BOOMER
BOOMER BUST
A NOVEL ABOUT ARTHUR DIXON ENGEL - A BABY-BOOMER - 01NOV10

Wikipedia defines Baby Boomers : “A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom. Between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context, and sometimes used to describe someone who was born during the post-WWII baby boom. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even within a given territory. Different groups, organizations, individuals, and scholars may have widely varying opinions on what constitutes a baby boomer, both technically and culturally. Ascribing universal attributes to a broad generation is difficult, and some observers believe that it is inherently impossible. Nonetheless, many people have attempted to determine the broad cultural similarities and historical impact of the generation, and thus the term has gained widespread popular usage.”
“In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations. In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence.[2] ^ a b Owram, Doug (1997), Born at the Right Time, Toronto: Univ Of Toronto Press, p. x, ISBN 0802080863As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.[3]” ^ a b Jones, Landon (1980), Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan

Affluent. Entitled. Spoiled. The Lost Generation. The Wasted GEneration. The descriptions go on and on . But didn’t Mom and Dad want us to be happy? Isn’t that why they bought us lots of cool stuff? Nearly weekly we went to Dud’s to get a new ‘surfer shirt’ for Tom and I. Dud’s was a local clothing store at Lakewood Mall and a surfer shirt was a cool short sleeved shirt with buttons coming halfway down the front of the shirt and contrasting trim around the neck and sleeves. There was no collar. These shirts were very popular and very cool and Tom and I felt fortunate to be able to wear them.
We also had 5 or 6 Pendleton shirts a piece. These shirts were serious. They were made of wool – were plaid – and had long sleeves and big cool pockets with flaps. These shirts were also very popular and very cool I think this is one design that has survived the decades. If you were cool you had Pendleton shirts. Mom and Dad made sure we had Pendletons. Surfer shirts and Pendleton shirts were both very BB. (Baby Boomer).
I think that compared to Mom and Dad and their parents, we were certainly spoiled. We always had enough to eat. I can’t remember ever wanting for food. I know Mom and Dad survived the great depression. Later I remember Dad reaching into magazine stands to find if there was any loose change. This at a time when I figured he was worth perhaps a million dollars or more. Why? Because he had survived want, need, hunger, fighting and scraping for a living. Mom too. Mom said there were times when Grandma would make dinner out of one can of tuna and some other ingredients to help stretch the precious food.
But Mom and Dad wanted us to have more than they did. They loved us; that’s why they were so good to us.
Tom and I have never known this kind of life. Mom worked at a grocery store and Dad worked at Douglas Aircraft. So, between the two of them we were well provided for. I think we were definitely spolied; we didn’t know any different. But I remember a neighbor saying something interesting; something that caused me concern; it was a warning. It was a voice of reason from someone who had been there. Joe Olsen was a wonderful neighbor. But I remember something he said – when I was a wee lad of about 7 or 8. “One day we’re going to wake up and have nothing.” Now for someone who loved his toys , guns, clothes, pet, home, bikes, and other ‘junk’, this was disconcerting. You possibly have never heard of the Great Garloo. I really had one. Looking at it now brings back fond memories – and like many of the ‘things’ in my life athat are no longer – I wish I had another one…or still had that one! Oh, you can find them – in working order on eBay. Garloo was big in the early 60’s. I mean, this was my own robot and it was nearly 50 years ago. He walked forward, backward, could bend over and pick up stuff and bring it to you. Well, he wasn’t like an independent robot that they talked about where he would serve you and be at your bidding. But he was like a monster. To be honest, he looked like the creature from the black lagoon.
At this age we liked to be scared. Sci-Fi movies. Horror movies. We loved em…and we hated em. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was pretty scary. Just the music from that movie can give you goose bumps. So here’s Garloo in all his green glory. I figure my Dad just couldn’t resist. I think it’s the toy he would have wanted if they had made them in 1930. Garloo was cool just to have; just to have him almost like a model. Some people who owned Garloo were scared to have him. Adjusted for inflation, Garloo cost $125. Yep, Mom and Dad loved me. And they loved my Brother, Tom. The museum of Science and Industry in Chicago has a display of dozens of robots – the Great Garloo plays a prominent part of this collection.
Garloo lasted a good long time…we were taught to take good care of our toys! He survived our stay in Lakewood; but he wasn’t to survive Lynwood. Boys being boys we matured in some ways and not so much in other ways. One thing we went through was pyrotechnics. Fireworks. Firecrackers and cherry bombs and M-80s; and half-sticks of dynamite. One fine day we had a big supply of explosives and a small supply of what we wanted to ‘blow up’. Well, we had Garloo. Don’t do it!!! Oh, yes – we arrived at a decision on this. One we regret now. But just the same, Garloo was going down.
The neighbors must have had infinite patience. The Loessnerz next door were a wonderful older couple, probably in their 70’s. Very nice people. But I’m sure that our shenanigans with fireworks must have gotten on their last nerve. But they rarely complained. We decided to go with middle-range explosives for our large green robot friend. An M-80 should do it. We removed Garloo from the cabinet in the garage. We taped the M-80 to a strategic spot on Garloo; his stomach. We placed him in the back yard and lit the fuse; and ran; fast. KA-BOOM!! These were the serious, loud, high powered M-80s. Made before litigation had them detuned to a whisper of their former selves. Garloo exploded into a million green bits, flying throughout the back yard and up and on top of the roof of the house and the screened in patio.
What remained was a shredded pair of leopard shorts, green shards of plastic, and a couple of motors that drove the green goblin. No mas. Blow taps. And when I think back, I think why, Art? Why did you blow up your $125 Garloo? Dad and Mom worked hard for that and you ‘killed’ him. One of life’s lessons.
What, pray tell, did Joe mean when he said we’d grow up and have nothing? My world was full of stuff – needs, wants, entitlements…everything imaginable. What exactly was he talking about? Well, what he was talking about was the great depression. When men went to bed with jobs, savings, stocks, bonds, and the like and woke up the next day with ‘nothing’. Meaning no jobs, no stocks, no bonds, and no visible means of feeding their families. Some chose to end it all and jumped out of windows, dashing their brains on the sidewalks. Joe also said children should be seen and not heard. I took what he said seriously because I could tell that he knew what he was talking about.
And he worked hard to support and put bread on the table for his wonderful family. We were like family with the Olsens. We vacationed together, played together, ate together…we were basically related. But we weren’t. More about them later. But certainly to be sure – Mom and Dad loved us. There was no doubt. They didn’t throw money at us and disappear to Vegas or anything like that. We did things together. We took vacations, we went to movies, we went to museums, miniature golfing, go-kart riding, trampolining, swimming…you name it. Well, I don’t think we ever went snow skiing…but I wasn’t really interested in snow sports. At that time.
Wiki goes further: “One of the unique features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the change they were bringing about.[4] This rhetoric had an important impact in the self perceptions of the boomers, as well as their tendency to define the world in terms of generations, which was a relatively new phenomenon.
The baby boom has been described variously as a "shockwave"[2] (ibid) and as "the pig in the python."[3](op cit) By the sheer force of its numbers, the boomers were a demographic bulge which remodeled society as it passed through it.
1. The term Generation Jones has been used by Jonathan Pontell to distinguish those born from 1954 onward from the earlier Baby Boomers.[ FNP Interactive - http://www.fnpInteractive.com+(2008-12-19). "The Frederick News-Post Online - Frederick County Maryland Daily Newspaper". Fredericknewspost.com. http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/archives/display_detail.htm?StoryID=91159. Retrieved 2010-08-02.
2. ^ "Birthday Gift to Obama - Your Generational Identity Revealed | ThirdAge Articles". Thirdage.com. 2009-05-13. http://www.thirdage.com/holidays-celebrations/birthday-gift-to-obama-your-generational-identity-revealed. Retrieved 2010-08-02.
3. ^ "Opinion poll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Research2000.us. doi:10.1016/j.jda.2006.01.001. http://research2000.us/2006/11/01/generation-jones-could-be-key-to-06-midterm-election-results/. Retrieved 2010-08-02.
4. ^ Noveck, Jocelyn (2009-01-11), "In Obama, many see an end to the baby boomer era". [1].
5][6][7][8]” It’s interesting how generations view themselves…remember that song “Kids, what’s the matter with kids today? Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?” This song was written for the stage musical and movie “Bye Bye Birdie” – inspired by the huge event – Elvis being drafted into the Service. It’s a satire set in 1958. The reason I mention this is that the song helps to describe the sentiment of all adults – that kids are spoiled rotten. “ Has it always been thus? Has each generation been like this – what’s up with kids – their clothes, their music, their work ethic – or lack thereof. They don’t want to work, go to school, study, do anything. They’re lazy. That was us. But not always!
Well, as I said – Mom and Dad loved us. They gave us Schwinn Stingrays, 10-speeds, loads of toys at Christmas, good clothes, plenty of food, a roof over our heads, LOVE. It’s so funny, because I can remember very well at a young age at James Whitcomb Riley Elementary school on Sandwood St in Lakewood, CA – the baby boomers are like a pig travelling through a python. Huh? Did I hear that right? A pig…travelling through a python. Having lived all my years on Hayter Ave. In Lakewood. The largest pre-planned over night built community in the history of the world – the closest I’d gotten to a python was possibly a garden snake or a potato bug. So my teacher drew the picture on the blackboard. We had blackboards in those days; not whiteboards; not smarboards; no – chalk and slate.
Ah – so that’s what we’re talking about. As cool as it sounded to be a ‘baby boomer’ – the thought of being in a python was definitely not good. And it seemed that when being described by the ‘great generation’ - or perhaps my teacher, that it did not sound very romantic. Not glamorous, glorious, or even good. Just sounded like a lot of people. However, because we were a lot of people, it seemed like we might have some influence. Be able to make things happen – possibly even for the good! But we had problems. We tended to waste time. To use drugs and alcohol. To be self obsessing. “Here’s me, and here’s the rest of the world; revolving around…me.” Mom reminded me once of a particular moment when I threw a tantrum. Now, I suppose as kids we all threw tantrums.
We wanted candy, or a bike, or a toy (like that cool Garloo – see pic – and they DID get me one!). But oh, no! This particular fit was about something that was a bit harder to procure. It wasn’t an exotic pet like a falcon, or a horse. No, I had a fit about the moon. You heard me right. The moon. After all, I wanted that! I couldn’t help laughing at myself later in life looking back on this occasion. I had wanted some things in my life – but the moon. I guess I must have thought that it was there for the having. That all Mom and Dad had to do was plop down some hard earned cash and it would be all mine. The moon.
We were the Baby Boomer Generation. My Dad was part of the ‘Great Generation’ or the ‘GI Generation’. They were born between 1901 and 1924. They fought in WWII. Dad did fight in WWII – he was on a Destroyer in the Pacific Ocean fighting the Japanese. His ship was named the USS Gwin. They came of age during the Great Depression. Tom Brokaw gave this generation their name and wrote a book with the same title.
The Silent Generation were those born between 1925 and 1945. My Mom was born in that era – actually Mom was born in 1932. A great year. A lot of wonderful people were born that year. Great cars, too. These were considered the children of the Great Depression. This event had a great impact on their lives.


It was 3PM on a Friday. I was excited about seeing my father. He was due to be home about now. He worked at the Aircraft factory that was located about 2 miles away. This was Lakewood, California. And the factory was McDonnell Douglas.

My name is Art and my Dad’s name was Edward. He stood 6’ tall and weighed about 220 pounds. He was a chiseled physique of a man having become a weightlifter while serving in the Navy during WWII. He was a bodybuilder, a fitness buff, a powerlifter, and a gym rat. He was all of these – and to a me, he was a super hero. A super hero? Yes. Because young I loved watching cartoons depicting the Hulk, Spider Man, Super Man, and Bat Man. I was 8 years old and this was 1962. When I was on the floor and looked up at my Dad, I saw a Hulking super man…with 19” arms, a 30” waist and hair cropped short which accentuated his receding hairline.
At Joe Nista’s gym he had set records for the most pull-ups and the most bar dips. Well, what the heck does that have to do with the price of tea in China? A lot to a kid who lived in the realm of anything’s possible. Here in mid-America, here in Lakewood – tomorrow’s city today. Built over night – a suburb of Los Angeles. Lakewood sprang up nearly over night to provide good, affordable housing to the men and women who fought in WWII. The great generation. Rows and rows of houses – mostly alike – with 2 or 3 bedrooms and 1 or 2 bathrooms. And a front yard and backyard to provide some place to plant some grass…or to let the weeds grow. Wink.
My brother Tom was there with me as I waited for Dad to come home from work. After a hard week’s work at school and playing with the neighbor boys, we looked forward to seeing our Dad. Tom was 3 years older than Art…he was 11. There were several boys on the block who were the same age as Tom. Sometimes I felt out of place trying to fit in with Tom and his buddies. They were too old and sophisticated for me, I guess. But I loved my brother and I hung in there. He often allowed me to hang out with him and his buddies.
I loved my family very much. I kinda worshpped them, I guess. It seems like they could do no wrong; until me and my brother had a disagreement over something. I was always excited to see my Dad. So when we spied for him to arrive after work – there was great anticipation. Dad had a sense of humor. He enjoyed watching cartoons with us on Saturdays. The Roadrunner was one of our favorites. How cool was that – a Dad who would watch cartoons with you. And I also wanted to be with my brother when he was playing with his friends. Sometimes I would really cramp their style; hold em back from having the kind of fun or mischief they felt they deserved. Mom and I were together a lot. Especially before I went off to school. We thought we had ESP. Sometimes we would finish each other’s sentences. That kind of closeness. So when the neighbor teenagers gave Mom a hard time and she had to read them the riot act, I was really shaken by the whole event. In my 8 year old world, this was nirvana; perfection; heavenly. They all had a big impact on my life. Mom believed in me, Dad tried to get us to be responsible, and Tom was my big brother. Kind of like a bodyguard. More on that later!
Tom was tall and handsome – with dark hair and dark skin…during the summer his skin got quite dark. He was blessed with this attribute, I thought. Because I had red hair and fair skin and I ‘burned’ in the summer. I don’t know about sun scream…oh, that’s sunscreen to an 8 year old. I don’t remember having sunscream. But I do remember coppertone and baby oil. I think in the early 60’s we mainly used stuff that would burn us more. We didn’t yet know about a disappearing ozone layer, global warming, or the internet…he he he. But there were times where I really didn’t care for being a red head. I mean – ‘carrot top’ didn’t go over so well. That was one of the favorite names for red heads in those days. ‘Red headed step child’. Now – what in the heck?! Who thought that one up? Because I want to find their grandkids and sock em in the neck!! Or then there’s the famous song…”beautiful beautiful brown eyes, beautiful beautiful brown eyes; beautiful beautiful brown eyes…I’ll never love blue eyes again.” Now my eyes were green – but they weren’t brown and I thought once again that I’d missed out!
Tom and I spied the end of our street – Hayter Ave. And we looked towards the end of our street near the country club. Dad would be dropped off at the end of the street by his carpool buddies and we would race to meet him. Sure enough, a car slowed to a stop and out stepped Dad. An oak of a man. That was our Dad. We were excited to see him and raced down the street to meet him. He had a ready smile; his green eyes shining and massive arms beckoning to us. His arms were so big that he had to roll up his short sleeves so that his arms were free to move. With his short-cropped hair and tight fitting shirts and small waist, he was referred to at work as “Mr. Clean”. This was because he looked just like the man in the cleaning product commercials.
“Hi, Dad”, Tom and I said as we got close to see him. “Hi, Boys” Dad replied. We both hugged him and felt a flood of emotion as we were so happy to see him. “What are you boys up to?”, he asked. Oh, nothing. We were playing and wanted to come meet you. “Well, that’s great”, he answered. “What’s Mom up to?” She’s at home cleaning and said we could go to Bob’s Big Boy for dinner!
Bob’s Big Boy…wow! We loved going to Bob’s Big Boy. Well, it was one of our favorite places to eat. You could get the double burger with the special seasoning salt, and fries, and a silver goblet shake. All the waitresses at Bob’s had hair piled up on their heads. Tom and I called them “Hair Girls”. Hair girls not only worked at Bob’s, but also cruised Bellflower Blvd. But we’ll talk more about that later…
As super a hero Dad was – Mom was too! Her name was Evelyn and as I was to find out later in life, she was an accomplished athlete, musician, singer, and that was all before she became our mother!! She was also beautiful. She had long, dark brown hair and brown eyes and was medium height and had a beautiful figure. Since Dad was built like Captain America and Mom was beautiful so you can figure there were times when Dad was gonna have to open a can o’ whup a** on some unsuspecting dufus who had drink a few too many shots of liquid bravery. One time Mom told me that she and Dad were at the Pike in Long Beach and they were having a good time. Some idiot liked what he saw and decided to pinch her. Well, rather than start a big fight, Mom didn’t say a word. If she had, Dad probably would have floored the guy. This made me feel bad for Mom. I wanted to defend her. I wanted to track down that so and so and give him a thing or two!
I remember we had a simple contest once to see who could hold their hand out in front of them the longest. I think I lasted a couple minutes, Tom lasted three, and Dad lasted four…but Mom vanquished all of us. She lasted 10 minutes! This absolutely blew my mind. I was certain Tom or Dad would win the big hold your hand straight out in front of you contest. They were athletes. They were tough. They worked out! But Mom was the endurance athlete! Another time we were testing to see who was most flexible. Who could touch their toes? Well, I could get past my knees! Down around my ankles. Tom could reach close to his toes as could Dad. But Mom; she did it again! She could touch her palms on the floor! HUH? Did I get that right? Yep – she sure could! I had never seen Mom doing yoga, or pilates; in fact, in these days I had yet to hear of these exotic workouts. But Mom was showing us how it was done! And her father Kevin could do the same thing. He had been quite an athlete as well and played golf daily until the day that he had a debilitating stroke.
I would find out much later that Mom was quite an athlete. In fact, we later found a photo clipped from the local newspaper. It showed a group of women playing volleyball at Simon Bolivar park. The caption read something like: “local women enjoy a game of volleyball at Simon Bolivar Park ‘mixer’”. In the picture is an obviously athletic woman up in the air having just spiked the ball over the net. Can you guess who that woman was? Yep – that’s right – our Mom!! But she never went on and on about her athleticism and she also took her role as Mother and Wife as the key focus and spent the most time on these. And understanding and enjoying these roles. Oh, there were the times to go back to Iceland to Ice Skate in Paramount. This was and still is a famous place to ice skate in Southern California.
So we all climbed into our ’59 Chevrolet Impala and embarked for Bob’s Big Boy. The ’59 Chevy is an American Classic. In that day we didn’t understand that this would one day be a ‘classic’. We just knew that it was a very cool car. Sexy fins which were unique for this year. Fins in this era were a mainstay; but the fins on the ’59 were fins on steroids. But to keep from being ostentatious – they were flat and sleek like beautiful ears on a pedigree dog…

The family went shopping for this car together. We had the ’50 Merc which was a great car (and another future classic!). It was a good car, but it was 10 years later and it was time to look for another car. We were all there together, Mom, Tom, Dad , and I. We looked at a few cars. But when we found the ’59 Chevy Tom and I began to drool! This car was very sexy. Yellow, a V8, fins, rear stereo speaker with very cool crossed racing flags. And the dash wasn’t like the plastic and leather stuff you see now days (albeit much safer…). This think had a formed steel dash with chrome! Tom and I both oohed and aahhed our way around the car. We climbed in, over, around, and through. And under the hood and in the trunk of course. And that trunk certainly had space enough for a couple of Sting ray bikes!!

Sting ray bikes, you say? Yes, sting ray bikes. But that’s another story. “Let’s get this one!” Tom said to Dad. Dad said “you think so?” with a big grin. I said “yeah, Dad, let’s get this one!” Mom nodded in approval and it was a done deal.
Bob’s Big Boy was located on the corner of South and Lakewood.

