My Mother Has Been After Me To Write My Memoirs Chapter Two

April 30, 2020

#2

Gentle reader,

If you are new to this blog/memoir, here is a link to the first chapter:

My Mother Has Been After Me To Write My Memoirs Chapter One

I left off with Mom and I in the doctor's office after two bullies pulled me off a chain link fence I had climbed to escape them. Resulting in my left arm's inner elbow being torn open to the bone. Literally.

These days, such an act would have had those two boys being expelled and their parents likely sued. But this was the 1960's. We attended the single elementary school in one of THE most wealthy towns in California. We went there only because we lived on that side of the street which is the border between that town and the one next to it where my dad was earning his Doctorate in Theology at a seminary. We lived in campus housing. 

I told you about this house and other things in the first chapter, so I won't rehash it.

None of the five of us siblings ever rode a school bus. Everyone walked or rode their bicycle to school and back. This school was a pleasant walk down a shaded lane. The local Rexall drug store was on the way. 

I spent many a pleasant hour in that store. I liked to build model cars, planes and ships. The Rexall had a good supply. Once I was old enough to earn an allowance, I visited the store often trying to decide which one to buy and build next. 1:25th scale cars were $2.00 of $2.50 which meant saving four of five weeks (no sales tax then) to buy one.

Back then, people still had televisions and radios that used vacuum tubes instead of transistors. I won't explain the difference, but below is an image of a tube piece of stereo equipment.

This is a Dynaco brand stereo amplifier made in the 1990's but it uses tubes. Those eight (four tall, four smaller) glass cylinders are vacuum tubes. I won't bore you with how they work.

You see, Dad would take me with him to the local store which had a tube testing machine. He'd show me which socket on the testing machine, and let me plug the tube into it. He then turned on the machine, and used it to see which tubes were bad. They sold replacement tubes. The Rexall had such a machine as most stores did for many decades.

I, like countless kids (boys especially) spent hours reading the latest comic books those stores displayed for sale. Much to the chagrin of the salespeople. 

I was and still am fascinated by World War II. Long before the silly television show McHale's Navy aired, I was especially fascinated by PT boats. Look those up if you're curious. So, Sgt. Rock which took place in WWII was one of my favorite comics.

I knew well the story of President Kennedy and the PT 109 boat he commanded in WWII. I found the address, at the library, of the PT Boat Association and wrote to them. They didn't realized I was just a kid and wrote back, asking me what boat I'd served on.

Reincarnation. Not that I believe in it, but IF it is real, perhaps I was in the war in a former life and had been killed. Then years later, I was born into my present life. Don't laugh. Anything is possible. let me add some evidence.

I LOVE Big Band music, which, wait for it, is from the 1940's and earlier. My wife and I have been learning to Swing dance, which originated in that era and Big Band music was danced to it. And still is.

And here, is my 1941 Plymouth Coupe which I bought in pieces as a teenager. I was making into a hot rod. OK, that doesn't prove anything, but it too, is from that era.

Anyway, back to the 1960's in the idyllic area of Marin County California where we were very fortunate to reside.

For thousands of years, the Pacific states and Canada, received a LOT of rain every winter. For California, this was the ONLY time it rained. Literally. 

Until very recently, a seemingly permanent high pressure area off of the Pacific northwest had prevented any winter rains and snows. This caused a multi-years long drought with the attendant destructive wildfires. Fortunately, the cycle has been broken and they had a LOT of rain, some places too much.

It snowed in the Sierra Nevada and other chains of mountains out there created over millions of years by the Pacific tectonic plate pushing up under the North American plate. It snowed a LOT, like thirty or more feet in the mountains. 

There was one problem the rains back then created in certain areas, including the street we lived on. When the tide was in, the rain water had no where to go. So the streets would fill with water. 

Great fun for us. We sailed boats we made on the water. We rode our bikes in it, creating wakes behind us. One problem was the driveway of this house:

That's right, the water ran right down it. Flooding the garage/summer house and flowing into the tiny already flooded creek that flowed across the back of the yard. 

