When I was a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s living in northern California I didn’t walk a mile in the snow to school but I did walk a couple hundred yards to catch the school bus. When it rained, Mom made me wear one of those yellow rain jackets with those cool clip snaps and hood. I even had those rubber boots you wore over your sneakers. It was fine though, because nearly every kid on the bus had the same thing on.
Mom knew all of my teachers and they knew her. When I got “lippy” in math class, Mr. Joy made me come to the front of the class, bend over his desk and he would swat me with a homemade wooden paddle. I still remember that paddle, because Mr. Joy was also the woodshop teacher and I helped him make it. Back then, it wasn’t worth going home and complaining to my parents that a teacher spanked me. Complaining would only increase the odds that I would get another spanking. Although, I must confess, I can only remember my father bending me over his knee once in my whole life and yes, that was after he had handed me his pocket knife and told me to go cut a switch. The reason for the spanking? I have no idea but I’m certain I had it coming.
My weekends were made-up of self-entertainment. I had a BB gun at the age of eight. I can be accused of killing anything that stood still long enough and wasn’t more than 10 feet away. I had toy trucks and caterpillars. I built a lot of roads and hauled a lot of dirt and logs. We had a railroad track behind one of our houses and I learned from my older brothers how to put my ear on the track to hear if a train was coming. If a train was coming, I would put a penny on the track so when the train ran over it, the penny would flatten out and become three times bigger. My bike was my best friend. We went everywhere together. In the morning, after breakfast around the table (usually homemade pancakes and a tall glass of milk), it was typical for me to leave the house and not return home until dinner. My bike took me to friends’ houses, the school for shooting hoops, catching grounders or racing the bike through the hallways. It took me to the community pool, to baseball games, to the movies (didn’t even lock the bike up) and to the local RX where I could sit at the counter and have a cherry cola!
During the summer, when little league season had ended, I would spend time with Grandpa on his 75 acre ranch. I learned a lot about animals, irrigation, hunting and driving. At the ripe old age of 11, Grandpa would let me drive his old jeep pickup around the fields. When I wanted to go hunting he would give me one bullet at a time. Our deal was that I would have to show him what I had killed before he’d give me another bullet. That taught me to really focus before pulling the trigger. It made me a pretty good shot!
Sometimes on the ranch, I’d saddle-up the old mare. She and I would go spend the night up in the hills. Grandpa would pack a can of Chile or beans for my dinner. I’d build a little fire to warm the dinner. For water I would bend down and put my face in the creek and drink away. The water was cool, fresh and tasty.
Most evenings at the ranch I’d sleep in Grandpa’s bedroom and we’d listen to the Giants play on the radio. These are great memories.
When I reached the eighth grade, Mom got sick. So sick, that Dad moved her to Hayward, California in the Bay Area, so she could get better medical care. I stayed behind in Yreka, all by myself to finish the eighth grade. Dad sent money to me every few weeks in order to buy food and a little extra for movies, candy and a cherry cola here and there. I always felt like I was alone but in reality, all of the neighbors in our little trailer park were watching over me. I didn’t realize that until much later. Looking back, I realized that I ate more dinners at the neighbors than I did at home.
When I graduated from the eighth grade Dad sent enough money to me to buy a greyhound bus ticket to get from Yreka to Hayward. I’ll never forget my two hour layover in downtown San Francisco. This would be my first real exposure to urban life. The greyhound station was huge. In Yreka, there wasn’t really a so-called station. You caught the bus in front of the Yreka Inn. I recall being in awe at the bus station; at so many of these big buses, all lined up in one place. The station was cold and filled with all kinds of people. Some that looked pretty scary; long dirty hair, tattoos, old clothes, and some didn’t even have shoes on. The station had an odor I had never experienced. My most vivid memory is that I wanted to leave. According to my ticket, I would be catching bus 36 and it would depart at 11:30 pm. I kept a close watch on the time and located bus 36 well in advance. Translation, I wasn’t missing that bus.
Now, living in Hayward, I entered high school at Tennyson High. That school had more kids in the freshman class than all the classes combined at Yreka High. We didn’t catch a yellow school bus to get to school we rode the public bus to school and it cost .50 cents.
During my freshman year, there were at least five major food fights in the cafeteria. These were violent. After my first experience, my game plan was to jump under the table and hide. We also had one active shooter event. This was 1969. I hid inside my locker which wasn’t all that bright.
We had a lot of different groups in the school, the blacks, the Hispanics, the jocks and of course, the druggies. There were lots of drugs that I had never been exposed to until then. I didn’t really know what they were but I surely knew that people smelled funny and acted weird. I kept my distance, not because I was smart but because I was afraid.
One day between classes I was in the bathroom and a Hispanic kid came in. For no reason whatsoever, he started pushing me around and (I assume) calling me names in Spanish. Not knowing any better, the country boy in me unleashed on him. I left while he laid on the floor crying. I was shaken up and scared. If this would have happened in this day and age, I suspect I wouldn’t be around to tell the story. That very same day, all the kids were outside waiting to catch the bus when four brown berets (Hispanic gang) ganged up on the wrestling team captain. He was a big, bulky kid. He nearly wiped them all out and quickly became my hero.
