A GIRL ON THE BEACH IN THE SUMMER OF 1951 Every summer, during the Easter break, high school kids in Southern California would migrate to Huntington and Newport Beach for the week. We would get a bunch of guys together and rent a house and the girls would do the same. Then we would spend the week on the beach, with girls chasing the guys. We would do dumb things like bleaching our hair blond, while playing volleyball. Easter week of 1951, my junior year at the beach, I met a girl, who was a sophomore at Rosemead, and we hit it off pretty well. So I asked her for a date that night. Well, when I went to the house to pick her up I had to wait a few minutes. While waiting I started talking to this sailor, who was also waiting. It turned out we were both waiting for same girl. When she came out, she came to me and said let’s go, and we left. She didn’t even look at him. That girl was Peggy Rhodes. She later becomes my first wife. You would think I’d have gotten the clue, Live and learn. Peggy and I dated a few times that year (1951), but nothing serious

THE DESASTEROUS 1952 FOOTBALL SEASON That was our senior year. First thing there was a change of coaches. Aubrey Tapp retired and Dick Manning took over as head coach. George came out of retirement. We had a lot of talent and by that time we had a lot of experience. We were ranked as the team to beat in our league. Well, Dick Manning was a really nice guy, but he turned out to be the world’s worst football coach. First thing he did was change from the single wing to the TCU spread formation. It was a passing formation designed for a team with two or three great receivers and a passing tailback. He had no experience with the spread formation and we didn’t have the personnel for that offence. To top it off, he would completely loose it when the game started. In our first game, we passed on every play. We lost 21 to nothing. We went on to lose every game but one, and we had to forfeit that win because it turned that we had an ineligible player. I have often wondered what would have happened if Dick Tucker had been given that team. It could have been an interesting year. The opposition couldn’t score much against us because we had a great defense, but we had no offence. We were a running team stuck with passing offence. We needed a coach who would play to our strengths. George was voted the most valuable player on our team, but Gary and I both made all league. It was really a frustrating experience

That football season I started dating Peggy Rhodes again (like I said, it was a bad year). She was a Rankette (a band group like the song leaders). We dated pretty steady until graduation.

MY FIRST CAR During my sophomore year I had an afterschool job at a machine shop just a couple of blocks from school. This gentleman manufactured plastering and cement tools in a shop behind his house. I think I only made seventy-five cents an hour, but I saved enough to buy my first car. It was a 1936 Plymouth coupe and I paid one-hundred hard earned bucks cash for it. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it was in great shape and was owned by a little old lady in Pasadena. My dad spotted it on his way to work and convinced me that it was the car for me. Well it wasn’t very sexy, but it turned out to be a great car for the money. The first thing I did was give it a new paint job. My mother had just gotten a new vacuum cleaner with a paint spray attachment. When my folks decided to go to Vegas for a couple of days, I figured it was a chance to try the paint sprayer. It worked great for painting the car, but it also painted the whole inside of the garage green. To put it mildly, my dad was not pleased. I don’t think he liked the color.

I drove that Plymouth for about a year until I got a chance to buy the car of my dreams. It was a 1939 Ford club-coupe owned by Elmer Veale, one of my friends on the basketball team. His dad was in the auto-body shop business and he said if I bought the car he would give it a new paint job in any color of my choice. I sold my green Plymouth for $150 and bought the Ford for $150. His dad painted the car a color called Champaign Ivory. It was beautiful. We called my car the Champaign Chugger

THE START OF MY CAREER AS A HOD CARRIER, A LESSON LEARNED One morning at breakfast, just before the summer break between my junior and senior year, I mentioned to my dad that I would like to get a job during the summer that paid more than seventy-five cents an hour. He said if I thought I could cut it, he would put me to work as a hod carrier at three dollars and twenty-five cents an hour. I couldn’t believe it. $3.25 an hour. I told him to sign me up. Believe me, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Dad was Superintendent for the plastering contractor on a large tract of homes in the San Fernando Valley. The first day I was out of school, he woke me up at 5:00am and we drove from Temple City to Reseda. We (the hod carriers) started work at 7:30 am. Oh, I forgot to tell you what a hod carrier does. He tends a crew of 4 or five plasterers. This poor sole is responsible for mixing the plaster (mud), setting up and moving the scaffolding, while keeping a consent supply of mud to each plasterer. To help him accomplish this task he uses a hod. A hod is a device that is designed to sit on a rack next to the mixer and is filled with about 250 lbs of mud. The hod carrier steps under the loaded hod, lifts it on his shoulder (either left or right) and transports it up/down stairs, ladders and around the house and dump it on each plasterers mud boards . Then he must clean up the mess at the end of the day. The new guys are assigned to work with a seasoned veteran for the first couple of days. These old hands teach the new guy how it’s done. My teacher was a 75 year old black man by the name of Bob Baxter. This old man taught me the ropes. He could keep a crew going and make it look so easy. I asked what’s the secret to do this job without it killing yourself. He said, no matter what job you’re doing, don’t ever pass up something that must be done. For instance, every time you pass the mixer, throw in a couple of shovels of sand ( a new batch of plaster took about 20 shovels of sand and a 100 lb sack of cement). Never pass up scaffolding that has to be moved. He said it’s the little things that usually get you in trouble. One of the union reps told me that Bob Baxter was independently wealthy and he owned a city block of property in L.A., he really didn’t have to work. That made me wonder why? When I asked him, he said he had worked hard all of his life, and all of his friends that stopped working died within a short time after retiring. He was not ready to go, so he just keeps working.

