We didn’t have shopping malls like we have now. When my folks shopped for clothes they would go to downtown L.A., which was pretty close, to department stores like May Co. or Broadway. They also shopped at the local business district on Whittier Blvd. They always had an account at the neighborhood department or clothing store. When my mother went shopping she usually took me with her. Well, shopping with her could be an adventure. On one of these shopping trips (I was about nine years old), and we were at Henry’s department store and she was shopping for a dress. Henry’s was the typical layout with glass counters down the middle and isles down each side, with dressing rooms with sliding curtains. The salesman was at the counter and my mother was in the dressing room directly across the aisle. She was in the process of taking off her dress by slipping it over her head and she lost her balance and fell through the curtain into the isle on her hands and knees. With the dress over her head, she crawled back into the dressing room. I thought that poor man was going to explode or have a coronary he was laughing so hard. From that day forward, when my mother would go into Henry’s, that man would get the giggles

On another shopping trip we were up on Whittier shopping and we were crossing the street in the cross walk. We were right in the middle of a busy intersection when her garter belt failed. Everything came tumbling down. She yelled at me to get behind her and hold everything up. We ran all the way home. I was an abused child. My mother and dad were very friendly people and we formed some wonderful friendships in the old neighborhood.

There was Gerry and Tommy O’Brien, and their four boys Jim, Danny, David and Pat. Jim was the oldest. He was my age. Something happened with the O’Brien family that I had and still have a very difficult time resolving. At eight years old, David decided to go into the Catholic priesthood. He left his family and from that day on was raised by the Church. I was nine at the time and the memory still haunts me. How could they let an eight year old make such a decision?

This is a picture of my dad and I with the O’Brien kids. Danny is on the left, and Jim is standing next to me with Pat in front of him. This was around 1945. We lift E.L.A. in 1949 and we lost contact with the O’Brien family. We did hear several years later that both the parents, who were about my mom and dad’s age, passed away within a couple of years of each other, but we never did get any details. I still wonder what ever happened to David?

Other kids in the neighborhood that I played with were Harry and Sunny Myers, Harry was my age and Sunny was his older brother. And there was Nancy. She was the only girl. Nancy was my age and a real Tom boy. She was the best athlete in the neighborhood. She always got picked first when we were choosing up sides. Then there were a couple of guys that were my best friends at Stevenson Jr. High. They were Steve Kazarian and Joe Boss. Some years later, when I was playing football at Citrus Jr. College, we were playing Oceanside Jr. College, and I tackled their halfback and I’ll be darned if wasn’t my old friend Steve. Now Joe Boss my other school friend was sad story. For a couple of weeks Joe had been absent from school. One morning they made an announcement in homeroom that one of our students had passed away. It was a real shock. It was the first time that someone I knew died. My mom took me to the funeral and I remember that the whole thing seemed unreal to me.

Then there was Dave and Rosie Ruis and their son Roger and daughter Anna. Dave was policeman for the City of LA. Roger was one of my main guys. The Ruis house was a really friendly place. They always had a house full of kids.. They loved having kids at their place all the time and we loved being there. There were card games like Canasta. That card game really became the rage in California, and for a while we played the dumb game every night

The Ruis’s were also the first to have a television in the neighborhood. Their set had about a eight inch screen with a bubble magnifier over the screen to make it look a little bigger. Because it was so small, we had to huddle around and up close to it to see. One of the most popular things on TV at that time was wrestling. There were headliners like Gorgeous George. Wrestling was a very big, big item. I remember watching the old Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars AAA baseball teams play in the old Pacific Coast League. The Ruis’s house was like the neighborhood recreation center. As a kid, I spent very little time at home in the house. In the first place there was no room in the house to play and we didn’t have TV, computers or cell phones. We were outside playing football, baseball and anything else we could think of, like Kick The Can. That’s a fun game. In the evening, the whole neighborhood, including the adults, would come out and play KTC and it was a blast. We also played touch football in the street, adults included. Then at night it was off to the Ruis’s. During the summer we kids would take the bus or streetcar to the Plunge (public swimming pool) in Montebello or to places like Griffith Park. ELA was a lot different than it is today. There were gangs then, but they weren’t shooting each other. I remember one day when I was in Jr. High School and three Mexican kids chased me home from school. When I ran in the house out of breath, my dad asked me what was going on. When I told him, he took me by the arm to the car and we went looking for them. At least he was looking. I was not anxious to find them. When we spotted them walking down the street. My dad stopped, got out of the car and said, I understand you guys are looking for a fight. Well you’re in luck , I’m here to referee, and you get to fight him, pointing at me, one at a time. I whipped them all, one at a time and I never ran again. And guess what ? We were best buddies from that day on.

