough necks, railroad workers, store keepers, Ma and Pa this and Ma and Pa that. And a generous assortment of worn out retired folks.

Never the less, we all were glad to arrive safely and with little trouble. Yeah, right. “You kids stay away from the water well. Just don’t fall in and…”

Cue music:

Oklahoma where the winds comes sweeping down the Plaines…

Fade to black.

The train that got away

2011-08-11T18:17:00.001-05:00

Trains and railroading to this Okie boy, was often a curiosity. Especially since we lived on the other side of the tracks. Growing up in East L A, our little adobe house on Simmons Avenue was about a half mile north from the Union Pacific railroad tracks. Just standing out on the sidewalk in front of our house, I could count from afar train after train. Dozens passed by our East L A neighborhood each day. Passenger trains. Freight trains. Tank cars, box cars, cattle cars, hopper cars, coal cars, switch engines, Streamliners, dome cars, baggage and mail cars, and yet even more that I had forgotten. All passing through and going to who knows where.

But what really held my curiosity was our nearby East Los Angeles train depot. All we had to do was to cut across two large vacant lots behind the Willard Battery factory, cross Ferguson Avenue, and there you were. At the train station. Shiny yellow Streamliner Passenger trains, passengers, redcaps, baggage and mail. All in one place. All fascinating to watch. And a wonderment for a grade school Okie boy. Where are the people going? Where are they coming from? Never found out. Just watched and wondered.

As an Okie boy or just as any boy, I received an electric train for Christmas. I got up one Christmas morn and surprise, there it was. My dad had set it up and was running before I had wakened. Certainly a Christmas prize for a young grade schooler in 1953.

And speaking of grade school, our second grade class took a field trip to ride one of the many Union Pacific streamliners from our East L A station to downtown L A Union station. Something likes a fifteen-minute ride. But fun and interesting none the less. We school kids sat in a Club Car as a U P rep explained train travel. And, our travels ended at Union Station downtown Los Angeles. A fun but short ride.

But back to our little East Los Angeles neighborhood railway station. Many times my friend Donnie or my brother would hike over on the dirt footpath to the little station. The station was your basic suburban train stop except it had local architecture. A desert sand colored adobe building with the classic red clay tile roof with black rot iron metal fixtures. Displaying the early California Spanish look. Possibly built in the 1930s and incidentally was occasionally used as movie scene backdrop for a few 1940s B motion pictures. Just the typical station where suburban Angelinos back then caught the train to downtown.

Inside the station was a long counter where train passengers would purchase tickets and check their bags. Possibly one or two station workers were handling these transaction. The rest of the depot was furnished with long church pew looking benches where passengers or greeters waited in anticipation of arriving trains. Very basic and utilitarian. But the big benefit inside the depot was a refrigerated water cooler. A water cooler just waiting for we thirsty grade school boys.

Through the doors leading outside to the departure and arrival area was a wide concrete concourse parallel to the tracks leading up to the train tracks. Passengers would gather in this space when trains arrived. Waiting behind the yellow caution line. Waiting with great expectation for either climbing on board the Streamliner or greeting incoming passengers.

A few feet back from the tracks and down the way was a tall metal poll with semaphores and signal lights. Flagged in position to tell the incoming train engineer whether or not to stop for taking on passengers or mail. Standing down the way a bit would be a Red Cap and his wagon. A gentleman wearing a red hat with a large wheeled cart moving passenger’s bags and mail sacks to and from the waiting train and station. Why he wore a red cap, I never knew. But it did look cool however.

Now, after numerous visits to the East L A station from my house, I recall one train arrival above all the rest. So it was, I was standing out on the arrival concourse and here came a shiny glossy yellow Union Pacific Streamliner coasting into the station area. People gathering, Red Cap waiting in position, horn blowing, headlight flashing, and me with eyes glued on the yellow engine. There was just something about the appearance of the Union Pacific trains. Always shiny with red painted horizontal double stripes down the sides with black bold lettering spelling out Union Pacific Railroad. A sight I have witnessed dozens of times. Just a marvel of mans ingenuity. Impressive, magnificent, and a real train just in front of my eyes. How cool!

So, I edged up to the yellow caution line to get a closer look. The train stopped and was taken on passengers. Then I was startled by a mans voice coming from the opened cab window of the train’s engine. A pleasant looking man leaning out the cab window wearing striped bib overalls with a matching striped engineer’s cap. Complete with red neck kerchief.

“Son, the engineer shouted. Would you like to come up in the cab and take a look, he offered. To say the least I was stunned. I froze in place. I didn’t quite know what to do. So I shook my head and backed away from the caution line. I am almost certain the engineer was puzzled as well by my rejecting his offer. Perhaps eve his feelings were hurt because of my turning him down on his request.

But to this day, I don’t know why I refused his offer. I guess because I was ten-years old and saw too many movies at school about kidnappers and evil people. Well perhaps. However I could have kicked myself for turning him down. Any kid my age would have been up the latter of the cab before the engineer finished his generous offer. What a knucklehead I was. Well maybe my response was because I was an Okie growing up in Los Angeles. Life is just filled with difficult decisions for a 10-year old Okie boy in L A. Oh well.

Cartoons made the Saturday matinee worth while

2011-08-02T17:19:00.000-05:00

My Okie mom and dad wouldn’t take we kids to the movies. Even though my dad was a big Tom Mix and western movie fan, he seldom if ever took we Okie kids to the motion picture theatre. I’m sure they had good reason. Four Okie kids to the movies? Some would rather have their own appendix taken out with their butter knife. However, we once did go to the wide screen Cinerama showings in down town Hollywood. But, only once. Certainly a marvelous treats but never repeated.

So it was left up to someone else to put up with and haul us kids to the cinema on a regular basis. My aunt Elsie was the one who first volunteered and drove us kids to the picture show. But, I must admit she didn’t tolerate much nonsense. No roughhousing. No giggling. No smacking of lips while eating popcorn. Don’t touch each other and her “do and don’t” list was endless. She had red hair and was an old maid. Certainly a poor excuse for being mean.

So, from the time I was about eight or nine years old, our aunt Elsie began taken my siblings and me to various movie houses in the East Los Angeles movie corridor. An area where there were about six or eight movie theatres up and down Whittier Boulevard. Otherwise known as Downtown East L A. A eating, shopping, and entertainment area frequented before there were malls and multiplexes.

But, as theater entertainment progressed some of us kids discovered the Saturday morning matinee. So later, when about age 10, my friend Jim and I went without adult escort to the Saturday morning matinee. Sent off by adults smiling and with no regrets. ”Good riddance.”

The two of us walked from Jim’s house for about two or three blocks to a big round top barn looking structure called the Garmar. The theater was named after the owner’s children’s. Gary and Mary. Or was it Gar and Mar? Not really sure.