I learned some important lessons working in the construction industry. The first thing that came to mind was the fact that I started as a rookie, at the same $3.25 an hour as Bob Baxter, who had n doing this job for fifty some years. It certainly gave me food for thought about what I wanted to do with my life. It was a good lesson to learn early in one’s life. I had great parents, but they were raised in a family that just assumed the after high school you get a job, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. We were the working class. Education was not a major factor in the family process. You must realize that my mother and father were raised at a time when education was a luxury. My dad didn’t finish high school. He had to get a job. Education was the responsibility of the school system. College was not in the plan. There was never family discussions about things like study habits or course requirements for college. The only thing I needed to worry about getting enough units to graduate from high school.

Back in those days there were rules against high school football teams practicing together during the summer. Football practice started one week before school started. So, I worked all summer until practice started. George did not play football his junior year because he wanted to work and earn money to buy a car. He had several part time jobs. One job he had was delivering furniture and appliances for a furniture store in Temple City. Sometimes he would need help and he would give me a call. That turned out to be a very interesting experience for two high school kids. For example: a lady in Arcadia called the store requesting a TV antenna be installed on the roof of her house. When we got there we found out she didn’t have a TV. She was dressed in a very sexy outfit. George called the store and the boss told to come back to the store and he would handle it. We had several cases the boss volunteered to handle. I remember we had a lot of fun with the ¾ ton pickup we used for delivery’s. We discovered that if you were driving down the street and turned off the ignition and just coast on compression for about ten seconds then turn the ignition back on, and you got one gigantic backfire (a big boom). Well what could we possibly do with that? One day we were coming down Santa Anita Ave and there was a lady kneeling down facing away from the street, picking weeds out of her Dicondra (it was a type of grass everyone had at the time). Well George was driving and I begged him not to do it, but he could not resist, he turned the key off and rolled right even with her and reignited. There was Dicondra flying everywhere. What were we supposed to do? Opportunities like that just don’t come along every day. George picked up enough work by not playing football his junior year that he came back to play his senior year driving a beautiful 1947 Ford convertible

1953 AFTER HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION Following graduation George and I didn’t really know what we were going to do next. George’s grandfather offered to pay for George to go to college and major in dentistry, and he also got some possible opportunities for football scholarships but he lacked some requirements to get into a four year school. I had the same problem. As I said before, I was not prepared academically. There was always the option of going to a community college to make up those deficiencies. We had some major decisions to make. Life was getting heavy. We needed to clear our heads. So right after graduation we jumped in George’s Ford convertible and took off for the Beaver mountains for a couple of weeks. We did some hunting and fishing and a little girl chasing. Those country girls are a lot of fun. Back then, those mountains were so beautiful. There were no camp grounds, it was all natural. We saw herds of hundreds of deer. It was so quiet on the mountain and it would rain every afternoon. There’s nothing like that smell after it rains. I’ll tell you for sure, when you get caught in the middle of one of those electrical thunder storms at eleven thousand feet, it scares the hell out you One afternoon we had our camp set up at Puffers Lake, with a nice camp fire under a big tree and a bolt of lightning bounced across the lake accompanied by a tremendous clap of thunder that was so loud and reverberating that you felt like you were inside of it.. George was squatted by the fire and he leaped clear over the fire. That was almost as funny as the lady and the Dicondra. We had a great week in the wild

