In 1951, I was just five years old when I was diagnosed with astigmatism by Dr. O. Righellis O. D. here in Arvin. I remember the first comment on my patient card was that I was continually getting car sick. I had to go to his office, which was located on Bear Mountain Blvd. just opposite from the Arvin Congregational Church at north “B” street, once a week for eye exercise training. My right eye had become very lazy. Its view on the world was so out of focus that I was only using my left eye. I got the “four-eye” nickname very early in life.

 

Back in those days glasses were made from real glass and my lenses were very thick and heavy. Finally, Dr. Righellis found a source for plastic lenses for glasses that were far more expensive than glass, but they were lighter. He talked my mom into buying me the first pair ever sold in Arvin. We picked them up on a Saturday morning, right before going over to the Canterberry’s house for a birthday party. Because the fitting had taken so long, I was late for the party that was being held in their backyard.

 

Everyone was in the backyard trying to spank the birthday boy. He had grabbed one of his birthday presents, a baseball bat, to defend himself. Marvin had backed up to the edge of the house and was swinging the bat back and forth to keep his attackers at bay. As I was coming through the house, I heard all of the yelling and commotion and figured I was missing something good, so I ran through the kitchen and burst out the screen door just as he swung his bat my way. He struck me squarely across the eyes as I exited the doorway.

 

The impact knocked me back into the kitchen and broke my new glasses. The lenses cut me all of the way around both eyes and gave me two black eyes. There was tears and blood everywhere. Dr. Righellis later told me that had I been wearing my old glass lens glasses, that I would have been permanently blinded.

 

In 1960, as a freshman at Arvin High School, I went out for the football team. I played the position of guard and tackle on the “C” class team in practice and chief benchwarmer during the games. I knew I was chief, because they gave me the uniform with the Number “1” on it. As I remember it, we lost every single game that year. During football practice one day, we were having a practice scrimmage. As soon as the ball was snapped and I blocked the player opposite me, my right plastic lens on my glasses popped out of the frame and immediately disappeared into a sea of grunting bodies and feet. All of which were wearing football cleats.

 

I dropped to the ground and frantically tried to get everyone to stop, so that I could find my lens before it got broken. But to no avail, they could not hear me and continued to push and shove. Now, even back in those days, I was in the situation where I needed my glasses to find my glasses and my search was not going well. Finally, Coach Lukehart whistled the play to a stop and several players tried to help me search for my lens. We simply could not find it. It had totally disappeared from the face of the Earth. Finally, coach Lukehart said we had to continue practice and he motioned me to get off the field.

 

We had been practicing hard for more than an hour and so we were soaking wet in the Arvin afternoon heat. When I stood up, I felt something icy cold touching my belly inside my football jersey.  Sure enough, there was my lens. It had fallen down the neck hole of my loose fitting jersey and since I had been on my hands and knees all of the time frantically searching, there it was, undetected until I stood up. I popped it back into the frame and continued with football practice.

 

Later that year, as a member of the AHS swimming team, I was at the Arvin Community Swimming Pool where the Arvin High School swim team met for practice and their home competitions. Coach Klinger was barking for everyone to get into the pool and start practice. As the girls ran out of their locker room one of the girls screamed that her contact lens had just popped out her eye and was lost. Everyone stopped and got down on their hands and knees. We searched the rough concrete deck to no avail, even though none of us had ever seen a contact lens and had little idea what they looked like. Roy Carlos even brought a broom over to sweep the area, but was told it would ruin the hard lens.

 

Hard contact lenses had just been invented and cost well over a thousand dollars so this was a big loss. She began crying because she knew that her parents were going to be mad at her for losing her new contact lens. I remembered my football practice experience and told her the story. I then said, “You don’t suppose ….?” Despite my best offer to help her search, she and two of the other girls ran back into the girl’s locker room. They came out a few minutes later, all happy. The errant lens had been found, a little higher than I had found my lens in football practice. While I was the hero that saved the day, not only did I not get to participate in the search, but I did not even get a kiss for my efforts. Such was the plight of a unappreciated, geeky, four-eyed kid throughout my high school days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arvin’s first community center did not have a roof. As a matter of a fact, it did not have any walls either. It had trees. I am referring to the DiGiorgio Community Park. In the 1950’s, the park was many things to everyone in the community. It was a place for reunions, weddings, receptions, church gatherings, revival meetings, movies, swimming, baseball, basketball, football practice, roller-skating, Recreation Center games and of course long afternoon naps in the shade.