But anyway, the theater seated about four hundred wiggling, giggling, shouting, running, bumping, popcorn dumping, Coke spilling preteen kids. However, back in those days most theaters had several teenage ushers to suppress the kiddie matinee exuberance. “Shut up you guys or leave the theater!” To say the least, customer service was not to our liking.

Never the less, what kept my attention from the very beginning were the two or three Warner Brother Looney Toon and Walt Disney Cartoons shown at each matinee. A wacky laughable moving comic strip shown before or in-between double feature movies. Simple hilarity shown at each movie showing and all this lasted up until I was about age thirty. Then, with no explanation, the cartoons went away. It went away along with the double-featured movies I guess.

I miss those wacky and unpredictable cartoons. Way back when, there were at least two 5-minute cartoons shown at each movie showing along with two feature length movies. In addition, there was one intermission and for the uninitiated, an intermission was placed in between the two feature films. The screen would go blank and the house lights came back on. A time to get your Juju bees and milk duds.

Then the intermission ended with fading lights and the next WB cartoon started. Cartoons welcomed by a cheering throng of pre-teen happy and sticky kids. Cheering kids quickly changing to giggling and clapping kids as the cartoon progressed. Soon whistling and mouth noises began. Before you knew it, Porky Pig would appear after the traditional WB musical closing tune. Porky would always say, Tha-tha-that’s all folks.

Now, here’s my point. What happened to my cartoons? Why are there no longer any cartoons shown in today’s theaters? What is the big deal? There’s just something about a well-written, well-drawn entertaining cartoon. I’m not talking Saturday morning two-dimensional flat looking TV Hanna-Barbarra cartoon, such as they were. I’m talking Warner Brothers Looney Toon hand drawn three-dimensional looking cartoons. Road Runner, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etc. All with their unique personality and foibles.

And there were those wacky voices and sound effects. Mel Blanc and his incredible character voices were a major part of WB cartoons production. As you may recall, Mel did all those insane voices that kept we kids laughing hysterically. Pair Mel with the genius producer Chuck Jones and their, my friends, is an incomparable cartoon production duo. This is also not to forget the production quality from Disney.

The cartoon music also was first class. The Real strings and horns and drums recorded in a recording studio using real people. Cartoon music was produced with real acoustic instruments and was never duplicated since. And for sure not synthesized.

I sincerely believe the WB and Disney cartoons had an emotional-psychological tranquil effect on the child’s brain. The music was NOT frenetic like today’s computerized mish-mash. But, rather easy going fun and frolic. I wouldn’t call it escapism but rather more like a mix of Hawaiian punch served under a palm tree on a warm sandy beach. Relaxation therapy. It made one feel oh so good.

Pink Panther where are you? Yosemite Sam, I hear your voice. Road Runner gives me a beep beep. Porky Pig, I loved your stutter. And, I miss you all. Please come back and save our children from the dummed down TV cartoons.

One cannot expect too much when there's much too little. Huh?

2011-07-29T13:05:00.000-05:00

Growing up Okie in East Los Angeles helped formulate my somewhat limited sociological Okie boy perspective. Certainly formulating expectations and drawing rational comparisons with proper conclusions. For example, it was my firm belief everybody in the world had a Maytag wringer washer. My mom had this wringer washer so it would only make sense that everybody in the world had a wringer washer. Right? Made perfect sense to me.

In addition to our modern home amenities, we also had a bathtub and a toilet just down the hall. Therefore, everybody in the world must have a tub and toilet just down the hall. Right? Well, it again made rational sense to me. After all how could you ever discover if Ivory soap floats without experimenting in a bathtub or toilet? Certainly Empirical science at it’s best. I was just a budding genius. Right?

But, here came my big summer vacation discovery. Certainly helping me to understand rural society and it’s surrounding civilization. Never the less, when I was about five or six years old back in 1950, my family and I jumped in our old 1947 Buick. Traveling along with a trunk full of over stuffed well-worn suitcases, an old antique water jug, and food boxes filled with fried chicken and sandwich fixings. With as much as we could pack in, we all left for the old country. Heading off with great expectations of a wonderful summer adventure.

We headed down to the California southern central desert trundling along in an air conditionless car. Heading on to sweltering Yuma Arizona. Then onto Tucson. Still heading east to Las Cruces New Mexico. Through the west Texas town of Lubbock. Then finally turned north and crossed the muddy Red River heading north to Wilson, Oklahoma. Driving on to my folk’s old stomping grounds, as they called it. A wide swath of red prairie dirt dotted with mostly scrub oak and broken down wooden windmills. Well, maybe a gas station or two and a hamburger joint as well.

But anyway, shortly after arriving and settling in at our relative’s rural homes, I discreetly made it known to my mom I needed to go pee pee. “Where is the bathroom,” I whispered. She quickly fetched my older brother and told him to take me outside. “Outside,” I responded to myself. Do they pee outside in this part of the world? And possibly have to pee behind a bush maybe? Just like we did on our summer camping trips? Maybe someone is presently occupying the toilet down the hall? No? Is this what you do here in Oklahoma? Outside? How caveman like. Oh dear.

But, anyway my brother hastily escorted me outside, walked up a red sandy worn footpath, and pointed me in the direction of a tiny weathered wooden chicken coop looking shack with several holes up high in the door. Hmm? That’s a bathroom? It looks more like a backyard shed for lawn mowers and fertilizer.

“There,” my brother said while pointing with a matter of fact pose. Go in there and be sure to hit the hole. And if you need it, there is a Sears and Roebuck catalog for your basic necessities. What? Sears catalogue? Is this where they do their mail order? Why would I want that in this place? Maybe it just for reading or light entertainment. Looking closely at electric fence chargers and some pictures of girls and boys in their underwear for sure didn’t seem to be all that appealing while toileting. How embarrassing! But in retrospect, this could have been the basis for a new reality show.

But back to the real reality, once inside, it was mostly dark with no light switch on the wall or no bulb overhead. Wasps were buzzing and getting dangerously close. Before I could construct more thoughts about this place, a strong putrefying odor burned up into my nostrils. Holy Cow! Someone forgot to flush. Hmm? Where’s the flush handle? Good gosh all mighty, look down that hole.

My instant gut reaction was to quickly turn around and kick the door outward. Then run as fast as I could and find the nearest tree do do my business. Surely this can’t be true. I must be having a really bad nightmare. My goodness gracious. Is this what they do in 1950s modern Oklahoma. I must admit this has evaporated all my imagined expectations of Oklahoma. My first lesson in assuming too much.

Then it dawned on me. Certainly kicking in my first attempt at abstract thinking. My folks and I must have come from a more advanced society than I had witnessed here in rural Wilson. Were we some kind of advanced intelligent life from another planet perhaps?