We lived near Del Amo and Lakewood – so it was a short drive – maybe 4 miles away. We piled into the sexy yellow ’59 Impala, Dad pumped the pedal a couple times, turned the key, and the 4 barrell carburetor helped the V8 to purr to life. Oh, and we had to have the glass packs. These were special exhaust with fiberglass that helped the car sound deep and throaty. The old school version of the turbo max. We pulled out on to Del Amo and turned left on Lakewood and cruised up the street. It was getting dark and the neon sign of L’s restaurant at the corner of Del Amo and Lakewood lit up the night. L’s was actually a pretty good restaurant as well…but how could you beat Bob’s?
I think the girl who took our order already knew what we wanted…we didn’t change very often. The Bob’s Big Boy Burger, fries, and the silver goblet shake. As she walked away, I couldn’t help notice her big hair. It appeared to be a condition of employment @ Bob’s – gotta have some extra hair up on top…a bun, a fall, a French roll – you name it. The order was placed on the stainless steel merry go round and we knew it wouldn’t be long. When the meal comes we relish at the relish…some kind of red relish on the burger…then they have the seasonling salt on the table which goes over well on the burgers. Oh, and some ketchup…and some ketchup on the fries. Very tasty. Not the most nutritious meal in the world – no salad within a mile…but very good to an 8 year old in in 1962 Lakewood , CA.
And the silver goblet shake – how tasty is that?! With the silver goblet making it look sexy to boot! I mean even if what was inside wasn’t thick, creamy, sweet, vanilla or chocolate or strawberry, it was so cool looking that you had to have one!! Was it chrome plated or polished staqinless? Who Knows? Perhaps Dad did. After all, he built airplanes! Dc-7’s, DC-8’s, DC-9’s… And more importantly we were all there together. A family unit! :^) The Engels were at Bob’s for a meal. For those unfamiliar with Bob’s – it was named after the mascot – the little fellow who stood out front wearing red and white plaid overalls holding a plate proudly in the air with a burger placed just so. You could buy the mascot as a bank. The “Bob” was so popular that indeed, you could buy all kinds of cool stuff with his namesake and visage so that you could take a bit of the BBB experience home with you.
It wasn’t until later that I realized that although there was some protein, carbs, and fats here – that this was probably not the best of meals. I mean, the fat, salt, and carbs were probably sky high. Probably enough for a couple of days. And far from balanced. And there was certainly no greens, salad, vegetables or the like. But all we knew was it tasted terrific. And it wouldn’t be until much later that I saw that perhaps French fries were maybe best consumer perhaps once or twice a month instead of 5 or 6 times a month. They also had mile-high strawberry pie. And advertised on local TV so that you really couldn’t resist.
Now – I haven’t been able to verify it, but I think Johnny Cash was singing songs for Bob’s. It went something like this…”At Bob’s Big Boy, we love good food just like you doooooooo.” All these decades later, my brother Tom can do a proud rendition of this song. In fact, I think he sings it better than Johnny himself.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but BBB pretty much disappeared some years ago. No one knew what happened. It seemed that there was a move to fast food like McDonald’s, Jack in the Box, and Taco Bell. Bob’s fell on hard times and started to vanish like drops of rain in the hot sun. We weren’t happy about this. But patience is a virtue. We are now seeing a resurgence. There’s one on Signal Hill on Willow just West of Cherry and there are some springing up in the local desert communities. For this we are very grateful. We like the BBB. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Burgers are very close to the original… infact, I doubt you could tell the difference.
After dinner we decided to go for a drive. We piled into the Impala, fired up the glass packs, and headed up Lakewood Blvd toward the beach. We figured we’d go down near the beach and maybe take a walk on the pier. That was just the thing to cap a great night spent together as a family.
LAKEWOOD
As a child I had no idea how fortunate we were to live in Lakewood. Later I would find out that it sprang up over night. Pretty much built in 1950/51 as a place to accommodate thousands of veterans returning from World War II. Dad had fought in the Pacific on a destroyer.
As referenced on the Los Angeles Public Library Website: “ Lakewood is a city ten miles southeast of Los Angeles that in 1950 broke new ground-literally and figuratively-when the Lakewood Park Company started building what would become the nation's first post-war planned housing development, consisting of 17,500 houses on about 3,500 acres. Lakewood emerged from a former sugar beet field to become a model planned community, complete with street lighting and underground wires, assembly-line construction of about 50 houses a day, berms between residential streets and the highway, and a car-friendly prototype shopping area called Lakewood Center. The community's size also eclipsed that of many long-established cities such as Holyoke, Massachusetts, and Santa Ana, California. Promoted with slogans such as "Lakewood-My Home Town" and "Lakewood, Tomorrow's City Today," the community was built just in time for war veterans and their families to buy their first homes with the help of the G.I. Bill of Rights, which let buyers put little or no money down and pay for their mortgages with low-interest 30-year loans.”
I recall lots of kids in the area about our same age. Tom had several friends on the street. I had my friend Gerry Greenwald lived right across the street from us. He and I were the same age. He had a dog named Cissy and a chicken. Each year at Easter they would dye the chicken with food dye. It was really cool. And Cissy was a sort of terrier who was a lot of fun. Cissy would hold on to this plastic steak while we twirled around in circles – cissy’s legs splayed out in mid air. I don’t think we thought a lot of what might happen to Cissy if she were to go flying off the steak or if we were to accidentally let go of the steak. Gerry’s Mom and Dad were great and would help to take care of me – sometimes we would ride to school together or go for walks around the block.
“As the unincorporated Lakewood grew from a small village in 1950 to a community of more than 70,000 residents in less than three years, so grew its municipal needs. Lakewood thus had three choices: become annexed to nearby Long Beach, remain unincorporated and continue to receive county services, or incorporate as a city. In 1954, residents chose the latter option and voted to incorporate as a city, the largest community in the country ever to do so and the first city in Los Angeles County to incorporate since 1939. However, the incorporation had a twist: while the new City Council would set policy and budgets at the local level, members would continue to contract with Los Angeles County to receive a wide range of county services such as road repair, water and sewer services, and fire protection. This novel arrangement-which let the city retain local control of its government while tapping efficiently into existing services-was spelled out in a document called the Lakewood Plan, that was adopted and modified by many other communities in California and the United States that wanted to incorporate as well.”
1954 – that was the year I was born. And Lakewood voted to incorporate as a city. Growing up I never remember hearing about beet fields or that the city sprang up nearly over night. But I do remember later my Step-Dad Virgil saying he was concerned about Lakewood; since the city had been built over night, it might just fall into urban / suburban decay just as quickly. A drive through Lakewood today will alleviate his fears and I’m thankful that Pop as we called him never saw this happen. Lakewood is still good old solid middle America as far as I’m concerned.
Mom and Dad put little or no money down (I think). Well, regardless – they paid about $9,000 for the home in 1951. Now days $9,000 might buy you a decent motorcycle, or a good used Honda Civic.
“ Today Lakewood-with 26,000 housing units, most of them single-family detached homes-remains known for its community services and quality of life as a bedroom community. The community is studied by historians and city planners because of its distinction as a ground-breaking type of suburb and because of the Lakewood Plan's visionary combination of local and county services. Among other things, Lakewood introduced a number of innovations into suburban development-such as assembly-line house construction-and is often compared to Levittown, New York.”
Our home may have been built on an assembly line, but it’s still standing (see pic in beginning of story). You’ll notice a couple of things in the picture - a large picture window and wrought iron. My Dad and his Dad Steven worked together and took out the multi-paned windows in the front of the house and replaced them with a large picture window. They also installed wrought iron on the porch. I’m amazed that the wrought iron looks just like it did when they installed it nearly 50 years ago.
They made some other modifications. They split the inside of the garage and left a space to park one car. In the other half of the garage, they built a beautiful den. Now – I’m not sure about how to describe the den. It had blonde furniture along with a nice, red leather couch. The walls were covered with light colored paneling – possibly birch. The walls were covered with Dad’s collectibles. Guns, knives, swords, tomahawks, rifles, spears and the like. There were nice display cabinets where Dad had other items like Indian beads, moccasins, bonnets, trains, model airplane engines and more…Dad liked to collect things and had lots of hobbies.
In a letter written in 1954, the Lakewood Speakers Bureau talked about looking into a crystal ball. “Have you taken the time to drive around our community of Lakewood?” “Have you taken the time to evaluate the facilities that are here?” “Have you taken the interest to look at a map and see what the future holds for your children and mine? If you have done these things then you are a good Lakewoodite. Then you have evaluated the beautiful propescts for us all as citizens of a modern community.” The crystal ball letter was written to help build momentum for Lakewood as an independent city. There was a push for annexation to Long Beach.
I suppose I was a good Lakewoodite. I noticed that it was only 1 block to walk to school – or to ride my bike. I would sometimes stop to pick up my buddy Erick Parkridge. He played the violin. One time I asked him how much it cost. He replied “it’s priceless.” Huh? I answered. How could a ‘thing’ be priceless? I would have to become a bit older to understand. I figured his violin must be worth oh, maybe $100. Tops. But I digress. We’re off to school and it’s a block away. James Whitcomb Riley Elementary school was a 5 minute walk. And right across the street was another wonderful amenity; Simon Bolivar Park. At Bolivar park was a beautiful, big pool, BBQ’s, large permanent shelters where people could huddle and have picnics, parties, quincineras; you name it. Riley Elementary school was I think built after a model. The model was put your classrooms in the middle along with offices and a cafeteria; or cafetorium. Add a teachers lounge. Surround this with only blacktop. Because, after all, grass took maintenance and care. Or perhaps it was a cost savings.
Add sprinkles of equipment like the ‘jungle gym’, merry go round, sand box, monkey bars, and some swings. Include some markings for kick ball, dodge ball and the like. You must have an incinerator to burn the trash. Now surround everything with a chain link fence and you’ve pretty much got the picture. I really liked my school. A few years previous I won an award for building a creative structure in the sand box (Kidergarten). What was this structure you ask? A bear cave! Of course!
Now – my Kindergarten teacher was amazing. She was elegant, beautiful, well-dressed and fixed her hair in a French roll. Mrs French wore formal white blouses and 2 piece skirts. I was only 5 years old, but Mrs French made my heart go pitter pat. I was especially eager to go to school and get to see my teacher. I suppose I had a crush on her. I wasn’t so excited about leaving Mom. We had been inseparable. At the time she didn’t work and of course, I didn’t go to pre-school. So we had a lot of time together. But when I met Mrs French, I was quite taken.
She was probably the reason I started wearing my black, wool suit with mactching hat with feather to school. You heard right – Kindergarten, black suit, playing in the sand box. Oh, and one day I went home with a note from teacher in my pocket. I had no clue what the note was about. Perhaps it was in praise of my master crafted bear’s den in the sand box competition. Or maybe it was the way I in praise of my helping to get the cots ready for nap time. So that night after dinner, my Mother opened the note and read to me – “Dear Mrs Engel. I am writing this note to you in the hopes that you will address a little problem we are having with Timothy.
On those days when he wears his suit, he refuses to remove his hat when he comes into class. We would appreciate it if you could talk with him and help him to understand that it is customary to remove one’s hat when entering a building.”
My heart was broken! Evidently, Mrs French was not in total awe of my cool chapeau. So that was then end of wearing my ‘complete’ suit – with all of the accessories! It was a sad moment. A moment of discovery. The sun would come up tomorrow; but somehow it would not be quite as bright! Of course I should try to remember that JFK helped to phase out the wearing of the hat by men. Perhaps it was the big, thick, reddish shock of hair that made it happen. If he had been bald, that cultural standby might not have gone by the wayside.
More recently Lakewood won a prestigious award – Playful City USA! ‘This award coming from a group in WASH, DC promoting children’s recreation and creating new safe places for kids to play. Part of the reason they got the award was for maintining and upgrading their parks. Included in the list is Simon Bolivar Park! That was our little park! I am glad that Pop didn’t need to worry about Lakewood going downhill all at once due to it’s being built ‘overnight’. With City leaders focusing on continuous improvement, Lakewood should continue to be a shining beacon on the hill.
Since the city was founded in 1954, it has been dedicated in providing good recreation facilities for kids. The award was given by Ka-boom – a non-profit organization. Darrell Hammond reminds cities that play and recreation for kids is not a luxury but a necessity!
On the city’s 50th anniversary and Sports Illustrated’s 50th anniversary, the famous magazine named Lakewood California’s “Sports Town”. When Lakewood was being planned, they had the foresight to leave plenty of room for parks and schools. The city has grown much in the 5 decades – with population now near 80,000. But recreation continues to be a focus. Parks and other facilities were a priority by City Management and Lakewoodites enjoy these places for fun in the outdoors. More than 13,000 take part in Lakewood sports programs each year. In addition, approximately 325 volunteers keep these programs going by working in various capacities including coaching.
The National Arbor Day Foundation also designated Lakewood as Tree City USA. Lakewood received this award for 26 years for its’ commitment to community forestry. "Lakewood is proud of receiving this honor and is committed to maintaining our promise to keep Lakewood beautiful through valuing our trees," says Mayor Raymond Coles.
Defining Moment
One year later was an event that we all remember. All of us Boomers. It was the day our President was murdered. JFK Assassinated we heard. Our Teachers were in shock; and soon we were as well. We were numb with disbelief! We had never been exposed to anything like this. I was 9 years old, I was in the 4th grade, I was James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School with the tons of blacktop.
Earlier this same year Mom and Dad took us down to Del Amo to see JFK drive by in his motorcade. Wow – there he was! Sitting up in the back seat of the Lincoln Convertible . Sitting on the back of the seat he looked right at us and waved. Right here in Lakewood! We felt ltruly honored and amazed to get to see JFK. He was a beloved leader; I didn’t know the difference between a liberal, a democrat, and a libertarian, but I knew I honored and loved the President.
James Sullivan wrote an article about JFK and the Beatles and shared that he felt they personified the 60’s. This article was written in 2003 on the 40th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. And it states in part:
“Forever stranded on opposite sides of the grassy knoll, Kennedy and the Beatles together personify the 1960s. The British pop group's ascendance in America has always been credited in large part to the nation's yearning for a diversion from the mass grieving over Kennedy's death. The lost glamour of the Kennedy era was replaced by the frothy exhilaration and renewed possibilities of the Beatles' reign.
As the band and its fans evolved together, writes McKinney, the audience would "demand that they lie still as they are strapped to the slab and this surgery of symbology is performed under the white light of an international arena." Given the Kennedy analogy the writer has just made, it is impossible not to think morbidly, of the cadaver of the president lying still while a nation tried to make sense of both his murder and his meaning to the culture.
We have not stopped trying. From Don DeLillo's "Libra" to the "grassy knoll" episode of "The Simpsons," from San Francisco's punk agitators Dead Kennedys to a special-edition JFK G.I. Joe, which depicted the onetime Navy commander carving an S.O.S. into a tiny coconut, our popular culture is never far from our 35th head of state and the collectively memorized details of his life and death.
Images of Kennedy have appeared in "Ghosts of Mississippi," "The Right Stuff" and Oliver Stone's epic, problematic "JFK," not to mention the reunion hack job "Surviving Gilligan's Island." In "Forrest Gump," a digitally enhanced version of the late president says of his simpleton acquaintance, "I believe he said he had to go pee."It's something the real Kennedy might just have said. Habitually acknowledged as the first telegenic and truly media- savvy president, he recognized the immeasurable political capital to be gained from a well-tended appearance of folksiness. Images were paramount in the Kennedy White House -- of Jack casually tossing the football, however much his chronic back pain was killing him; of Jackie, impeccably dressed by Oleg Cassini, leading the famous televised tour of the White House; and most poignantly, of little John-John saluting his father's casket. “
I can never forget the horror of our teacher telling us about the President being killed. Adults do a pretty good job of ‘hiding’ their emotions. But when the time was right or wrong in this case, there was no hiding emotions. Their face was stoic, but you could feel the shock and horror emanating from every pore…or so it seemed.
I felt a pit of acid in my stomach. No one knew what would happen to us. Would this mean the end of our Country? What’s next? If the President could die, what about Dad? Or Mom? Or Tom? Or me? And who hated him enough to kill him? Didn’t everyone love our President? John F Kennedy. JFK. War hero. Author. President. Beloved.
In the years since so much has been written about this assassination. I remember walking around in a fog. No one had an answer. People were crying and sobbing. It was a tragedy. We remember JFK, but not FDR. Later we would see pictures and video of people who had found out about FDR passing. And they cried. They loved him. We loved JFK. It’s hard to explain. As a young boy I didn’t understand politics. I understood my family unit. I understood my school. I understood that we were in a war of sorts against an evil empire. Russia, the USSR. People who wanted us dead. Were they responsible? I don’t remember losing anyone in our family and this was like losing a family member.
So I was naïve, young, and inexperienced. This was death. This was loss, separation, sadness, shock and depression. Would we survive? What is next? Who is LBJ? He looks old. JFK was young and handsome and we thought his family was terrific. John John, Caroline, and Jackie. Camelot.

As much as we were saddened by the loss of our beloved President, we were completely psyched about the Beatles! Mom and Dad went and bought us their first album released in the states: “Meet the Beatles.” And meet them we did! One of my favorite things to do was cruise around on my green Schwinn Sting Ray bike (see photo above) with my transistor radio blaring the latest in fine music. Whether it was the Beatles or the Beach Boys – I loved em all. But just as the death of JFK was a horrible tragedy – America (and I think most everyone) fell for the Beatles. The boys from England, the mop tops. They were young, different, had a new sound and accents. How could we resist?

John, George, Paul, and Ringo. Meet the Beatles. They were quite young when they came to America. 19 to 21. And America embraced them and their music. The British invasion. Interesting. We had fought for independence from England and now they were invading with musicians. The mop-tops. We thought they were great. I must admit, we even bought Beatle wigs! Yep. Thinking of that now I believe we must have looked ridiculous with those things on our heads. On the other hand, now that I’m follically challenged, I think it might not be so bad. LOL.
This was music you could dance to; music that made you want to move! “I wanna hold your hand.” Now that’s a song! The boys from Britain certainly spoke from the heart…they spoke that feeling every boy had about girls. Even though when we were younger they were’icky’ and had cooties. But as we matured we did want to hold their hand. We did want them to love us – “love love me do”.
“Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you…”. “Tomorrow I’ll miss you; remember I’ll always be true.” This is what was on our hearts and this is what the girls wanted to hear. And hear they did. The screaming was an indication of their popularity. The boys formed in 1960 in Liverpool England. The Beatles were perceived to help drive the social and cultural revolution of the 60’s.
Did their music move us? Oh, yes – I would say. You couldn’t help get excited when you hear a Beatles song. I’m sure that Mom and Dad didn’t hesitate when they went to Wallach’s Music City to buy “Meet the Beatles.” In 1962 they produced “Love Me Do” and the rest is history. This song brought them mainstream success and they continued to make wonderful music together for the next 8 years.
In 1967 they released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I was 13 at the time, and I remember getting this album from My Aunt Marie for my birthday. Wow – now, how cool is that? Rock and Roll music from your Aunt? This album came to be known as a masterpiece! They have sold more albums in the USA than any other recording artist. It was tragic that we lost John so long ago to an assassin. And George succumbed to cancer . But Starr and McCartney remain active and who would have thought that Ringo would mature and become ‘the handsome Beatle’?
DOUGLAS
From the time I could remember I had heard about Douglas. Douglas Aircraft . That’s where Dad worked. He built airplanes. Douglas Aircraft had started in the 20’s in the back of a Barber Shop. Donald Douglas was bitten by the aerospace bug and would grow his fledgling company into a giant. One that would play a pivotal part in the deadliest war ever - WWII. As many as 70 million perished throughout the world due to this conflict. It involved most of the world’s nations.
Dad was a mechanic. He helped assemble the airplanes. Dad hired in to Douglas in 1952. And at this time (1962) he was working on the DC-8. Douglas Aircraft was in the fore front of development of commercial air travel. From the 30’s into the 50’s – Douglas went through a progression of the DC-2, DC-3, DC-4, DC-5, DC-6, and DC-7. All piston driven aircraft. Even in these early formative years, the push was for continuous improvement. The public wanted safe, affordable transportation. And that’s what Douglas provided. Even though Boeing was first with a steel airplane in 1933 with their 247, Douglas held the lead during these years in commercial aviation.
The DC-2 was a twin engine 14 seater
This airplane came out in 1934. They enlarged the bird somewhat the following year and the DC-3 was born. The DC-3 would become one of the most successful aircraft in history. It was the DC-2 that provided safe, reliable, and comfortable air travel. KLM even entered theirs in an air race between London and Melbourne taking 2nd only to an airplane built specifically for the race. The military version was called the C-39. Wikipedia
The DC-3 came out in 1935. The speed and range of the DC-3 revolutionized the aircraft industry in the 30’s and 40’s. It had a huge impact on the outcome of WWII and many are still in use to this day. The military version was called the C-47.
In this picture C-47’s are lined up for the Berlin airlift. The American Airlines CEO Cyrus Smith called Donald Douglas and asked for an improved airplane. One that would replace the DC-2. What helped to popularize the DC-3 was the DST (Design Sleeper Transports) and in-flight kitchens. You didn’t have to do without now in air travel. And with a sleeper berth, you could even catch up on your rest!
Now an Eastbound trip from the West coast could be made in 15 hours with only 3 refueling stops. This was a big improvement over the Boeing staple. Of the over 16,000 built, more than 10,000 were the military C-47 version. These were built in Long Beach and Santa Monica, California and in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The C-47 played a critical role in operations in Burma, Guadalcanal, and New Guinea. Called the “Skytrain” it was singled out by General Dwight Eisenhower as one of the four most critical weapons to helping the allies win the war. The other three being the bazooka, the jeep, and the atomic bomb. The C-47 was also used up through the Vietnam conflict with one version called “spooky” a gun ship getting special notoriety. Many DC-3’s are still in service today.
The DC-4 was a four engined aircraft which also served during WWII and into the 60’s. it had a crew of 4, held up to 86 passengers, and had a whopping range of 4250 miles. The DC-5 was a 2 engined aircraft intended for smaller loads with shorter flights. It was not very popular and with the end of the war, many initial orders were cancelled and production was held to 12 units.
The DC- 6 is a 4 piston engine aircraft originally developed during WWII as a military aircraft. However, with the end of the war, it was redevleoped and modified to compete with the commercial market. 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military, and fire control roles. It was built between 1946 and 1958. Pan Am used the DC- 6 to inaugurate their trans Atlantic service. Many of these aircrafter were later replaced by the jet engined 707’s and DC-8’s.
The DC-7 was first delivered in 1953. The head engineer at TWA was pushing Donald Douglas for an airplane that could make it from coast to coast in 8 hours. This being because union rules stated that this was the limit to a pilot’s flying time. Douglas held out for a firm order totaling $40 million to ensure his development costs would be covered. This order coming from American Airlines President C. R. Smith. In 1959 Douglas began converting the DC-7’s into freighters – extending the viability of the example.
The DC-8 was Douglas’ first jet aircraft. It was built from 1958 until 1972. Even though Douglas was beat to the punch by Boeing’s 707, the DC-8 was still very successful and remained so until 1972 when larger designs like the DC-10 would take its place. Dozens of reengined DC-8s still fly today while the 707 left commercial service in 2000. Douglas was studying a 4 jet engine aircraft in 1952 – it would have a range of 3000 to 4000 miles and carry 80. By 1953 the development continued and the military was floating interest in a tanker project. Douglas was frustrated by the Military’s quick decision to give the contract to Boeing for 29 KC-135 jet engined tankers. He protested to Washington to no avail.
Douglas decided to push on with the DC-8 development. Without military money to aid development costs, he shelled out $450 million from his own pocket to help get the program developed. In 1955 Pan Am placed an order for 25. And also for 20 707’s. They were the trend setter and other airlines soon jumped on the bandwagon. First flight for the DC-8 took place in May of ’58. Britain’s Comet had been redesigned after fatal crashes found their windows cracked because of pressurization and depressurization. They returned to service this same year, but their fate was sealed by Boeing and Douglas. Putting 10 ships into flight test helped expedite their certification and the first commercial aircraft went into service on 18SEP1959.
They were now building DC-8’s at a rate of 8 per month. However, Douglas failed to offer the various size of aircraft as Boeing did with the 707. This limitation helped to lead to loss in market share. 556 were built between 1958 and 1972. On 21AUG61 a DC-3 broke the sound barrier of 660 mph to help in the development of a new leading edge for the wing. In ’65 Douglas finally offered a stretched fuselage. This helped to bring new life to the line with 262 of the Super Sixties being built. In the late 70’s McDonnell Douglas teamed with General Electric to provide quieter engines for the DC-8; this being the Super Seventies. This version was roughly 70% quieter than the Sixties series and was also 20% more fuel efficient. This 4 engined jet was now the quietest in the air.

I can remember Dad talking about working on the aircraft. One day he came home with a patch on his eye. “What happened?” I asked. “Well, Artie, I was drilling a hole, and a metal chip landed in my eye.” “What?”, I asked. “A chip?” “Yes, a metal chip that’s part of the material removed from the hole when you’re drilling”. Once he explained I squinted my eye as hard as I could as I imagined how horrible that must be. “I went to the Doctor and he set me in a chair, told me to hold my eye open, and not to move or blink.” “Then he took a pair of tweezers and pushed them right at my eye; it was all I could do to keep from moving!” “Three seconds later, the chip was out!” I was so relieved that Dad’s eye would be OK. “What’s with the patch?” “That’s to help the eye heal.” “ There’s some inflammation and it will take some time to heal up.” I knew about healing. Or at least I thought I did. Before seat belt litigation, we didn’t always buckle up in our ’59 Chevy. I remember Dad telling me that if we ever got in an accident, simply hold your hand up against the dash to prevent yourself from hitting your head. This might injure your hand, but it would be much less of a serious injury than one to the head.
Since Dad lifted weights and was as close to a real life bodybuilder I had ever seen, I really thought of him as some kind of super hero. Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. One time we had a little problem on the block. Tom somehow got into it with Desire’ Olsenz’ boyfriend, Jeff. He was about 4 or 5 years older than Tom and he had either hit him or roughed him up a bit. I wasn’t quite sure. But one thing I was sure of that Tom didn’t often complain to Dad. Well, when Dad got wind of this he was not happy. I think he instantly reacted. Perhaps hastily. Next thing I know, he had Jeff by the shirt and jacket and had lifted him up in the air and pinned him against the garage wall. And this is no exaggeration. Dad could do this. He got the boy’s attention. Quickly. He read him the riot act and told him in no uncertain terms that he had better never touch Tom again. Or he would ‘turn him every way but loose’. I think he got the picture. I talked with Desire’ about a year ago and she recently spoke with Jeff. They recalled this little altercation with a good laugh.
It was nice to have a Dad who was capable of this. I felt he was there to protect us. However I didn’t run to him with requests to beat up on my foes. Tom and I wrestled and fought. Often times I would take the worst of the battle. Tom was 3 years older than me so he usually had an advantage. But he only had that advantage as long as he had me within his grasp. I recall vivdly the time we were playing football in the street and I took a rough block from my big brother. Well, this just couldn’t happen! This made me very angry. “Artie’s angry!” “Artie’s gonna get some revenge!!” So I was at my little temper’s living end and wouldn’t stand for it, so I ran into the house at 4823 Hayter and found a piece of art work built by my big brother. Oh, yes – it was a piece of art. It was a house made of ice cream sticks. I didn’t think of the repercussions, the outcome, facing Mom and Dad, facing Tom, falling asleep in the bed next to Tom, sitting quietly in the front room while Tom has time to come up behind and get me in a full Nelson…no, I didn’t think of any of these.
So I ran out of the house, down the steps, across the walk, down the slope of the front yard to the street and up and within 15 feet of my brother and with all of the acumen of a Tom Dempsey, punted the fragile piece of artwork into the air. On the street. In front of 4823 Hayter Ave. What proceeded then was in slow motion. The beautifully crafted art work made of ice cream bar sticks shattered into hundreds of pieces. And at that moment, that release of rage and frustration; I realized my folly. I realized that Tom, Mom, And Dad would all be wanting a little ‘talk’ with Artie. I was in big trouble!
Tom and I liked to watch Lucha Libre and other wrestling shoes. The UHF channel picked up Mexican wrestling. We especially liked the advertisements. Yo tango mi amore’ y mucho gusto BURGIE!!!! We figured they were selling Burgie or Bergermeister beer. As we watched these shows we figured that we’d better see if those holds and moves were truly that effective. So it wasn’t uncommon for Steve and I to have each other in full or half Nelsons or the various other moves that Gorgeous George or The Destroyer meted out on their unfortunate opponents. And Bobo Brazil had good moves, too. As I recall we played pretty well together until I ended up being a baby or got hurt and started whining. I’m sure Tom got frustrated with my youth and innocence sometimes. I am today very grateful for a terrific brother whom I love very much.
Tom and I dabbled in weight lifting. Since Dad always had weights around we lifted too. I remember posing with my double biceps pose. My pudginess, white skin, and red hair overwhelming the camera! Dad worked out at Nista’s gym. I remember him opening one in Cerritos years later. Dad said that he held records at the gym for the most dips and pull ups. He would often practice doing dips with a 50 lb plate hanging from a waist belt. He also had a pull up bar in the garage where he could crank out the reps. As a youngster I couldn’t even do one of either. I was kinda pudgy and not athletic in those days. In fact, It’s only recently that I’ve been able to do any pull ups. Even in High School when I was ‘lean and mean’ I never even tried to do pull-ups. We were more focused on weight lifting and running. We also climbed ropes and poles.
For gym class at Riley elementary we would do the usual fun stuff like play kick ball, dodge ball, tag, and the like. One of my favorites was playing on the jungle gym. The jungle gym I like to hear the sound of that. At the time I didn’t think anything of it but now it makes me smile. The jungle gym was like a pyramid but made of steel tubing that you climbed. And if you got to the top you could go inside and hang from the top or you could slide down a pole. But for the brave hearted, you could climb to the top and then leap off. It seemed like we were 50 feet in the air. When you jumped you wanted to make sure there were no other kids down below you and that you had a clean patch of sand to land in. This was the day of sand use. They weren’t worried about cats using the swand and cleanliness and so forth. The sand worked well in breaking your fall. Kept you from breaking an ankle or worse. It was like a badge of courage if you could leap off the top. You had to be pretty brave and usually the girls wouldn’t jump. Well, some would. Sally Valencia would. She was pretty tough. I wasn’t sure about her. I guess I liked her but didn’t quite know why a girl would be jumping off the top of the ljungle gym.
Sally reminded me of the tough girl on Leave it to Beaver. The one that stood up to the Beave. I liked Sally and didn’t like her at the same time. I’m not sure exactly why. With the knowledge I have now as a grown man, perhaps it was because she was ‘strong’. She stood up to me. I couldn’t push her around (figuratively). Most girls let the boys have the last word. Maybe that’s what made Sally interesting. She was different. I could even see her getting physical with boys. She may have had brothers at home. Maybe that’s where her source of strength came from. The challenges of home with the brothers honed her skill so that when she came across the wayward fella, it wasn’t even a challenge!
MOVIES
Psycho. Come on, you’ve all seen it. You remember it. Like it was yesterday. I remember the first time I saw it. Since I was the oldest available Cousin, I was watching my Cousins at my Aunt Maria’s house. There was Johnnie, Louise, and Anna. They were great Cousins. We had eaten hot dogs, on eof my favorites and even got a chance to go swimming. In fact, this was the very pool where I learened to swim. Aunt Maria, Uncle John, and Mom and Dad were going out for the evening and I was to babysit. The Kids – my younger Cousins had gone to bed and I had the TV all to myself.
Psycho. Was on. There it was. I had never seen it before. Wasn’t this something more for cable TV? They didn’t have cable TV back then. Alfred Hitchcock’s Horror, Mystery, Thriller masterpiece was on tonight. Oh, yeah – this was good. I was going to get myself scared to death! And no one else was there with me (the kids were safely asleep in bed). So it would be doubly scary! Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, and his dominating mother would have a collision of sorts when Janet was caught up in a web of sickness and jealousy. The suspense builds as Janet steals the $40,000 from her employers’ client and then takes off. She doesn’t get far before she pulls into a tired, scary, spooky looking little hotel.
What sticks in my mind the most are two scenes. One is the shower scene where Janet meets her end. I think that all America went ‘stinky’ or converted to baths for several months after this flick hit the screens. Imagine warm water relaxing you, washing off the stress, guilt, terror and fear of being caught for grand theft. When you are most relaxed, the shower curtain is flung open and a mean spirited little woman with big attitude starts swinging wildly with a butcher knife. You put up your hands in defense, but the blade thrusts though and finds its’ mark. You thrash wildly, but begin to weaken. Janet falls and the knife blows stop…the black blood circles and goes down the drain…close up on her eye as the life drains out. Absolute horror poetry. You couldn’t have scared 1960 America any worse! Sleepless nights, now showers, nightmares abound! My heart was pounding in my chest. I jumped up and made a quick round of the house to ensure all doors and windows were closed and locked. What was that!! Oh, shoot – it was Kitty!! I just about peed my pants!
The other scene I found horrifying was when the Detective played by Martin Balsam was going up the stairs to investigate where the thief might be. And out comes Mrs Bates (Norman) with that flying butcher knife again. The horror on his face. It was filmed in such a way that it was like YOU, the audience, was committing the murder. His wide eyed shock and gasping were right in the film lens such that it was you wielding the deadly steel. And it followed him as he backpedaled and began to fall all the way down the stairs. Oh my gosh – could it have been any more horrible? To look directly into the face of a man being brutally murdered and compounding it with him falling backwards down a big flight of stairs. You felt off balance, you felt you were falling, and you felt as if you were the murder. Because that was the attitude of the camera!
Psycho is one of those great classics that can be watched over and over and manage to scare the living sugar out of you every time.
1963 brought the release of “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”. “It’s under a big W, I tell ya…a big W”. And so Jimmy Durante launched a wild, madcap race across the desert , the skies, through a hardware store, and all points in search of the loot, the ill gotten gain. This just before he ‘kicked the bucket’. At the time I didn’t really understand the breadth and cast of this movie. I just knew that it was hilarious, full of adventure, and just plain good old fashioned fun. The 3 stooges as firemen? Bonus! Of course it wasn’t the original 3 Stooges. Curly had been replaced by Joe. It had a lot going for it: A terrific cast – from Buster Keaton and Spencer Tracy to Ethel Merman and Mickey Rooney. The story was great, too – a bunch of unscrupulous, greedy people find out about a pile of dough buried by some crooks. Like pirate loot just waiting to be dug up and enjoyed!
The race of cars through the hilly, curvy road is terrific. A delivery truck driven by comic genius Jonathan Winters, a Volkswagen Beetle driven by Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett and others all racing at break neck speed to be the first to get to the money. The lengths they go to – hiring an old biplane which is on it’s last legs, blowing up a hardware store, hiring cabs and filling up and chasing each other through town. It’s all a lot of fun, albeit deadly if it were in true life.
And when they all get injured falling off firemen’s ladders, they get the last laugh when Ethel Merman comes in at the end yelling at all of them and she slips and falls on a banana peel. Great stuff!
Later in the 60s came the movie “The Graduate”. Dustin Hoffman played a young College boy who is seduced by the neighbor’s wife. Mrs Robinson is played by Ann Bancroft. The script was very good and the movie made Hoffman a star. It was a comedy and a drama. The sound track was crafted by Simon and Garfunkle.
Possibly the movie that had the biggest impact on me as a child was Godzilla. Some of you are already smiling or smirking and thinking, Godzilla? Well, yes – Godzilla. As a youngster I was scared out of my mind by this movie. All of the bad special effects, bad dubbing, bad costumes, bad miniatures, bad music all came together at a perfect time in my life to scare the ever-livin pee out of me. When that music got weird, and your heard that horrible unearthly growl of the great monster, my skin was covered with big goose bumps!! This movie was totally believable to me. I am not sure the first time I saw it, but it was released in 1958, 4 years after I was born. So I was probably very young. It was that grainy, poor quality, black and white edition. It looked like a documentary in retrospect. I remember the scientist. I remember the fisherman uttering in horror …”God-zilla!...God-zilla…” With that unspeakable look of horror on his face. You knew that he had seen something that had changed his life forever.