My folks loved to dance. They would get on the bus and go to places like The Riverside Rancho, by Griffith Park, and dance to the music of Tex Williams and his band (Tex had a hit record titled, Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette). Or Ocean Park Pier and dance to the music of Lawrence Welk. Or they could go to The Palladium and dance to the sound of big bands like Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Freddie Martin. They would go alone or with friends or family like Bill and Ardie. My mother once said that those years in E.L.A. were some of the best years of their lives.

1945 THE END OF WWII When the war ended in 1945, uncle Mack Easton came home from the war in the Pacific. Mack was really my dad’s uncle, even though dad was older by about six months. Mack was my grandmothers brother. He moved in with us while he was working on his CPA at UCLA. He was with us about a year before he finished school and got married.

One of the most vivid memories I have of ELA was when Mack lived with us. It was a summer evening when he came walking down the street, coming home from his new job as an accountant for Sears and Roebuck in his brand new $100 suit. He ran smack dab into a neighborhood water fight. Bill and Artie were over along with the Meyers from across the street and the O’Briens and several other neighbors and all the kids. Well someone, for whatever reason, fired the first shot with a hose and all hell broke loose. Every hose and receptacle that could hold water was manned. When Mack came around the corner they got him. He ran back out of range, took off his suit jacket and shoes and charged into the battle. That water fight was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. This neighborhood was a crazy place to live.

When we lived in East L.A. in the 40”s, during the summer I would grab a ride with someone going to Beaver and stay with my grandma. I would see grandma maybe twice a week when she would come looking for me because she thought I should change clothes and bath at least once a week. I don’t think I spent one night at grandma’s house during those summers. I hung out with my cousins Monte Hutchings and Jim Cox. Most of the time with Monte. We would sleep outside under a tree in Jim’s back yard. We had a canvas to throw over us if it rained. We just ran with the wind. In Utah the big celebration of the year is Pioneer Day on the July 24th commemorating Brigham Young’s entry into the Salt Lake valley with the first group of pioneers in 1847. That’s when he said “This is the place”. It’s a big day with a parade and three days of horse races. I remember one year we got in trouble because we were rounding up stray calves and had calf riding contests in a barnyard of one of the kids that were brave enough to hang around with us. One year we were lucky to have a couple of horses to ride. I don’t remember who they belonged to but they were real nags. They were old and not very sure footed and probably one step from feeding the fish at the fish hatchery. They would not let us ride with a saddle because they might stumble and fall and there was a danger of getting hung up in the stirrups and getting dragged. So we rode bareback and thought we were real cowboys. Beaver was a great place for a kid to grow up.

Every year it was a challenge to avoid uncle Dan. He always had a big garden somewhere and if he could find us, he would put us to work weeding his garden.

Monte and I were always getting into some kind of trouble. I remember one year we were down in the lane between Beaver and Greenville looking for trouble. There was an old deserted log house just sitting there decaying. We decided that the windows were good targets for throwing rocks. There were a couple of other kids with us, but I don’t recall their names. Just about the time we broke the windows the owner of the house came down the lane in his truck. We took off, but one of the other kids got caught and gave us up. The owner was a farmer by the name of Taylor Farnsworth. It just so happened that he was in the process of filling his silos with corn stocks at the time and he needed someone to stomp silage. Stomping silage is a dirty job. You are getting in the bottom of the silo and they blow in ground up corn stocks and you keep stomping or you get buried. We were child slave labor for three days to pay for the windows. He never did replace those windows. I always looked forward to my summers in Beaver. My folks would come up later to bring me home.