There were lots of blackberry bushes in the back of the yard. I still don't like the taste of blackberries. We called their thorns "prickers" because they pricked us. Kid logic. 

That backyard also had fig trees, two varieties. And plum trees. Do you have any idea what a nasty mess figs make when they hit the ground? They rot, grow mold and stink. I don't like figs or plums or prunes. Which if you did not know it are huge raisins made from plums. 

Onetime I found a double plum. It was kind of heart shaped. I climbed to the top of the garage roof, carefully laid that plum across the peak of the roof and checked on it routinely to see if it became a double plum. It never did wrinkle up. It just sort of sat there and finally fell apart. Each half sliding down opposite sides of the roof.

Speaking of roofs, remember my telling you about Davy's summer house having a flat roof?

Well, I had planted potatoes one year in our back yard. I know, what was I thinking? Anyway, I was digging them up and I heard a strangely loud buzzing noise. "What the heck?"

I looked around and then up. A strange dark cloud was approaching. I looked and wondered and watched this odd thing float over the fence to Davy's back yard. 

It headed to a tree next to their summer house. Then it settled on the tree. Being curious, I went over there, got Davy and we went to see what it was.  

We walked out there and looked up the tree and here was this large black mass of something. It was buzzing, but not as loudly as before. We ran and told our folks (that's old time speak for: parents) and they came out and told it what it was. 

A bee swarm. When bees decide it's time to move, they all fly off en masse. That's French, I think, for altogether. The queen is in the middle of the group being protected. 

When they find a place to land, she lands with her guards and then the entire hive lands around them. Countless thousands of bees were then on that tree.

My folks gave me a camera just like this, or it could have been a Savoy brand. Sears sold lots of cameras in those days with their brand, TOWER on them. 

I ran home, got my camera, and Davy and I climbed on the roof and I took photos of the bees. I came across those black and white, square photos years ago and could NOT figure out what they were of. So I threw them away. Many years later, I suddenly remembered what they were of! In my defense, it was a crappy camera. But, I still have the memory. 

Here is a photo I found on the Internet. The swarm that day was larger than this one. With the way Honey Bees are in grave danger these days, it is a welcome sight to hear and see them in the Azaleas and other blooms in our yard.

I know that is not a Honey Bee, that's a miniature rose and a much smaller bee, but it works. Image captured with one of my Panasonic Lumix digital cameras.

To those who have never been to California, especially those who reside in the humid South like we do, you should go someday. Forget moving there unless you are wealthy, but visit, the state is SO beautiful, the weather is sublime and you will see why so many have for hundreds of years chosen to migrate there. It will be well worth our while.

Please take a look at my main blog, The Robb Collections, if you like. In it I write about our passions and adventures and more: The Robb Collections

Thank you so much for taking a look at my fledgling attempt at remembering my past and helping me to figure out why some people think I'm special.  

Feel free to follow the story and comment below or on Facebook.

Scott
April 30, 2020
#2 

 

My Mother Has Been After Me To Write My Memoirs Chapter One

April  17,  2020

Chapter 1

Gentle reader,


It is not me who thinks I'm special. And I'm not referring to those individuals who require special education. It is other people who have said so. A lot of them. And frankly, I can't figure out what I am doing or saying, or writing to cause their reaction of positivity.

I was five and a half in this photo. I was darned proud of my new double cowboy pistols set! Roy Rogers was my hero!

I think I had a fairly normal upbringing. I earned average grades in school. It wasn't until I was attending college part time that my English teacher remarked on how excellent my papers were. Then the painting teacher and fellow students raved over my imaginative final painting of a nude. All I did is put her in a room in an old Victorian house.

But, so many people have told me, "You make me feel special." Well, that's because to me they are.

My wife marvels at my ability to start conversations with total strangers which often ends in our exchanging contact info. I wasn't always like this. I was very shy as a kid.

So here's the deal: I am going to tell you my life story  through this blog. If you follow it, maybe you will be able to see what it is that is special about me. Then you can let me know. Deal?