Ah ha! Somebody is pulling a fast one on me. What is this place anyway? Mom! Dad! When do we start back to our home? This is not what I expected. Where is my American Standard white porcelain toilet? Where is my roll of T P? Please, please take me home mom and dad! I need to go to the bathroom. Can’t you see me holding up two fingers?

Choose your words carefully. Mom is listening.

2011-07-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

I was running like the fury up the front cracked driveway at our smallish East L A home screaming as I ran. “mom mom,” I yelled out. I hurriedly peddled my Feet up the steps, glided across the scuffed red painted front porch, and then angrily shoved open the glass front door banging the door knob up against the inside chalky plaster wall. A mindless reaction I am sure was told hundreds of times to never do again. But anyway, I stood there for a half second catching my breath and said, “Jimmy’s a big fat jackass,” I told my mother in a loud declarative voice. Stating this conclusion as if I were the sole innocent victim of some horrific playground abuse.

Then she suddenly stood erect and glared straight down at me. Her eyes were wide open with eyebrows arched high in unbelieving horror. But I continued my innocent plea and said, “That stupid jackass Jimmy Vasquez called me a butt face. How could he say that to me? I’m his best and only friend.

But anyway the pejorative word, “Jackass” was often tossed about by many of my playground buddies. And, certainly this schoolyard invective was just a little misunderstood word flipped about by some of my bumptious grade school boys. A seemingly innocent word I had sometimes exchanged on the playground without much thought back in 1952. But, certainly only used in self-defense or whenever necessary. Which ever came first?

Although, before I could cool my own heated anger and continue to construct a reasonable defense for myself, my mother gripped my arm like a courtroom bailiff and rushed me into our undersized 1940ish bathroom. She stopped me right in front of the washbasin that hung under our cracked mirror medicine cabinet. Then she firmly clinched the back of my skinny Okie boy neck like a dirty gravy stained dish ready to be scoured briskly. Before I could say anything else, a white bar of Ivory soap suddenly and without a reasonable hearing, entered my mouth in mid sentence. Barloop-gag-spitooy!

“Mom,” I looked up at her and shouted with surprise. Then before I could offer another gagging, bubbling word, again, for the second time, the pungent tasting soap bar entered my mouth like a well-aimed torpedo. Blaa-pooy-aarrgfoop. Good thing my front teeth were missing at the time.

“I’ll teach you how to talk young man,” my mother uttered with a clinched teeth grimace. “No one talks like that in my house,” my mom proclaimed with the stern jaw of a Supreme Court justice. We are moral people from Oklahoma. “Anybody who talks ugly will certainly get his nasty mouth washed out with soap.” You understand me son? At that moment, I’m almost sure I heard the judge’s gavel strike the courtroom bench. BLAM!

So, in defense, I nodded my head vigorously but I didn’t quite understand her mouth-washing concept. But to placate my mother’s rage, I gave her the response she wanted and expected. “Yes-yes,” I assured her repeatedly. I would say anything to prevent the soap from reentering my foaming mouth. Harrg-spoop!

Once again, a lesson learned after the fact. However, it took me a while to make the connection between washing my mouth out with bitter tasting Ivory soap and her making a solid case for not using the forbidden expletive, jackass. Certainly a sociological label arbitrarily chosen by my mother as being and sounding evil. “I oughtta box your jaws!”

Never the less, a word strictly prohibited in or around our house. “All the other boys in my second grade classroom, I thought to myself, always used the rhetorical declaration jackass to rebuff a playground barrage of mortifying adjectives.” “So what did I do or say that was so wrong? Why was my tongue and throat being assailed with sour tasting hand soap? Gag-o-gulp-o-barf!

Now, I say, what does soaping out one’s mouth had to do with well-established schoolboy phraseology? How is white Ivory hand soap useful in correcting one’s choice of playground vernacular? Is there a chemical-to-brain catalytic reaction I didn’t quite understand? Butt, to avoid my mother’s punitive implementation of hand washing soap, I decided to pay closer attention to my bad word list. Nonetheless, no matter how you could adjudicate this word usage controversy, Jimmy Vasquez is still a big fat jackass. Na-ne-na-ne-na-ne. Just don’t tell my mom I said that.

My Summer recycling and banking business 1951.

2011-07-25T13:20:00.000-05:00

Back in 1951 and as I had mentioned previous to this posting, as a nare-do-well Okie kid of 7-years old, I use to collect empty glass pop bottles. And as also mentioned before, it was to redeem and collect the bottles in exchange for monetary payment from our local Ma-Pa grocery store. Yes, I was a collector of molded stained glass. An investment that paid great dividends. Two cents for a 12-ounce bottle. Five cents for a quart tinted molded glass beverage urn.

But, to Locate and retrieve these valuable archeological artifacts of blown silicon was not all that easy. One had to rummage with bare hands through back alley trashcan. Digitally excavating in and around unknown substances. A time honored process to find the prize collectable. “Ah-haa, a Coke bottle. Look at that baby would ya. Add two cents to my accounting ledger.”

Then if rifling through refuse containers back in the alley didn’t yield the desired result, then we would resort to going around to the front knocking on our neighbor’s door. Knocking sometimes as early as 7:00 AM on any given Saturday morning. “Do you have any empty pop bottles you don’t want sir?” SLAM! I seldom understood why people were so emotionally attached to their pop bottles that they would react so angrily. So, my business partner and I would just go on to the next neighbor’s house until desired results were achieved.

Now, to add to our cash earnings, we later discovered a business that would take in newspapers and rags in exchange for cold hard cash. Paper and rags measured by the pound. So, once again my business partner, Donnie and I went a knocking on neighbor’s doors. “Sir, are you finished with this morning’s paper? Can me and Donnie have all your unused newspapers?” SLAM! “What did he say? Kiss my what?”

Well needless to say, Donnie and I made a reasonable amount of spending cash collecting and scavenging. And I mean spending. We spent it all. All on comic books, candy, pop, and bubble gum. Gone. It all went away as fast as we got the money.

Next, here is my point, our joint venture had difficulty keeping a cash reserve. We didn’t have any plans to keep back or save money in our piggy banks. However, I had no piggy bank to keep cash in. Therefore how is one to keep a cash reserve in one’s possession? In our pockets? Nope. If we kept currency in our jeans pockets, it would quickly go away in a flash. Spent. Gone. Thus yielding empty pockets.

So, later, when I was in the third graded a lady came to visit our school. She was from the Bank of America. She spoke of savings accounts and how a boy or girl could send in a bit of money in a heavy paper string bound envelope along with a bank passbook. The money went to the bank each week on “Bank Day” and deposited in our very own account with our name on it. Then the envelope along with the passbook would be returned with the most recent cash entry and total amount saved to date. How cool! I had a bank account in my name. I am now somebody.