On the way home we stopped in St. George to get some peaches. St. George was referred to as Dixie in Utah. It was a little town of maybe 1500 people, known for its peaches. Today St. George is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, with a population of about 75,000. We bought a bushel of peaches and headed home. Somewhere south of Vegas we discovered that we had a bad battery. We had to push the car to get it started. Well; when we got to the agricultural inspection station at the California border, we had to stop and were asked if we had any fresh fruits or vegetables. Of course we had those peaches under a blanket in the back seat. Naturally we said we didn’t. The car smelt like one big peach. The agent was suspicious and asked for us to open the trunk. We then explained to him that we had a bad battery and the ignition key opened the trunk. If we turned the car off to open the trunk, then we had to push the car to start it. He said, no problem, he would push us. Well the area where we stopped was gravel. We turned off the car and opened the trunk. No peaches in the trunk. The agent started to walk away and we reminded him we needed a push. So, with clipboard in hand he started pushing. If you have ever tried to start a car on gravel by popping the clutch you have to get going pretty fast or it just slides. He must have pushed us a half mile before the car started. We waved goodbye to one sweaty border patrol agent and drove home with our peaches.

After returning from Beaver I did the hod carrier bit again for the summer. I was working for Gene Farnsworth, one of the other superintendents for Ludlow Brothers. And yes, Gene is a part of the Farnsworth clan that brought us to California. We were working a tract down in Anaheim. Our tract was on a two lane road called Harbor Blvd, and Disney Land was under construction just a half a mile down the road.

George was looking for summer job to make some money for school the next semester. He really wanted to get on as a hod carrier because it paid well. I asked my dad if he had any job openings on the tract he was running in the San Fernando Valley. He had nothing. So I asked Gene if he could use another hod carrier. He had no jobs available either. Particularly someone with no experience. It was true, George would have a hard time getting a job having no training. So, I told George to come to work with me for a couple of days and I could show him how the job was done, and we could split the pay. The second day Gene came by and asked me what that kid was doing here. He had been watching all the time and liked the way George worked. I explained what we were doing and why. He said if he wonts a job that bad, he was hired. We worked the whole summer.

1953 COLLEGE DAYS AT CITRUS JR. COLLEGE That summer both George and I decided to attend Citrus Jr College in Glendora. George had been talking to Bart Bartel. Bartel was a year ahead of us at Rosemead and played center on our football team. He went to Citrus and played football. Bart sold both of us on what a great football program they had

Citrus Jr College was established in 1898, nestled in the foothills east of Azusa in Glendora California. At that time the College was surrounded by orange groves. The College shared the property with Citrus High School. Our first year, 1953, there were 175 students and 24 players on the football team. The head football coach was Blas Mercurio. What never ceases to amaze me is Blas was not only my football coach, we ended up 29 years later as co-grandparents. His son Vince, married my daughter Michele and presented us with our granddaughter Marci.

Our football team was a mix of guys from all over the area, Monrovia, Citrus and Rosemead high schools and a half dozen vets coming back from serving in the military. These guys were old. They were in their early twenties. They rented a big house in the center of an orange grove. They had great parties. Then Blas found out about the parties. The next practice he called a meeting under the goal post. He informed us that he knew about the parties, and if there was anybody here that rather party and chase women than play football they had the option of leaving. There was not enough left to field a football team. I never let Blas forget that day. He had to go around campus to get everyone of the players that left and make a deal. Nobody really wanted to quit so it was not difficult to get all the guys back

That first year at Citrus we had a very good team, but we lost the conference championship to Antelope Valley JC. What made it so much fun, was that Glendora was a small town nestled in foothills, surrounded by orange groves, and the whole town turned out for every game, both home and away. Including the Mayor and our parents. My mom and dad and George’s dad didn’t miss a game

Then there was Gary. That sneaky bugger graduated with all of the requirements to go on to college. For his diligence he got a football scholarship to the University of Denver. He made a very good choice. Denver University was an outstanding private school, plus they had just hired a new football coach by the name of Bob Blackman. This coach was rated very high and was expected to put Denver on the map in college football. He did pretty well too. I think they were ranked as high as 3 or 4 in the nation. Gary got a four year ride, but his freshman year he played on the freshman team. The problem was the freshman team was not on the training table. He got a bunk in the basement, tuition and books. Food was on him. When he came home for the Christmas break he’d lost about 20 lbs. George and I were working for dad during the break and he put Gary on as a laborer. He also gave Gary some clothes to take back to school. Gary didn’t have a warm jacket or winter clothes, so he gave him a couple of jackets. He said they were trying to freeze the kid to death. I don’t think Gary ever forgot that little act of kindness. My dad was a very kind and generous man. In his family he was the Chairman of the Board and big brother. That’s the reason we always had someone living with us. If anyone needed help he was always there