I never thought that I was good looking. Looking at pictures of me when I was young, OK, I was cute. But, one's looks are what genetics assign to us.

As you may be able to tell, I was skinny. In fact, I was 155 pounds at six foot, three inches tall into my thirties. Oddly, when I started my senior year in high school, I was five foot six inches tall. When I graduated, I was as tall as I am now. Do the math. I had acne pretty badly as a teen and still had it into my twenties.

But STILL the girls and women seemed to flock to me, then. I didn't get why and I still don't. I'm in my sixties and they still like me, even ones who are decades younger. It boggles my mind.

That's my older sister when I was two or three.

I was born with a large birthmark on my right cheek, you can just see it. My parents had it removed soon after.

Over the years, when people noticed the scar and asked me about it, I often answered, "It's from a knife fight in 'Frisco." Many laughed, but the woman who would become my first wife said, "Really!?" She actually believed me. That should have been a red flag.

That's the whole family (me on the left) probably around 1964.

We moved from Kansas, "West, the far West" (quote from Rango, in his self-titled movie) all the way back to California in our VW bus. Just think of all the huge mountains that 40-horsepower VW had to get all seven of us over.

Dad and My middle sister in Kansas. She's looking a little cocky.

Like all stories, I should start from the beginning. Dad's family has a surname that is supposed to be a "sept" (derivative) of MacFarlane, a notorious clan that got kicked out of Scotland centuries ago. They had tried to steal the Earl of Lennox's land. They failed. Many settled in Ireland, but some went on to America. We do not know when his ancestors emigrated.

I wrote "supposed to be" because according to my DNA testing there is no Celtic or Gaelic in my DNA. By the way, while I have you, the former word is pronounced Kel-tic, not like the basketball team of the same name. The latter is pronounced two ways: Gal-lic or Gay-lic. The Scots pronounce it one way, the Irish another.

Mom's family is Czech and that has been shown in my DNA. Both my parent's families moved to Phoenix, Arizona when each was young. I'd say in the 1940's.

Which comes to where I was born: Phoenix. I only lived there for the first two weeks of my life. Dad and my sister were at home in California. The grandparents were in Phoenix. That was the first time I flew in an airplane. An expensive luxury in the 1950's! I do not know how that happened.

Dad had gone to college in Phoenix and Mom was in Nursing School there, and almost finished. The  met in the church choir.

He was all set to move to California to attend Seminary to become a Minister and did not want to go without her. He pressured her into dropping out of nursing school and marrying him. So, she did. Her mother was none too pleased.

We lived there in Marin County, which is right across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. What a wonderful place to grow up! California has such amazing beauty and mostly wonderful weather.

These are photos I shot during a surprise visit to California given to me by my wife one birthday. I had not been there since 1971. I was largely able to find my way once in Marin as a result of still having a map from my childhood. I would get it out from time to time over the years. 

Marin is the hills you see across the bridge. They adopted strict building restrictions in the county long ago which is why there are not ocean-view homes.

This is the chapel at the seminary. You can just see the roof of one of the larger buildings atop Seminary Hill, above and to the right in the photo. The steeple collapsed in the 1906 earthquake.

Once he graduated, he was assigned to a church in a small town in southeast Kansas.

A school picture of me that I probably cut out myself. OK, that is a cute boy.

Sometime later, he was transferred to another town nearby. The problem with small towns, (if you have watched The Andy Griffith Show, you have seen how it was) is that EVERYONE knows who you are. We could not get away with anything!

Preacher's kids are notorious for getting into trouble. One time I sneaked into Dad's church because I wanted to climb up into the bell tower, something he would not let me do. When I was looking out the steeple's windows, I saw him crossing the street. "Oh, no, Dad!" I scrambled down the stairs hoping to escape, but as I opened the church door, there he was. "Scott! Did you come to visit me?" He was smiling, so I agreed that was what I was doing.