Now, here is the rub. Back then and up until I cashed out my bank savings account, I had earned a handsome return on investment. Four point two-five percent. A phenomenal return on my saved money. And this was a huge return on a total investment of about fifty bucks. A total amount saved fifty cents at a time over a span of 8 or 9 years.

Four point two five percent. You couldn’t get that rate of return on today’s savings if you put in a hundred thousand dollars. You would be lucky if you got one percent. Just one percent.

So, what happened to that bank that paid me such a handsome dividend? If I had a bank that paid me 4.25-percent today, I would go back to collecting bottles and rags. Sounds pretty good to me.

The roler coaster that almost took me down into Hell.

2011-07-23T12:50:00.000-05:00

Was there ever a time and without much thought you would have strangled your older brother? Well, my answer would have been …probably. Almost. Just about. And, yes I was provoked to revenge enough to be moved to that terminal end. But good thing for him I was much smaller than he. He was 13-years old and I was 9.

What almost drove me to this horrific thought was his dare devilness. He would do things I wasn’t inclined to do. Nine-year-old Okie boys normally don’t subject themselves to such risk. But if I didn’t agree to follow the lead of my older brother he would call me chicken. I didn’t want to be called chicken. Neither did I want to be called Big Fat Chicken as well. So, the only way to call his bluff was to give in. Do what he dared me to do. I use to walk away from his crazy ideas but the older I got the more I had to prove my Machoness to the world. So, I had to prove to him I wasn’t a Big Fat Chicken.

But anyway, there was this one event I could have easily strangled my older brother over. It begins like this. One of our favorite places to visit in the summer in Los Angeles back in the early 1950s was the amusement park in Long Beach called the Pike. Mostly a fun and “pleasure” place for gentlemen from the Long Beach Navy yards near by. Not only were there park rides such as bumper cars, Fun Houses, shooting galleries, Farris Wheels, freak shows but, also several gentlemen bars and the obligatory assortment of tattoo parlors. Plus several other establishments we will not talk about here.

Going way back, I can remember the first few times we visited the Pike. It had sat almost at the waters edge inside the Long Beach/L A harbor breakwater. At a younger age we would visit the sandy beach, jump and dodge the small six-inch breakers, wade in the low surf pools, and basically get wet. Getting wet in the summer was what a young Okie kid was supposed to do anyway. That and eat watermelon of course. Such joy.

Now, just north on the beach sitting out over the water, was a very tall white wooden framed structure called the Cyclone Racer. The Cyclone Racer was a speeding roller coaster. Advertised the tallest, fastest, and scariest coaster ride west of the Mississippi. A very tall structure supporting miles of narrow rolling track. A track, which moved a chain of six or eight roller coaster cars. Each car holding about five or six amusement park riders.

From a distance you could see the coaster cars climb to the highest part of the wooden structure moving at a snails pace. Click and clacking as it slowly climbs to the top. So far so good. But, once the cars crested the top and starting angling downward, they would fall straight down at an ever-increasing rate of speed. Then when it hit bottom the roller coaster would shoot straight back up going faster than the eye could possibly follow. All of this craziness certainly I would not necessarily volunteer to do. Besides, I get dizzy when up high like that. And I also become a bit queasy when hitting bottom that fast. I don’t really care for the uneasy feelings. I really didn’t want to die anyway. Especially at such a tender age. And as you may or may not know, legend has it that many years ago the very last car was rounding the 90-degree turn and flew off the track with four riders aboard. It fell hopelessly into the ocean beneath the roller coaster structure. But, it had been reported to never been found or recovered. I didn’t wish to be a part of that.

Never the less, here is where the dare comes in. My sociopath brother dared me to ride the Cyclone Racer. No thanks, I said.

Big fat chicken, he said.

No I’m not, I said.

Yes you are he said.

Oh Ya, I retorted.

Yeah, he replied.

And the shouting exchanged went on and on without resolution. So, the only thing I could say or do was to agree to ride the roller coaster.

But, you have to go with me, I demanded.

Okay, he said.

So, here I was stuck in this agreement with no possible way out. I would have loved it if only space aliens would have come down and sucked me into their flying saucer. But no such luck.

But anyway, we got our tickets, walked up the concrete ramp to the loading platform. I was thinking this would really be a very good time for a major earthquake. Bringing down the entire white wooden framed structure. Creating a good excuse for not riding. But, that too didn’t happen either.

So, here came the roller coaster cars. Each car had a front seat and a back seat. The seat backs were very high with padded side panels. Today they call these head restraints. A device used here on the coaster car long before car manufactures caught on to this innovative idea. They were there to keep you from whiplash or just to restrain your brains from falling out. A good idea.

So, we climb in and then a long metal bar was set back in our laps to keep us from flying forward out into the shark infested ocean. Pleas please not me. So there, we had sit in our little coaster car. Ready to move forward into the dreaded unknown. Then my last wish. Wishing the mechanical device that runs this thing would suddenly shut down. Stop cold. But, again, no such luck.

Suddenly I felt movement forward. Then we started to head what seemed like straight up. Looking straight up at the noontime sun. Slowly. Click by click. Something likes counting down to an execution. Click. Click. Click. Up it slowly went climbing higher and higher.

I dared to glance over outside the car. Holy moly! It looked like we were about a mile high. People and cars looked like dots on a map. I quickly sank back into my seat holding my mouth. Why me, I thought. I’m too young to die. Please please. Let this be a bad dream.

Then I noticed the car in front of us angling downward. Then our car was leveling off and angling straight down as well. Our speed was increasing at a phenomenal rate. The wind was rushing my face so fast I couldn’t shut my mouth. I opened my eyes and we were pointed almost straight down. We were dropping like a rock. Screaming faster and faster. People in the car front of us were holding their arms in the air. Why? Are they crazy? My brother insisted I too hold my arms in the air.

“Are you mad, I yelled at my brother.

We must have been going about a hundred miles per hour. Fallen downward. Downward I was sure to a certain death.

Before I could scream bloody murder, we hit bottom and instantly shot straight back up. Like we were shot from a cannon. Leaving my stomach in my mouth. Arg. Gag.

Then were flying along at break neck speed. Good thing we had head restraints or my head would have surely flown off by now.

We took corners at least 70-MPH. Twists, turns, up, down, sideways, up again and then down. Banging my head against the side and back padded panel. All in mere seconds at lightening speed. All parts of my body bumped, shoved, twisted, and compressed against the side and back restraints. All in one fell swoop. I’m sure I must be dead. No one could survive this. Not even my dare devil brother. I am certain of this.