I took a drama class at Tennyson High. This was my favorite class and remains my favorite of all time. The classroom had its own stage, curtain and dressing room! One of the girls that I became (sort-of) friends with came into class one day, looking really bad. She leaned over to me; eyes nearly closed, smelling to high heaven and said, “I’m so stoned.” I had no idea what she was talking about. I just smiled.
Dad rented a lot in town where he was selling firewood. He had moved two of the little bunk houses we owned, when we were logging onto the lot. These cabins are where the workers would live in the woods until the logging jobs were done. I remember one day while exploring the lot, I went inside one of the cabins and found four hippies living there. Scared the hell out of me. I ran over to my brother and told him what I had found. He went over to the cabin, yanked the door open and proceeded to throw the hippies out by force. What was I doing at the ripe old age of 13? Crying like an eight year old. Again, if this had occurred today, I’m guessing that my brother would be in jail and the city would have evicted the old man (dad) from the property.
Mom was getting worse. Before school had started at Tennyson, during the summer of 1968, Dad shipped me off to stay with Aunt Fern and Uncle Herold. They lived in Downey California (Los Angeles area). They had kids just about my age. This red neck country boy was now in the middle of the melting pot. Having said that, this was one of the best summers I ever had growing up. Uncle Harold was a big Dodgers fan and took me to several games. Just a few blocks from their house was the local YMCA where I could go and get into a baseball game, play ping pong or play around on the monkey bars. After dinner, my cousin Randy and I would often find ourselves in a street baseball game right in front of the house. Disneyland was only a short 30 minute ride away and Cherry Beach was about the same. I spent the summer going to baseball games, playing baseball, going to the beach and visiting Disneyland. Who wouldn’t like to spend a summer like that?
Mom died the following January of cancer. Dad, my siblings and I all drove to Colorado to bury her next to her Mom and Dad.
One memory of Mom was a time when she and I drove from Yreka to Delta Colorado to attend a funeral. It was summer time, it was very hot out. We were crossing the salt flats in Utah when suddenly the oil light came on in the car. Mom pulled off to the side of the road and shut the car off. She got out and opened the hood of the car to see if the car had oil. It did not. I was sitting the car this whole time. She walked around the car a couple of times and then looked back under the hood. I was 10 years old. Frustrated, she opened my door and yelled, “Are you just going to sit there or try to help me find out what happened?” I got out of the car, not having any idea of what I was supposed to do. All I knew is that it was hot outside. She showed me that the dip stick showed there was no oil in the car. She said all of the oil had drained out. She pointed to the line of oil on the road where she had pulled over. Still not knowing what I was supposed to be doing, I started to follow the oil line as if I were a cowboy tracking the bad guys. I followed the line for serval hundred yards until it stopped. Guess what? Lying in the middle of the road, right where the oil line stopped was a bolt. I picked it up and ran back to Mom to show her what I had found. She took it from me and with a huge smile on her face she said, “That’s the oil pan bolt that keeps the oil in the engine. Crawl under the car and see if you can find a hole where it goes.” I did and sure enough, at the bottom of the oil pan was the hole. I screwed the bolt back in. Now all we needed was oil.
An hour or so went by until a man and his wife in a pickup pulled over to ask if we needed help. Mom explained what had happened. The man crawled under the car and tightened the bolt and then proceeded to pull 3 quarts of oil from the bed of his truck. He poured the oil into our car and we were back in business. Mom tried to pay him for the oil. He wasn’t having any part of it.
When Mom told this story she always praised me for saving the day. I’ll never forget it. It taught me two things. First, even if you don’t know what to do, do something, anything and second, don’t be a lazy ass.
My opinion, we truly do have two different worlds to live in, right here in America. I suppose both worlds have good and bad aspects but kids growing up in one or the other have differences. Differences in how they grew up for sure. In some ways I think the rural life teaches you to be more independent and self-reliant. I also think because those towns in rural America are smaller, more people know each other and look out for each other. People know their neighbors, know the teachers, know the local Sheriff, the gas station owner and the Chamber of Commerce President is likely your best friend’s Dad.
My one year in the Bay Area at Tennyson High was the worst year of all my school years. I can honestly say I didn’t have a single true friend. I never felt safe. Perhaps that’s only because I was a fish out of water. I certainly hope kids who grew up there didn’t feel this way. If they did, how horrible would that be? All I know is that I went from feeling like I was somebody, to being a “nobody” overnight.
These two worlds still remain today, and I believe that the differences are greater than ever. The folks in the big cities can’t understand why the folks in the little towns across America cling to their guns and religion and those folks in the rural areas don’t understand why the city folks don’t care about these things. Not to put all people under one tent, I don’t mean to do that. I can assure you, Aunt Fern and Uncle Herold went to church every Sunday and somewhere, locked up and hidden away, they had their guns too.
If I had to raise my boys today, I’d certainly choose to do so in a small rural town but I’d be sure to expose them to the tall buildings and city streets of urban America too.
I am not sure if there is a point I am attempting to make here but, if there is one I guess it would be that all of us would do each other a great service by simply understanding that we have grown up in different surroundings leaving us with different points of view. While we share our America citizenship, we won’t always share ideals.