Not that he was a bad father, he tried. He was an only child and was not encouraged to make friends. So he didn't have many and was used to dealing mainly with adults. His parents were strict, so that is what he knew of parenting.

The only time he ever hit me, aside from the usual spankings which we all got for misbehaving (that was normal then) was when I was a young teen and had said something snarky over my shoulder to him. "SLAP!" he hit me on the right ear. But that was it. And frankly, I deserved it. Not on the ear, but a smack for being a smart-ass. Nowadays if accused of being one, I reply, "Better than being a dumb-ass."

(A note on the quality of some of the black & white photos shown in these articles. My parents owned an Argus C-3 camera like this. It was affectionately called "The Brick". I don't know if they had a light meter. So some photos are blurry and someone may have their eyes closed.)

We were not Catholic, but back in the Baby Boom, people made lots of babies. So, I have an older sister, a middle sister (I'm the second child), a younger brother and baby sister.

My older sister and I on the porch in Kansas around 1959.

Growing up with so many built-in playmates, we had a lot of fun. Preachers of the non-TV variety do not make much money. Plus, most mothers and/or wives, stayed home as "homemakers" back in those days. Two-paycheck families were very rare.

My younger sister and I in the pool. Around 1960.

Since we were essentially poor, Mom baked bread and cookies and other goodies. She canned vegetables and fruits. She says we begged for "store-bought" bread, but anyone who has ever had fresh baked bread knows we were foolish for doing so.

Proudly sitting atop my new tricycle. Check out the cowboy boots!

Nonetheless, our parents did the best they could. You saw the pedal-car and we had tricycles and later bicycles.

All five of us used a bike similar to this to learn on. Ours had a "gas tank" attached beneath the handle bars at the front and beneath the seat at the rear.  It could be unbolted under the seat and reattached lower down the vertical post for girls, and left attached at the top for boys. You see, girls wore skirts and dresses then. It had a coaster brake, with twelve inch rims with solid rubber tires. (Photo found on the Internet.)

I remember Dad was pushing me as I pedaled along down the sidewalk after he took the training wheels off. I'm chatting away and finally realized that he was not responding. I looked back and he was a block back, grinning at me. I'd been soloing all that distance and did not know it.

Hand-me-down clothes were a given. I suspect some church members in lieu of voting a raise for Dad in Kansas, probably brought over the occasional casserole or outgrown kid's clothes for us to wear.

The clothes my younger siblings are wearing were no doubt worn by my older sister and I first.

Lego were a favorite of ours. My brother still has all of the family Lego. We now have a foot locker full which out kids played with and now the grandkids do too. Most of it we bought from thrift stores. Great places to find all kinds of great things. If you've priced new Lego sets you might consider looking at thrift stores.

My younger brother and middle sister in the toy VW bus the dealer must have been giving out. The rope was a gag for the photo.

Note the three-digit Kansas license plate number on the real VW.

 

My younger sister wearing my Army uniform shirt and helmet liner. More on that later.

Dad tried to do whatever he could that needed doing around the house and yard. So I watched and learned. I can clearly remember playing with my Tonka dumptruck in the basement with all of the sawdust he was creating building something or other.

I inherited the handyman gene. I liked to tinker with by trike and bikes, I knew from early on that I wanted to be an auto mechanic when I grew up.

Rural Kansas, like many rural places around the world, and the world as a whole historically, most people had to do it all themselves. There was just no other way it would get done. Far more people were poor per capita half a century ago than now.

Our parents let us dig holes in the backyard if we wanted to. I loved to play Army and one needed foxholes.

Their first new car, a 1958 Chevrolet Delrey, the bottom of the line, price and content-wise. Note the "dog-dish" hubcaps.

One thing Dad did just made no sense: He felt that he needed a new car ever year. We could not afford it, but Mom had vowed to "honor and obey" when they married. Eventually she must have gotten through to him as it was stretched to perhaps every three or four years. We were the first people in Kansas to buy a VW. They started with a Beetle, later switching to a Bus as the family grew. We had a number of them over the years.

After I finished second grade, we moved back to live in Marin County, California.