Finally we all came to a slow coasting stop and none too soon. Slowly cruising back into the loading and unloading platform. So, the roller coaster torture was at last over. At this point I discovered I was still alive and certainly a miracle for sure.

Once the coaster car had come to a complete stop, I had malevolence thoughts of murdering my bigger older brother. Revenge! I’ll get back at him some how. But, before I knew it my brother had jumped out and disappeared. Lost in a crowd of screaming and laughing amusement park goers. Good thing, I thought. He would be road kill by now. Maybe. But not. He was still bigger than me. I was just a 9-year old short Okie kid. A lone survivor. Just plain Okie and glad to be alive.

Easy to drive. Easy to work on. Easy to sell. Why?

2011-07-20T14:24:00.000-05:00

Simplicity, economy, and passenger comfort must had been the marketing and advertising verbiage written back then on black and white brochures. Folded brochures printed to describe the all-new 1937 Ford V8 sedan. An automobile designed for the growing Middle American young family in the late 1930s. Aerodynamic, plenty of horsepower, and still yet, simple. And most of all, easy to work on and repair. Very similar to the Ford my mom and dad drove from Oklahoma to California back in 1941. Which began the Okie Without Borders stories. But, that’s for another later posting.

Nonetheless, one evening twenty years later back in 1957, my Dad, brother, and myself squatted down on our garage floor and intensely studied the disassembled V8 engine. An engine hanging from the overhead rafters. We all observed the extracted car motor from a 1937 ford as we closely inspected the moving parts. Gently touching as if surgeons prepping a patient for heart surgery. A partially disassembled flat head V-8 engine was hanging down from an overhead chain hoist in our southern California home’s garage. Pistons, rings, carburetor, and more were spread about the garage as we carefully took apart, cleaned, and replaced parts in an earnest attempt to overhaul the aging Ford’s engine. Three sets of oily hands worked about the engine block like surgeons intent on resuscitating an ailing body. We later repeated this same process on two other occasions. As they say, we later got good at it.

The almost antique Ford was my oldest sisters first car that she gave up due to multiple experiences of embarrassment. She said her boyfriend would, from now on, drive her where she needed to travel. Totally abandoning this fine motor machine. A machine Henry Ford built. Well, he and about ten thousand others.

But anyway, leaving this marvelous specimen of mechanical engineering to our disposal and loving care. It became our assumed responsibility to nurture and rehabilitate this fine aging car. Love of machine and road is what drove we guys to our bonding of man and engine. Something like a dirt farmer hugging his beloved Farm-All tractor. No love so great.

But back to our story. Let me try to describe this quality automobile. It was painted in a dull royal blue and I can only surmise, it was very shiny when brand new. Its grillwork had layers of horizontal chrome ribbings that tapered downward to the bottom. Down to a hand crank hole. And on the nose of the blue hood was a rocket shaped chrome handle that released and unlocked the hood. It also had original hubcaps, which were inscribed with the V-8 symbol and were also painted dull blue. My personal favorite feature of this classic car was its rubber ribbed covered running boards. A great place for a junior high Okie boy to stand and ride and catch the wind in his hair.

Continuing on, this exceptional car had no tares or loose stitches over its tannish colored mouse fuzz upholstery. Plus its same colored headliner was still in place. It also had a cool 3-speed floor shifter and the front windshield was hand crankable outward for easy air ventilation. But the crowning feature was its car radio. An old tube-type Philco radio that worked up until the day we sold the car.

Here is where I begin to cry. Oh my, I could knuckle my Dad for selling this classic automobile. It would now be worth a fortune. It had no dents or major mechanical problems. It could had easily been restored to its original condition. It just needed painting, a little engine work, a little break work, and hopped into and driven.

However, had I shown more interest in this magnificent machine, back when I was in junior high, I could have easily driven it to high school. I know girls would have thought I was stone nuts. Surely, avoiding me like a crazed nerd gone whack-o. But, where oh where was my presents of mind. I guess on girls instead. Darn me anyway!

But back to reality, today, a fully restored 1937 Ford sedan would easily fetch a six-figure return on its original investment. My sister originally paid only 100-bucks for this now 70-year old antique car. She saved for months as she worked at the movie theater box office. Yes, she only paid one hundred American dollars for this beautiful machine.

Never the less, my Dad sold the 1937 Ford to some irresponsible kid for almost nothing. He may as well given it away. A reckless kid who chopped it in to pieces and turn it in to a low-riding chrome plated and flaming hotrod. Looking something like a four wheeled Cruise Missile. How very depressing!

Nonetheless, how short sighted we were back then. Well, it was really my dad’s decision to sell the mighty machine. He just wanted to get it out of the backyard. It was sold or rather given away for only 100-dollars. Ouch!

I could have had it! I had it in my grasp. It was one day sitting in our backyard driveway waiting for some nare do well junior high kid to take notice. But, I didn’t. It slipped through my fingers like gold pieces dropped into the street gutters. Gone. Poof. An investment like no other. An investment manager’s dream. Money tossed to the wind.

I could have cried had I known to. Someone please, kick me in the butt!

Just me and aunt Elsie on the road again

2011-07-18T15:06:00.000-05:00

It’s that time of the summer once again. It’s V A C A T I O n. Time to set sail exploring the vast American wilderness and outback. School is out and no more homework. Free at last. Yes, free at last.

It was this month 51-years ago I drove my old maid aunt from Los Angeles back to Wilson Oklahoma. A small lazy southern Oklahoma rural town just north of the Red River. I had just received my driver’s license. So, the two of us shortly there after drove off riding in my aunts orange 1956 Mercury sedan. A longish looking vehicle somewhat reminiscent of an orange aircraft carrier with side-view mirrors. Without a doubt, an automobile a teen boy wouldn’t want to be seen driving. Especially is teen girls were watching. I would rather be lying in a bed of poison ivy instead.

But anyway, my aunt and I eventually headed southeast down through the California southern valley desert and headed for Yuma Arizona. And let me explain, her car had no air conditioning. She wouldn’t allow me to play the radio. And, I was instructed to drive as long as I could stand it. Plus, this was before most Interstate highways were paved. “Why the heck did I agree to this torture?”

Now, trip was a slog with some risk to it. No, it wasn’t that I just got my license. No, it wasn’t because of the roads. Roads were in pretty good shape. It was more like the volatility of my aunt’s temperament. Short fused. Angered without due cause. And accepted no responsibility for her own explosive nature.

Also to explain, she had red hair, had never been married, and lived according to her own whim and caprice. She never had any husband or children to please or cater to. Most of all she would come and go at will. All she ever had to do was show up on time at work. All other times were her own. And just don’t get in her way. If you do, you my friends become the target for her unyielding wrath.