At that age I’m not sure I even understood that this was fiction. At that age I think that I thought it was a documentary. And what ensued after my watching Godzilla was a recurring nightmare. Here was the nightmare. Godzilla would come from the South…from the Lakewood Golf Course end of the street. Kung…Kung…Kung…you could feel the vibrations through the ground. And every 20 seconds or so he’d let out that unearthly growl which translated loosely means I’m the biggest mamma jamma on the earth and I’m comin’ for You!
So there I was in the front room of the 900 sq ft home at 4823 Hayter Ave. Godzilla was coming. And here was the catch. If while walking down the street he could see you, he would proceed to come over and either cook you with his breath, eat you with his 30” teeth, or stomp you with his tons and tons of machismo. So what you had to do when he was cruising the street was hide. And I would hide just below the big picture window at the front of the house. Why I chose not to go hide in the den, garage, back porch, or back yard; I’m not sure. Maybe it was because I wanted to ‘keep and eye’ on the big guy!
One time he stopped, bellowed, turned, and looked right at me. I figured my time was up. Even though he moved pretty slow, he was so big and bad that he was sure to catch me. I didn’t budge, but played ‘dead’. Good strategy. Worked with bears and giant fire breathing monsters! I’m not sure when the nightmares ended, but it was a relief when they did. Because waking up from this bad dream left you feeling spent!

SPACE RACE
1957 was a year when we lost a race. It was the year that the Russians launched Sputnik. We actually lost the beginning of the race. The space race. Sputnik was the first earth orbiting satellite. In the midst of the cold war, we were absolutely uncomfortable with this situation because it meant that the Russians, the Communists had gotten the upper hand in the next frontier. Both of us had been working with rockets and ICBMs but to have a device orbiting the earth opened new realms of concern in terms of surveillance, secrecy, and potential weapon delivery. Sputnik was Russian for elementary satellite.
The launch unshered in all kinds of activity, including political, technological, military, and scientific developments. The sputnik travelled at 18,000 miles per hour and took 96.2 minutes to complete and orbit. It emitted radio signals which were tracked by amateur operators throughout the world. The satellite’s signals lasted 22 days until the batteries failed. 9 weeks later Sputnik fell from orbit and burned up upon entering earth’s atmosphere.
This victory for Russia quickly became a source of propaganda. It looked like a big win for Russia and a defeat for America. This was a one two punch to America. First was the surprise – this happened completely without the knowledge of the American intelligence network. In addition, there was the fear and panic of the American public. Will we be able to defend ourselves? Why didn’t our leaders know about this? What can we do to catch up?
America was embarrassed and this may be just the thing that pushed America to go for the moon landing. It was just 11 years later when America would plant the stars and stripes in the lunar dust.
The space race is well chronicled in the book “The Right Stuff”. Or at least part of it! The old timer pilot with the southern drawl and chewing Beeman’s is Chuck Yeager. Of course he also wrote an auto-biography. In that book he mentions a fellow test pilot named Russ Schleeh. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would have the opportunity to work with someone of this stature. Chuck relates some hilarious stories about he and Russ and how they would go fishing for the golden trout and something about bears along the High Sierra.
Russ was a test pilot and eventually found his way into the the DC-10 Program Office at McDonnell Douglas. It just so happens that I found my way into this same Program Office in 1981; two years after hiring into the factory in Long Beach, California. Russ was a legend. He had pictures on his office wall showing him flying captured Nazi aircraft during/following WWII.
I really enjoyed getting time in Russ’ office, listening to his stories. About flying these aircraft. He was also one of the pilots of Jack Northrup’s original flying wing. He was flying the test bird where the nose gear collapsed and a fire broke out. In the ensuing wreck, Russ broke his back, but managed to drag himself out of the wreckage. He also fought with the fireman who was putting the fire out as he wanted the “bloody thing to burn to the ground.” Did I mention that Russ had broken his back in the crash? And he was then fighting with the firefighter in the hopes the flying Wing would burn into a molten puddle. That’s how tough Russ was. He also later raced boats and was quitge an athlete. I believe Russ was part of our marketing for the military side of the house. We ended up winning the KC-10 Tanker contract and subsequently built and sold 60 examples. The Air Force was very happy to get them. And there are still 59 flying today.
Erick Partrich
Erick lived right around the corner on my way to school I would stop and hang out with Erick. He’s the one who owned the violin. And he’s the one who told me that a violin is priceless. I couldn’t fathom it. Erick was what I would call a ‘cute’ kid. He had chubby cheeks. But we had common ground. We both went to Riley Elementary. We were the same age. I passed his house on the way to school. And he had a brother who hung out with my brother. Since Lakewood grew up nearly overnight and lots of young couples bought homes and set up housekeeping nearly all at once. I suppose it was inevitable that there would be lots of kids living in close proximity that were the same age. So Erick and I were pretty good buddies. He liked my green Schwinn Stingray bike. I would sometimes give him a ride to school. My Stingray was like the sportscar of the bicycles. I thought this bike was so cool. One day Mom came home with a green and blue example of the type in the big cavernous trunk of the 59 Chevy.
Holy smokes! Stingrays!!?? I believe Mom said she got the money from her Credit Union. I was very grateful. So was Tom. We loved our parents very much and still do. Mom got us these bikes because she loved us.
Stingrays
At some point I became the fastest Stingray / bike rider on the block! How could this be? Perhaps it was because I had the energy to make it happen because I was not involved in any organized sports! The Stingray had a banana seat and the high rise handle bars and small wheels. It was like a chopper. They’re still making copy cats of this bike. We would have races up and down Hayter. One of our favorites was to ride up Hayter and around the ‘loop’ of high end homes at Lakewood Country Club and back for time. The quickest was the ‘man’ for the day. I think it took all of about 5 minutes or so. But you had to be careful, because you were crossing streets that ran east and west.
We kept these bikes for years and they survived our move to Lynwood. There I would ride my bike with Bruce and help him with his paper route. I rode it until a fateful day parked in front of Clark’s drug store. I didn’t have a lock on the bike that day and it disappeared! It was stolen. Another loss of innocence!
DISNEYLAND
The Magic Kingdom opened the year after I was born. 1955. As early as I can remember, we started going to Disneyland. There’s not doubt in my mind why. Mom and Dad loved us very much and wanted us to enjoy the best. Disneyland was way cool . The most fun. Mom even made a song up about Disneyland. She’ll still sing it today if you ask her! Disney Disney Disneyland, Disney Disney Disneyland… I think she got more excited about the place than we did. Whenever we climbed in the car to ‘play’, we would pretend we were going to drive to some destination. Well, you’ll never guess where we would eventually decide to go…DISNEYLAND!!
As a child I remember just loving the place. I wanted to be there. At the end of a 12 hour day at Disneyland when I was completely exhausted, I didn’t want to leave. I figured when I grew up I would end up working there. Later on much of my family would work there – at least the Romanoffs did.
My favorite souvenir was a helium balloon. Mom and Dad would always oblige me. There was something magical about a helium balloon. It was another reality. Something that floats…defies gravity! How the heck does that work? If my balloon would last until the next day, Dad would help me apply chromium tape so that we could track that sucker twice as long. Until it was on the edge of space, I thought!
I loved Disneyland so much that I would dream about the place. I shared this much later with a Psychology Professor while I attended Compton Community College. She was into para-psychology and suggested I was dreaming about a life that was false…made up of false fronts; facades. I let her have her say and then concluded that I had always just loved Disneyland. There was nothing to the façade. She also liked to hold people’s watches and determine what was going on in their lives, or tell them their future. I never got into that line of thinking. I guess I wanted objective evidence.
Disneyland was ultra cool. Now there are websites, twitters, blogs, apps…you name it…about Disneyland. From the moment you stepped on the property there was stuff to enjoy. Take the parking lot – you were parked in Mickey A4 or Minney B7 or Goofy G9. The scene it conjures up is when in National Lampoon’s Vaction the Griswolds parked their car and began to sprint for the gate. Because you just couldn’t wait to have the big FUN!!
I also think the reason we went was because Mom and Dad loved it. I mean, Mom enjoyed anything that would make us happy. And Dad liked trains and DL had trains. He also like American Indian culture and they had that at DL as well! They had the cool train that ran around the whole park. I know Walt Disney had a kick with this one. And it’s still there today. It’s not a white knuckler by any means, but when you climb on the train you smell that special aroma of the steam train and get the motion of the real train. And you ‘explore’ the various lands within DL; including the land of the dinosaurs. And then there’s the train in Fantasy Land – Casey Jr’s Circus Train. Dad loved and collected HO Scale trains. He also bought us trains.
As a kid I never remember getting tired when we went to DL. We would get there when the gates opened, and stay until they kicked us out. We would get our money’s worth, because we could only afford to go once a year. I don’t think there was anything like season passes in those days. If I hadknown about it, I would have saved up all my money to purchase an annual pass and then gotten there at least once a week by hook or by crook.
Some of my favorite attractions were the flying saucers, Swiss Family Treehouse, the canoes, the paddle wheeler, Tom Sawyer’s Island, the Matterhorn, and the Pirates of the Caribbean. The flying saucers are now long gone. But I remember them well. You sat in the middle of a large saucer and grasped handles on either side. You were strapped in (I believe). Then they would turn on the air, and your saucer would ‘take flight’ and you just had to lean one way or the other to float in that direction. Very cool. And the sides had rubber bumpers so it was like two rides in one. One for crusing around and the other for ‘bumper cars’.
The Swiss Family Robinson movie inspired the Swiss Family Treehouse. Pure ever-lovin’ fantasy! The movie was a delight. The Swiss Family is marooned on a deserted island and they decide the best place to build a home is where else? In a tree!! You could see bits of their wrecked ship in the tree house. Disney imagineers made it all very believable. You climbed through the levels and could see the hosuewares and furniture; the various fabrications that helped to make the tree ‘home’.
The Pirates of the Caribbean came along later. It was a master stroke. A ‘dark’ ride that went way beyond. Disney tunneled under the ground to make room for this one. And it had water falls, oceans, burning villages, artillery fire, pillaging pirates, and THAT them song. “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!” The Pirates ride was pure genius. Audio-animatronics at its’ finest. The pirates, good citizens of the village, dogs, cats, other various critters came to life right before our eyes. So life like. This was the 60’s and anything was possible. I imagined the Imagineers at Disney probably worked for NASA in their spare time! Truly fascinating the stuff they did. You could see the individual hairs on their arms and legs, the whiskers on their faces.
In the jail the pirates try to bribe the dog to give up the key by whistling to him. His cheeks puff and shrink as he does so. The ride is a little ship itself. You go through riding on a car that rides on rails for the most part. But when it swooshes down the two waterfalls, I believe it’s actually floating free like a raft. Fascinating engineering by Walt Disney.
The Enchancted Tiki Room is a good one as well. It starts out with flowers coming down out of the ceiling, then birds, then the tikis come to life. The ensuing music and song fest is truly entertaining…and then there is water and lights. The senses are all drawn into this amazing show.
The Matterhorn is basically a roller coaster ride within the mountain. Along the way you see the abominable snowman and go from dark to light and inside and outside the mountain and finally through a pond of water. Crashing nearly to a stop. The Matterhorn cars were called bobsleds…you felt that at any time you would go careening off into space. But, alas, this never happened. However, we were there one night and noticed that the ride had been shut down. Rumor had it that a boy had stood up while on the ride and that he struck his head. I do remember seeing a nurse and a stretcher. I hoped and prayed he survived.
The submarines were lots of fun. You climbed down into actual submarines which cruised around a lagoon. You got to see fish and other critters under the waves…some treasure, and also there were mermaids poised at various spots around the ride. Sitting on rocks and brushing their beautiful long hair. At one point while looking out the port hole next to your seat you saw lots of bubbles and then suddenly the voice over said “what, do you see what I see? Sound the alarm!!” And what showed up as the sub passed was a ‘seamonster’. It was kind of a goofy looking one – nothing scary by any means. After all this was 60s Disneyland. Scarier stuff would come later.
Autopia allowed kids to drive actual cars. They were cool little fiberglass examples. Like go-karts, only slower. But as a youngster it was terribly exciting to get to drive your ‘own’ car. The cars moved around on tracks that kept you within the lane. Also, you were governed to about 3 miles per hour. And if you dared to run into your fellow fun lover, there were large bumpers with big springs that had lots of travel. So the chance of hurting anyone including yourself was pretty much zero.
You cruised around through the ‘countryside’ complete with gas station, trees, grass. Disney were masters of ‘suspending unbelief’.
Fantasyland included lots of fun rides for kids. One of the most popular was Dumbo. This was basically an ‘octopus’ type ride that went around in circles. You climbed into your ‘Dumbo’ which was faithfully recreated by Disney Imagineers to look just like the cartoon. In the tip of Dumbo’s trunk was a tightly held feather – the thing that gave Dumbo the faith to fly! The magic continued within the ‘car’ where the rider could flip a lever up or down and make their Dumbo fly higher in the sky or swoop down lower to the ground. A lot of fun and very magical for kids! I always loved getting to fly my Dumbo. It felt like I was really flying and this truly Was Fantasyland!
Probably my favorite ride in Fantasyland, if not my favorite in Disneyland, was Peter Pan. “Hang on everybody, here we goooooooo!!” You climbed into a small pirate ship – again, faithfully painted up and animated. As the car rolled out you could see it was supported from above and as you ‘joined Peter’ in flight – the car was actually ‘flying’ and you could see the city, water, ships, Captain Hook and ‘The Lost Boys’ down below. The effect was terrific with the use of black lights and various scenes painted in black light paint. I knew I was on a ‘ride’ but as I flew around this glowing world down below with the wonderful Disney songs playing in the background I would suspend my disbelief and have a great time.