Ernie and Monte

After Mack left, Uncle Ralph, dad’s younger brother, came to live with us for a short time. There is more to the Ralph story that I go into in more depth a little later

After the war ended in 1945, dad got into the building trade. GI’s were coming home by the thousands and they needed places to live. So, the construction of new houses was a booming business. Dad got a job as a plasterer working out of the union hall. He worked freelance as a plasterer for about year, then he got a chance to work steady for Ludlow Brothers Plastering Contractors in San Gabriel. They really liked him and he fit into the company very well. Given the opportunity, he worked his way up to Superintendent. He ended up making more money than he had ever made in his life. We were in fat city. Remember I told you about the 1927 Studebaker; well he traded that for a 1937 Studebaker. Dad really babied his cars. He had me dust them every day, because we didn’t have a garage. Well maybe he did it sometimes. He loved his automobiles. One day he spotted the car he always wanted, a black 1941 Ford coupe, and he bought it. That car was his pride and joy. Things were going so well that in 1949 he decided to buy a brand new Hudson Hornet and build a new home in Temple City. His brother Bill had already built a house there. So, dad bought a lot and built his own house, with help from friends and relatives. It was a real exciting time for all of us. We had our own home. It was only twelve hundred square feet with one bathroom, two bedrooms and den, but it seemed like we had so much room. We had a backyard and a two car garage. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I had my own bedroom for the first I time could remember. I wondered what we going to do with all of this yard, front and back? Then I found out, I was going to mow it

THE RAMS MOVE TO LOS ANGELES Just a little history on how I got interested in football. In 1946 the Rams moved from Cleveland to L.A. and the following year the L.A. Dons were an. entry in the new All American Football Conference which was formed that year. Both teams played their games in the Coliseum which was very close to us in E.L.A. and we became rabid fans of both teams. My Mom and Dad and I went to almost every game. We sat in the bleacher seats. They had a fence at the twenty yard line and the seats inside the twenty were reserved. The seats outside the twenty were first come first serve, those bleacher seats were fifty cents. I don’t remember what the price was for reserve seats, but we couldn’t afford them anyway. In 1946 the NFL was made up with ten teams. The Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Boston Yanks, Washington Redskins, New York Giants, Chicago Cardinals, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions and the Rams. The Ram’s had players like quarterbacks Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin. Running backs like Glen Davis, Tom Harmon, Deacon Dan Towler, Tank Younger and great pass receivers Crazy Legs Hirsch and Tom Fears. Rivaling the NFL the AAFC was comprised of eight teams. The Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, Baltimore Colts, Buffalo Bills, Chicago Rockets, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees and the new L.A. Dons The Dons were led by Glen Dobbs. As a kid I was in hog heaven, Since they were not competing against each other, I could have two favorites. We saw great players like Slinging Sammy Baugh and Sid Luckman, Otto Graham and Jim Brown. I loved going to those games, they were my heroes and gave me the desire to play the game. Then after the 1949 season the two leagues were merged into the old NFL. When they started the 1950 season the new NFL had thirteen teams. The Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburg Steelers, Washington Redskins, New York Giants, New York Yankees, Chicago Cardinals, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts and the Rams. Sixty-five years later there are thirty- two teams. Nine of those teams are still in the same cities. That would be the Eagles, Steelers, Redskins, Giants, Bears, Packers, Lions, 49ers, Browns. I think the Yankees went through several cities before ending up in Dallas. The Cardinals settled in Arizona and the Colts landed in Indianapolis. That leaves us with the Rams. As of today they have gone from Cleveland to L.A. to Anaheim and then several years in St Louis and finally as of the 2016 season are back home in Los Angeles.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG INTO THE 1950’s When we made the move to Temple City I was fifteen and had just finished the ninth grade at Stevenson Jr High School in ELA. I started tenth grade and my football career at the brand spanking new Rosemead High School in 1950. By the time I arrived they had already picked the team name and our colors. We were the Panthers and our colors were blue and grey. My first priority was to play football. I had no experience except for sandlot games we played at the recreation park. There were no youth programs like Little League or youth football

A NEW KID AT A NEW HIGH SCHOOL This was really an exciting time for me, being a member of the first class at Rosemead High. Most of the kids were from middle schools or high schools in the area. The largest groups were either from or would have gone to El Monte High School. I was among a small group that were totally new to the area. So, I had the opportunity to make a whole new set of friends

I was told to report to the JV coach one week before school started. The CIF had rules against any team practicing together until one week before school starts. So I reported in to coach Dick Tucker the first day of practice knowing nothing and nobody. A great learning experience. That was September 1950.