So, some how we manage the long road trip without too many roadside explosions. Just got lucky, I guess. Plus not too much yelling or condescension. I just drove and kept my mouth shut. All the while absorbing all her prickly accusations. Why risk an explosive situation over being wrongfully accused of being a irresponsible, block headed teenage boy. Or worse, just being An Okie. So why should I risk the radioactivity and fall out just to save my own pride and dignity?

But anyway ladies and gentlemen and to explain here, this Okie boy is going on vacation one more time. In the meantime our weekly posting will either be brief or possibly none at all. Don’t worry, hopefully I should return shortly and back at journalizing my wretched Okie past. Thanks very much for visiting my journal, Okie Without Borders.

You might explore some of the earlier postings listed below.

Happy vacation,

Chuck Ayers

Read my daily blog, The Red Dirt Post.

Go to:

http://www.chuckayers.com/reddirt

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Sit here on this bucket of ice boy.

2011-07-18T14:59:00.000-05:00

Crank 'til ya cain't crank no more.

Certainly I am not disparaging the significants of Memorial Day. But back when I grew up in Los Angeles usually Memorial Day was the beginning of Beach going and ice cream making. Oh sure, we visited gravesites and paid homage to our ancestors but not until we traveled back to Oklahoma later in the year. Oklahoma was the place all my ancestors were laid to rest. We visited Oklahoma later in the summer and to show our respect, we cleared off weeds and brambles from the gravesites.

But anyway, Memorial Day weekend was the official beginning of the beach and sunburn season. In addition to beach going, Memorial Day was also the beginning of ice cream making season. An even more important event and celebration.

My parents were big time Okie ice cream makers. You know, wooden bucket, hand crank, ice, rock salt, and all the trappings for making ice cream. A tradition started back when they lived in Oklahoma in the 1930s and early 40s. And, certainly continuing the necessary Okie grunt work to get to the big pay off of ”Homemade Ice Cream.” This is certainly an effort not for the faint of heart. Or is it, faint of Arm.

So, the tradition had continued when they later moved out to California. Absolutely summer was not complete and over without a big ice cream church pick nick in the park near the beach. Tubs and tubs of ice cream were made. Fresh banana, fresh strawberry, and vanilla. But, we never really got in to chocolate ice cream. Chocolate was just a bit too exotic. Not easy to make. Besides ma and pa loved the fresh fruit kinds of ice cream. So, that’s what we did.

My ma would cook up all the vanilla, eggs, cream and or whatever it took to make ice cream. For some reason I never knew how to formulate all that. It was beyond my job description. You know. Being an Okie boy in L A already came with its complications. Let alone trying to concoct ice cream recipes. My assigned specialty was knowing how to pile in the ice into the bucket, pouring the rock salt, and crank until my arm fell off. Well, that’s just an Okie expression. I still have my arm. I did the grunt work while my ma got the glory.

Actually, it was my dad who took all the glory. He acted as ice cream making choreographer. He was the one telling everybody what to do. When to do it. And, when to stop.

Gentlemen start your cranking! Then, let the scooping begin. I’ll take a scoop of each, thank you.

Darn me, I was watching the wrong thing.

2011-07-18T14:45:00.000-05:00

Had I paid attention, I wouldn't have ever burned.

As a naïve Okie teenager growing up in East Los Angeles, I had made my

share of visits to the coastal beaches of Southern California. Which also meant I had my share of blistering sunburns as well. Probably too much time spent lying on the sands day dreaming and not enough time body surfing and riding the breaking 3-foot waves. But instead, I was frittering away many hours shirtless while asleep on my very used and tattered beach towel. Hmm? People go to the beach to sleep? How Okie.

Now, what’s seems funny (if you want to call it that), is I had several intense burned many many times. From about when I was six years old and up until I was over thirty, I was no stranger to persistent sunburn and it’s painful results. Why? Was it because I was Just an Okie? Was it because I had fair skin? Did it have anything to do with never using any sun oils or burn creams? If an Okie can’t eat it or drink it, why buy it. Or did I just spend too much time mindlessly daydreaming at the beach? Possibly spending way too much time counting all the soaring seagulls in the salt air? Yes! All of the above.

But anyway, Okies usually don’t go to the beach. To the cow pond maybe. Nonetheless, Okies don’t have the where with all and a sense of First-Aid to prepare themselves for long stretches at the beach and what to do if sun burned. No oil. No coco-butter. It just wasn’t part of a typical Okie’s daily routine. Okies are only prepared to handle red neck burns. “Splash a little cold bacon grease on your neck and you’ll be just fine boy.”

I can’t count how many times I headed off to the beach with no preparation. No suntan oil. No skin cream. No sunglasses. No hat. Doing or not doing all the things you should expect a California kid to do. We were out of our red dirt element. Our parents did not instruct us how to handle beach protocol and the required etiquette. It was like me taking my favorite goat and entering it in an Arabian horse show. Totally ignorant of what to expect.

You would think after all this time watching others apply various sunning creams to shoulders, backs, and legs I would had easily figured this out. Especially when I observed girls and their meticulous applications of body oils. And, they say girls are more aware of these kind of things than boys. So, I obligated myself to closely watch the ritual of spreading oils across tanned girl skin. Many many hours spent watching girls bringing their towels, bags, suntan oil, hats and skimpy swimsuits. It all seems so methodical and planned out. Plus, many hours watching girls help each other apply suntan oil on their backs. Long thoughtless moments watching girls lie on their tummies with glistening oiled backsides. And certainly many hours watching girls run and splash in to the surf. Splashing with their well-oiled bodies.

You would surmise that I would had earlier surmise it takes a little preparation before visiting the beach. Was nothing learned from all this girl watching after all these years? Well. I finally realized I was watching the wrong things. How stupid of me. Darn!

Me and Wal Disney

2011-07-18T13:09:00.000-05:00

Me and Walt Disney

I believe it was 1957 and possibly in the springtime. It was a bit cool so I was wearing a light cotton beige zipper jacket. The weather was somewhat mild and a very blue sky and mostly clear. A day possibly painted by Norman Rockwell.

I was standing there alone at the curb waiting for the trolley to approach. So, here it came. And, as usual the horse drawn trolley was coming to a stopped at its turn-about at the end of Main Street and stopped near the Main Street train station. There it held in place for any new boarding passengers.

The trolley driver Quickly jumped down from his driver’s seat, moved forward to the front of the well-groomed mostly brown horse, and started adjusting the horse’s leather harness. As he was making his adjustments, I stepped over and gave the man my ticket to ride. The driver took my trolley ticket and continued to adjust the horse’s harness. So then I climbed aboard and found a seat to the right side of the trolley.