Mr Toad’s Wild ride was fun…it was just a typical ‘dark’ ride but really not so dark. There was lots of cool scenery and you went flying through doorways and lots of horns and alarms and police standing there trying to get you stopped.
Casey Jr’s Circus Train was fun. Some of the cars were made up like animal cages and you climbed inside and felt like a lion or tiger being locked up like a real circus train. One of the amazing things about Disneyland was their attention to detail.
From when you first come into the park, you see Mickey’s head made up of flowers. The manicure and attention to detail are amazing. The Main Street buildings are beautifully done and are to scale. I believe it’s 3/5’s scale. So immediately you feel like you’re in a small town. Perhaps like Mayberry RFD. There is a Genera Store, a magic shop, an ice cream shop, candy store, and a restaurant.
To0morrow land was always a lot of fun,. They had the rocket ride which was actually a lot like Dumbo – but you were riding in a cool looking jet. They also had a ride where you sat in a rocket which took off and went into space.. This was pretty realistic. There were screens down at the floor and up above. You could see where you were going and where you had been. Obviously they had taken some actual footage from a launch and used this for the video. Along with the video there was authentic sound effects as well as vibration in the seats. Great ride!
Frontierland was cool, too. You could buy yourself a Pendleton, ride the river boats, get some Mexican foot featured by Fritos, shop, paddle the canoes, go to Tom Sawyer’s Island, or shoot at the attacking Indians from the soldier fort.
Knott’s Berry Farm
Of course, Disneyland wasn’t the only amusement park in town. Just down the road was Knott’s Berry Farm. In some ways, I actually like KBF more than DL. Knott’s had lots of fun stuff. It had a donkey ride, the Calico Mine Ride, the log ride, haunted shack, ore shop, train, boot hill, the saloon, shoot outs with real bad guys robbing the train and shooting the place up.
I think my favorite was the Haunted Shack. The haunted shack was lots of fun. You went in and saw the miner pour water up hill. Shoot a pool ball on a table and watch it roll back toward him and go in the pocket. People went up and sat in a chair that was mounted on the wall and you could not get up. You literally had to be helped out of the chair. And people stood at weird angles. Had gravity gone haywire? Was this place haunted? Who knew?
Riding the train was fun. This was a real, old steam train that Walter Knott had purchased from Colorado. Part of what was so cool about this ride is that the train was boarded by train robbers who shot up the place and then came through the cars asking for valuables. The authentic dress and weaponry helped to make this bit of entertainment believable.
Dad loved all these places because there was always an element to them that struck right at his core. Dad was very interested in the American Indian culture. He came from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There was an area in Knott’s called Indian Trails. They had authentic Native Americans with proper bonnets, beaded clothes and moccasins. Dad made bonnets that he sold to the Walt Disney Company for use in their TV shows and movies.
There was a ‘resident’ Indian at KBF who was good friends with Dad. Mom assures me that we exchanged Christmas cards with him for many years and with Mom’s memory I would never doubt her. I remember seeing post cards and pictures with him. We would also sometimes get our pictures taken at the photo saloon. You could line up at the bar or climb up on a ‘bucking’ horse. I think both are still available for pictures.
Flash forward about 15 years and we’re eating dinner at the four crowns restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway in Corona Del Mar. I can’t remember the reason – it may have been a party for Cousin Mary’s engagement…but I remember Aunt Evelyn asking me what I wanted to do. What were my aspirations? Well, I replied; I would like to be a writer. Oh, yes, she replied – well that’s wonderful. Of course you’ll have to have lots of experiences, travel, meet people and you will have plenty to write about. This now is approximately 30 years ago and I still remember that fondly.
In my life I’ve had my share of job interests and aspirations; college majors and the like. I have majored in Psychology, Philosophy, History, and Business Administration. So how did I end up in Aerospace? Blessed, is my answer. As a teenager I enjoyed ‘some’ success with writing. I wrote poetry which was included in a high school book of poetry. I wrote more poetry and songs. So I am now following up and trying to make this writing thing come to fruition.
So back to Knotts – it was started back early in the last century – actually in the 20s. Walter Knott . A man by the name of Boysen developed a new berry which was a cross between the loganberry, blackberry, and rasp berry. The “Boysenberry” was born. So Walter started selling these at a small shack along California State Route 39. The rest was gradual and would lead to the first theme park in America. Next up they started serving wife Cordelia’s signature chicken on their wedding china. People started coming from far and wide to enjoy her delicious chicken dinners. If you visit the restaurant today you will find rosters permanently framed and mounted on the wall signed by famous people who came and enjoyed a meal. Dick Van Dyke, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and the like.
Then daughter Virginia started selling little knick knacks to people who were waiting in line for the chicken. She later would establish Virginia’s gift shop – and it would survive for many decades.
Walter also installed a volcano that spit fire and steam at the push of a button. This also kept people amused while they waited for a table. Knott figured it payed for itself very quickly because families became very engrossed in playing with the volcano and had to be called on a loud speaker. I remember that when you pushed the button to start the volcano a little ‘devil’ would crank the contraption which created a big boom and the fire and steam would spit out of the top of the volcano.
BOEING LEADERSHIP CENTER
As I write this letter…send my love to you…remember that I’ll always…be in love with you…
Oops – I mean as I write this letter, I’m sitting in room 1308 of the Boeing Leadership Center. The Boeing Leadership Center is a beautiful big establishment in the suburbs of St Louis Missouri. ?It was established about 11 years ago as a place on the hill where Boeing Leaders could go to learn about all things Boeing. Primarily, in the vision of our current CEO Jim McNerney to take leaders and make them better. Grow our leaders; grow our business. Some people dread coming here. They don’t know any better. It’s a beautiful place. It was originally a large estate with a beautiful chateau, ballroom, and farm land. The family that still works the land has been here for 150 years. There are tall stalks of corn out there. Boeing purchased the 286 acres and in 1996 started construction on the learning center.
The service here is like that of a 5 star Hotel. But let me start from the beginning…I am currently a Senior Manager on the C-17 Program in Long Beach, California. As part of their ‘grow the people, grow the business” they ask us to come to the BLC for a week of good networking, collaboration, sharing, learning, stretching, training, growing. You name it. So on Nov 7, 2010 I boarded a 737 bound for Phoenix which hooked me up with a flight to St Louis Missouri. I wanted to fly in on Sunday so I could relax, get settled, hit the gym, take a hike to the river’s edge and just enjoy the place.
The Soutwest 737’s are terrific. Fly very nice. No problems on the flight. I met some women from Orange County who were bound for Santa Fe New Mexico. They worked for the Government and were bound for a conference all about child support. Child support? Really? Yes, they were headed there to bench mark, learn methods, new processes; I was amazed that the Government would be paying to send them to a conference. I thought that was just private businesses that did that sort of thing. But of course, the way our Government spends money, I shouldn’t be surprised.
When I got to St louis I was surprised at how nice it was. About 70 degrees and mostly clear skies. But my next experience was amazing. Since I was the only one on this flight and the only one who had just gotten in for the BLC, they didn’t send the usual van; they sent a Lincoln Continental limo. Well, limo might be a stretch, but the car is stretched longer than a typical Continental because the leg room in the back was probably an extra two feet. I asked the driver, Eula, if it was my imagination. “No”, she replied. It is longer than a regular car. “Wow”, I responded, very nice. I had ridden in a limo or two in my life. But this new, jet black Lincoln Continental rode like a dream. Eula was a very good driver.
I told her that it was nice to see some familiar sights in St Louis. I had been here about ten times back in the mid-90s to work on the T-45A transition and lawsuit to recover full scale development money. We passed the Boeing Company store on John McDonnell Drive. We passed a number of other Boeing sites. We drove for about 30 minutes to get to the BLC. A nice man at the guard gate checked to verify I was who I was. Who is that guy riding in the back of the fancy Lincoln Continental? No one famous.
You drive past the beautiful Chatea which was built out of stone by the previous owner. A ways down the hill is the gorgeous ballroom. There is an underground tunnel connecting the two. The Leadership Center is like a 5 star Hotel. The service is as good. People follow the Disney model in terms of Customer support. We wear badges with our names and people who work here graciously call us by name. “Good morning, Tim!” “Good morning, Darrell!” What can I get for you? Fried eggs? Omelette? We can make you an omelete any way you want . Darrell remembered my name for the rest of the week…he didn’t have to see my name tag. Everyone was genuine. Or at least seemed to be. They would smile, look you in the eye, patiently waiting for you to respond. I have to say that I would venture the folks at the BLC are perhaps better than DL at being Disney.
I am in a class with about 35 people from all over the Boeing Corporation. The people are all Senior Managers at various stages of their careers. Some look to be about 25 while others are closer to 65. I am probably at the right edge of the bell curve being 56. Sometimes I don’t like to admit that. I’m plenty old enough to get a discount at a number of restaurants, old enough to be in AARP, and old enough to officially retire from Boeing with a pension. But, I don’t think I could support our family. It’s certainly not a police or Highway patrol pension! People have all kinds of interesting jobs! Manufacturing C-17 transport aircraft, 777’s, 767’s, 787’s, Financial analysts from the Crystal City, folks who modify and rework black boxes in Ohio, and the list goes on.
I am there on Sunday and it’s 4PM. I find myself with a full day to burn prior to the beginning of class. Hey, this should be nice. I figure I can take a nap, go to the gym, enjoy the nice food, take a hike down to the Missouri River, and really get to know this place. Sounds like a plan!! So I begin by checking out the food. I hadn’t had any lunch and was pretty peckish. However, dinner was still a ways off and lunch was over. What to do?
What to do? Well, in every ‘lodge’ as they call it on the main floor, at the end of the aisle and overlooking the Missouri River valley, was a room of sorts. A gathering place, complete with fireplace, couches, chairs, a computer and printer, writing supplies, books, and…snacks. Snacks you ask? Oh, yes…granola bars, protein bars, yogurt, trail mix, sodas, coffee, tea, water, cheese, sandwiches, salads, cottage cheese, berries, and fruit. And I’m sure I’ve left something out. So I go take a look and find a beautiful turkey and cheese with asparagus sprouts on wheat bread. This is not your usual 7-11 / quick stop sandwich. I pick the sandwich, take some mayo and mustard, a diet Mountain Dew, a small pack of trail mix, a water, and I’m heading back to my room.
As I dig in and find this sandwich to be delicious, nutritious, healthy, even! Yum. And the trail mix is delicious as well. And the Mountain Dew is tasty, too. After relaxing a bit I decide I’ll head down to the Boeing Fitness Center. The fitness center is complete with all kinds of equipment. To start with they have a spinning area complete with state of the art stationary bicycles. At the front of the room is a video screen which I find later provides the class with sort of a simulator type experience. Like they are riding in a group outside on hills, valleys, and cityscapes. At then back of the bike room is a refrigerator full of all kinds of drinks from regular bottled water to flavored water, protein water, protein drinks, juices, and Gatorade. Next to this is protein bars, granola bars, energy bars, nuts, and other snacks. Further into the room I find a nice rack of dumbbells ranging from 10 to 50 lbs.
Next up were the cardio machines. They had stairmasters which had the additional feature of a TV screen ; nice! A ski machine which had that funny side motion you need when skiing, ellipticals, treadmills, and others. Then were various strength training machines. Some were Life Fitness, others Hoist I believe. These were interesting. You set the weight you wanted to lift and when making the motion of a bench press for example, the machine rocked forwards and backwards. I t seemed to use your weight as you performed the lift. There was a large area where you could do abs or cardio. It appeared with was kept open for various classes they might teach because just adjacent were all kinds of balls, jump ropes, medicine balls and the like which could be used in a class.
They had a Jacobs ladder. I didn’t try this – but it’s basically a climbing machine where you’re on your hands and feet and the ‘ladder’ advances at the rate at which you want to climb. I figured I would stick with some basics. I did benchpress, military press, some pull-ups, and some dumbbell curls. The workout went well. One of the things I really enjoy about the fitness center is that all along one sweeping wall is windows which let all kinds of natural light in. Outside I could see many trees which were in various stages of color changes. Since it was Nov 7, Fall was definitely in full swing. From beautiful deep reds to oranges browns and yellows with every sort of variation. And trees that didn’t change providing a striking contrast.
Dinner. The River’s Edge dining experience is extraordinary. You begin by starting at the top of the stairs gazing down and out toward the Missouri River. Two stories of windows and a beaufitul valley view are what pull you into the dining area. Also at the top of the stairs are storage for books, computers, portfolios, etc. and examples of the fare for the evening. The meals range from chicken breasts, to salad, to fish, to prime rib and king crab legs. Healthy to decadent. As I consider the choices of course, I tell myself “Hey, Tim – remember you do go to the gym and this is special, so you can afford to treat yourself; a bit.” Why do I listen to myself sometimes!? Sylvia is the manager of the gym and she explains to class members the danger of over indulging at the BLC dining room. To illustrate her point, she brings a nasty, disgusting looking piece of rubber out – two times the size of a loaf of bread, and says “this is a pound of fat.” Yuck. Truly disgusting. We certainly don’t want that hanging on our bodies!!
So you take the two flights of stairs down to the dining area and are met with a buffet set up, a salad bar, and an order counter. The order counter is where three to four cooks graciously take your orders for anything from collard greens and catfish to onion rings, ravioli, cooked to order steaks, prime rib, crab legs, bacon cheeseburgers, and various others up through and including homemade ice cream. I figured out why the ice cream is part of the service counter. Because if they had it out in the self serve area, people would be putting on exponential weight gains.
Darrell is on duty and quick as a flash he says hello, Tim how are you? What can I get you tonight? To which I reply well, what do you have? He replies with a litany of goodies which had my head spinning. How can he even remember all that stuff? And how did he know my name? Oh, that’s right – I’ve got my badge on with my name. But he said it so quickly and genuinely and I didn’t even see his eyes go down to my badge!
I open one of the buffet covers and find turkey encrusted with some kind of cheese. It looks good, tasty, healthy and ‘not’ so much. I figure at least I’ll get my protein and it will be tasty to boot. I get some spinach and dark green lettuce from the salad bar and add some walnuts, fruit, and cranberry vinaigrette. I also get some broccoli and cauliflower to add a nice vegetable. Good start I tell myself. Not too bad…but those desserts…
The room is sort of shaped like a big ‘bell-curve’ with the apex being the closest and having the best view of the Missouri River. I decide to take advantage and move down close to the end of the room and pick a table with a great view. Immediately Marilyn comes to greet me and ask what I would like to drink. I noticed that people had wine on their tables and I do drink a little red wine every night. What kind of red wine have you? I ask. Marilyn replies Merlot and Cabernet. OK, I’ll try the cab. I respond. Quick as a wink I’ve got a nice glass of Cab on my table and I cut the tukey with my fork. Mmmmmm. Melts in my mouth! Delicious!
Jackie joins me at the table. She is from Ohio and her site modifies and repairs black boxes or avionics boxes for aircraft. How are you? I’m good she replies. She has the merlot and we gaze out to the sweeping River valley and I ask her about her work. She tells me about the avionics mods and repairs they perform. She brought up her boss Jake. She said he was a hands off kind of guy. Great boss. But didn’t like trouble. He didn’t want to be in the nuts and bolts of the daily operations. If something did go wrong, he wanted to know about it right away. Jackie had worked all over.
She had been in Long Beach on the twin jet, Huntington Beach, Arkansas, Ohio and a couple of other places as well. I am amazed at how flexible some folks are. And many of them have been rewarded with more promotions because they were willing to move when the company needed them.
I told her about Long Beach and the C-17. How we were going to be cutting our assembly rate and how we had cut back and would be cutting more soon. She suggested I be a good mentor and help people find jobs. Have the ‘tough’ discussions where need be.
The next morning I slept in and really enjoyed the chance to catch up a bit on sleep. Today I thought I would hit the gym and take a hike on the blue trail. That’s the trail that goes down to the Missouri River.
I went to the front desk and asked for a guide to the trail. She pointed me to a place just outside the front door where there was a sleeve of guides hanging on the wall. I took one and could see the trail beginning behind the BLC next to the softball field. I headed down the main hallway and just short of the last lodge took the door out back…immediately I was impressed by the beauty of the fall colors in the trees. Beautiful orange, red, yellow, and colors I can’t describe. It’s Nov in MO and the weather is incredible! It’s about 8AM and its already about 70 degrees. I am in my typical gym outfit. Tennis shoes, shorts and T shirt. As I make my way to the softball field I notice a parking lot where some folks who live locally park. Cool. I notice a predominance of American made iron. Nice. I appreciate that. I know that Detroit is trying to make a comeback and needs all the help we can get.
An occasional gust of wind throws leaves high into the sky swirling like sparks from an autumn fire. But there’s no smoke and the sky is as blue as azure. At the start the trail is asphalt. I think this is a bit overkill, but I appreciate the sure footed trail because it’s actually pretty steep. The elevation of the BLC keeps it safe from potential river overflow. I step carefully but assuredly down the trail and scan the trees. This reminds me of something and I think yes, the movie Last of the Mohicans. It reminds me of the forest scenes where various ambushes occurred. But no renegades launch from the thickets. Only the occasional sound of flitting birds and the rustle of leaves.
I am alone. No one else is on the trail or in the area. It is breath taking. Nothing exactly like this near where I live in Anaheim, CA. We have some trees, we have some trails, but not like this. The leaves are huge. Possibly maple? Leaves 10 inches across. I can see that some judicious trimming has been done to keep the trail safe. A few logs have been cut and are marked with orange tape. Further down the trail it becomes gravel. Decomposed granite? I like this better. It just seems to fit better with the forest. The trees seem to reach up to touch the sky. Way up. I have my camera with me and snap some pictures as I walk. Some trees are full of leaves, others are half naked, and others are bare. It reminds me of the Fleetwood Mac song Bare Trees.
What am I feeling? Blessed, fortunate, lucky, healthy, strong. I’m in my mid-50’s and am blessed to be here. My company feels that this experience is important enough to send me 2000 miles to a beautiful setting replete with wonderful people and service, food, accommodations, curriculum, teachers, facilitators, cooks, cleaners, drivers, concierges…whew…to start with. And it’s Monday morning and the birds are chirping, the sky is blue, I’m healthy, happy, exercising and communing with nature. I feel very blessed. I’m happy. This is so nice. And I’m the only one out here! I step at a moderate pace. No sense in rushing because there’s no hurry. The exercise is happening but how beautiful is this? Each new angel reveals new cascades of color, green, blue, yellow, orange, brown, red. A red tree shadowed by blue sky. A naked tree reaching what looks to be over 100 feet into the cerulean sea. Walk walk walk walk…I come to a bench and emergency signal station. They really think of everything. If someone had health problems of some kind they only had to hit the button to summon help.
And too, there were workout stations. Jump, stretch, hang, to foster workouts by the hikers. I am tempted to get on the back stretcher, but decide to pass when I see it’s a bit low to the ground and has some spider webs! Pass. Walk walk walk..more trees lots of trees. Bushes, thickets and as I round another corner I see it. The mighty Missouri River. Wow. It’s big! Looks to be about a half mile across. And moving pretty slowly. I wonder if I could swim it. I think I would be very tired and I also note that it doesn’t look very deep and might had tangles of trees and other debris beneath the surface.
I look up river and see more river. This thing is massive. Down river is the same. I was told that the Mississippi is just up about 4 or 5 miles. I wonder if Huck Finn ever spent time on this river? I look across to the other side and see what appears to be farm houses. I can imagine that this river bottom land is very fertile. Washed with the nutrients of many years of river water flowing across and dropping onto the plain. I notice that there is a sign that says be careful the river bank edge is soft and unstable. In other words, don’t get too close to the edge you might fall into the river. I get as close as I can while feeling safe and think that someone probably fell in at one time or another. There were no fences or guard rails. This was a place where you needed to be careful. I snapped some more pics on my digital camera and got back to the path and headed further up the Missouri River. The River was truly impressive. It reminded me of visiting the Grand Canyon. You look and try to soak it in. You’re in awe of the beauty, the majesty. I am reminded of the great earthquake that reversed the flow of the Mississippi in 1811. The New Madrid earthquake. Evidently the quake was so violent that the river bed was upset and caused the river to reverse directions for a few minutes. If a quake like that occurred here, now, nearby I think that I could probably run like the wind…well, like as fast as I could away from this river’s edge. I could see some trees that would eventually be falling into the river. Today, tomorrow, next year. Their root base being worn away by the relentless flow of water.
I continued along the river’s edge. The drop from the river bank to the water looked to be about 12 feet. Wouldn’t want to fall in there. I see across the way a tributary that cuts in from the farm land across the way. Interesting. I wonder if it’s another river or just a creek or stream. More trees more river. Amazing that as I walk, though I am continually amazed at God’s creation. A maple tree is a maple tree is a maple tree. True that. But not. Because every one is different. Every foot of the Missouri River is different. Every angle, every leaf, every branch, every moment is different and I am continually blown away at the majesty, the beauty, the variation of color in this day; in this moment. Now.
There are times where we get bored, we get tired, we get filled up with the mundane. The routine. But as humans we tend to stick with the routine. We don’t want change, we want routine. Because that’s comfortable. On the other hand, when we change the routine, when we challenge ourselves is when we grow. I was taking a law class and the professor was from Berkeley (the finest law school on the planet, said he) and he said you’re never more alive than when you’re learning, than when you’re in school. Good point and seems to be held up by recent studies about anti-aging, anti-alzheimers, anti-dementia. They say to stay sharp and avoid growing old, you need to challenge yourself, learn something new. I guess I mention this because it came to mind that I really wasn’t looking forward to the BLC. My previous visit was a mixed bag. The amenities, people, food, facilities, etc. were top notch. The curriculum…not so much.
First on a daily basis they switched things up to keep us off balance. They told us X in the morning and Y in the afternoon. Oh, sections 1, 3, and 5? Don’t read that. Read 2, 4, and 6 and then don’t work those questions, write a paper and give a presentation… In retrospect we see it was all to ‘keep us off balance’. To teach us about being flexible and responding to different situations. Which was interesting. But the days were long and instead of learning, I think we were mostly just tired, worn, and confused. To top it all off we had to play a silly star wars game complete with lights, special costumes with gold stars and medallions; again, all to teach us about team work. It was disorienting, confusing, maddening. I’m not sure their methodology was getting the desired result.
By contrast, this time was something very very different. The curriculum was focused on promoting trust and focusing on employees’ strengths. When I ordered the books from Barnes and Noble, I was impressed. Right from the get go. Trust and strengths? Wow. I had hired in at a time when Theory X management was the mainstay. When you would go to meetings and see Directors and Vice Presidents belittle, threaten, intimidate and basically dehumanize people in their employ. How sad, I thought. I would later fantasize about beating the blank out of thse same ‘Executives’ if given the chance. Perhaps at the Laughlin reunion? Yes – who would be my first victim? No, I didn’t want to go to jail. And wasn’t I a Christian? So I couldn’t very well do that, could I? But for a minute or two it was fun to imagine. I would later see many of these gentlemen at the Laughlin reunion and decide that time had been kind to them. It had humbled and softened most if not all and I couldn’t imagine hurting them now. Well, maybe a couple…
So why this talk about routine vs change? I guess I wanted to say that I was really glad to be here in Missouri. And that the worst part about the last visit had been vastly improved. It was like Boeing gets it now. All the game playing – figuratively and literally – was gone. They talked now about trust. Fostering a trusting environment where speed and efficiency are the result. And focusing on strengths. Instead of constant push to fix our weaknesses; focus on accentuating your strengths. Take a team of smart people, a diverse team with different strengths and you can beat the world.
This second session of the BLC for Senior Managers was ‘mandatory’. That meant get it done. So I scheduled it way back in the Spring. But the year had filled up quickly and I couldn’t get there until Fall. I was hoping the weather would be nice. I had been in MO when there was ice on the ground and when the heat and humidity was as thick as molasses. But this time was …perfect. It was unseasonably nice. About 10 degrees above normal. Perfect.
The actors in the movie 300 used change and unbalance. They used muscle confusion to get in shape for the movie. Every day the workout changed to keep the muscles off balance. To force the body to respond. One thing I had found recently was the need to change up my workouts. From spin to stairs, to crossfit to elliptical.
Benchpress, pull downs, pull ups, squats, deadlifts. Changing it up. So as much as routine feels good, feels right, is safe, and not as taxing. It is important to have change, variety, to mix it up.
I took more pictures and continued down the path. The Missouri wasn’t in a hurry. She kept on amblin’ on. Downstream. I kept moving up the path and still remarked the beautiful trees. I passed an assembly of hummingbird feeders. They think of everything here. As I walked further up and came again to asphalt I saw there was a grassy area leading up to a thicket. I imagined a band of renegades with tomahawks and wondered at my chances. I was in some kind of shape but didn’t have any weapons. I came back to reality and was blown away at the beauty of this place. Further up I can see the back side of the BLC and again the trees that were planted here. Possibly chosen for their gorgeous colors or red and orange. The rounded corners of the BLC with windows are great architecture. I enjoy their beauty. This 285 acres is quite a place. The trail steepens as I get closer to the center and I think this is good insurance against flood plain waters.
I stop back at the fitness center and meet Sylvia. As nice a person as you’d ever want to meet. I notice her accent and mention it to her. I ask if she is from North Dakota or possibly Minnesota. No, she says but she’s glad I noticed her accent and says she’s from Canada. I say yes, you sound like the nice sheriff lady in ‘Fargo’. Funny fella. Ya. She says yes – similar to that. We chat a bit about fitness, the gym, the equipment, etc. I tell her it’s my second visit and that I really appreciate the center and all of the nice amenities.
One great benefit (I think) of being in a fitness regimen is the lack of sickness. It’s rare for me to get sick. I think instead of having 2 or 3 colds a year I now go about 2 years between colds. Well, for whatever reason, I am coming down with a cold now. Maybe stress, maybe not washing my hands. Not sure. But sure enough, I’ve got a sore throat. Dag nab it! Colds are a pain in the ass – or a pain in the head I suppose. I have a snot locker full of it and it’s yucky. Hard to breathe. So what do you do when you get a cold? Take medicine, drink more water, get more rest. But I was 2000 miles away at the BLC. Another lady who was in our class suddenly quit coming to class. She had a cold too. Poor thing. I wanted to sit in my room and drink liquids and watch Oprah, too – but I figured if I did that I might have to make another trip to St Louis Missouri. So I grinned and bore it and took meds and drank water and just tried to get better. My throat was trashed so the tickle was there ever-present. Cough. Cough cough. I hated that. The lady at the front office graciously gave me sinus/pain/and cough drop meds. This took pretty good care of things. But that dang tickle in my throat. When I wasn’t sucking on a cough drop it was a peppermint trying to keep my throat from getting dry and scratchy. The common cold. I wish it wasn’t so common. But the common cold has how many sources and how many variations? Endless? They say it’s caused by a virus. And we haven’t cracked that code, yet.
It’s been about a week since I first had a sore throat and now I’m in the midst of the cold. Yuck. Being sick is a terrible feeling. A result of man’s fall. Sin.
What now? I have time. Time to write. Sitting in my room down the way the Missouri River ambles. Keeps on amblin on. I write. 1600 words a day. This is my first book. First one. I had always wanted to be a writer and now is my chance. National Novel Writer Month.
Michael, Diane, and Pam are our teachers. They’re a great team. Michael is a free lancer(?) and Diane and Pam are resident full-time here at the BLC. Michael travels all over teaching. He says this is the place. This is the best place to come. He said few Corporations have this kind of place for learning. For leadership. He plays competitive hockey. Pam told us about her fitness journey. Once she came to the BLC she gained 40 lbs. She told us how she was frustrated in trying to lose weight by simply cutting calories. Her husband told her she needed to add exercise, so she got on the treadmill and walked. With his help , she shed the 40lbs. Dianed shared with us about her husband. He works for Boeing as well and works remotely. Or virtually. She said during one very tough stretch he started looking very sickly and like he was just breaking down. She visited Employee Assistance Program (EAP) asking for help. Eventually they got some good counseling which possibly saved his life and their marriage.
Mike had an eclectic and grounded style. He said that he wasn’t here to teach us about leadership, but to facilitate the process and environment in which we might be led to grow. As our CEO Mr McNerney says – Grow leaders, grow your business. He said that if he tried to fill us up with lots of good leadership stuff we’d be ready to mutiny after one day. I am delighted by the turn of events in the BLC. Primarily the curriculum and style. Mike chocks it up to a change in leadership at the center. Evidently the misery we experienced previously was primarily due to the leadership at the center. And evidently the leaders at Boeing and the training team were at loggerheads and nearly resulted in Mike’s company being tossed out.
So management changed on both sides and the result is amazing. No more working until all hours on busy work, projects, and presentations. Now the focus was on good, usable stuff and another big change. Leaders teaching leaders or LTL. This was the decision to bring in Boeing executives to talk with us on various subjects such as diversity, the Boeing Management Model, trust, and strengths. Now this change just feels right. Intuitively.
I remember meetings years ago at Boeing where it was all about fear and intimidation. ‘I’m the biggest baddest dude in the neighborhood, so you will support me in the manner to which I am entitled.’ Or else. Or else what? Or else I will do everything in my power to destroy your career, intimidate you, tell your boss what a piece of dirt you are. It’s hard to imagine now, but the company used to be run primarily by these types. Emotional, egotistical, power hungry, paranoid managers. Not leaders. Some were gentlemen. Some were polite and professional. But most were not. And this probably arose from a lack of training, lack of understanding, and a lack of caring. What was it to be a baby boomer amongst this time of change?
I think a time of finding our own way. Of playing the game while thinking is this what it’s about? Is this the style I should emulate? Early in my career I actually worked for some fine leaders. Ralph Mitchell, Bob Faulks, Joe Lombardo to name a few. All real gentlemen. One now runs Gulfstream (CEO). His coaching to me at that time was pick leaders you admire and try to emulate them. I picked him. For one. Joe was polite, professional, and smart. He questioned the status quo. When manual labor was simple and tedious, he sought automation. When bullies gathered to pounce on one of his, he would be there to defend us. If necessary. A fellow leader described him as a ‘world beater’. The description impressed me! When I hired into McDonnell Douglas in 1979 it was common knowledge that approximately 50% of the employees working at that time were eligible for retirement. Now, 31 years later, the same is true – or nearly so.
The speed of trust. This was one of the books we read for class. Pre-work they call it. The author talks about how if you have a trusting environment, everything speeds up. Efficiency and productivity go up and costs go down. Imagine that in America. In our global market, where we are now competing with Japan, China, Russia, Malaysia, and Mexico. Where we have farmed out many if not most of our manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor countries. And when we do this we offload our technology as well. We no longer build televisions in the USA. We let that technology go to Japan. They started out cheap, undercut our prices, drove us out of business, and then raised prices. We no longer build TV’s in the USA. And the same goes for more and more as we ‘farm it out’ of America to cut costs.
But are we really cutting costs? What is the real price of $8 tennis shoes at Wal Mart. Made in
China. As we buy the ‘cheap’ Chinese products at Wal Mart and send them our money, what are they doing with all of that income? Their standard of living has risen. That’s a good thing. But they are also building up their military. Building quiet submarines. Building huge bomb shelters. Hmmmm…I wonder what they have in mind?
And what about Harry who lives across the street who used to make tennis shoes in the city of Industry. What does he do now? Oh, he’s on welfare. What about Sally down the street who used to make dresses in the city of Vernon? Oh, she’s on welfare. What about Richard who used to make TV’s in Fresno? He works part time at Wal Mart. What is the new Industrial model in the US? As companies farm out parts and assemblies are they farming out potential profit at the same time? As we deal with foreign suppliers, we now have new organizations springing up. Supplier management and supplier quality. We have issues that arise that we used to manage in house. Technology differences, language barriers, shipping (distance) logistics, quality, schedule, process management to name a few. Where we thought we’d farm out a simple part to Mexico, now we have material issues, process issues, language issues, technology issues, shipping problems.
The answer was we would have Americans working on new technology, new ideas, smarter, less labor intensive jobs. Certainly some of this is true. Jobs have opened up in information technology, programming, data base management and the like. But the middle class seems to be getting worn away by these decisions. As we farm out fabrication and assembly jobs the great majority of kids who could get into these kinds of jobs without degrees are now left looking elsewhere for positions. McDonald’s, Wal Mart, NAPA auto parts, etc. Decent careers ca be had in these businesses. But manufacturing jobs were good, wealth producing jobs. And now there are many less. Our automobile industry has been crushed. Many of the big 3 autos are not even built in the US any longer. In the recent bail outs by the US Government, only Ford chose not to take the handouts. And they appear to be the strongest of the three coming out of this terrible recession. And proudly led by an aerspace executive, Alan Mulally.
I believe the key is we all need to be smart about the decisions we make. The cars we buy, the jobs we offload, the loans we take. The politicians we vote into office. It all matters. And when we vote or make a decision to give a retired Highway patrol officer a 6 figure income for life, we must ask ourselves, is this sustainable? The same goes for Teachers, Police officers, Firemen, and the like. Recent revelation into public unions, elected officials like the mayor and city manager of the city of Bell has revealed telling stories about why our Government suddenly finds itself insolvent. And the talk of taking away Social Security benefits. This one is particularly tender as I reach the age where I begin to think of retirement. Politicians have for decades sipohoned money off our Social Security funds to use for other projects. Now that everyone is greedy and the system is becoming insolvent, they talk of ‘taking away’ from social security benefits. I say go back to LBJ and take the money from his family. He’s the one who started taking money for other politically ripe issues. We have worked all these years paying our money into the system and now that they’ve been caught with their fingers in the cookie jar they want to cut benefits.
I like another approach. Cut the cheating, cut the corruption. There are people dedicated to stealing from soc security and medicare by bilking the government for millions. 60 minutes ran a story a few weeks back about medicare scammers who set up medical supply houses. In strip malls. Theyk never even open their doors, but send the government bills for millions of dollars. The Govt is required to make payments within a certain period so they quickly pay. And Joe bag of donuts disappears with millions of our money and meanwhile your local Democrat wants to cut benefits to social security and medicare recipients. Wrong!!
How did I get from Knott’s Berry Farm to Medicare? One of my favorite rides at KBF wa the burro ride. Yeah, they actually had an animal ride.