 

Many families celebrated their Easters and had their Easter Egg Hunts there, followed by family reunions or picnics, where they would reminisce of births, passings, wars fought and fish caught. Anyone that was passing-by was usually invited to join the party. Most of all though, just laying back on the cool grass, listening to the birds chirp, and the butterflies flutter, as the clouds passed overhead made life worthwhile. We met our friend after school to play there, or to challenge each other to fist fights to defend the honor of our brothers or sisters. The park was in the center of everything. You identified where you lived in Arvin, in relation to the park. If a friend was coming over to play, you met them halfway, “at the park”. 

 

We kids use to swim and body-surf in the flood irrigation, lawn watering ponds, long before there was a swimming pool in Arvin. One time, Mom and Dad were taking me to Little League softball practice. We turned off Haven Drive onto Myer Street and had just passed the “Easy Way Market” when my Father saw three young kids trying to catch a very wet and forever-mad gopher that was stranded on the berm between two adjacent ponds of water. The kids were closing in from both sides with their hands outstretched ready to grab their new-found pet. The gopher was standing on his hind legs chattering at his attackers.

 

 My Dad, saw this and hit his horn for a long blast, he then slapped on the brakes, threw open the door and he ran across the flooded pond, yelling at the kids to get back, as he gave the gopher a full football field-goal kick across the pond. He then gave the kids a stern lecture about trying to catch wild gophers, while still standing in 9 inches of water. He then slogged back to the car, still parked in the middle of the street, with his door wide open and cars going around us. I don’t think I ever saw my Father move that fast again his whole life.

 

The Recreation Center building was home for Boy Scout Troop 97, where we met weekly and I learned Morse code. Once while out in the park at night, we were practicing our Morse code, using flashlights to signal back and forth between teams, one of the scouts noticed that there were flashlight signals coming from the Bear Mountain hillside above “The Cross”.   DOT – DOT – DOT (S), DASH – DASH – DASH (O), DOT – DOT – DOT (S), (S-O-S). This is the universal distress Code (SAVE – OUR – SHIP meaning “HELP!!). The scout, seeing this, signaled back and the signal again returned. They ran inside and got the leaders who also signaled and got a similar return signal. Two of the Leaders with several of the scouts went up onto the mountain and found a family stranded with their car broken down, and they were able to rescued them. We heard all about their adventure at our next meeting, where the husband who had been stranded with his family, was present as a guest to say; “Thank You,” to all of us.

 

We also learned knot-tying and most of my outdoor skills that I have been able to amaze my kids with, every time a knot is needed or trail is to be found. During the summer you could check out checkers, chess, Chinese-checkers and backgammon sets. We played ping-pong and pocket-pool. It was the departure spot for the buses that took us to the Buena Vista Elementary School swimming pool, before Arvin had our own swimming pool. Also, we all met there to leave for Scout Jamborees, campouts to Caliente Creek and field trips to Fort Tejon up at Lebec.

 

In the early 50’s, 16mm black and white movies were shown on the baseball diamond. The projector would be on home plate and the screen would be at the pitcher’s mound. The audience would sit in the stands to watch the movie. They were showing a caveman movie one time, with lots of dinosaurs and wild animals roaming on the screen. I leaned over to my brother, Leo and ask him why all of the people were behind bars in a cage. He thought a moment and leaned back over my way and told me that it was so the wild animals did not attack us.