Wait a minute! Trolley? Main Street? What am I talking about anyway. Well first of all, there is no Main Street in my hometown. and certainly there have never been any trolleys. So, what I am talking about is Disneyland. Yes, Disneyland located in Anaheim California and inside the Disney theme park is a festively ornamented Main Street with a horse drawn trolley ride near the main entrance. The trolley ride turns around at the town square near the train station at the end of Main Street USA. Then rolls back down Main Street to the turn about at the other end near Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Well anyway, back to my story. I stepped on board the Main Street Trolley after giving the driver an “A” coupon. Good enough to ride the trolley back in those days. And in those days you paid per ride. But, instead of handing money to each ticket taker, you would buy a coupon book of rides valued at different prices. The A coupon being the cheapest. The E coupon being the most expensive and good for the Jungle Ride or the Bob-sled Matterhorn. Just as an example. And by the way, this was my umpteenth time visiting Disneyland. Including the first visit on the day it opened back in 1955.

Mean while back to the story. While sitting idle, the driver was still adjusting the horse’s bridle and keenly focused on that project. But for me, I was the only one sitting in my hard wood bench seat patiently waiting for the ride to hurry up and begin. The trolley had about five or six rows of empty bench seats, so I took a seat about two rows back from where the driver normally sits.

I had sat all the way over to the right side and was glancing about the Main Street area. A full of life place where many shops and eateries were busy with Disneyland visitors and lots of happy faces.

Squealing, chirping, giggling children. Children pointing and tugging on parent’s hands. Almost every adult had rustling paper bags of mouse-memorabilia souvenirs. Kids running about with Mouse ears atop their twirling and bobbing heads. All visitors walking happily through an invisible shroud of appetizing aromas. Aromas like sizzling hamburgers, popping popcorn and hot corndogs.

Just complete magic in one well planned out happy kingdom. And parent and child alike, experiencing the Disney fantasy. All are just big and little kids. Wowing and Gee-whizzing all over the place.

Now here comes my “vision of the Madonna” moment. As I was sitting in my space on the trolley, I was glancing Out of the corner of my left eye, I noticed two well-dressed gentlemen climbing aboard the trolley and sat next to me. Both were dressed in expensive business suits looking a little out of place but appearing to be okay guys. Now, the one gentleman who sat next to me, had cigarette in hand and was pointing about the Main Street area and narrating to his companion what was going on in this section of the theme park. Obviously he knew what were happening here and maybe a park manager or area supervisor perhaps.

It suddenly came to me to take a quick glance at these two gentlemen’s faces. Certainly didn’t want to be sitting to close to some FBI agents or plain clothe policemen. Not that this would matter. But you can’t be too careful.

Nonetheless, The one on my far left looked like any downtown L. A. businessman. Well fitting suit and polished shoes. However, The gentleman in the middle sitting next to me with dark wavy, shiny hair and a dark well-trimmed mustache was certainly someone I recognized in a fraction of a second. Holy jumping Jiminy Crickets! It was Walt Disney himself. The main man. The godfather of fun and fantasy. The man who single handedly invented animated fun.

Holy fairy godmother! Yes, I said Walt Disney. Almost every kid idealized uncle. Yes! The creator of my microcosm. How did I know this was really Walt Disney? I had watched almost every Disneyland program since it’s beginning. I knew his face. I watched almost every Mickey Mouse Club program since it’s started. I remember his easy smile and comforting voice. I was in love with Annette Funicello. But, what does that matter? I’ve read hundreds of Disney comic book. I really enjoyed Scrooge McDuck and Goofy. I certainly had absorbed Mr. Disney’s DNA by constant sheer osmosis by just holding a Disney comic book close to my face. Reading and watching all those fanciful cartoon creations. I know who he is and have without a doubt memorized his distinguished face.

But anyway, here I sat motionless on the trolley with mouth eyes wide opened staring straight ahead in disorienting shock. To the casual observer, I must have looked traumatized by some space alien. Mr. Disney was still talking with his touring companion and all I could think of was Holy Cow. What do I say? What do I do? Under such circumstance, I don’t think I could have even remembered my own name.

However, while I still was in a foggy stupor and couldn’t believe my eyes, Mr. Disney had then motions to the left and the two gentlemen stepped off the trolley. Also, I guess, the horseman never noticed Walt Disney’s presents on his trolley as well.

Anyway, I thought how could this be? How could such a monolithic icon be sitting right next to me? Sitting on my same bench seat and right next to my left arm. The same left arm I still have today. Holy moly!

The next question in retrospect is how was it I had no presents of mind back then to ask for Walt Disney’s autograph or just say “Hi Mr. Disney.” Or, “I like your place here.” But anyway, I didn’t even remember the rest of the trolley ride. I must have looked like one of those people frozen in place by a demented evil Vincent Price sculptor. I am pretty sure people standing on the street as we passed by saw me with my mouth and eyes wide open as if in total frozen shock. Pale faced. Comatose. Quick, call 9-1-1! This guy needs thawing out. Get your emergency blow torch quick!

My Okie family Blond Furniture Showcase

2011-07-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

Our new 1954 L A home. A Blond Furniture showcase.

Our home décor. From Pre-Californian to Post-Okie. Sears and Roebuck near the L A River loved my mom. We bought almost everything from Sears. Jeans, tools, clock radios, toys, mufflers, curtains, and more. And certainly more and more.

It was 1954 and we just moved into our new yellow stucco house on Sixth Street. It was brand new and had one and a half baths. Three bedrooms and a one and a half car garage. They said it was a two-car garage but we needed a half car to fit in next our whole car. But anyway, it had all hardwood floors and a brick fire place. We were the envy of our block. Or maybe just the envy at the end of our block.

So then, moving day came. We moved in and placed our sparse but modest Okie furniture in each room. However, our rather large living room looked a bit bare. All we had at that time to fit in the living room were sofa, chair and a weird table. Our sofa was a sawed in half sectional. Having been once upon a time just one sofa. A strange sectional reupholstered with a bright red gnarly material. A material usually found on the floorboards of most Nash Ramblers. Plus a matching stuffed chair also reupholstered in an equally gnarly material but in Breen. Both item most Okie looking. We had no help from a interior designer. Who needs design consultants when we had the help of the clever reupholster guys.

Then the third and last item was a mahogany table. A table higher than a coffee table or end table. It was oval with swirly-curley legs. Art deco maybe. But anyway a table that you might find in a cheap museum and used for ceramic statuary of the younger thinner Elvis. Not really sure what it was used for. It didn’t seem to match our post-Oklahoma décor. Too formal looking for our bunch.

Never the less, my mother saw this dearth of furniture as a furniture buying opportunity. Even though I did not see or hear what happened, I know for certain what happened. She most certainly told my dad if he cares to have company after church on Sunday he should definitely buy all new furniture. It was as simple as that. Case closed.