I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, but in the meantime I was having a great time at Citrus, made a lot of new friends and I loved the Glendora area. Because of the size of the school, everybody knew each other. When we had a student body meeting, we met in Hayden Hall. Hayden Hall was about the size of a large classroom. You could say that it was a warm and friendly place to go to school. We had one hundred and seventy-five students and twenty-four guys on the football team. To put that into prospective, today the school has over fifteen thousand students. We didn’t have offensive and defensive teams, we played both ways. The faculty was young and knew each of their students. A good example was Frank Martinez. He was Dean of Men and taught history and he liked to play ping pong. We would get him playing ping pong in the student lounge and try to get him involved in the game and lose track of time, because if he was ten minutes late to his class, we could leave. We were never successful. He was always one step ahead of us. He was an ex-marine (actually there is no such thing as an ex-marine, once a marine, always a marine) and on his exams, if you didn’t know the answer, you could write in God bless the marines and he would give you half credit.

My second year at Citrus the school grew a little. We probably had two hundred students. One of the new students was Peggy Rhodes. Remember her? That was when we started dating pretty seriously. She got right into the swing of things. She was a Song Leader and a Homecoming Princess. We had a good football team and won the conference.

Citrus Jr. College Football Team

The game I remember the most of all of the games we played in the two years at Citrus was on Thanksgiving day, 1954. Blas had schedule a game against Los Angeles Valley JC. They were a large school and were known as the farm team for UCLA. They were also undefeated and top ranked in the nation. They must have had a 100 really big guys on their football team. Blas told us before the game, he was sorry he had scheduled them, but we would just have to do our best. He also said the other coach told him that if the game got out of hand he would pull the number one and two teams and play the sub’s. Till this day I’m not sure he wasn’t feeding us a line of bull. It was homecoming and as usual the whole town was there.

We took the field first and then proceeded to watch as these huge guys in white uniforms just kept coming. It seemed like they had more players than we had students. We won the toss and elected to receive to start the game. Their kicker put the ball deep in the end zone, and we started on the 20. I was at right guard and George was the fullback. Robin Kipp, the quarterback, handed the ball to tailback Milt Bunn on a play designed to go right between guard and tackle on the right side with the fullback leading. I pulled and hooked onto the guy in front of me and the next thing I heard was a big roar. I looked up to see Milt scoot 80 yards for a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage. That was the start of one of the best games we ever played. As for L.A. valley they just could not get started. We ended up winning the game 21 to 7. That was our last game at Citrus for George and I and the end of my football career. George would go on to play at Whittier College for George Allan who went on to coach the Rams and Redskins. The following January I was playing on the Citrus basketball team in a tournament at Analope Valley JC. L.A. Valley was playing in the tournament , and a couple of players came over and asked if any of us played football. There were three of us and I asked them why they asked. These were guys that also played football at L.A, Valley. They said they could not believe that the small school up in the foothills won that football game. They thought all they had to do was show up and they got caught with their pants down. That Thanksgiving day turn out to be one my fondest memories.

1955 DECISION TIME. WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE? In the summer of 1955 I had gone to two years of college and didn’t have a clue as to who or what I wanted to be. It had been fun going to school, playing football and just being a kid. That phase of my life had come to an end. Like I said before, in my family you go to school through high school, get a job, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. College was for the bright kids, and I was certainly not in that category. I envied people with that capability. That summer George and I did the old hod carrying and Gary came home for the summer and worked for dad again as a laborer. I kept telling him he wasn’t smart enough to be a hod carrier. Truth was I was really envious and proud of my friend for what he achieved. At the end of the summer George would be off to Whittier College. What to do?

At Rosemead, I had three years of drafting. I liked making drawings and was pretty good at it. That was one of the few things I did right in school. I had no desire to be a laborer for my life’s work. So, at end of the summer of ’55 I applied for a job as a draftsman at Aerojet General in Azusa. The company was located where the brewery is now, on the west side of Azusa at Foothill Blvd and Irwindale Ave. They designed and tested rocket engines. They had bunkers in the pits where they test fired those engines. It was an exciting place to work. I got the job. I started at $195 a month.

When they fired up one of those solid propellant rocket motors in the test bunkers, it could be heard all over the valley. Every once in a while one would explode and blow the roof off of the test bay. I was interviewed and hired by the Chief Draftsman, John Parker. I remember that he was concerned that I might not be happy going from $3.50 an hour to $1.13 an hour. He had no idea how happy I was to have a job with a future.