 

My mother loved to Roller Skate and they had a concrete slab which had overhead lights on the east side of the park. Once per week, they would play 78 rpm records from a Victrola and we would skate until late in the evening. Most of us had roller skates that fastened to our shoes with skate keys that tightened tabs onto the soles of our shoes. My Mother had real shoe skates that she had brought with her from Kentucky. I remember that one young beautiful lady could skate backwards around the entire rink and we would watch her as she skated, admiring her grace and beauty. I never did master the art of skating backwards.

 

When in 1959, they placed the swimming pool deep in center field from the baseball diamond. Everyone was sure that the west side dressing room windows were at a safe distance, but Albert Bullard proved them wrong at least three times, by hitting home-run balls through the windows. The first time, I was the centerfielder and I was sure that I was in trouble for not stopping a ball that sailed 20 feet over my head, before it hit the window. I had to loan them my own personal baseball, so that they could finish the baseball game.

 

I took my Lifesaving Course at the pool and I became Arvin’s first “Certified Junior Lifeguard”. Later, we used the pool for Arvin High School physical education class, swimming team practice and a place to hold our hometown meets. In the summer, the pool provided us endless summer afternoons and evenings of relief from the heat. We lounged, swam and splashed with our friends, as we watched the girls work on their perfect tans.

 

The Head Park Caretaker worked for Kern County and lived in a house that was provided for him by the County on the corner of Haven Drive and South Hill Street. My Mom and Dad were friends of his and we would often be invited over to his place for Barbeques. He had a dog that had been trained to only accept treats if given to him from your left hand, because his owner thought that most people were right-handed and there was less chance that he would be poisoned if he would not accept treats from just anyone. 

 

I am sure, that while the trees have gotten taller, and some even fell over in the 1977 windstorm. The park is still used to wax your car, meet your friend, have a picnic and play baseball or soccer, but most of all it is still a place to listen to the birds chirp, butterflies flutter and to lay on you back on the cool grass to watch the clouds lazily glide overhead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        & nbsp;       &n bsp;       &nb sp;       &nbs p;         ;                 & nbsp;     THE END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They say confession is good for the soul. Back in Junior High School at Haven Drive, then finally at Arvin High School in 1960, my friend, Gary D. Smith and I were members of “The Untouchables”. This was Arvin’s very own, model airplane club, where we met once a week at the Arvin Community Center and built model airplanes, which you either bought at Fox Appliances or Gannon’s Cycle Shop. You built these using model airplane glue and with 20 people building models at the weekly meeting at the Center, you could get quite a buzz in a closed up room, no one thought of “Getting High” from the sniffing the glue fumes, after all, you could always go outside where all of the advisors were smoking and breathe that instead.

 

Back in those days they did not have RC (Radio Controlled) airplanes. We built “U” control planes that were flown in a circle attached either two wires or two string control lines, free flights (motorized gliders) or un-motored gliders. Either of the last two, you released into the wind, never to see again, but the event usually involved a 10 mile chase in cars and pickups careening down narrow roads and through farm fields with three or four guys screaming directions to the driver, who was also looking up for the plane. Eventually they would realize they had been following a crow or turkey vulture instead of their plane and would return back to our Saturday flying area.   This was the grass covered physical education playing fields just north of the boy’s locker room at Arvin High School, where we had room to fly our planes in an open, cushioned field with no trees.

 

This was also the time when America and USSR had started the space race with the “Soviet Sputnik(October 4, 1957)” and “American Echo(August 12, 1960)” and so a few of us were into building quite basic rockets. Our first rockets were water pressure powered. You filled the rocket most of the way up with water, then pumped it up with air and released it, getting soaked during your effort. Next came fizzy rockets with baking soda and vinegar, Alka Selser or anything else that created pressure, then on to solid rocket fuel engines. We would go to Dick Miller’s Drug Store and buy jars of Salt Peter (Potassium Nitrate) powder, then roll moistened cotton twine into the powder until it became heavily coated. We would then use these as fuses to light off our rockets.

 

Ah, but I have digressed!