So, an easy payment plan was opened at Sears. Then my mom and dad gave it a moments thought then bought all new living room furnishings. With their best Okie wisdom, they thought they would try all blond wood furniture. Blond? Wood? How about all veneer.

Let me first remind you, the hard wood floor was a light brownish oak color. Slat boards running the length of the house. Hard wood from the living room all the way backs to the back bedroom. And again, light colored hardwood.

Needless to say the blond wood furniture was also light colored with a completely different tone. Having a slight hint of creamy beige. While the floor had an almost light red oak color. Never the less, light wood on lightwood. Okies don’t believe in color contrasting.

But anyway, the new blond furniture had sharp square corners and most modern. And, modern for about two and a half years. Then it turned into Okie modern. My mom was so proud.

We had one rectangular two tiered end table which we sat in-between the gnarly red sofa. A larger rectangular coffee table. Most susceptible to coffee stain. A square corner table with a half second level. We sat the corner table in the bay window next to our old rocker. After all, we didn’t need a corner table in the corner. We did need a corner table in the window with a 3-way lamp atop.

Shortly there after came our blond 17-inch Sears Silvertone swivel TV set. A big square metal box painted in Blond. The TV sat upon a blond veneer revolving table so one could direct the TV in any direction. However, the TV only worked for about six months and fell into disrepair. It started flipping, rolling and leaning diagonally. Most difficult to watch. One would get vertigo just watching. Not fun. That thing went away pretty quick.

Next was the dining room furniture. And should I say it? Yes, it was blond. The dining table was a blond veneer expandable to accommodate at least eight chairs. Even though we had only six chairs. The chairs were upholstered with some matching gnarly multicolored mish mash tweedy material. I don’t remember exactly how it looked. Then there was the matching blond buffet with gold handles and knobs.

Now, what got my attention after a few years of just blond furniture was the all-new blond stereo. And it too came from Sears. Its main cabinet had a three-speed record changer and a A M and F M radio. The main cabinet and the external speaker both had huge 12-inch woofers and an assortment of tweeters and mid-range speakers. Had I tried it, I could have blown out all the windows in the house. But, I didn’t. What I did discover on the radio was Jazz. There were about three or four L A FM stations on the FM side of the dial. And one or two were all jazz stations. What a discovery for a teenager!

But anyway, my mom’s passion for buying furniture went on from there. Next was white French provincial with marble tops. The coffee table was a long oval marble top, which had sagged at each end and looked like an upside down surfboard with white French provincial legs. And French provincial this and that. Later came a more finished look. Dark wood with routed finished edges with inlaid glass top coffee and end tables. All these decor changes were mile markers of how my Mom’s Okie decor progressed. Progressing into a more sophisticated look.

Well, it certainly beats my mom and dad’s pre-Californian hand made crate furniture in an Oklahoma house with no running water or electricity. Don’t ya think huh?

I feel most faint when eating watermelon in public

2011-07-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

I feel faint when eating watermelon

Eating the summer delicacy, known as watermelon, is to Okies, as fine vintage wine is to the French connoisseur. Watermelon, to the native Okie, is something respectfully coddled, gently sniffed, and ritually indulged in. All the while, eaten carefully while regarding the delicate red aromatic nectar of the fruit. Taking extra care to lightly sample the texture with the discriminating Okie pallets. Oh, really?

However, Spitting watermelon seed doesn’t come to me easily. Even though the ritual runs in my family, I feel a little uncomfortable purging seeds from my mouth and on to the ground or possibly in to a formal dining table china dish. Gaaroon-foop-tittle-clink. Something like a cotton-picking machine extracting cottonseeds out down onto the floor.

My honorable parents, being from southern rural Oklahoma, almost always went out of their way to purchase watermelon every summer season from our local super market. And, this summer ritual as far back as I can remember first began way back when I was a toddling lad growing up in late 1940s East Los Angeles. Watermelon is part of our cultural roots. It is by default, our family heritage.

Now, Selecting a prize melon began with the red dirt folksy way of thumping melons. With the index finger flipping in rapid succession against the outer green shell. This process of determining ripeness was based on sharpness of sound or dullness of sound as you thump. Sort of ripeness sonar for testing watermelons. If you hear a dull thud, ripeness is assured. If you hear a higher pitch sound, something like Cmin7, one octave below middle C, the melon under percussive analysis is not ready for the picnic or dining table. So, continue to thump more melons. Thumpidy-thump-thump-thump.

After the melon is chosen and sufficiently chilled, it would be subjected to a merciless long and sharp butcher knife. They would slice it lengthwise, cut off a long wedge of red meted melon, hold it like an ear of corn, and proceed eating it directly with face buried in to the melon. Eat a little and then spit a little. And, you repeat the process until only the light greenish rime is left in your hands.

Then, faces would be awash with reddish melon juice and random seeds stuck to cheek and chin. Fortunately, most of the time, this method of melon devouring was done either out in our backyard or at a less observed city park. Most often at our annual Okies days at a large park near Long Beach.

This method of facial red juice baptism was not that unusual of us as members of a former rural Oklahoma family. Slurp-slobber-spittooy. And of course there was the spitting seed challenge. How far can one spit a seed. Needless to say it takes practice.

Never the less, this is what I fear the most. I am fearful of people watching me, I am positive that someday soon; The UK Royal Secret Service will come and kidnap me. Then forced me to sit at the British Queen’s royal linen covered dining table and partake in a dinner of high ceremony. Certainly eating nervously with Her majesty. Elegant dining with royal dining etiquette. Something I know nothing about. You know, be aware and careful of how regal repast is engaged in. Do I lay the linen napkin on my lap or stuff it down my tank top? Certainly use the right salad fork and finger bowl. Don’t talk with your mouth too full. Her royal highness is watching for all miss-cued table faux pas and she is keeping notes.

“Oh, pardon me sir, the Queen wishes to serve you a royal slice of watermelon. May I remove your dinner plate with those hideous sucked dried chicken bones? It is suggested by the queen you indulge in the melon with just your face with no fork or fingers.”

Huh?

“Yes. You sir. You must be an Okie, are you not? Yes, Therefore, you must then easily behave like an Okie. Most likely an Okie stepping right off the melon truck. The Queen should like to observe you eating watermelon.”

Huh?”

“Yews. You sir, are the evening’s entertainment.”

Raise the curtains. Light the lights. Watch the Okie spit seeds on the linen tablecloth. Fade to black into a complete faint. Kerr-plunk! “Does anyone know CPR?

“Yes but not really. I’m not touching him. Drag him outside.”

So as the result of this watermelon phobia, I never eat watermelon. I won’t touch it. Just push it aside when presented with a big slice. Please excuse me, I feel faint. Fade to black.