This was one of my favorite rides. Getting to ride on a real animal. Being a ‘city boy’ we really didn’t get exposed to animals very often. The occasional horny toad or barn owl was about the size of our critter collection. But getting to ride a real burro. How cool is that? I think the closest thing I had done to this was a big tall red horse at Green Oaks Ranch Camp. It was a Christian camp I went to with Tom and the next door boy who was Tom’s age, Gerry Gregor. Gerry’s mom was a very sweet lady and was like having a second Mom living next door.
The burro ride started out near the train station and headed up through the main drag of ghost town and around the Calico Mine Ride. I remember seeing a whole bevy of burros. A veritable herd. And I wondered, even as a lad, how the burros were so well behaved. They didn’t bite, charge out across the ghost town, stage a sit down strike or any of the sort. I thrilled at the chance to ride the burros. I got to be a cowboy of sorts.
A cowboy. I was named after Tim McCoy. A real cowboy, born in 1891. He was also an actor. A fine one at that. And a fine American – serving in The Great War (WWI) and WWII. He rose to the rank of Colonel in the Army Air Corps. McCoy was quite famous, especially with young boys of the era, so that he appeared on the cover of Wheaties cereal boxes. Before joining the military he saw a Wild West show as a young man and became involved in the culture by getting a job at a Wyoming ranch. There he became an accomplished roper, rider, and expert at Indian sign language. He was accepted as a brother by the Arapahoe on the Wind River Reservation.
After leaving the military at the rank of brigadier General, he was asked by the Famous Players-Laskey to provide Indian extras for a Western extravaganza called The Covered Wagon produced in 1923. He starred with Joan Crawford in 1928’s The Law of the Range. Tim went on to acting and touring with his own Wild West Show. Then came WWII and Tim volunteered for the Army Air Corps working in Liaison work and winning several decorations. He then decided to retire from the Army and show business. But Hollywood called again…
In 1952 he hosted The Ti m McCoy Show – giving kids an authentic lesson on American history. His co-anchor was Iron Eyes Cody. Although Cody was of Italian descent, many Americans thought he was an authentic Native American. Tim’s show won an emmy award.
Dad was faithful in his allegiance to Tim McCoy. In one of his many books (some of which I now own) was a newspaper clipping noting the passing of the great cowboy and actor in 1978. I don’t know enough about Tim McCoy – but I do know that he is honorably mentioned in the Gene Autry Museum in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. Tom and I took Dad to the Gene Autry museum several times. Each time we saw some of the same collection, but every time there was a new collection on rotation at the museum. Whether it was cowboy technology or western art, there is always something to enjoy at the Autry.
I think the burros had done this route a few times. It was like they were on auto-pilot. Cruising through ghost town and all parts of the Knotts park. One of our favorite things to do during the Holidays was to go to Knott’s and visit Santa Claus. The annual crafts fair runs around Thanksgiving until Christmas. People bring out their crafts and many create their art on the spot. Included are such treasures as ‘coin art’, jewelry, glass jewelry, shirts, jackets, tie-dye, names written in artful ways, names on rice, turquoise rings, and leather wares. Everything is fun to look at and some to buy. I have bought some silver jewelry here. We would have family get togethers here. You get into the park for brining a new toy for tots. The Marines collect the toys, you get admission to the park and crafts faire. We all walk around the park and catch up on family stuff. Hugs and kisses all around.
As the kids got older they opted to go on some rides which we all agreed was fine. We would top off the visit with a trip to Cordelia Knott’s Chicken Pie Dinner Restaurant. Now, for about $10 you were going to get a meal. You’d start off with biscuits. As many as you want. With butter and preserves. Not any preserves, but Knott’s brand! Now I would be the first to remind you to eat responsibly and to work on being fit. But a trip to Mrs Knott’s restaurant is something to remember…and something to look forward to.
They bring out a big platter of biscuits covered in a white cotton cloth to keep them warm. All the butter and preserves you want. The biscuits are small, but yummy. Those kind of calories you don’t really need, but really enjoy. Next comes vegetables – corn. Then they serve a salad or soup. The entrée of course is chicken – but they have other choices as well. Ribs, pot roast, chicken pot pie, and chicken fried steak. I usually get the chicken or the ribs. And then there is the drink – why not have boysenberry punch? And dessert – boysenberry pie? I think the price is up around $15 now. But well worth it. And the restaurant also serves lunch and breakfast. Plenty of food for everyone and food that everyone in the family will enjoy.
Looking back as a youngster one of my favorite things to do was to go to the display of rocks, figures, sculptures, statues and what not that glowed in the dark. They had lights on when you entered, then turned the lights out and you could see many things glowing in the dark. Also, I believe they had black lights on which really made the items glow brightly. I found out later that this was a collection of Walter’s son Russell. I didn’t know any better – to me, this was one of the best attractions at KBF. Well, this and the haunted shack! I’m not sure exactly how the transaction occurred, but I think it went something like this. Hey, Dad – wouldn’t it be cool if we could have one of these glow in the dark things? Yeah, I suppose. What did you have in mind? That skull – it’s only $5. In those days I think Dad made about $4.50 an hour. So in 1963 this was a lot of money. ‘Only $5’. Well, we’ll think about it. It would be so cool to have it in our bedroom. It would be like a night light. Tom – don’t you think it would be neat? Yeah, sure. “How about if you pay for it with your allowance?,” Dad asked. Oh – he had me there. OK, I can do that! That would be five weeks worth, right? Yes. OK – sounds good. The skull was a pretty good knock-off of a human skull and it had been coated with some kind of material that once exposed to light, would glow in the dark. It glowed an other worldly bluish-green. And it was bright.
As a young boy growing up in the 60s this was the epitome of cool. I a m not quite sure how you describe this. We wanted to be scared just short of death and we wanted things that were high tech, different, hard to explain. Now – you take a glow in the dark skull and you get all of them in one item. One collectible goody. Dad dug into his wallet of hard earned money and plunked down the $5 and the glowing, scary, high tech, human skull, scary as heck sculpture was mine. The skull took its proper and prominent place on the dresser staring out and Tom and I at 4823 Hayter. I remember taking the brightest flashlight I could get my hands on and ‘charging’ that thing up as much as possible so that it would glow like a light house.
OK, Tom – turn out the light! He did and the eerie glow of the blue skull emanated from the dresser. You didn’t stare at the skull, you kind of peeked at it because it seemed to stare back from the hollow dark eyes. Just as Garloo scared the bejeezus out of my generation, now I had a screaming glowing, beaming skull that would lull us to sleep here in Lakewood, California. Imagine. Everyone would want my skull. All the kids would want to be scared to death, too! Does it get any cooler than this? Fright, joy, elation, excitement, wonder; the beauty of it. It glows in the dark. It’s magical! I’m sure Mom must have had some thoughts about putting a skull on the dresser. Probably not her idea of the best kind of knick-knack to add to the repertoire. Probably nothing like this in Solvang; the place my brother would aptly name “The Knick-Knack capital of the world.” There were statues of Mother Mary, Jesus, plain old rocks and minerals. You name it. I figured Russell must be a very lucky boy. And to have your collection become an attraction at America’s first them park. Well, that’s just the greatest!
The glow in the dark attraction was called Inspiration House. The door would open and a glowing Jesus would appear and give a message to the group. This attraction was located by the Chapel next to the lake.
KBF had the only operating Church in a them park. The Church of Reflections was originally built in 1876 and was a First Baptist Church in nearby Downey. Walter bought the Church had it disassembled and rebuilt next to Reflections Lake – and it became the Church of Reflections. We would often wander in and visit the beautiful little Church with the steeple. Sunday service was held here and weddings could also be arranged.
Also on the grounds was the original stand used by Walter and Cordelia to sell Boysenberries back in the 20s. A little slice of Americana. I admired the little stand – it was about 12 feet long, 8 feet high, and 5 feet deep. It had a door that rose up in the front so that you could ‘close shop’ at the end of the day and secure the contents.
Disneyland had burro rides, too. Not to be outdone. Walter was at the forefront having the first theme park in America. But Disney was just up the street. A large strand of orange trees would give way to trains, attractions, and goodies of all kinds. When Knott hired an engineer to design and build the Calico Mine Ride, there was one very curious future customer and competitor out front watching the progress. One Walt Disney. He watched closely as Knott’s engineer worked for over a year to design, develop, and complete the ride. Disney would, of course, have his own train rides. Like many boys who never grow up, he loved trains and wanted to employ the use of trains in his theme park. And he would.
James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School was where I went to school. Generally I did well in school and had the occasional issue arise. I attended school here from Kindergarten through 5th grade. As a kindergartener I remember the sand box, Mrs. French and her beautiful hair-do, the heat which came up from the floor. How did they do that? The heat radiated up through the floor. Seemed like a good idea, since heat rises. In Kindergarten we took naps. We had mats and we got them out and put clean sheets on them and laid down for naps every day. I don’t know if they do this now in most Kindergartens, but I do know that recent studies suggest it’s a good idea to take a nap every day. Good for stress, memory, energy, productivity; you name it. Seems like a good idea. In Europe they take sometimes 2 hours for lunch so that they can include healthy habits like naps. Google Corporation has places for people to nap and get massages. Google also has people to take care of parking tickets, take out your laundry and dry cleaning, car servicing, and more. There are up sides and down sides to this. It sounds like perks and it is. But it also helps to keep the employee working more efficiently and longer. The upside? Increased efficiency and productivity. The downside? More hours of the employee spent working.
The same is true with new technology. The Blackberry, for example, was recently introduced to Boeing Long Beach Senior Managers. We were excited to get this new tool. And to be sure, our efficiency and productivity went up immediately. However, the downside is you are never off line; never truly unplugged. In the middle of the night when you wake up and see the red light blinking, consider what is that? Is it an emergency? Is it the boss asking me for something? Is it a family member needing help? Blackberrys are a win-win. The Company gets more hours, more efficiency, more productivity; the employee gets the power of a terrific tool which can provide all kinds of benefits like real time email, internet access to name a couple.
I dove off the top of the jungle gym, I won a 1st prize ribbon for my bear cave, I wore my suit and hat to school; and this was just in Kindergarten. Auspicious beginnings?! Besides the sand around the jungle gym and monkey bars, there wasn’t a stitch of grass on the grounds of James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School. Asphalt jungle. Asphalt everywhere. The 1950 movie is described as “A major heist that goes bad once double cross and bad luck cause everything to unravel”. The unraveling at Riley was only when you fell. That’s when things were bound to go wrong. Because playing on asphalt had some general risk issues. Let’s just say the original designers did not have kid’s safety in mind. Perhaps more in mind was low maintenance. There was so much asphalt that it was truly beautiful. As long as it wasn’t raining, it was a dream come true for traction . Your
Chuck Taylor’s would grip like sandpaper on that nice black top. You could really generate some G’s when you rounded the corner playing kickball or hide and go seek or whatever game you happened to be playing that day. But on those occasions when you lost some grip, when it might be damp or raining, when you said oops, and started to take a tumble. That’s when the black top could take its vengeance. When the asphalt could bite. Ouch. It was hard and there were times where we had to go see Nurse Sally. Nurse Sally was very nice. She had a giant bottle of hydrogen peroxide in her office. When we came in with a bloody/raspberry knee, shin, elbow, palm, you name it; she had the remedy! Nurse Sally was sweet and would ask what happened to which we would always say “I fell down.” To which she would say “well, I have just the thing.” This might sting a little bit. Aiiiii!!! Yep, it usually did sting a little bit.

Jack Purcells were very popular too. You could see legit Jack Purcells when you checked the tell tale shape on the bottom of the shoe. Speaking of shoes and getting new ones…there was a way to get new shoes. Earlier than you might think. I remember one kid would drag his shoes as he rode his bicycle accelerating the wear on the sole of his shoe so that he could ask Mom and Dad for new shoes. I was taken off guard by this. I was a bit shocked to see the level of ‘cheating’. I thought that was dipping right into Mom and Dad’s pockets in a very selfish way. To tear up your shoes prematurely just to get a new pair of kicks seemed downright rotten. I never tried it but it stuck with me.
JWR is also chained off from the public. That helped contain the kick balls and other playground equipment from careening off into the public byways. One of my very favorite recess past times was the tether ball. Tether ball. Seemed like a strange game. Perhaps it started out as an Indian game of some sort? Don’t know – but it was a lot of fun and I seemed to excel at this sport. Maybe it’s because I was taller than the average bear. Or average kid. You got on your side and ‘served’ to the other player. If you got ‘lucky’ you could play your way around them and ace the whole game without them even touching the ball.
On one rainy day I had a raincoat on and with the rain falling off the roof I saw people bending over and catching water in the ‘pocket’ that was part of the raincoat. I thought this was a fun idea and joined in. Oops. We were caught and had to go see the Vice Principal. I remember the teacher telling the VP that he had had trouble with me before. For the life of me, I can’t recall what trouble that was. Stranger is that I’ve never forgotten that. Maybe he had mistaken me for another fellow. A ruffian. A brigand. A ner do well. A miscreant. Was I one? I wonder now. No matter. I am free from his tentacles. After all, we were just playing in the water, not tearing up the asphalt.
One of the regular occurrences there in Lakewood were the sonic booms. As the jet fighters broke the sound barrier in the local airspace, the buildings would shake with relish at the shock waves. I loved them. Some people hated them. It reminded me of what Dad did for a living. Building airplanes. Dad had a buddy named Don Phillippi. Don had airplanes and Dad said he got to fly with him in a P-51 Mustang. This was a WWII fighter aircraft built by North American. The plane in later modifications was capable of 487 mph. Dad said that when they were flying and the pilot pulled back on the stick that the G force caused him to ‘grey out’ or lose most of his vision. He said that the force on his body was like a strong man pushing down very hard on your leg. I was impressed and never forgot the story. The P-51 was designed and built in an amazing 117 days! I t started out as a reconnaissance aircraft, but then later became a fighter/bomber/escort aircraft eventually leading to total air superiority for the allies.
The P-51 was economical to produce and was also fast, durable, and well made. A testament to its value and resourcefulness is the fact that it remained in service in the US military into the 80s. After being superseded by jet aircraft, it still found value in Korea, and Vietnam. In the 60s Ford Motor Company would name a sports car after this legendary fighter. The initial order for Mustangs was from Britain. They wanted them for reconnaissance and ground attack duties. This due to the fact that its high altitude performance was somewhat limited. The sound of a Mustang zooming past is something that rings a chord in the hearts of gear heads everywhere. Airplanes, cars, motorcycles; you name it. Guys in general love the sound of a cool exhaust. Flowmaster? Glass Packs? Oh, by the way – glass packs were special exhausts that people put on their cars to make them sound cool. Dad educated us about this after market bolt on which made a normal V8 sound like a real hot rod! Cheap mod – but effective! We had glass packs on the 59 Chevy. The Impala was a piece of art. At the time we didn’t really understand that. But we did greatly appreciate the beauty of the car. Fins!
TOM
My brother, Tom. Handsome, dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. I was jealous! Especially after hearing that song “Beautiful brown eyes”. I guess that meant that green eyes were inferior. Red hair was inferior. Fair skin and freckles were inferior. Not really. I knew better. Looking back now I can see I was a minority of sorts (red hair) but diversity is really cool. But Tom was my older brother and I really looked up to him. Even though we fought like the dickens; we really loved each other. He was Niner and I was kitten. Don’t ask.
Tom was my protector. At times when my youthful energy would get the better of me and I wrote checks I could not cash. Tom was there to rescue me. To pull me back from the precipice. Erik (my buddy with the violin) had a brother the same age as Tom. One day we were sort of hanging out together and I said some smart alecky thing to him which was basically a challenge. Now, I had no chance against this guy. He outmatched me in every way (except mouth). He turned to Tom and asked ”can I smash him?” To which Tom replied “no way”. Whew. Snatched from the jaws of ‘death’ again. I remember it vividly. And I remember at age 9 that I was getting big enough to know better. Tom saved me this time. I needed to make sure this didn’t happen again.
Tom would mostly play with a few key buddies in the neighborhood. Gerry Gregory, Mack Atlas, and Kevin Olsenz. They were all in the same grade. I spent as much time with them as possible. Mostly because I wanted to hang out with my big brother. But I also liked and admired Gerry, Kevin, and Mack. From the get go I was at a disadvantage because I tended to hold the big boys back. Just by the fact that I was three years younger, meant I would be slower, less powerful, not as keen, and just a hindrance in their eyes. But there were times where I got to hang out with them and had fun doing that. We would play army, tag, war, ride bikes, ride ‘skobies or skate boards; the list was endless. We could be creative. We could think up something new every day. Every hour
Tom and I didn’t play much organized sports. At least, not until High School where Tom excelled. Tom went out for Football and our lives were changed forever! Tom was like me – perhaps a bit heavy and out of shape. After one year of football, he was a lean, mean, fighting machine. I remember him showing me the veins in his arm after he had leaned out and been lifting weights for months. I was very impressed. But I think my reaction to him was more like “so?” I didn’t want to give away how much I admired his new strength. And speaking of strength, he was named to the elite group of Football players known as the Golden Knights. Lean and muscular. He could benchpress over 300 lbs. He was truly in great shape. I remember walking with him at the beach and people would stare at him. I felt again in the presence of greatness. Like my Dad, Tom was a super hero!
I tried following in his footsteps. I tried my hand at Football and helped change my world. It definitely opened up the world of fitness to me. But I didn’t have the perseverance to stick with it and quit in my Sophomore year. I think between Tom’s example as well as my little brother Kyle’s success in sports I saw that they were fine athletes. And because of that example, it helped me to reshape my life later in life. That being my 50’s. With Dad, Mom, Tom, and Kyle as examples, they helped to inspire me to change my life. I had gotten out of control. Even though I worked out with weights and was relatively strong for my age, I had gained a lot of weight. At my peak, I was close to 310 lbs! Mom was a good athlete – I mentioned the photo of her spiking a volleyball and winning the strength/endurance contest. Dad was a bodybuilder, Tom a football player, and Kyle played all kinds of sports from cross country running to basketball to football. He was an all-city corner back at Millikan High. He has wheels. And my Sister Evelyn (named after Mom) was also a runner winning awards at local track meets. And my step-Dad Tim was also a track runner. And I had mentioned Mom’s Dad being an athlete – golf and tennis.
But key to my decision along with all of this inspiration was more and more information coming in nearly daily tying all kinds of diseases to obesity and overweight. As blessed as America is to have relatively cheap food readily available to most people; the down side is a high level of people being overweight and obese. Every week I would read another story about diseases tied to being ‘fat’. Senility, arthritis, dementia, arthrosclerosis, alzheimers, high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke to name a few. So I made a conscious decision to get serious about losing weight.
Now I was already going to the gym, but primarily lifting weights. I decided I needed to add more cardio/fat burn. So I started by adding spin class to my workouts. So for my first time I was at the Boeing Fitness Center and there was a woman there named Marla. She commented that she was going to go to spin class. I said that I should probably go, too because I needed cardio work. She said yes, you should. Meanwhile I was on a treadmill warming up. So at about 3:50 I go to the desk, get my numbered orange card so I could be sure to get a bike in the class and go into the spin room. A regular spinner/biker helped me to get through the adjustments on the bike; the seat height and distance from the handlebars, the handlebars height and forward and aft, the baskets which hold your feet. I would later learn about ‘SPD’ type bicycle shoes that allow you to ‘click in’ to the pedal. Allowing for a more comfortable, uniform, and stable ride.
Beatriz walks through the door and I say to myself, ‘so that’s what a spin teacher looks like’. She is probably 5’7” and perhaps 110 lbs. Very slim in the waist and hips. She starts out by playing some soft calming music and has us go through a series of stretches. Arm to the left, arm, to the right, arm behind shoulder, neck left, right, up, down, lean left, lean right. OK, now we’re going to start with a straight away, dial your resistance to a 3 (on a scale of 1-10) and we’ll start getting warmed up. Hey, this isn’t so bad. 10 min down and I’m breathing hard and Beatriz tells us to take a breath towel off and take a drink. Wow – breaks, even. Interval training they call it. Tabata method, intervals, pressing your body and giving it a break and pressing it again. Next up a hill …a gentle hill. Hmmm – no big deal. I remember climbing that steep hill with Dad on my Peugeot in Corona Del Mar. Oh, but this was 30 years later and 100 lbs later…oops. That’s right. 2 minutes into the hill and my heart felt like it was going to pop. And that’s when I began to pray. Pray that I would make it through this hill without dying or at least without a major medical emergency. It would be hard to explain to my boss Mark that I had a heart attack while in ‘spin’ class. Oopsie.
3 more minutes in the hill. Beatrice! Marla! There were maybe 5 people in the class. Now I knew why there were so few people. Because this class is tough! I thought about my family – all of this great athletes. I thought about quitting football in High School. I would not quit. I wanted to sever that tie in my life. I would not quit. Even though I was near 300 lbs and out of shape, I knew it was time to kick myself in the big gluteus maximus and get moving! Don’t quit. Be like Mom, Dad, Tom, Sis, and Kyle. Be an Engel. Little Engel. That’s what they called me when I played football following in Tom’s footprints. Little Engel. I swelled with pride because I was a knock off of my big brother, Tom. But the thread was broken when I quit so now I tell myself keep going, keep going – you’re not a quitter. It’s 30 years later, you’re 100 lbs heavier, but you can do this! You finished your Associate of Arts degree, your Bacherlors degree, your Masters degree, you bench pressed 350 lbs at the age of 50, you can do this. You need to stay the course!!
So where did this come from? Where did the ability, the perseverance, the stick to it, the work ethic come from? Well, along with help from the good Lord, Jesus Christ, my savior, was the blessing of my family. The great examples of my family members – all of them. Tom showed me the way by finishing school. I followed him to Compton Community College when many/most of my classmates went elsewhere. I think maybe 10 of our class actually went to Compton. Most opted for giving another address so they could go to Cerritos or elsewhere. Of course, too, many went to 4 year schools. Help and encouragement from teachers and coaches. Our beloved Mr ‘B’ – Mr Bridgers in Junior High. He knew I was a chubby teenager and he helped get me into some kind of shape. He told me that with a little more push I’d really get rolling. Actually he wrote that in my yearbook.
Mr B used to run laps with us. He’d run along behind us and kinda push us to run faster. I think he probably got a kick out of coaching us. He was trying to shape young lives. Working with 7th and 8th graders must have been a challenge. But Mr B always treated us with respect and pushed us to do better. To grow, to stretch ourselves.
Beatriz would have another song and another challenge for us. How about a flat run? A flat run? I think that was like a sprint? It was. Hydrate and towel off, keep your feet spinning, active recovery. Active recovery. Ah, you mean your heart rate comes down as you spin slower and towel off and get a drink. Got it. And you prepare for the next challenge. OK, here we go – on comes the loud, pulsating, fast music, with Beatriz beckoning, pushing, driving. You were caught up in the emotion, the music and your legs want to go faster and faster. RPM up around 100/min. Pretty fast. How was that heart rate? Probably up around 135 or 140. Good Lord, don’t let me die, I prayed. Because I was pushing that heart rate up where I hadn’t seen it in at least a decade.
Quick, quick, quick, quick…shoulders down, elbows bent, core tight! Quick, quick, quick…everyone ride their own ride. If you need to hydrate, get a drink. 2 more minutes. Who knew riding a stationary bike could be such a challenge. Call it what you will. Spin, cycling, it was all great. The mixture of riding, the music, your friends and fellow riders, and the encouragement of the instructor made spin class infectious. After an hour of hills, straight aways, transitions, in seat, and out of seat riding I exited spin class with a smile on my face. I was spent, soaked with sweat, and had a renewed sense of accomplishment. Now I needed to think about diet.
My wife had been on Weight Watchers for years. I approached her one night and told her that I wanted some guidance on diet. I told her if she was on WW, could I join her? She already knew the diets and cooked accordingly for herself. Couldn’t I join her in that program? Yes. She gave me lots of advice, guidance, literature, and the daily books where you record your ‘points’. And so began my journey with Weight Watchers. Some of the plan looked pretty boring and bland. But If I could get my head wrapped around eating more vegetables, salads, fiber, and protein, I should be able to be successful on the plan.
And so, weighing weekly, more cardio, more calorie burn started to whittle away at my bulk. I had spent a number of years competing in the benchpress competition at the Boeing Fitness Center in Huntington Beach. It certainly is not a world class competition, but was fun and exciting just the same. My best lift was 350 lbs. That in competition – in the gym, I had lifted 360 with my partner, Bobby. Even though this was a pretty good lift, I felt it was somewhat tainted by my body weight. That being, that generally, the heavier you are, the more you can benchpress. The other limiting factor can be your height. Shorter people can generally benchpress more due to the mechanics of lifting.
But now I was focused more on fitness. Lifting became secondary and I focused primarily on cardio and fat burn. Spin class became a bit easier each time I went. A bit. And I got into a routine of spin class going 3 times a week for about a year. Beatriz, Eileen, and Karen. They were the 3 teachers. Each teaching Mon, Wed, and Fri. After a year of spin mixed with a bit of other exercise – a smattering of weight training and the like – I had lost about 40 lbs. I was pleased and people noted my success. People asked how I did it and I shared about my journey. My years of denial – eating junk for years and years and saying to myself, ‘oh, that’s OK, I lift weights.’ Eating high fat meals, high carb meals, high sugar, low fiber meals followed up with scads of ice cream or cake or pie. Yes. That was the recipe for my 44 inch waist and 308 lbs peak weight.
As kids we used to get some good food. Mom and Dad had good jobs. Mom worked at the grocery store as a meat wrapper, so we never wanted for good food. Sometimes Mom was able to take advantage of good meats that had been marked down. So we always had steaks, roasts, and good ground meat. But the stuff I fell in love with was the chips, ice cream, cookies, fudge, cakes, and candy. I had a sweet tooth. I think Tom did too, but he was blessed with perfect teeth. My first visit to the Dentist with Grandma Warner resulted in 9 cavities in that little head. 9!? Sheesh. I guess all that candy did it’s damage. So all of my poor eating habits resulted in me adding extra weight and getting out of shape.
As a teenager, when I went out for football, I lost the weight. They worked it off us. I wish I had stuck with that plan, but fell back on my old ways, got lazy and ate wrong resulting in putting a lot of weight on my 6’4” frame. Weight Watchers, cardio, fat burn were helping me to get on track. I was pleased with my progress, but was beginning to stagnate. I had plateaued. What came next was a challenge at work. Well, at the Fitness Center – they had a weight loss challenge. I figured this was just what I needed to get me rolling again! Like Mr B said – with a little more push, youll really be rolling! So I signed up for the challenge.
Even though I had already lost a good chunk, I still had a ways to go. So this would be perfect timing. I decided that what I needed was to kick my butt harder – more cardio and more lifting. And tighten up a bit more on the diet. So I set out to do so. More cardio. I felt I was a bit stagnant with the bike, so I tried the stairmaster. Wow! Quite a challenge. The first time was tough! I was breathless. But I kept it up and got to where I could go an hour, sometimes 75 minutes on the stairs. In doing this, I was burning between 600 and 800 calories! Equivalent to a meal! That and sticking pretty closely to the weight watcher diet of 34 points I saw more weight melting off. At the end of the 12 or so weeks, we weighed in and had the results. I had lost another 30 lbs and came in 3rd overall for men in the contest. I was proud of this accomplishment. And I was close to my ultimate goal of reaching 230 lbs. A few weeks later I reached that goal and my total weight loss from the high point was 75 lbs!
Some people told me I had lost too much weight. I told them not to worry; I hadn’t lost that much. One lady at work gave me a new nick name ‘waist line’. I got a lot of compliments and appreciated them. I had an opportunity to talk about spin class, weight watchers, hard work, and perseverance. I saw many show up at the gym who had never been there before. I felt proud to set an example. To be like my family was to me. It had come later in life but still felt great. And I was glad that I had survived my heavy weight. Not to mention smoking!
McDonnell Douglas
I had hired into McDonnell Douglas in 1979. I didn’t think I would follow Dad into the aerspace business. He had worked there at Douglas for 28 years now. But my first wife Sidney and I had moved into some apartments in Bellflower right near Woodruff and Artesia. I worked at Amen’s market – Super A I believe it was called. I met a friend and his wife. His name was David. Dave worked in a systems department at Douglas Aircraft. He was helping to set up a new Manufacturing Execution System (PRIMS – Product Requirement Information Management System). He told me that they were hiring. I told him that my Dad worked there. He said well, hey – you might want to talk to him…so I called Dad. He talked to a friend down the hall who said hey, have the kid come in and apply. Since he has his AA degree, that’s a step up. Yeah, I did have an AA degree.
So I gave Dad my application and he took it in to Ralph Mitchell. ‘Mitch’ as he was affectionately known by his team. This group of people were Schedulers. They scheduled parts, tools, kits, and various other assemblies for airlines. For spares support. I came in and had an interview with Mitch. I think it went pretty well. I tried to be on my best behavior and was as professional as possible. Mitch seemed like a good guy. H e warned me that if I did get hired, that it was partly because of my Dad and his reputation and that it was important to work hard and build on that reputation. I told him that I understood and would do my best. I was hired.
Wow! A job at McDonnell Douglas! Working right down the hall from my Dad! I was super blessed! I remember how excited Sid was for me. She thought this would be a good change to move from the grocery business to aerospace. I had been in the grocery business because of the example and help from Mom and Pop, my Step-Dad. Pop was Tim Klasey. Another man from the great generation who also fought in WWII. While Dad was in the Pacific fighting the Japanese, Pop was in Europe involved in the battle of the bulge, fighting the Nazis.
My first days at McDD were eye opening! I got to see the assembly of DC-9s, DC-10s, and the throngs of people who worked here….thousands upon thousands. When I hired in in 1979, they were in the midst of a hiring drive and I believe the employment had peaked at around 30,000. We were part of schedules and were primarily working with spares schedules. Spare parts. Sometimes the airlines needed a part quickly and the order would come through us if we didn’t have the parts in stock. In that case we would figure a quick schedule. If the airplane was actually grounded for the part, we would figure a day or two to cut the metal and then fabricate the part.
When working a spares order we had a CMSR (commercial/military spares order). This form had triplicate carbon copies. At the top was a part number and a quantity. Also there was a job serial number for tracking and the customer information ( if it was an actual recent order from a customer). The first thing we would do is pull the FO (Fabrication Order) or AO (Assembly Order) that normally built the part. At this time, this paper work was not yet in a computer, but was a hard copy kept in the AO/FO files. We would go downstairs and write up a request on a card and give it to the ‘girls’ in the files to pull for us. We could either leave the form there or ask them to pull them right then if the job was ‘hot’ enough.
The AO/FO would have tooling and material information. This was key to our scheduling job as we had to be sure the material and tooling were available to build the parts / assemblies. We could also call the shop floor and check with the ‘control booths’ which housed the parts throughout the shop floor and see if they had parts in stock to fill the order request. Especially if it was a hot priority (AOG = aircraft on the ground), or 1A which was also hot or need to fill within 2 weeks.
AOs and FOs were created by the planning department. My Dad worked in Planning – but worked primarily Production Planning. That is he supported the folks who built the airplanes moving down the assembly line. For spares we worked with Spares Planning. They were located nearby and we would have normall back and forth traffice for questions about their ‘paper’. The FO would usually call out a material like aluminum sheet stock or steel tubing which would be cut to a certain size. Then the material would be moved to the next station to be stamped, formed, trimmed, heat treated, machined, or various other fabrication operation which would then go on to the various other operations until they were completed.
I was trained when I originally joined the department by “JB”. JB Spenz was very confident in his job. He was also transparent in his training. In that, I mean he revealed everything he knew to me so that I felt confident in the job I was doing. He had been in Spares working for Mitch for about 2 years at this time and had about 10 years in the company. JB was careful to teach me about material, parts, tools, wait, move, and queue times. He taught me about the various systems for checking for parts, tools, and materiel availability. I found it all fascinating and had a pretty good memory so it came to me pretty quickly. Within a short time I had been promoted to a salaried position and with it had more responsibility. I was given the job of quoting an scheduling kits. Kits were collections of fabricated parts and assemblies, fasteners, supplier parts, etc. to modify an aircraft. Usually these were fairly small mod kits for adding an antenna, or some palletized seats. But sometimes the kits were large and had hundreds of parts. One of these was the kit for modifying an entire DC-10 to 10 abreast seating. This kit was huge! And the mistake I made was twofold:
1 – I didn’t pay attention to the ‘need’ date.
2 – I didn’t schedule it in accordance with work order #xyz123.
Big oops. Embarrassing oops. I got a call 2 weeks later asking where the kit was. And I responded huh? It’s scheduled for next October. Well, turns out next October was about 6 months later than Product Support wanted it for our Customer. What ensued was meetings with my boss, his boss, Product Supports’ boss, etc. etc. Well, I think you get the picture. What I learned out of all of this is to pay attention to the details. Because sometimes that is very necessary information. And I also learned that it’s a strength to ask for help. When I first got the CMSR and scheduled it, I knew it was something ‘different’. And what I should have done from the get-go was ask JB for help.
O r I could have gone to Jack Straight. Jack was a super man – he had fought in the Army in WWII and when Honorably Discharged, was hired by Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. He showed me in some historical documents, where he worked during WWII on the SBD Douglas dive bomber assembly line. I was blessed and honored to be able to work with and be trained by a man of courage, honor, and bravery. As much experience as Jack had in running the landing gear shop as well as various other departments and his war time experience, I truly appreciated his mentoring and guidance.
When the Iranians held some 400 hostages in 1979, Jack shared some advice. He said that what we should do is run a couple destroyers up off shore of Iran and start lobbing missles into Iran. He said this would get their attention. After all, the Ayatollah Khomeini was making a mockery of America. Flaunting the fact that he held hundreds of Americans hostage for all the world to see. The super power of the world held hostage by a tiny group of extremists. I nodded approval at Jack’s suggestion. Seemed like a good idea. And with Ronald Reagan being sworn into office, the airplane releasing the hostages cleared air space as the ceremony concluded. If not, I’m sure they would have seen some missiles or worse.
Jack lived in nearby Belmon Shores in an exclusive area right off Alamitos Bay. He had a get together at his home where we had a meal and played cards. A great time was had by all. When Jack finally retired after some 40 years of service, we gave him a moped and a trailer stocked with fishing gear so that he could easily navigate the confines of the popular area.
I worked in a bullpen. A bullpen was an area with desks pushed together. Generally you sat across from a desk mate with a table or desk separating you. So people were allowed to smoke in this era. Imagine – people with asthma, emphysema, etc. sitting three feet from someone who smokes cigarettes or cigars. Thinking back on it it’s a wonder we didn’t all come down with some horrible disease. It was a different time and thank goodness that was then and this is now. Honestly now I don’t think I could sit in an area like that. I have had symptoms of asthma in the past and I think it would make me sick to sit in an area that allowed smoking. Also, I had a bout of pneumonia 10 years ago and I know smoking had some weight in that happening.
My Dad was a true health nut. He ate whole foods, no white flower, no sugary foods, no soda, and not candy. He ate meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, and cheese. He lifted weights, jogged, rode bikes, did all kinds of sports over his lifetime. And imagine his frustration with me when he walked by my desk one day in 1980 and saw me smoking a cigarette. “Tim!”, he exclaimed. “Hi, Dad!”, I answered. “What in sam hill are you doing?” “Oh, uh, smoking a cigarette…”, I managed. “Why in the world would you be smoking a cigarette?” “Oh, I don’t smoke much; just a couple a day.” Liar. Big fib. Dad was pretty disheartened by this news. I mean parents want better for their kids. More for their kids. Not going from health nut to “smoker!” And so on I went smoking. It was a social thing. Something to do with my ‘spare’ time. JB smoked; why shouldn’t I? And as I write this with a cold I’m thinking thank God I don’t smoke any more because if I did, even with this cold, I’d be out there having a smoke right now. Killing my bodies’ chance of defending itself against the onslaught of the virus, the phlemn, the yuck.
We worked fab parts, assemblies, welded parts, and composite assemblies. Each order carried a unique set of instructions. As simple as a nameplate which was fabricated in department 647 right there in Long Beach. Even a nameplate had a 6 week schedule. For a ‘normal’ priority job the typical schedule was 6 weeks. Then as jobs got more and more complex, we would add time. Interestingly , much of the time was wait, move, and queue. That is, as the order set waiting to move to the next department; this is ‘wait’ time. Then ‘move’ time is the actual transportation of the part from one station to another. For example, there was a department that cut the material. Then it had to be moved to the heat treat department, then to the forming department, etc. The queue time was the time the job set waiting to be worked. It was considered ‘in queue’ if it had to wait for people or machine time to actually be worked.
A standard pipe or tube assembly might take 6 weeks, but a welded part made in 426 or 6426 (the initial 6 indicating Torrance or C-6) would take longer because generally two or more pieces had to be welded together. This meant another work center or department with more wait, move, and queue. Department 553 was what we called pots and pans. This was a general assembly department where parts were assembled on a ‘bench’.
Composite parts generally required lay ups of layers and resin and time in the autoclave. These parts were generally made in Torrance. I got to visit the Torrance facility many times and always marveled at the capability we had. From basic fabrication to complex machining of large parts like the DC-10 engine ‘banjo’ fittings. I had the opportunity and responsibility to go to Torrance to get status for various parts built for the Special Products Program Office. I worked on the KC-10 and was assigned to the Program Office. Later they folded in ‘special products’ which included items like the bomb racks, NACESII sets and the like. I also got status on ‘big bones’ items or those items deemed to be line or jig stoppers. One of my contacts for information was a nice lady named Markeel. I still see Markeel on occasion. She works on the commercial side in CASS or Commercial Aviation Services (what we used to call Product Support).
I remember walking through one large building and seeing aisle after aisle of machines capable of machining pretty much any part we needed. Rows and rows of machines. Some busily turning out quality parts and some idle. But the size of this might and capability was awe inspiring. Then there were the ESD or Electrostatic Discharge Machining areas. And Chem Milling. And water jet part cutting. And later would come stereo lithography. Making a part quickly directly from a 3D model out of plastic for fast prototyping.
Dad lived in Huntington Beach and later Westminster. I remember his carpool buddy telling me about pulling up in front of his house in the morning to pick him up and Dad was busy doing pull-ups and bar dips. In the morning. When many are having a second cup of coffee or a second donut. He was doing dips and pull ups. And Dad could do them like nobody’s business. He would often put a harness around his waist with a chain hanging down and would secure some plates to the end of the chain. The weight might be as much as 50 pounds. And he would do dips or chins with this much extra weight hanging down. No exaggeration. And most men can’t do one of either. With no weight. Dad was in great shape.
With my lack of discipline both in the gym as well as at the dinner table, was it any wonder that as an adult I could do no pull-ups and perhaps 5 bar dips? Sad. Measly. Pitiful. Only after working hard at losing weight and developing more strength was I able to knock out a set of 7 to 10 pull ups and perhaps 15 dips. I would also hold weights between my knees in memory and dedication to my Dad. Of course I couldn’t compare with his performance, but I was getting better. I can remember hanging from a bar a couple years ago and not only couldn’t I pull myself up, but I was in pain!
My workout partner for a number of years was Robby. Robby and I met at Bally’s on a Saturday about 6 years ago. I was adding weight to my benchpress and he helped add weight. He put a 25 on one side as I put a 25 on my side. He waved and I waved back. Later I would find that Robby was also a Christian and that he was deaf. He would go on to teach me sign language (or basically the alphabet and a hand full of words) . It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I would also find out that Robby had eye problems. That he was probably half way to being blind. It boggled my mind at the life he must lead. And it also boggled my mind at how well versed he was and how well read he showed to be in the Bible. He would recite verses and I wondered how he knew these things since he could barely read any longer. But he had been an adept student and had an excellent memory.
I would later marvel at his memory as we sat and ate dinner. Robby, Annie, and I. Annie was /is Robby’s girl friend. And in that one sitting I recall Robby telling approximately 15 jokes. One after another. One of my favorites is the one about the cat. A man and woman decide they want to get rid of their pet cat. He had become a real annoyance and he decided to take the cat ‘for a ride’.
So he puts the cat in the car and takes off and drives a mile or two and drops off the cat. He quickly leaves and accelerates and heads for home. Upon arriving he is shocked to see – you guessed it – kitty sitting waiting for him on the front porch. He asks the wife what happened and she replied he just showed up a couple minutes after you left.
So he takes the cat again and drives around the corner heads up about 2 miles, turns left, turns right, goes another few miles and drops the cat off. Surely he figues, this will lose kitty. He gets home and shock of shocks he sees kitty waiting with the Mrs on the front porch.
So this time he says hey, I’m gonna take this cat and really lose him this time. So he drive and drives; turns left, turns right, doubles back, goes 5 miles, then turns and goes another 5 miles. And drops off kitty. He turns for home and realizes hey, I’m lost. He opens his cell phone and calls the wife. Hey, Honey, is Kitty there. Yes. Well, put him on the phone, cuz I’m lost!!
That was one of about 15 jokes Robby told in a row. At one sitting. During one evening meal. What a joy. It was then that I remembered that when people lose certain senses, or suffer a loss of some kind, they are often blessed in another way. Like Robby had lost 98% of his hearing and 65% of his sight, but he had mad skills when it came to telling jokes. And this I think was partly because of his amazing memory.
Robby and I had some great times in the gym. We were probably the strongest team In the gym. There were some bigger stronger guys like James, the Principal, and big Mike. But as a team, Robby and I were probably the strongest. We got to where we could both bench 315 lbs. That’s the Olympic Bar with 3 large 45lbs plates on each side. That’s a ‘man’ weight. As my new workout partner would say ‘not a chick weight’. Of course, I have known of and seen ‘chicks’ lift much more weight than I can handle. At my strongest with Robby in the gym about 4 years ago I got 315 lbs for 5 reps, 285 for 18 reps, and 225 for 21 reps. That’s a lot of bench pressing and probably too much concentration on bench work for sure.
Later I realized as I had gotten up to a body weight over 300 lbs, it was time to reign myself in. That’s when I got on the stick and with the help of lots of folks and some dedication of mine, was able to pull back a bit on the reigns.
Seven years ago I started competing at the Boeing Huntington Beach Fitness Center’s Benchpress Competition. I thought I might have a shot at doing pretty well since I had lifted 360 lbs for 1 rep in the gym. And this contest was a best rep max with three tries. So I signed up and continued with my lifting. And my big body (fat). The first year I got a respectable 350 lbs. This was close to the best in the entire contest. I think the best overall was about 380. And I was only beaten by 2 or 3 people. For my age, and weight category I won first prize and was pleased when I won a trophy. The trophy is of a man at a benchpress pressing an Olympic bar. A nice trophy. I went on to win 3 more of those and 2 2nd place medals. One of the medals is dedicated to my Pop Tim who fought in WWII in the Battle of the bulge. His children, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren have all dedicated awards they have won to Pop and they adorn his flag which was presented to Mom by the Color Guard in honor of his service at his funeral. It was a beautiful service.
But as nice as it was to be strong, I realized it was more important to be fit – or at least more fit and so began my journey to lose weight and the long haul of cardio, fat burn, cross fit, spin, yoga, pilates, core classes…
My new partner in the gym is Jake. Like with Robby, I think we’re probably the strongest team in the gym. Especially when Jay joins us. A couple of weeks ago all three of us bench pressed 315. Now it’s rare to see anyone benching 315 at the Boeing fitness center. But to see a team of 3 people benching 315 together is truly rare. But we did it. And since we thought it was kind of important, Jake asked me if I would take pictures. So I did. I took pictures with my Blackberry. First was Jake. Then Jay. Then me. Man, the pressure was on. I hadn’t benched that much in probably 3 years or more…but we had all been getting stronger with our benchpress. Jake said hey, let’s go for it. I said OK – let’s do it. I wasn’t awfully confident. But after Jake did it and then Jay – I knew I had to go for it. BAM!! Up she went. And we were all very happy and proud and basking for a moment enjoying the achievement!
So flash back to the BLC and It’s day one and I know there’s massive food to be had. And I figure I have to get my butt in gear and get the cardio going! I jump on the elliptical/stair machine and flip on FOX News and punch in my age, weight, fat burn, and 60 minutes. People come and go and I roll on on the stairmaster. Further into the night…more and more I go and enjoy the fact that despite the approaching virus in my lungs and sinus, I’m working out. What does Dr Oz say about working out while being sick? Joe Weider would say use your common sense and listen to your intuition. What was your body telling you on a given day? What was your energy level? Where were your short comings? Calves? Time to bomb the calves.
I am fighting off a cold. A virus I started catching before I left to come to St Louis. I had a sore throat on Friday night – but slept in on Saturday so that I felt pretty good on the weekend. Sunday morning I flew out to Phoenix and then to St Louis. I seemed to do pretty well on the flight with my ears; but the feel of the virus is still there. I start taking meds and drinking extra water. Peppermints are readily available which help to keep my throat from getting dry. So sitting in class for 2 hours at a stretch is not too bad. But when I cough, I do so the ‘new’ correct way; into my elbow. Everyone appreciates this because it supposedly helps to keep you from spreading the disease around as readily on your hand.
Boring stuff – talking about colds. I don’t get them very often any more. Maybe once a year or even less on average. I think working out really helps. And taking vitamins and greens. Health
Health. Fitness. Nutrition. Whole foods. Supplements. It’s a big subject. It’s timely and important. My Dad was a health nut and a gym rat. He ate whole foods, took supplements, vitamins, worked out at home, in the gym, on the street. He loved working out. Loved it! When Mom and Dad divorced Tom and I would go visit Dad and Katy on the weekends. We would wake up to the sound of Nat King Cole…”Unforgettable…that’s what you are…” Beautiful music. And Dad would appear in the doorway. “Hey, I’m going to go for a run around the neighborhood. Wanna go with me?” Barely awake and nudging twilight sleep again early Saturday AM I replied…”uh, I’m kinda sleepy.” “Ok, I’ll see you guys in a bit.” And off he would go. And we listen to Nat…”unforgettable, though near or far. Like a song of love that clings to me. How the thought of you does things to me. Never before, has someone been more…unforgettable…” Simply amazing. Beautiful. This was Camelot. 1960s. Here with Dad and Tom and Katy. And Nat. Nat King Cole. His music like liquid nerve potion. Soothing, lilting, soft, kind, music for the soul.
How did I get from fitness to music?! Oh, I think they’re entertwined. So when a young man on the USS Gwinn Dad was a young strapping fellow from Sioux Falls South Dakota. He was skinny, but healthy and strong. Didn’t run from a fight; but decades later and 40 lbs heavier he wanted to have a reckoning with a bully from his childhood. I think we all do. At least guys do. To grab hold of those cowardly cads and turn them as Dad used to say “every way but loose”. I had mine when I thought of the captains of industry who brow beat me, talked down to me, disrespected me in the past. But thanks to the Lord and maturity I have forgive them. I saw some of them in Laughlin and laughed at myself for considering beating on a poor man in his 70s who was here to have a couple drinks, eat a nice meal, and reminisce about old times at the ‘bird farm’; Douglas Aircraft.
Dad had a big chest, big shoulders, big arms and a small waist. Young ladies at work would comment to me about how good looking and handsome Dad was. I was down right jealous! But Dad loved everyone. Loved to chat with folks. Was very social. So much that we sometimes got busted at work for chatting in the hallway while enjoying a cup of coffee. I know Dad got written up with disciplinary action once time for this and I felt really bad. I remember seeing the write up. Edward was witnessed talking in the hallway with his son during working hours. Edward and his son have no business to be worked during working hours. Then there was the time that Dad was in at work early working what is called ‘pre-shift’ overtime. I think he was in early and had his feet up reading the newspaper. He missed the sound of the bell for start time and Zack Calhoun walked In and caught Dad ‘in the act’. In the act of not working when he was supposed to be hot on it…pre shift…overtime! Earning time and a half. Oopsie. Zack cleared his voice and Dad turned down the corner of the newspaper. Uh, Ed, did you happen to notice what time it was? “oh, sorry, Zack!” And off he scurried to work. Zack had lots of people working for him. I saw him at the recent Laughlin reunion. He is now in his early 80’s and doing well if a bit frail. He’s not one of the guys I wanted to punch out. He was a good leader for the most part.