 

It is now our freshman year at Arvin High School and our first exposure to science. As an experiment, the teacher had each of us go to the Arvin Dry Cleaners on the southeast corner of Haven Drive Boulevard and Bear Mountain Highway to buy one dry cleaners bag which they sold us for 10 cents each. As a school project, everyone filled their bags with natural gas from the Bunsen burner spigots in the Chem Lab classroom, and then tied the open end tightly with string, the other end of the string was tied to a pill vial in which each student placed a note asking anyone who found this to write back with the location it was found. In a mass release, everyone turned their balloons loose at the same time in the quad area of Arvin High School. Several students did receive responses from thousands of miles away, but alas, Gary and I did not.

 

We were real disappointed that our balloons were not found, so we decided to release additional balloons from my home at 301 Grove Street on our own. Pretty quick it became an obsession, and Gary and I were spending all our lunch money every day buying more bags.  But we never received back any responses, even though there was not a pill vial left in the house and piles of pills out of their bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet. We never thought that we could have blown the house totally down, if our stove, where we filled the balloons, would of had been equipped with pilot lights, and with 8 or 10 bags floating in the living room, while we finished filling the bags. 

 

 

Gary was making some fuses with a new bottle of powder we had just purchased while I was filling the bags, when I thought, “Heck, Why not tie a fuse to a bag?” At first we tied a short fuse to one balloon, lit the fuse and released the balloon into the air. Up-up it went.  Finally at about a thousand feet we saw a flash of light and small ”Boom!”. “Wow! That was exciting! Lets’ tie all the rest of them together, use a longer fuse and see what happens!” By this time it was getting dusky dark, but determination prevails and we finally got all of the balloons ready, lit the fuse and off it went. The balloons finally climbed out of sight and we figured the fuse had gone out when suddenly there was this giant flash in the night sky with a giant boom.

 

Alright! That was fun! Shortly later the siren from the Arvin Volunteer Fire Department sounded and we thought, “Wow!  There’s a fire someplace!” when I heard our telephone ring. I answered it and found that the fire chief was looking for my father who was the County Road Foreman. It seems that their phone lines had lit up with calls about a mid-air collision, flaming debris seen plummeting toward the ground. The search for the crash scene and possible survivors was on. All of the police and volunteer firemen were scouring every back road and field. Reports were coming from everywhere. “It was north of Town! - No!” “East of Town –No!” “Tell your dad to try South of town.”

 

This event had taken a life of its own, with crews driving aimlessly around looking, most of the night. The following Wednesday, the Arvin Tiller lead with a story about the flaming mid-air collision. Was it a UFO, single plane explosion or two plane collisions? No wreckage had been found despite hundreds of hours of searching, costing thousands of dollars. The last line of the article was a plea for anyone with information to come forward.

 

This was the end of our model rocketing and amateur ballooning for awhile, but most of all, I hope that the statute of limitations has expired by now.

 

Several years ago, someone mentioned the term “Latch Key Kid” and I said “What is that?” They explained “OH! That is a kid who gets home after school while both parents are still at work, so they wear a door latch key around their neck, tied to a shoestring so they can get into the house.” I thought about my days back in Arvin, California where I had grown up in the 50’s and remembered, neither of my parents were home when I got home. “Why, I was a latch key kid!!!” But, wait – I never had a key, because none of our doors had locks on them, not even the bathroom door. If it was closed – it was occupied, and you were supposed to hold it. 

 

We use to go away for mini-vacations a weekend or even up to a week and when we got home, our mail was neatly stacked on one end of the couch, leaned against the arm and the newspapers were stacked against the other end’s arm. The milkman would have come in and changed out your milk, butter and filled the egg bin from the refrigerator. In the earlier days the ice man also let himself in and added ice to the top of your ice box as needed, and emptied the drip pan of waste water. With all of these people in our house, unsupervised, and yet nothing was ever missing. 