Rosemead High School’s football team ran the single wing offence, the same as both USC and UCLA. The single wing formation lines up unbalanced either left or right as shown below:

The left formation would normally run left and right formation would run right because as you can see the blocking strength is in that direction. The TB (tailback) received the ball from the C (center) and runs the ball behind the blocking of the FB (fullback) QB (quarterback) and G (running guard) along with the T (tackles) WB (wingback) and E (ends). Coach John McKay of USC called it student body right or student body left. He could also pass to the eligible receivers the FB, QB, WB, or the E’s. The key man in the single wing is the tailback

I started my football career as the running guard. That’s a key position in the single wing because he pulls and leads the way. The tackle next to me was a guy named Gary Nelson and the fullback behind me was a kid from Big Bear named George Vallance. That was over 65 years ago and they have been part of my family like brothers ever since that day.

Gary lived in Temple City with his mother and dad and his younger brother Wayne. George had just moved to Rosemead from Big Bear with his family, Dad, Mother and his sister Marlene. They had a good sized piece of property about a mile south of the high school and a couple of blocks east of Rosemead boulevard. Their place was big enough to have horses. They were just north of an old airstrip that was no longer in use. Just south of the airstrip was the San Gabriel riverbed. That riverbed ran all the way up to Azusa Canyon. George and I rode his horses all the way up to where Bradbury is now. I remember one day George asked Gary if he had ever ridden before and if so would he like to go riding with us, and he said yes he had and yes he’d love to go. Well the truth was he had never ridden a horse in his life. There are funny moments in one’s life, but none funnier than Gary Nelson trying to fake being a cowboy. The horse would get into a trot and Gary would get into a bounce. The horse didn’t know whether to stop, go, run or trot. The poor animal had no idea what this guy wanted him to do. When we got to the riverbed and turned left to go up the river, his horse turned and Gary kept going straight. It was one of those moments that I’ll never forget. As far as I know, that’s the only time he ever rode a horse. There were others from that team like Gary Cullens, that became good friends, but those two guys have remained a part of my life to this day

The varsity coach was Aubrey Tapp and his assistant was Dick Manning. Tapp was older, like in his fifties, and Manning was a young man just out of USC. Tapp had the helm my sophomore and junior years and we did alright. We didn’t win the league, but we were competitive.

Our sophomore year was the rooky year of football for Gary, George and I, so we were assigned to the JV team. But, we had two young guys from Whittier College that coached the JV team. The head guy was Dick Tucker and for the life of me I can’t remember the other guy’s name. After all it’s been over 65 years, what do you expect? The point I wanted to make, was those two guys took us raw recruits, who had zero experience and taught us how to play the game. I may note that after George graduated from Rosemead and went on to play at Citrus College for two years, he accepted a football scholarship to Whittier College from where Dick Tucker hailed. George became a teacher and coach and also became very close friends with our Dick Tucker.

The JV team played their games during the week in the afternoon. On the nights the varsity played, a few of us would suit up for the varsity game. It gave us the chance to show not only the varsity coaches, but the players what we could do. The next year Gary and I moved up to varsity, but George got a job and didn’t play football that year

I loved sports. I played a little baseball, at least I was on the team I enjoyed practicing with the guys. I couldn’t hit a lick. The same with basketball, I was on the team, but I didn’t play much. I made some great friends on the basketball team. There was the Parker twins, Fred and Ted. They were so identical that the coach and some of the teachers never could tell them apart. They would go to classes for each other and the teachers never knew. They would switch jerseys during a game and the coach never had a clue. I met Elmer Veale playing basketball. He’s the guy I bought my 39 ford from. I also made friends with a guy named Ron Campbell, whom I ended up rooming with later on.

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