Dad sort of looked like this. They nicknamed him Mr Clean at work because of his great physique. They would marvel at how he could make his chest ‘dance’ by flexing his pectoral muscles. One planner was a pretty good cartoonist and he would draw cartoons of various folks there in the Planning department. He drew Dad up pretty much like Mr Clean. One time we were at the drive-in theater and a guy crowded us from behind. Dad was trying to b ack out and this guy got right on his bumper. So Dad started to get out of the car to ‘crush’ him. But Mom stopped him. Later at the snack bar we saw a friend of Dad’s who was a cop and he told Dad – you should have flattened him. Dad was a gentle giant. He really loved most everyone. I never saw him have to beat up on anyone. He felt bad when as a teenager he went out for football and broke a guys’ leg. I think this made a difference in how he lived his life. This was even before he started lifting weights.
Dad lived throught he depression and it made a big impact on him. Mom was a post depression baby. I remember Dad said he once played this ‘game’ where a guy would toss a dollar into this throng of boys and they would duke it out to ‘win’ the dollar. I guess it was sort of a cheap replacement for Saturday night at the fights.
Back to Hayter Avenue. The Owins boys. The lived next door. I believe there were three of them. They were a bit older than Tom and it seemed like they were always causing trouble. One day the Post man came running up and asked to borrow my bicyle. Why, we asked. He replied – because someone stole my mail truck and I want to see if I can catch them. Doug Owins!! Not good. The law kind of frowns on messing with people’s mail. Perhaps at this tender teen age he failed to grasp the brevity of what he had done. I think he ended up doing some time in the big house for that one. And then there was the time that I was with Mom and one of the Owens boys was giving Mom a hard time. It may have been that he was ogling, or staring, or made a comment. But I remember Mom ‘unloading’ on Mr Owens. In no uncertain terms he got a piece of Mom’s mind. I was pretty impressed. Because I had never seen this side of Mom. And I would suppose that she may have threatened telling Dad. And if she did – Dad would have probably laid the ‘board of education to the seat of understanding’. If you know what I mean! To this day Desire Olsenz still asks about Doug. But I don’t know where he is. Mom might know – she has an amazing network and very sharp memory.
Dad was all about getting the work done. Making things right. Mom was about love and hanging out. But Dad did that too. I remember Mom would work on my math with me when I was a kid. Mom and I were very close and could pretty much finish each other’s sentences. On the first day of Kindergarten, my legs suddenly became ‘paralyzed’. I couldn’t walk. Mom played along with me for awhile and finally I saw the futility of this whole act and was suddenly ‘healed’. Joy!!
Dave Julius lived across the street. He was about Steve’s age but didn’t really hang out with him that much. Many years later we would run into (not literally) at McDonnell Douglas. He worked in the same line of work – Business Management – as Steve and I. We did schedules and I think he did as well. We were all amazed to meet up with him again all these years later. We felt it was great to see each other again.
4th grade. It was like graduation! You moved to the other side of the school – you matriculated. Moved on. It was like going to High School or something. We moved over to the East side. On the other side of the incinerator. You know I had a problem. I tended to sometimes want to do things that were possibly unacceptable. Like writing on the wall of the bathroom. I wrote on the wall with a felt marker in my own cursive writing style. Which is why it was probably easy for them to trace the writing back to me. I think I said something choice about one of my pals with whom I’d had a disagreement at school. I think it was confined to one or two of the squares of tile in the bathroom.
When I was called into the vice principal’s office they let me know in no uncertain terms that they knew it was me. And I quickly confessed. I was in trouble with a capital T. How was this all going to go down? Would I be expelled? Suspended? I knew if you were suspended it was for a brief time of a week or so. If you got expelled, you were done for the year. Possibly out of the school for life!
But these were not to be. They actually treated me like a mature 4th grader…they told me to go home and talk to my parents about it and figure what should be done. Now this was certainly hard for me to go through with. It was the honor system. So that night after dinner I broke the news to my parents. I think they were glad to hear me confess; but sorry to hear about what I had done. Mom and Dad told me how important it was to respect public property and that it was their money that paid for all of the wonderful resources that we enjoyed. Like schools, parks, teachers, and the like. I told them how sorry I was and that it would never happen again. That was the end of my tagging…for now.
DIVORCE
It was 1965. 45 years ago that Mom and Dad decided that they were going to separate. Dad had bought a second car. A 1946 Willys Jeep Station Wagon. How cool was this? I knew something was up when Mom asked us to come sit down in the front room and talk with us about something. We must be in trouble or something. They told us that they had decided that they were going to live apart for awhile. That they were separating. Sha-bam!! It hit me like a frying pan. Like a brick. I’m not sure how Tom took it at first. I was in shock. Later when we talked, I knew that he was in shock as well.
I had been living in Camelot. The perfect world. Mom and Dad were the Queen and King of our enchanted world. A world full of love, plenty, fun, good times, and warm feelings. Warm fuzzy feelings. And now it appeared this was coming to an end. How did I feel about this? I felt like I was body surfing and got caught In a large wave that was tossing me about; somersaulting and twisting and not knowing which end was up. For awhile I thought there might be hope. Mom and Dad were certainly civil to each other. There wasn’t much fighting that Tom and I could see. “Tom, what’s going on?”, I asked. “I guess Mom and Dad are getting a divorce”, he answered. “What will become of us?” “We’ll probably go live with Mom.” In 1965 there wasn’t nearly as much divorce as there is now. It’s about 50/50 now. I think in those days it was more like 10/90. Only about 10% divorce rate.
But certainly what did not change was the fact that all 4 of us loved each other. It was just clear now that Mom and Dad for whatever reason weren’t getting along and had decided to go their separate ways. I remember not long after that we went to the IHOP at the corner of Candlewood and Lakewood Blvd for dinner. Funny place to have dinner, huh? But we loved that place. Of course, we also loved Love’s BBQ which was right next door. But we were at IHOP and I remember Dad saying “we will keep ‘her’ here as long as she’ll stay.” We loved IHOP and you could actually eat any meal there. Brother Tom and I loved our hamburgers…I think it must have been the German blood? So the IHOP menu had an item called the “Our Own Burger”. I think it was called this because they knew that people would be in awe of the fact that they could make pancakes and hamburgers to boot. When Tom ordered the “Our Own Burger” his upper lip would curl up. Just like Elvis. And yes, for the record, Tom IS that cool. So I kinda got the impression that Mom wanted out of the marriage, but that certainly didn’t make her ‘at fault’ for the separation. It may have been Dad – or both. But in retrospect, I understand that sometimes things just happen. I have survived 2 divorces of my own. I know I’m a ‘bone head’. No doubt about it. Sure, I can do some things and I love my family dearly, but I have made some very bad decisions in life.
Going forward what would it all mean? What puzzled me was that I was under the impression that Mom and Dad were fine. I had heard them fight a time or two. And that was never good. I think I even saw Mom hit Dad once – on the shoulder. Maybe not. But Mom could definitely stick up for herself. I didn’t dislike or have anger toward Mom or Dad. But I felt really bad that Camelot was no more. That innocence was lost. It happens sooner or later. The loss of innocence. Whether it’s the first time you lose at a game, lose a loved one, get sick, get an F, get ripped off. It’s life. Living with imperfect people. I hear people complain about work. The politics. They don’t like Bill or Joe or Pat. But I tell them if you go work at General Electric, Southwest Airlines, Fiji Water, or Farmers Insurance, there’s going to be a Bill, Joe, and Pat. And they are people who are imperfect. And all you can do is do the best you can at your job and move forward. Try to help and be a team player and excel in your field.
At this point I don’t remember if I cried or just sort of wore the pain in a ball in my stomach until it gradually wore away and dissipated over time. We ended up moving to the apartments on the east side of Lakewood Blvd just south of Del Amo. They were cool, clean little apartments and were certainly in the same neighborhood. We could continue going to our same schools. Me at Riley and Tom at Hoover Jr High. By this time we were blessed to have 2 bikes each. Our Schwinn Sting Rays and 10 speeds! I think the 10 speeds were Royce Unions. Sounded pretty cool! They were definitely fast bikes. Those 10 speeds made you into a fledgling bike racer for sure! The thing with loss is that the world keeps turning and lives go on. Time heals. We had school, play, food, bikes, toys, friends. We hadn’t gone far. We would be seeing Dad on weekends. Mom was soon dating. She had met Tim at the store where he worked. I certainly resented him at first. How dare he invade our Camelot? Little did I know that he would come to be a wonderful 2nd father. Not take the place of Dad – but be a great man, husband, and 2nd father to Tom and I.
I remember we didn’t have closet space at one time and Tim asked Tom and I what we thought about building these free-standing wardrobes . Yes, it seemed like a good idea. He even asked us to help build them. It was surprising and a breath of fresh air as well because it was the first time I can remember an adult giving us a challenge like this and asking for our help. One time Tom was walking his bike across Lakewood Blvd. A guy had stopped well past the limit line and was half way into the intersection with Del Amo. As Tom made his way behind the car, the guy decided to back up to where he belonged, running over Tom’s bike wheel in the process. Thank God Tom wasn’t injured. When he brought the bike home, it looked like a Pac Man head. A nice circle, but with a big triangle formed in the wheel! Oops! Off to the bike shop to get a new wheel!
I met a kid that lived in a house right across Lakewood. His name was Billy Frisco. He had white hair – or really blond hair. I don’t think he was an albino. But he was a pretty wild kid. Never met his parents. Since this was the 60’s we were allowed to go home for lunch if we wanted. So I remember Billy inviting me over to his place. We rode our bikes off from Riley and headed over to his place. “Ever had fried baloney?”, Billy asked. “No”, I answered. Fried baloney? No kidding? Never heard of such a thing. So he got out the frying pan and put a dab of butter in and let it melt and he got out the Oscar Mayer baloney and threw a few slices into the pan. Sizzling baloney smelled pretty good. Kind of like 2nd rate bacon or something to that effect. We put mustard on a couple slices of Wonder bread and were good to go! Man, a warm meal for lunch! Rare! Mom worked and we usually took our lunch to school. A peanut butter sandwich, chips, cookies, and milk in a thermos with matching lunch box. Loved the lunch box. I can still remember that unique smell of the lunch box. I think it was a bit stinky because of leaky thermoses. But the food was always good. Billy and I ate our Baloney sandwiches. Then we jumped on our bikes and headed back to Riley. The Schwinn Sting Ray was the equivalent of the Corvette sports car. Lean, cool, sporty, and fast. Or at least I thought so.
Billy also introduced me to shop lifting. “It’s easy”, he said. “Yeah?”, I answered. “Sure”. “You just act cool and pick up stuff and when no one’s looking just put it in your pocket”. Was that all there was to it? So this was the beginning of something I’m certainly not proud of. I would steal stuff that wasn’t worth much. But just the same, it was stealing. Usually it was erasers, pens, pencils; school stuff. Small stuff that would fit in my pocket. I remember stealing a pack of those short ‘golf’ pencils. Dice, a deck of cards. I thought it was kinda cool – but the stuff I got from stealing was ‘tainted’ somehow. It didn’t bring the usual fun or joy of getting things the right way. I probably shop lifted off and on for maybe a year. Thank God I never got caught. It was as stupid a thing as you can do. That’s all I needed was a record! Go to military academy or juvenile hall.
I can’t remember the number of times we heard about the military academy. Only later did I find out that indeed there was a military academy very close by. Right on Signal Hill. Southern California Military Academy. It was probably a 10 min drive from home. And as far as juvenile hall, It sounded like prison for kids. I could imagine a place where all the kids wore jeans and 1 size too small t shirts and rolled up their cigarettes in their sleeves. How about that for a vision? And they greased back their hair like John Travolta in Grease only they weren’t nice like him, they were mean like the Owens boy who stole the mail truck. Tom and I sometimes got carried away. As patient and loving a home and Mom and Dad made for us, we sometimes pushed the envelope. So Mom would say “boys, boys, please!” To which we wold pay no attention. So the next step she would grab us by the arms and try to get our attention. If we didn’t shape up by then, we got the military academy or juvenile hall story. Juvenile hall…there’s Bobby Owens; Sal Mineo look alike. Top lip snarling, cigarette smoke. “Hey, guys, there’s a new fish!” The tin mugs slide up and down the bars banging in unison the crescendo sounding like thunder. I feel my knees knocking. “I’m not scared”. Not much, I’m not.
The guards are 6’6” and at least 300lbs. The Rams’ fearsome foursome are jealous of these guys. “Alright junior!” “Says here you couldn’t keep your sticky mitts off the golf pencils!” Ha ha haaaaaaa!!! Somehow I’m thinking this isn’t James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School any more. “Well, let’s see; there’s a couple of open cells we can put him in. But he’s gonna have to bunk up with either Butch or Chuck!” Both of them sounded like mean motor scooters. Petty crimes, you know, stealing cars, breaking and entering, assault and battery, burning your victims with cigarette butts ala Sal Mineo. No big dealio. The horror! I think we got scared straight way before anyone thought of scared straight. The Parents mentioning military academies and juvenile hall and the bad movies we watched on TV all combined in a swirling, smokey, sweaty, violent nightmare that was successful in scaring Tom and I straight – straight away from ever wanting to deal with either of those places.
Many years later I would drive a few minutes from McDonnell Douglas up Cherry avenue and over Signal Hill and as I went down the south side of the hill I noticed on the west side of the street the military academy. Now it didn’t look like such a bad place. But as a kid I remember thinking that they probably required perfect discipline. And when we failed to make the mark, we would probably be doing push ups “drop and give me 20!” Which probably would have been a good thing for me.
Billy Frisco seemed like the kind of kid who might have done a little time in Juvenile Hall. He was rough, wiry, unkempt, smart, and fun. I still liked him. He also introduced me to mustard sandwiches. At this point I figured that he may have had some rough times in his past. Mustard sandwich? No baloney? No meat? Just bread and mustard? Yep. That’s right. And it was even better toasted. I noticed that the windows in Billy’s garage door had been broken and covered with wood to retain some kind of security.
Sometimes on the weekend we would ride our bikes around. One Saturday morning we ended up over at Lakewood Center. When you’re 10 years old and you’re on a Sting Ray it seems that the possibilities and opportunities are endless. We would race around the center. One place was cool to ride was behind the grocery store, because it had a ramp and you could get going down that sucker really fast. So we did that and we rode some more. Then we noticed something interesting behind the grocery store. A large, tall, stainless steel case sitting on 4 wheels. Just sitting there. What must that be, we wondered? Why would that just be sitting out here? Could it have something inside? Of course, it was absolutely none of our business, but we decided t check it out. We pulled and pried and tried to get the thing to open up. It was like a strange, space age puzzle. But finally it gave up the ghost and we slid a panel up and opened her up. And to our surprise, we found that it was full of bakery goods. So we decided that it must all be day old stuff that’s getting thrown out and took a couple of packages of pastries. Pastries for breakfast! Heady stuff! Up and on the Sting-ray fueled by pure sugar and white flower! And deep down we knew that the bakery locker was not day old stuff. That it was new, fresh bakery goods that we had stolen. Mental note: “Don’t ever do that again!” And we didn’t. We realized that we were lucky to have gotten away with that. That if the nice Lakewood Police had dri ven by, we’d have been off to Juvenile Hall.
We were getting used to living at the apartment on Lakewood. It was a nice place. Clean and with lots of windows. Funny, I remember one night Tom and I were home alone. We had watched a scary movie – maybe the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Or worse. But it was late, we were alone, and we heard ‘noises’. The wind was probably blowing or something like that. But Tom and I armed ourselves with weapons (wood sticks) and took up defensive positions on the folding couch. The couch was cool – you simply lifted up on one side and it would unlock the other side and you ended up with a flat bed. All the blinds were pulled tightly down – and the traffic was streaming by on Lakewood Blvd, but we were certain that someone or something was trying to get into the apartment. But that never happened. We finally relaxed, turned on Leave it to Beaver, and the fear and tension of the sneaky burglar melted away on the sound of Mrs Cleaver’s heavenly voice.
I didn’t have any fear perse of the future. Tom and I didn’t discuss how we were going to live. Dad lived in the Hayter house, Mom and Tom and I lived in the apartment. We’d be fine.
Dad liked museums. He would take us to the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. I think this is because of the Indian culture represented there. He was very interested in Native American Culture. We toured the Southwest Museum and saw lots of Indian depictions. Clothing, pottery, bonnets, papooses, and the like. The museum is currently located on Museum drive in Los Angeles and has extensive American Indian history for all tribes from Alaska to South America. We would also go to Griffith Park and Travel Town. Griffith Park was a huge regional park right off the 5 freeway in Los Angeles. Within the park is Travel Town. On display at Travel Town are numerous trains and you can also take train rides. There are a number of different trains of different styles with Pullman coaches and diesel switchers. There is also a Christmas train ride where children and adults alike ride to the North Pole and can visit with Santa Claus.