 

In 1957 my Aunt Mae DeRossette came from Shivley, Kentucky and lived with us for a year or so, after my brother, Leo got married and moved out of his room. She was a very rotund woman who had developed a fixation on television sports, which back in those days was solely devoted to Wrestling and Roller Derby. I remember walking home from school and hearing her, more that a half mile away from home, hooping and hollering at the top of her lungs about the dirty tactics being used by the players on teams which were named things like “The Thunderbirds” and “The Outlaws”. 

 

She took her sports very seriously and she knew that if she would scream loud enough the players would hear her warnings to watch out for this player or than obstacle, thus she could save them from disaster.  Then she cursed the players who had planned dirty tactics, condemning them to Hell, for plotting against “Sweet Nell” or “Molly Mae”. They were all voluminous women in tight-fitting narrow waist skating outfits who were the team big scorers. And who knows, the shows were being broadcast from Strelich Stadium in Bakersfield, only 30 miles away and the players might have occasionally thought, “Wait, what was that I just heard???”     

 

Her enthusiasm only increased with Tag Team Wrestling. Long before the World of WWF, we had very colourful wrestlers such as “Georgeous George”, “The Masked Avenger”, “The Crippler”, “Tricky Nick Bockwinkle” and “Cowboy Ellis”. I came in one day and she was sitting on the edge of the couch, almost foaming at the mouth wriggling and twisting to help the Thunderbird players win. I committed the ultimate sacrilege by telling her that it was all staged, and that the winners were rigged. One week, one team was the hero and the other the villain, and next week it was all reversed.  Never did they win by more than two points and it was always a last minute cliff hanger save, when the hero or heroine clinched the winning points from the evil opponent pulling out a win from a certain crushing defeat. You would have thought I had said a bad word at supper. I was in the dog house, but what did a 12 year old kid know? 

 

Now, I told you that in preparation for this. Our bathroom was very small. You went in a narrow corridor, past the shower which was off to the right, and the toilet was tucked in the end with a sink directly in front of it.  The sink had two faucets, HOT and COLD about 6 inches apart. You had your choice, freeze or scald, but nothing in-between.   Slightly beneath the sink on the far wall was a unvented, ceramic gas wall heater that you lit with big wooden bluetop kitchen matches. 

 

It was the warmest room in the house in the winter and my favorite reading room my “Mad” magazines in because I could rest the comic book on the rim of the sink, lean forward and read while I was on the pot. My father finally figured out why I was taking so long in the bathroom and used to sneak down the hall and burst into the bathroom and confiscate my magazine. 

 

I got use to listening for him because the metal grate over the floor furnace in the hallway would creak as he snuck down the hallway and I would hide the magazine before he burst in. One Saturday morning, I had assumed my favorite position in “the reading room” when I heard my Aunt Mae doing her little pee-pee dance in the hallway, so I got up and gave up the bathroom to her.   She rushed past me as I opened the door. I went back to my bedroom, which was located diagonally across the hallway.  

 

I closed the door, thinking “The smell that is going to come out of there in the next couple of minutes wasn’t going to be pleasant.”  I laid on my bed and resumed reading my latest Superman Comic. The creaking of the grate in the hallway did not even register as I read onward. Dad had snuck down the hallway and in a giant burst of energy he ripped the door to the bathroom open, leaping in to snatch my comic book. 

 

Now, Aunt Mae was quite large and kind of assumed the available space around the toilet when she sat down. When dad burst through the door, she stood up screaming with her pantaloons around her ankles. As she stood up, she ripped the sink off the wall in front of her and water began spewing all over the floor. Dad instinctively dove to the floor to turn the faucet valves off and Aunt Mae started jumping up and down screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs. Whether she was trying to get away from the hot water or my dad was not clear, but she wound up stepping on his hand. 

 

My mom came running as well as three of the next door ladies. I opened my door just as dad was leaving the bathroom, holding his hand, Aunt Mae screaming in the background and Mom and the neighbor ladies pumping questions from the front. Dad gave me a death stare as he passed. Sure enough, bright and early the next day, the bathroom had a big chrome latch on the door.  

     I was truly a latch key kid and me and my “Mad” magazines never got disturbed again.