In the small towns in Kansas which we lived in, no one ever locked their doors. Keys were often left in the car. As I said, everyone knew everyone else there. So a stranger would have been kept under neighborly surveillance. Nothing bad ever happened to us.

Here is something that did happen. The towns were small and Dad usually walked to the church and back. Or one or the other walked to the store.

One time Dad drove to the store with my sister and I in the backseat. He ran into the store, bought what he needed, came out the door and walked home.

When he got there, Mom said, "Where are the kids?" "Oh, crap!" He ran back and found us sitting patiently in the car blissfully unaware of what happened.

Back then and there, people routinely left the little ones in the car. There was son worries about kidnappings* or cars being stolen. It was a more naive but also a safer world. 

*Ironically, my middle sister was kidnapped in Marin. I don't know what he said to convince her to get in his car. Fortunately, he stopped at a store and she got out of the car and ran. That same sister had other bad things happen to her as a kid. She survived them all and is very happy these days.
 
Once we lived in Marin, we found out that people always locked doors.

One time we had gone somewhere as a family and came home to find one of my friends playing in our room. My brother and I shared a room most of our lives as kids. My friend said he knocked and no one answered. Finding the door unlocked he came in and made himself at home.

Many towns in California are notoriously wealthy. The one near the seminary is very wealthy. The school we attended was in that town. Famous people have and do live there. Based upon the median income in 2017 (the latest data available), the estimated income in 1965 was almost $25,000 a year. Someone earning minimum wage that year made $2,600 a year.

For the family of Seminary students and staff, they were destined to find their own housing.

There was housing for doctoral candidates and teaching staff, however.

This is where we lived for most of the time until he was hired to teach. The garage is two-part. The back part is the "Summer house".

Our neighbors to the left in the photo, were our best friends. The father was also a doctoral student and they had kids our ages. Davy (David, Jr.) was my best buddy.

That's him on the right, my little brother in the middle. My one-and-only Aunt had that child-sized US ARMY uniform made for me. Dad bought me the WWII helmet liner I'm wearing at the Army Surplus store. One of my favorite places to visit! Davy's basement had the hat he's wearing in it. The jacket we found spread over a large bush one day we were hiking up Mount Baldy.

This is the house that came with his teaching job. Huge Redwood tree in front. The shingles are redwood, the deck is redwood and paneling in some of the rooms is redwood. It is a fantastic house and the nicest we ever lived in. Taken during our trip a few years ago as was the other house photo.

We were allowed a LOT of freedom of movement as kids. Parents today would be HORRIFIED by what we were allowed to do back then!

I mentioned "summer house" in the of the photo caption of the smaller house. Davy's summer house was in their backyard. It had a flat roof. Davy and I thought nothing of jumping the nine feet off the roof, repeatedly. I will tell you more about some of our adventures later.

Davy's dad was a runner. Something VERY rare in the 1960's. He wore Adidas sneakers. He liked to run in the hills of Marin and to hike. He had taught Davy, and later taught me, to hike, and a lot more about nature.

My aunt, Mom's sister, told me how excited she was to move to the "Golden Hills of California!" She was quite disappointed to find the "gold" was dead grass. To our delight, she and her husband (and our one-and-only cousin) lived just a few miles away.

It traditionally only rained in California in the winter. It rained a lot when we lived there. Snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains could reach twenty feet or more in most years back then. Climate change has altered that greatly.

Bald Mountain, or Mount Baldy as we called it was about an hour walk from our house. Our parents let Davy and I go climb it anytime we wanted. "Just be home by supper time." We were in ELEMENTARY school! Sometimes we took cardboard boxes with us. We'd flatten them out and slide down the dead grass covered surfaces.

Bald Mountain, image found on the Internet.

Later on, Davy's dad taught me to hike Mount Tamalpais. It was TEN MILES one way. Davy and I set out ALONE one summer morning. We were equipped with: water, jungle chocolate, sandwiches and a real walkie-talkie set on the frequency of their home base radio and a trail map. We were to routinely radio home to let them know where we were and that we were safe.