Dad’s Willys was so cool. It was a 46 or thereabouts. Willys! Whenever Dad saw a jeep he would chime “Look at the jeep, look at the jeep, look at the jeep jeep jeep!” So we got into that same thing – Mom, Tom, and I. This thing was so cool. Visions of camping trips, going off-road, and just being really cool came to mind. How could you not love this thing. Just as the ’59 Impala was cool for it’s beautiful flowing design, the Jeep was cool because of it’s utility. For being a ‘man machine’. Cars are so cool. Dad helped us to understand that. As boys, we knew that Schwinn Sting Rays were cool, mini-bikes were cool, so were go-karts, dragsters, roadsters, street rods, and Jeeps.
Mr. Atlas lived down the street on our side. He lived 2 doors down from the Olsenz. He was a very nice man and really loved us kids. He had skee-ball machines in his garage that he let us use. Actual skee-ball machines just like you find today in Chucky Cheese. Now where in the world did he find these we wondered. But not for too long because we enjoyed playing with the machines so much. They all worked, too. Amazing! And he also had about 20 bicycles. The bikes were available for us to ride; all we had to do was sign out for them and then we were good to go. There were 20 different kinds of bikes. Including one that had an off center hub on the rear wheel that you rode like a scooter. Strange but cool at the same time. Occasionally Mr. Atlas would come up with ideas to make money. One time he had us selling bags of fertilizer to the folks in the neighborhood. He worked out a deal so that we could make some money at the same time. Very cool. Especially for energetic young boys who were out to make some extra money to accentuate their allowance. So we sold the fertilizer and made a few bucks and a few bucks in 1964 was serious money!
Now can you imagine the activity and noise level when we had some 25 kids down at Mr Atlas’ house and the skee ball machines are going and the bikes are all up and down the street. It was crazy. Crazy fun!
Halloween in Lakewood was a blast. We would usually work up some costume that would do the trick like a pirate, a hobo, or something like that. We had gotten pretty clever on our trick or treating. We would use pillow cases and start early before it even got dark. Since we were young and full of energy, we would yell trick or treat as we came up the walk and most every house on Hayter Ave had candy or money for us. Pillow cases make great collection bags, because they didn’t tear and you could grab the top together and run like the wind and not worry about losing any of your precious booty. We would head down Hayter toward the Lakewood Golf Country club and as we got closer to the golf course, we would see more full size candy bars and money. Some folks who lived in the nicest homes would give us $1 dollar bills. No kidding. In 1964 when a dollar was a dollar. We were ecstatic! How cool was that!? These folks must be seriously rich because who else could afford to give us treats like these?
We’d run all the way home and show Mom and Dad what we had. A pillow case at least half full of candy. That’s a lot of candy! Thank goodness that Mom and Dad helped us eat it and also to ration what we would eat. Otherwise we probably would have been very sick!
LYNWOOD
Well, we weren’t going to be staying in Lakewood. Mom and Virgil were to be married and we were going to be moving closer to Mom’s parents – my Grandparents Kevin and Marion in Lynwood. I wasn’t real excited about changing schools. I was going into the 6th grade. I was a little intimidated by the change and remember asking Mom if the schools in Lynwood were ‘behind’ the schools in Lakewood. Like, “can I get a break on this move?” “No, Artey, I don’t think so!”, Mom replied. Oh, well, I had to ask! What I found later was that the schools in Lynwood seemed to be every bit as good as good ol’ James Whitcomb Riley Elementary. I ended up going to Roosevelt Elementary for the 6th grade. It was a great school as far as I could tell and I met good friends and had a super time going there.
We moved into an amazing home in Lynwood on Lewis Road – 10831 to be precise. The home had been owned by a rich man who had been involved in the Aerospace business. It had a slate roof, intercoms, mirrored walls in the front room and bathroom, it had a chime door bell that played “How Dr I Am”, a screened in patio with hard roof that had a ping pong table, built in BBQ, fireplace all made of beautiful sand stone, a wet bar complete with neon signs, a large bonus room that Tom and I used as a bedroom behind the garage. The bedroom was approximately 400 sq ft, had cork flooring with a 2 level safe in the floor, one wall had a giant mural of a lake, it had fluorescent lighting, paneling, a wardrobe, dressing room, and bathroom. Behind the screened in patio was another small room that had originally been a ‘dark room’ for photographic processing. The floor in the garage was covered in tile where the aerospace business was run. There was beautiful cabinetry in the garage with roll away beds. The home went on and on with amenities. One of those diamonds that you just wouldn’t imagine unless you went inside and looked around. There was another large patio with metal awning cover on the side of the house. And liberal use of sand stone all around the home from front to back, in the patio areas and walls.
One of the first things I decided to do once we had some free time was to hop on my Sting Ray and race over to Grandma and Grandpas house to see how far it was and surprise them. I think it turned out to be about a mile. As I raced along toward Grandma’s house, I went through some gutter water that got my feet wet. I stood up on the pedals and ooops, my foot slipped off the pedal and went in front of the pedal. So when my foot hit the ground the pedal hit the back of my leg and sent the whole contraption somersaulting onto the asphalt! My chin went into the blacktop as sure as a hammer hits an anvil. OUCH!! That’s gonna leave a mark! As I picked myself and my bike up and started to put things right, a couple of witnesses came over and looked at me and sort of winced, and said “Oooh, let me get you a wash cloth.” “Thanks a lot”, I managed. Clearly I was bleeding and the looks on these folks’ faces told me it might be pretty bad. One lady brought me a wet wash cloth which I pushed into the wound. “Let me see that”, she said. “OK.” “Mmmm, I think that’s going to take some stitches.” “Really?”, I asked. “Do you think so?” “Yep, it’s pretty deep.” I had never had stitches. I couldn’t fathom having stitches. So I held the rag on my chin and turned for home. When I got there I showed Dad and he said “Let’s go.” Meaning let’s go to the hospital. The Doctor cleaned it out and gave me a shot of novocaine in the general area to numb things up and proceeded to whip in 9 stitches to sew up my chin. It was like a badge of courage. Everyone wanted to see my stitches. Some took my word for it; others wanted to see under the bandage. “Yuck!!” my buddy Joe Stidham said. “Yeah, pretty bad, I guess.” My Aunt Bea later told me to put vitamin E oil on the scar which really did seem to help!
BRUCE and BILL
There were lots and lots of kids on Lewis Road. At one time we counted them all up and it was a total of 58 kids. On one city street. At once. There were some kids that appeared to be about my age. I saw some of them out playing and I thought I’d ride down by them on my cool Schwinn Sting Ray and see if I could get to know them. And as an ice breaker, I had my little fan. Now, why you would need a hand held battery operated fan while riding a bike, I would never know. But it seemed like it might be an ‘ice breaker’. This was the first time I saw Bruce Birdsong and Bill Vilareal. They looked to be about the same age as me. Bruce noticed my fan and said “Hey, how ya doin?” “Good”, I said. “How are you guys?” “We’re good”, they replied. This would be the beginning of some beautiful friendships. We were kids, we loved to play, to hang out, to mess around with other kids. I soon found out that they had Sting Rays, too. Cool. We would be like a gang. Well, not really.
I had never been much of an athlete in my life. But I could ride a bike pretty well. I rode the Sting ray as fast as I could go. We raced up and down the block. As it turned out, I was the fastest rider! It felt good to accomplish something; to be the best. Even if it was only the best bike rider on Lewis Road. Bruce and I became good friends. We hung out with each other a lot. We played games, rode bikes, played, went to the shopping center, hung out at the school. And as fast as I thought I was on my bike, Bill was the fastest runner. He was gifted. Faster than all of us.
One of the games we played was Stratego. It’s like a chess game but with a military theme. Bruce was smart and he often beat me at Stratego – much to my chagrin. I would protect my ‘flag’ with mines and bombs and all, but Bruce would somehow find a way to get through my defenses and capture my flag. It was one of our favorites. Another one we played was the game of Life. That was a cool game. “The Game of Life.” I can remember the song on the advertisement on TV. “What would you become?” “A lawyer, a plumber…” Spin the wheel travel around the board and random ‘stuff’ would happen and bills would come in to be paid. We played skittle bowl – it was a game with pins and a pole with a ball and you would push the ball like a tether ball and see how many ‘pins’ you could knock down. We played a game with a folding plastic casino type game. Kind of like Vegas for kids. You played with cards and it was a lot of fun. And we played Monopoly – who didn’t? And Risk. We played Risk a lot and that game seemed to last for hours sometimes.
We loved riding our bikes. Sometimes we rode down to Sears to check out the records. You could buy ‘45s’ there or ‘LPs’ /albums. Bruce had a paper route. It was around our neighborhood. Sometimes I would get up early and go with him on the paper route. It was o-dark-thirty in the morning on a Saturday and we were folding his newspapers. In those days you still put a red rubber band on each paper – fold it twice and rubber band. And his Sting Ray had the perfect handlebars to hold the double bag newspaper holder. This was like a custom made set of bags for holding the papers so you could ride with one hand and throw the paper with the other. We loaded up the papers and headed down the street. This was an adventure for me for a couple reasons. I had never had a paper route and I also had never been up this early riding my bike around in the ‘dark time.’ Bruce’s route covered about 10 blocks. I helped out a couple of times moving papers that went astray on the toss; but Bruce’s hand was pretty true and he did a super job of getting the papers where they belonged. After we finished the paper route Bruce asked If I wanted to head over to Stopps for something to eat. Wow! Eat out?! Just us kids? I was starting to feel so independent! But it was actually Bruce who was mature and independent. He was setting a good example. Sure – let’s go! So we went to Stopps and Bruce ordered cinnamon toast. Sounds great – I’ll have some, too! So early in the morning in 1966 we sat at Stopps eating cinnamon toast. Reminds me of a cartoon “Powdered Toast Man”. But that’s another story…
Bruce had a great family. He lived with his Mom Millie and sisters Carole and Shari. His Dad, Jerry lived in nearby Downey. They treated me like family and we treated Bruce like family. One time they were going down to Tastee Freez and invited me to come along. Turn down ice cream? No way!! So off to Tastee Freez we went and I was thinking how cool this was going to be. We got there and everyone placed their order. I saw ‘dipped cone’ on the menu and asked what that was. Oh, it’s a soft serve cone dipped in hot chocolate. Wow – that sounded great, I’ll take one of those! So everyone had their ice cream and we were headed back to Bruce’s house. We got home and we were all eating our ice cream and Carole looked over at me – a 12 year old who’s supposed to be a bit mature. And she said “Hey, Tim, it looks like you’re enjoying that ice cream…you look like a little kid with that chocolate all over your face!” Everyone looked at me and started laughing. I probably turned 3 shades of red. I went into the bathroom and looked and sure enough – I looked like a little kid with chocolate covering half my face. But I must say that ice cream was simply delicious! Millie, Carole, and Shari all had a good laugh. And I had to laugh at myself as well.
Sometimes I had sleep overs at Bruce’s house. We would play games and hang out and eat poor Millie out of house and home. Sometimes we’d play scary games with Carole. We’d hide in the dark and she would come in and scare the bejezus out of us. The Birdsongs had a rocking chair in their front room. I thought that was so cool. It had these cool pads tied to the top and base and made it more comfortable.
There were kids that lived behind Bruce who sometimes got into it with us. We would end up throwing stuff at each other. One time we really got into it and we decided it was time to bring out our secret weapon! Explosives! Well, not really – but yes. We had firecrackers and since it was summer, we had fruit. So these wonderful fruit trees in Bruce’s backyard were full of fruit – plums, peaches, nectarines. The plums were the beautiful, large, purple ones. So we selected a nice, ripe one. Inserted a firecracker and readied the weapon for delivery. “OK, you light it and I’ll throw it”, I said. “OK”, Bruce replied. He lit it and I threw it and Ker-pow it went off about five feet above the heads of the ‘backstreet boys’. The plum splattered all over them. Plum, plum juice, plum pitt. Yuck! After a second piece of fruit they basically waved the white flag and conceded defeat! We won the day and thank goodness no one got badly hurt!
Bruce’s Mom’s Dad lived right catty-corner from them. They put a gate in so they could go back and forth to each other’s homes. I thought that was so cool. Bruce and the girls called him “Poppy”. I remember being in the yard one day and this gate opens and a nice man comes through and says hello and he goes to Bruce’s house.
So one Saturday I had arranged to go over to Grandma and Grandpa Warner’s house to mow the yard. I wanted to help out and it would be a chance to visit with them. This time I was a bit more careful about my ride and there was no incident. I got to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and said Good morning to Grandpa. “Hi, guy!”, he said. I remember the first time he said that I looked around to see if there was another person there who might be named “Guy”. Youth is funny sometimes. So I went to the garage and got the mower out. It was a basic push mower with a catcher. I mowed and grandpa edged and we made quick work of the front and back yards. Then we swept up and as we were finishing Grandpa asked if I was hungry for breakfast. “Sure!”, I said. Wow, how cool is this – Grandpa is going to cook breakfast. “Do you like eggs?” “Sure do!” “I like em scrambled.” So Grandpa cracked some eggs and mixed in some milk and stirred em up and made some of the best tasting scrambled eggs I’d ever eaten. I was really surprised because I didn’t think Grandpas could cook. Grandma must have gotten a kick out of that.
Grandma Warner was very sweet and I loved her very much. She called me her little lamb. When I was little and we were visiting she would make me a little palette on the floor so I could take a nap. Grandma was a wonderful woman – very classy. In pictures she usually wore a long blue, black, or grey skirt with a white blouse. And in earlier days she wore a tie. I thought that was a bit unusual, but from my point of view, wearing a suit to Kindergarten was cool. So for Grandma to be formal with her ties, that was AOK with me. It looked classy and dressy and I would later see girls wearing this kind of outfit at McDonnell Douglas.
One of the favorite places for Grandma and Grandpa to take us was Pier Point Landing. Pier Point Landing was the place to go by the ocean where you could visit shops, enjoy rides, feed the seals, and eat at restaurants. Superman and Lois Lane at Pierpoint Landing.
There were all kinds of shops that you could walk thru and it was right on the Pacific Ocean so there were fishing spots close by, too. Grandpa would take us fishing sometimes. We weren’t the most patient fishermen; but he did very well catching bonita and mackerel. Even some halibut. Tom and I would find ways to torment the poor fish that Grandpa caught. It was bad enough to be out of water, but we also had to play with the poor guys. There was a cool ride where you got into a ‘Seal’ and rode around on a track – like a small scale roller coaster. And they had seals you could feed. For a small fee you paid for some minnows and the seals just loved you for feeding them. Every time we went down to PPL we had to feed the seals.
Pierpoint landing is still there in Long Beach, but it’s primarily an embarkation for fishing ventures.
KYLE AND EVELYN
Mom and Pop were married and about a year later Mom was expecting. Long into the pregnancy we thought there was only one baby and then right near the end the doctor said he heard an echo. Well, it wasn’t an echo! It was two babies! Mom gave birth to 2 beautiful healthy babies. Kyle and Evelyn. As an eleven year old newly moved to Lynwood in our new, wonderful home, here comes more wonder into our lives! What could I expect? What was this going to be like? I’d always been the ‘baby’. Well, in retrospect, all I can say is it was wonderful.
I know there are all kinds of theories about birth order and where were you? Were you first, middle, last, etc – I know Kyle and ‘Sister’ as we affectionately call her were a complete joy. As babies we fell in love with them. Tom and I helped babysit or watch the babies – whatever you want to call it. But we enjoyed spending time with the babies. They were the babies! Tom and I learned to change the babies, to work with ‘real’ cloth diapers, to do the laundry daily. Hey, this wasn’t so hard! The babies came to be known as “The Little O’s”. The little O’s were called that because they fixed their mouths in the cutest little ‘O’s’. It would have been cool to have video of them with their little O’s and have Pavarotti hitting a big high note in The Barber of Seville. He he he!!
Kyle was known as the ‘Founder of the little O’s’ and Sister was the ‘Assistant Founder of the Little O’s’. They were the cutest things you could ever want to see. I was 11 and I loved them from the beginning. Tom was 14 and he did as well. The babies were bundles of joy. Everyone was ecstatic with the babies – and having twins made it doubly wonderful.
When the babies were still young – about one year old – we embarked on a road trip across America. Well, half way across anyway – we were headed to Sioux City Iowa. We would be driving Mom’s big, beautiful 65 Cadillac with the 500ci engine. Pop did all the driving, Mom navigated, and the babies and I hung out in the backseat. There was plenty of room in the Caddy – in fact, we felt like royalty being chauffeured in the big Caddy. I remember keeping a diary of our trip and had a lot of fun doing that. The people we met, the ‘hardships’ we endured – (not really!). Po p taking advantage of the Caddy’s big motor and cruising along at 95 mph. Smile. As a young boy in America with a healthy interest in cars, this was so fun! I peeked over the seat and saw the big long needle tickling the 95 mark; I turned to my left and saw the babies stretched out on the cavernous back seat of Mom’s caddy. Mom was dozing as well. This is so cool!, I thought.
Well one of our first stops would be Las Vegas. We would spend the night there before continuing our trek. In these days we didn’t bother with reservations. Who needed reservations? You just stopped at a Hotel and got a room. Well at the first place they said ‘no vacancy’. Same with the second, third, and fouth. After the fourth try, we opted for sleeping in the car. OK, very good – no problema! After all, this was an adventure! So we pulled the big Blue Caddy into a darker spot of a Hotel parking lot and it was time for shut eye. But as a 12 year old in Vegas on a big adventure, I don’t think I slept more than about 30 minutes. If that. I was too amped up. Too excited about the trip. And didn’t someone need to ‘be on watch’? Funny me. I think I was running on adrenaline and maybe some candy. But I didn’t crash and burn. Too amped up. Vegas, baby! 500 cubes sittin under the hood, the vast highway built by Eisenhower’s team to ensure safe escape and civil defense for America lying out there ahead of us like some kind of challenge. Images of asphalt rolling out ahead of us for thousands of miles spun in my head. Let’s roll! But it was 3AM and everyone was asleep. I watched people come and go in the warm Vegas night. The hum of lights lulled me into unconsciousness.
At dawn’s light we were on our way. Heading out into the desert beyond Las Vegas. The adventure ahead would be exciting and wonderful. Pop had diabetes and at one juncture we ended up in a small town without insulin. When a waitress at a restaurant heard of our problem, she called her husband who brought supplies to the restaurant. This was the kind of people we met on the road. Another time a Hotel was full and they let us sleep in their ‘basement’ – it wasn’t a typical basement, but a nice room with beds – made up like a Hotel room. Very nice of them. I remember heading out across Wyoming and coming down a long gradual hill and looking ahead and could see what seemed like 100 miles of perfectly straight road.
The Caddy rode like a champ. No problems. Smooth. The perfect touring car. Cruising along for hundreds and hundreds of miles. We sang songs, ate at restaurants, had a great time. Oklahoma City – wow – an oil well on the capital lawn?! Oil has been very good to Oklahoma. We have family that came from OK. My great grandfather Benjamin Franklin Richards had a family in Oklahoma that consisted of among others, Mom’s Mom Marion and her younger Sister Eugenia who is still alive at 98. They lived in Woodward County, OK. And when Ben came to California, worked his way up to Police Chief of the City of Orange.
Pop’s family was wonderful. We met everyone there in So. Sioux City Nebraska and Sioux City Iowa. Pop’s Dad had been Mayor of So Sioux and there was a Park there named in his honor – Klasey Park – which survives to this day. They took us in and we stayed and played with everyone. I remember meeting one kid on a farm in Missouri named Buford. Being about the same age we found common ground to share – fireworks! He had firecrackers and cherry bombs which were readily available in Missouri. I won’t write here what …oh, what the heck – life on a farm is different that life in the city. Pure and simple. Animals are animals and if you live on a farm or ever did, you know what I mean. For most Americans, we understand that many animals such as sheep, cows, pigs, and the like are here for us to use. To eat, make clothing from, and the like. Well, Buford shared a story about what he had done with a cherry bomb. He and some friends. They put a pipe in a dogs butt and lit a cherry bomb – and well, you get the idea. I’m not condoning this and I’m also glad he didn’t suggest we repeat the offense. I could only imagine.
Being on a farm has benefits – you can shoot shot guns right there on your own farm. We got to do some trap shooting right there outside the house. How cool is that!? Nothing like that in Lakewood!
Kyle and Sister were about 3 when Grandma Warner bought them some cool, yellow Easter outfits. Way too cute!! Later when I had a Willys Jeep station wagon of my own – I remember taking the babies with me. Even if it was on a date. Kyle and Sister would ride along and play in the back of the Jeep with my bean bag animals. One day I was at my girlfriends house and she, the babies, and I were going somewhere and we were on my girlfriend’s street. It was a narrow street and you were only allowed to park on one side or two cars couldn’t pass ea other. Well, some kids were riding their bikes and one little girl was looking backwards while riding her bike so she started venturing out into the street. I slammed on my brakes, stopped, and she ran into my fender and fell off her bike. Police were called and she was taken to the doctor. She was OK, but the cops checked my jeep and found the brake pedal too low. All it needed was some fluid! A witness told Police that I had actually stopped and that the little girl had come out, but to no avail. I got a ticket for a low brake pedal and would have to pass a safety inspection. When they checked my brakes, they said I needed some new parts. Well, I was having trouble finding parts because the vehicle was over 20 years old. So I ended up eventually selling the Jeep. Wish I had it now!
Kyle and Sister were wonderful kids and grew up to be great adults as well. I always thought they had Hollywood good looks. They were very popular and had a lot of fun. On Lewis Road as I mentioned, we had some 50 kids. So Kevin and Sister had a sprinkling of friends that were close to them in age to hang out with and become close friends with.
VIETNAM
If you’re a baby boomer you have vivid memories and feelings about Vietnam. What was it in America to be a Baby Boomer and live during Vietnam? A time of Patriotism? A time of Protest? A time of great unrest and division in America. The theory was that if we let Vietnam fall to the Communists that other countries would fall like Dominos. The Domino theory.
Tom had a Deferral because he went to College. I was thankful for this. I didn’t want to see him have to go off and fight and possibly die in a war. I didn’t fully understand the war, but I knew that people were fighting and dying there. Were they dying for freedom? What is the cost of freedom?
In WWII Our Pop and Dad fought the evil axis and won! They were clearly evil and intent on world domination. The Germans had kicked it off by attacking country after country in Europe. The Japanese, their allies, followed suit on their side of the world. Dad would fight them in the Pacific on a Destroyer in the waning days when the Japs were using Kamikazes. Dad’s ship would be hit by a Kamikaze after shooting down 5 in 15 minutes. The Gwinn carved out their piece of fame by simply being there and doing their job. Pop was involved in equally famous battle of the bulge – when Germany in the waning days of the war gave it one last push to try to fight off the push to their border. They bulged and looked to break out, but Pop and his buddies did the job and pushed em back, ultimately Hitler would commit suicide as the Americans and Russians closed in. But Vietnam was different. It was highly political and torn by the difference of opinion at home.
Battles were seen on the nightly news. Soldiers would take a hill or a village and have to leave it. Instead of a clear mission, there was confusion. What is the ultimate goal? Who is the enemy and who is not? In Vietnam there were thick jungles full of enemy troops and booby traps. There was guerilla warfare. Something akin to what we used in the Revolutionary war. 55,000 would eventually die there. And this was just on our watch. Before us, the French were there and they had given up and left.
The Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC is a very emotional place. Soldiers go there and leave mementos of their buddies who were lost in the war. Memorials at the Memorial.
Some went to war and fought and died. Some returned. And some who returned still serve! And some went to Canada to escape the draft. The problem with Vietnam is there wasn’t a clear, evil enemy to destroy like in WWII. It was nebulous. Unclear. And without clear backing at home, there couldn’t be a clear victory in the field. What’s left now is a time for healing. The Vietnam Memorial was a beginning. And today people are reaching out to Veterans. Of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as Vietnam. Because when soldiers came home from Vietnam the peaceniks spat on them. Not good! For soldiers who thought they were fighting for our freedom, to be treated in such a way was unconscionable.
By the time I got out of High School I had to register for the Draft, but it was cancelled in favor of a volunteer force and the Vietnam war’s winding down in the mid-70’s.
FAITH
I wasn’t too far out of High School and I had been wondering about life and why we’re here. And what’s to become of us. Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And Antoine de Saint-Exupery said “What is essential, is invisible to the eye.” From “The Little Prince” a novella. And so, I did. And I wondered and I sought direction. I took Philosophy and comparative religion classes. I spoke with my good friend and confidante Shuke Pradip. He showed me the Hindu path. With the Bagavad Gita. And Hare Krishnas. And Buddhists, and various other faiths. I read the book Be Here Now. I discussed things with my mentor Leo Beuchel. He appeared to be a student of Theosophy. He was a Horticulturist and botanist from pre-WWII Germany. I befriended him when I was delivering for Medical Arts Pharmacy.
And so, my parents had taken us to Church. Primarily the Methodist Church in Lynwood. And we were baptized as children. And we went to Church – not every Sunday, but on Christmas and Easter and with others who happened to invite us. And I would go to Church with Lurae. But I still wondered.
I had always been taught the Big Bang and evolution. So, this amazing universe with all that’s here, with all that ever was and ever will be just happened by chance? Our earth hangs in a balance between fire and ice. Hangs in space, spiraling around the sun, turning in circles providing night and day. And this is all chance?
More amazingly, human beings and all that is on the earth. All by chance. Because it wanted to be there. Because of mutations. A one cell organism that started in the ooze and transformed due to mutation due to the sun. And then came a multi-celled organism. Then an amoeba, then a pollywog, then a frog, then a fish, then a lizard, and well, you get the idea. Amazing.
And even if all this could happen, where did the building blocks come from in the beginning? The bare materials? Dirt, elements, minerals, carbon, fire, ice. Stardust? Where did it all come from? Was it always there?
And so – in the final analysis, I choose Jesus. Jesus provides hope, life, love, a future – for eternity. He went to the cross to save me from my sins. He left an empty tomb. He sent the comforter – the Holy Spirit to be with us until he comes for us again. Praise God!
LOVE
I was certainly interested in girls. They were beautiful, smelled good, and viva la difference! Growing up with Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Racquel Welch could fire a boy’s imagination! As I grew older and taller, I lost a lot of my baby fat. By the time I finished my second year of football in High School I had finally leaned out. Thank goodness!
Being a pudgy kid, I didn’t have much of a ‘love’ life in my early teen years. Some kids start having girlfriends when they’re 12 or 13. Not me. I was kind of shy. But certainly interested in girls.
To be honest my first girlfriend was really Donna Olsenz. She lived right down the street from us in Lakewood. We probably weren’t so much the romantic type as we were just good buddies. Donna and I hung out a lot together. She would hang out with our family and I hung out with her family. When we went places like the zoo, out to dinner, or even on short vacations, it was fair game to join in. She was a year older than me but since I was a boy and we were young, we didn’t care. We were fast friends. The Olsenz lived just 4 doors down from us on Hayter Ave. I remember vividly when they decided to put a pool in. Wow! A pool! How cool would that be? Now when I was a little lad I loved the pool but until I learned later to swim in my Aunt Marie’s pool, I stayed in the shallow end. The Olsenz pool even had a nylon rope with little floats that kept that side of the pool cordoned off for little fellas like myself. And another thing I needed was my mask. I think it was all the years of watching Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges. If the mask was good enough for him it was good enough for me!
Now I’m going out on a limb here telling you about some stuff that is probably …well, OK, I’ll just say it. On occasion Donnatalked me into playing with dolls. Now the Barbie was a pretty nice looking Doll as dolls go. She was pretty shapely and was a handsome facsimile of a girl I must say. Now later, I’d prefer to play with ‘guy’ dolls like GI Joe with the Kung Fu grip! But that would come later. And then there was Ken. Ken was cool. And Donna would play with my army stuff too – but I think she preferred the dolls. Whenever we played out on the street. Tag, hide and go seek and stuff she would join in . We were a ‘diverse’ group of kids!
One of the trips we went on was to a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles. Mom wore her beautiful red Oriental dress, Desiree wore a dress, too – and I word pants and a shirt. Nothing fancy, mind you! He he he! We were family. That’s the way we looked at each other. I think it was later when we got a bit older that the hormones started to kick in. When swimming we’d give each other a couple extra glances.
On one occasion we went to the zoo. We were all there together – at least most of us. I think Desiree’s Dad had to work. And he was a hard worker. Actually Mom and the Olsenz parents all worked in the grocery business. Mom and Shelly were meat wrappers. Shelly had taught Mom the business and Mom took off from there. John was a truck driver. He was a good one, too – he drove for Safeway. Once while making a delivery, he stumbled upon a hold-up at the store. In the midst of the action, he was shot and eventually lost a lung to this crime. But John would go on to live a good, long life in spite of the injury.
I’m not sure who gave me the idea, but somewhere along the line I figured out this whole “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine” thing. Donna was probably 10 and I was 9. Maybe it was my Uncle’s Playboy magazine…I’m not sure. But sure enough I tried that on Donna and she was sweet enough to show me. I think we were in the pool that day. Well, I chickened out – maybe it was the shrinkage due to cold pool water!? I HAVE TO LAUGH. But I truly chickened out. What a whimp – and what a good sport Donna was for showing me a peak of her breast.
When we moved to Lynwood I didn’t really start talking much with girls until around 10th grade. I had gone out for football and with my growth spurt, it helped to lean me out a bit. So at least I had a bit more self-confidence. I had followed in my brother Tom’s footprints as far as football. I was certainly big enough. But I didn’t have the right attitude and wound up quitting in 10th grade. Football had helped to get me in shape and shown me what discipline can produce. At this point I had gotten to be about 6’3” and 170 lbs. So I got some interest from a few girls. One of the very first that I dated (so to speak) was Colby Archer. She was a year younger than me. I’m not sure how we met or how things progressed. It could have been that we were both French language students. But she was a cutie. Long brown hair, tall, slender, cute as a button. Somewhere along the line I ended up walking her home. She lived in a very nice, newer development in Lynwood near the High School and closer to Atlantic. Her home was 2 story which was unusual for our city. Most of the homes had been built around the 40s or 50s. I think her home was a much more recent development.
But I was shy as they come. I hadn’t spent a lot of time around girls. I remember we went on a ‘triple’ date? We went miniature golfing with Rick Douglas and maybe my buddy Bruce. I was with Colby. We had fun. But back to being shy – I was afraid to kiss her. How do I do this? What if she doesn’t want me to kiss her? I still remember a good friend of Colby’s saying “give her a Good one, Tim!” Well, I think we kissed maybe 2 or 3 times, but that was about it.
Colby had a friend named Jill Mackelprong. Well, Jill and Colby were friends, they both were on the Drill team or flag, I believe. And somehow after hanging out with Colby, I met Jill and we became pretty good friends. Jill was also tall, lean, and had long dark brown hair and was a beauty. Jill and I would play Moon Monster. I was the Moon Monster and she was the Moon Monsteree. And we would play this game in the backyard and eventually it would lead to us kissing. Kissing. Ah, so as amazing as women were, they were even more amazing once you got to kiss one!! Jill’s Mom would take us places and we’d hang out and I got to be part of their family of sorts. But it wasn’t to last, either. I think I had a lot to learn. I was naïve and immature and I think these girls were looking for someone older (a whole year) who was also an athlete. I think I hurt my love life when I quit football!
It was perhaps around the age of 15 and in 10th grade I was taking yet another French class with a girl named Terrie Jones. She was a cute little thing – short compared to my nearly 6’4”. We were chatting one day when someone came by to talk with her. Terrie turned to me and said “I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Lana.” “Hello, Lana, nice to meet you!” “Hello”. And that was that. Nice to meet her. I’m not sure what happened after that, but I was “between” girls – and was of course, interested in the opposite sex. Lana was attractive. She was an ‘it’ girl. What was the ‘it’? Not sure. But viva la difference. Lana was medium height, had brown hair, high cheek bones, and a booty.
Lana and I also had some common interests. I took Drama class and so did she. I think we had some chemistry, a spark, attraction. She was in the Lynwood High production of Bye Bye Birdie. My family and I were in the audience for the production. Well, Lana and I became pretty close. We spent a lot of time together. I was 15 and she was 17. The older woman. But we didn’t focus on that. It wasn’t important.
She had 3 sisters and I had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. Sometimes when we went on dates or were just going places, we would take Kyle and Sister. We were all family. My first car was a 58 Oldsmobile. Pop bought it from Alita down the street for $100. Yes, in 1970 you could get a decent car that ran and was good transportation for roughly that much. It was probably worth more than that…but in 1970 it was 12 years old. But that car! It was covered with chrome. And had a big, beefy V8 under the hood. And the interior was full of chrome and gadgets. It ran perfect. It had a different sort of color – pink. It was one of the popular colors in the late 50s. so one of the first things I did was to get it painted. Midnight blue. Deep, dark blue with lots of chrome. I loved this car! It was so nice of Pop to buy it for me. I think the equivalent these days would be roughly $2,000 or so. For something that ran and got you from point A to point B.
The Olds had some serious power. Go-power, baby. Once Bruce and I were out cruising around and we met up on Tweedy Blvd. Cruising of course. We were sort of playing bumper tag passing each other. He was in his Ford Fairlane. I very nice car. Fast, too…but we’ll see how fast. We turned on to Alexander headed South toward home. Now, Alexander at Tweedy is a big, wide street. Wide enough to…pass on!? Yes, I thought. Bruce accelerated quickly around the corner and I was right behind him. I thought I’ll floor the big dog and let the 4barrel kick in and see what happens. Sure enough, the big, heavy Olds had the go power and I turned into the oncoming lane to pull up on Bruce. I was gaining on him…even, then passed him. We were probably going 70 or 80 up Alexander. But it was late at night and no one was around. Thank God. No traffic. We were stupid but it was so fun! A rush!! We were both blessed with cool cars. I think his Dad either handed the Ford down to him or bought it for him. But it was a very nice car. In great shape and I think a bit newer than the Olds. It was dark green. But the big, bad, blue Olds covered in Chrome won that day! We didn’t have a big rivalry – just friendly competition. Like when I won the Sting Ray bike races.
One night we were out crusing around and Tom and his buddy Rock Douglas were crusing around in Rock’s super-fast VW bug. Now, this was not any bug. Not any Volkswagen. This thing would run with most anything on the street. Being light and a Bug, Rock had installed a hotted up engine – I think stock was about 1300 cc. He had something like a 2200 with Weber carbs. When it launched, the front wheels nearly left the ground. I had seen him on Bullis road racing a 750 Honda. The supreme stock street bike of the day. And stay right with it through 2nd gear. Well, on this particular night we got into a little bumper tag. Rock and Steve started following Bruce and I so I pedaled down the accelerator and took a right on the street right behind the High School. Rock was closing fast, so what was I to do? Floor it! Soon we’re going 70 / 80 on this surface street. The Olds is big and heavy but in a straight away pulled hard on the VW. Scrubbing off speed and stopping was another thing. It was the late 50s and the focus was big, heavy, chrome, and go-power. Not stopping. This was not a BMW. Nothing resembling a sports car! Pulling up to Carlin we pulled a California stop and slammed on the gas to power slide around the south side of Lynwood High. The Vw grew smaller in the mirror until Bullis road and I had to slow again. Screeeeee! Around the corner and north on Bullis road. Around the corner came the red bullet with Rock and Tom in hot pursuit. We headed up the street doing probably 80 and the signal turned yellow. Slam on the old fashioned brakes and the Olds was getting tired! Brakes were hot and losing their ability to slow us down. We finally pulled over and Rock and Steve pulled along side and the Olds was hot and breathing hard. We laughed and yelled at each other and smiled about the little tour of Lynwood we’d just been on. We had probably chased each other for 15 minutes, but it seemed like a 24 hour at Le Mans to the big chrome beast. Lots of fun!!
What does that have to do with love life? Well, now that I had a car we could go on dates. Lana and I liked going to Lucky Boys and getting dinner. We would go to the movies at the Compton drive in. It was only about 4 miles away. Lucky Boys had taquitos, burgers, onion rings, shakes…all of the basic food groups! We would go to the Lynwood Christmas parades. They had one on Long Beach Blvd and also one on Atlantic. South Gate also had one on Tweedy. Lots of parades. Proud cities, they were! And I remember Hobo Kelly crusing around through Lynwood on a float – going up and down all the streets.
I remember double dating with Lana, her Mom, and her Mom’s boyfriend. We went to San Diego. We drove in her Mom’s 65 Cadillac. Her Mom’s car was dark blue while my Mom’s was more of a green-blue. But her Mom’s was just like my Mom’s. So we cruised down to San Diego for the day. We went to Sea World. Very fun. Who doesn’t like Sea World? You get to see the dolphins and the killer whales. That was an interesting trip.
At times life seemed idyllic and at times life seemed tough. Lana and I didn’t always get along. We sometimes got upset and jealous with each other. So when we broke up I would hang out with Suzi Conkle and she would hang out with Les Jaspers. How often did we do that? I’m not sure. And to make matters worse, when we got back together, Suzi and Les would date. So it was a weird deal to say the least. But somehow we persevered.
We exchanged class rings. So girls in those days if they were going with a boy, would wear his class ring. And to make it fit, they wrapped yarn around it and would even brush it and puff it out to make it look ‘cool’. It was a big deal. And then I would wear her ring on my little finger.
We went to football games and ate lunch together. I went to Church with her at Olivet Baptist Church. It was right down the street – maybe half a block away. Good people there. We did things with the Church – went on picnics. I remember the Pastor liked ‘red pop.’ He was a very nice man. And they had youth pastors and leaders that were always pulling on me to get more involved. To commit. To go to their college, get involved in their ministries. I did to some extent. But they wanted me whole hog and I wasn’t quite ready to make that kind of commitment.