A beautiful photo by Alexis Lentine of Mount Tamalpais in Marin: Image found on the Internet. I still recall the east peak was 2,571 feet high.

We made it to the of the East Peak and began looking around. After awhile, we asked a man what time it was. He guessed by looking at the sun that it was three O-clock. We asked someone with a watch. "Just coming up on six O-clock." Yikes! There was no way we could get back down before dark.

We begged a dime to make a phone call home. We flipped it to see which dad to call. Davy lost. His dad was furious as he had to drive AROUND the mountain to the side on the Pacific and then up the road to the top. It was a while before we did that again.

Being in color, this was probably from my school in Marin.

I told my aunt about Davy's dad's Adidas sneakers which have racing stripes and she gave me twenty dollars the next birthday! That's around $165.00 today. Davy and I walked into town and found a shoe store that had Adidas. I picked out a pair just like his dad's in my size. They were $19.95! Some sell for more than that ($165.00) nowadays.

I wore them to school and before long, kid after kid asked me about them. It wasn't long, remember this was a VERY wealthy town, that many of the kids in school were wearing Adidas. I wrote about that in my other blog:

I was an elementary school trendsetter! ADIDAS and driving shoes collection. 

Like all schools, this elementary school we attended in Marin had a hierarchy. I was skinny, not very strong and most importantly, not wealthy. 

This is the ENTIRE Third grade of that school. I'm the only boy wearing eyeglasses, to the teacher's right, on the top row.

Do you see the girl right in front of me in the gingham dress? When she walked into the classroom the first day of third grade, I saw her and fell in love. In fact, over the next six years, I liked just about every girl you see there.

If you are old enough to have read Charles Schultz timeless comic series, Peanuts, imagine a real life Charlie Brown. That was me. Uncoordinated, slow runner, clumsy, shy and no good at sports. One of the girls I liked was red-haired, too.

This still is from their Thanksgiving TV Special.

PE was particularly painful for me. I was teased mercilessly because I was terrible at every sport. When it was my turn in kickball, for instance, everyone moved inside the baseline. Sigh. One time, probably in eighth grade, I finally kicked it hard. Right over all of their heads!

One summer, I was sent to Summer School to learn soccer. When I think back, why? Our parents discouraged any interest in sports or other school activities. Anyway, we were taught the proper way to play the game.

When they introduced soccer that Fall in PE, no one but me was playing correctly! "You have to stay in position!" I vainly yelled as a knot of kids around the ball ran all over the field trying to kick it.

One time we were playing outside this stone chapel and I tripped and fell. I ended up with a black eye.

That became a new source of more whispering by my classmates. Finally one of the athletic boys asked me if I'd been in a fight. "No, I tripped and fell." Boy did they laugh at that answer.

One recess, some boys were chasing me and I climbed a chain-link fence around the playground. It had those "X" shaped points at the top to discourage climbing over. I had hooked my arm over the top trying desperately to escape. They dragged me off the fence. They didn't beat me up, they were rich kids after all. Someone pointed out that my sleeve was ripped. I looked in the hole and saw my arm bone! Oddly, I did not freak out of faint. Also oddly and gratefully, it did not bleed.

This was long before emergency rooms and rescue squads. A sympathetic crowd followed me to the nurses office (something else they may not have now). She took a look and called my mother. At that point, we had her sister's car (my favorite Aunt) and thus Mom was able to pick me up and drive me to the doctors.

We were told to wait. Mom, never having been one to stand up to others, so we waited. But because she knew this was BAD, she finally told the nurse to LOOK at my arm. The color drained from her face and she rushed off to get the doctor.

After that, for a while, I was somewhat of a celebrity at school. I still have the "L" shaped scar inside my right elbow.

That's enough for chapter one. I made the mistake of making the photo captions a different font. It didn't like that and the size of that font varied greatly. I learned my lesson. Keep it simple.

Scott
April 17, 2020
Chapter 1