2ND AMENDMENT
GUNS. We started young. Dad had guns around from the time we were wee infants. So as we grew older (8 to 10) we got to handle and use guns. One of my favorite old pictures is Tom and I sitting in the Den on Dad’s red leather couch holding Winchester rifles. Dad always taught us safety first. When we were handed a gun the very first thing we did was to check it to see if it was loaded. All the while handling a gun it was either pointed at the ground or at the ceiling. Never pointed at anyone or yourself. Safety first. Even as kids when all we wanted to do was get our hands on these beautiful weapons, Dad taught us carefully. It became second nature to us. When it was handed to us or when we handed it to anyone, we would be sure to keep it pointed in a safe direction. We never loaded a weapon unless we were at a shooting range or in the desert where we could shoot. Again, the weapon was kept pointed down range or at the ground or in the air. Never at anyone.
We started small. .22 caliber rifle. That was my first gun. I still own it. I would become a pretty good shot with that rife. Our favorite place to go shoot in our youth was Lake Matthews. With urban sprawl, this area is all built up now. But in those days it was ‘out in the country.’ And you could go out there and find abandoned washing machines and refrigerators that you could use for target practice!

FAVORITE BABYSITTER
TV. Television. There were 3 main TV shows in the 50s and 60s that idolized American families. Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Ozzie and Harriett. And I loved em all. Ruth Atlas was one of our most favorite babysitters. I remember her chasing us around the bed trying to get us to go to bed. Or something like that…Her brother Mack was Tom’s age and they were good friends. But Ruth was older and would sometimes babsit us. We were young boys. Brothers. We would gang up on people. Especially female babysitters. And we did. She survived. I hope she was well paid.
Perhaps our favorite babysitter was Television…I remember our little black and white Dumont. I must have been all of 4 or 5 years old. But I remember sitting on the floor on our green carpet watching the Dumont. Man, this was living! Ricochet Rabbit, ShaZam, Hercules, Sea Hunt, Engineer Bill, Captain Kangaroo, Diver Dan, Hobo Kelly, Romper Room – Do be a do-bee!, Bozo, Sheriff John, Tom Hatten and Popeye, HR Puf n Stuff, Soupy Sales, Mr Wizard, Lidsville, Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, the 3 stooges, Henry Aldrich, and Chucko to name a few.
Tom’s good friend Dave Rigoli went on the Chucko show. Many of the shows of the day would have audiences of kids. Well, at one point I believe Chucko asked Dave if he wanted to spin his hat which would “start the cartoons.” Dave wasn’t having any of that. His reply to Chucko was “ahhh Cram-it, Clownie!!!”
Mr Wizard was so cool because it was TV and science. Mr Wizard would wow us with science. He made it fun. I think America needs Mr Wizard now because we seem to be failing at Science, technology, Engineering, and Math. So let’s get some kind of Mr Wizard out there to get kids interested in Science again! He would take some household materials and invite a host kid to combine the ingredients and see if they wouldn’t blow up the studio. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. But check out the pic above.
And one of my favorites was Leave it to Beaver. The quintessential American family. But of course, every episode found the Beav in some kind of fracas, problem, dilemma. Which was usually mopped up by the end of the show. “Hey, Wally, whatcha doin’?” Wally and Beav were like me and Tom. Wally was older and had his buddies and wanted to do his thing with them. Sometimes the Beav got lucky and could hang out with his brother and the older boys. The Beav was in 7t Heaven. That’s kinda how I feel. Or felt! Smile.
Ozzie and Harriet was another one. I loved this show, too. “The Irrepressible Ricky as Ricky Nelson!” I was Ricky and Tom was David. This was a long running series – from 52 to 66! Very successful. The Nelson family not only were successful actors, but very talented musicians. In fact, Ricky lost his life flying from concert to concert when the plane he was flying on crash landed.
Ricochet rabbit
Engineer bill
Hercules
Captain kangaroo
Sea hunt
Twilight zone

MUSIC
Fleetwood Mac would become one of my favorite groups as I went through my teens. Tom liked Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Joe Cocker. Elvis, The Who, Led Zeppelin. The Guess Who. T Rex.
Did Music change people or did people change music? As we got a bit older we definitely had interest in Rock and Roll. Mom and Dad had bought the Meet the Beatles album and we never looked back. The Beatles were terrific. There are people today who talk about John and some of his politics and choice for a wife and all. I tend to agree with some of those conclusions. His whole sit in bed – the sleep in as opposed to a sit in or whatever he and Yoko called the thing. And how did John choose Yoko? Was he sober? But you know they say there’s someone for everyone. Who would have guessed that John Lennon, about as famous as you could be, would choose Yoko Ono? And to this day Yoko is ‘making music’. I have yet to hear anything by her that I would say was good.
But the Beatles were terrific. When interviewed by Tom Brokaw about what song he remembers and what epitomizes his life. Bill Clinton replied “In my Life”. “In My Life I loved you more…” Was he singing it to Hillary? To Chelsea? To his supporters?
From Meet the Beatles to many of the other albums both by the Beatles as well as the independent artists. I enjoyed much of their music. George Harrison went through his Eastern religion period. His All Things Must Pass album was great. Paul McCartney’s Ram On. Paul is still very active writing and performing. I like most of his music. When he was with Wings he was still very popular. The Beatles have just become available on iTunes. I don’t use iTunes, but if I did, I would download Beatles music. I don’t agree with all of their politics. In fact, like many Hollywoodites like Susan Sarandon and other rich, guilty liberals, I see that Paul supports Democratic causes. So be it. I still like his music.
Tom and I always loved Elton John’s music. He was very popular in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. More 70’s. I remember Tom bought one of his early albums. Elton John. Your Song was very popular. At this time we didn’t know he was gay. Again, I don’t like him for his sexuality, but for his music. This album also had Take me to the Pilot. Another very good song. I probably listened to this album 50 times.
Tom sort of introduced me to Joe Cocker. I had heard a couple of his songs. He sang at Woodstock. But I remember Tom bringing home one of his early albums. I believe Joe Cocker! Was one of his first. I think this was the one Tom purchased. “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” Wow – an amazing song. “Protected by a silver spoon…” Hmmm. I always wondered exactly what this meant. Was their some deep symbolism there or was the window lock actually secured with an eating utensil?
I went to a Sly and the Family Stone concert. He appeared much as he does in the photo above – but the hair was even bigger and had a big, thick red sash or ribbon tied around it. I bought this album – Fresh. “If you want me to stay, I’ll be around today, to be available for you to see.” Great album.
I started following Fleetwood Mac in 1970 and became a big fan. They were a British Rock group formed in 1967. I was 13. Bare Trees was one of my first albums. I had interest in some bands that I don’t think Tom cared a lot for. Fleetwood Mac was one of them, I think. They were more softer rock – blues rock. Mick Fleetwood, Christie McVie. The band saw changes as players came and went. Some taken down by health – mental and physical. In their 1971 album they sang about the “Woman of 1000 Years.” Wow – just the title was something special. The Bare Trees album had “Sentimental Lady” and “Spare me a Little of Your Love.” All very good music. It’s been over 30 years but I still enjoy their music greatly. Christie McVie and others have gone solo and done very well. We had a chance to see FM on a recent tour at the Irvine Amphitheater.
Elvis. The King. In my teenage years I just thought that Elvis was for “older folks.” Grin. I am now older. Actually I started liking Elvis when I started listening to his music. His distinct voice. His style; his charisma. He died in 1977. I remember where I was when I found out he had passed. I was with my brother-in-law Jim Perroti. He needed help with his car because his battery had died. And the story came in over the radio. From that day on I took more of an interest in Elvis and as the years have passed I enjoy his music more and more. I was actually upset when his ex-wife and daughter sold some of the rights to his Estate. I thought they were traitors. But I’m sure it was more of a business decision. Elvis movies were good, too! Oh, sure – he was bored with them after a couple years shooting the same bubbly, light stuff. But America loved it. Still do. Who doesn’t like Clam Bake?
Leonard Cohen. I remember when I first brought home a Leonard Cohen album. Suzanne. That’s the name of the hit song. I guess Leonard is unique. I’m not sure what his style is, though recently he’s seen a resurgence in popularity. When he’s singing he sounds like more of a poet than a singer. As a matter of fact, he is also a poet. Touching, moving, emotional. That’s how the music moved me. He was different, unique. I remember Tom asking me where I had ever heard of this guy. Funny. I had heard of him from a friend at work, Racquel.
Joni Mitchell was also one of my favorites. “Woke up, it was a Chelsea Morning.” “Big Yellow Taxi”, “A Case of You.” “Court and Spark.” I fell for Joni. Not so much her beauty – I fell for her because of her music. I wrote a love letter and sent it to one of the Production Companies that produced her records. I think it ran along the lines of offering her a walk in the Santa Cruz morning sunlight…love with a teenage boy. I’m sure she was tempted to call me! Ha! I think around this time she had fallen for one of the members of The Eagles singing group. I don’t think I could compete with him…Joni is also a poet, singer, song writer. She is from Canada. Has strong politics, and still smokes. She says she still smokes because of her sensitive nervous system. I know people in their 80’s who smoke. God’s speed, Joni – I hope smoking never hurts you! She also paints. She is a true artist.
The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean gave Southern California their surf music. “She’s real fine, my 409, she’s real fine my 409, my 444444ooooooo99999999!!” “Little Deuce Coupe” by the Beach Boys. Now Dad had to buy this album – and many years later he would HAVE a Little Deuce Coupe! A ’32 Roadster. A great year for people AND cars – the year my Mom was born. I think everyone loved their music. Later the Beach Boys would play in Washington DC as guests of the President of the United States. Just a little beach band. Hmmm. Came out of Torrance – a town nearby where McDonnell Douglas used to build most of their parts. “She’s real fine, my 409!!!” Well I saved my pennies and I saved my dimes…before I knew there would be a time…giddy up giddy up 409! Giddy up! A cowboy term!? Nothing can catch her, nothing can touch my 409!
Well, the closest I came to a 409 in those days was Kevin Olsenz driving his Dad’s Malibu. Tom and I would go cruising with Kevin and the Malibu had 4 on the floor. We raced everything that we could – up and down Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). I was probably 13 and Tom and Kevin were 16. And the Malibu was just fast. I remember Mr Olsenz calling it ‘transportation’. However, I remember in practice, Kevin saying “race car!” And it was a blast. It was as thrilling as it gets. 13 – hormones starting to flow, getting to hang out with Tom and Kevin. In a full fledged piece of American Iron, baby! This car was rockin’!!
“I was crusing in my Sting Ray late one night, when an XKE pulled up on the right…” Oh, yea – Jan and Dean – 1964 – Dead Man’s Curve. “Dead Man’s Curve – won’t come back from dead man’s curve…” The last thing I remember Doc, I started to swerve, then I saw the Jag slide into the curve.” Surf City ballad – yeah, baby. “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” Jan and Dean – one went to USC, one went to UCLA. Cross town rivals!! “Go granny Go granny Go granny Go!!”
The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I remember Tom buying this album, too. All Along The Watchtower – Electric Ladyland. Purple Haze. Some consider him to be the greatest electric guitarist in history. He along with other stars of the era died young. Of excess. Of drug and alcohol abuse. For those of us who survived, we are thankful. Because many who lived in and through this era emulated the stars. It seemed OK to use drugs and alcohol. And some did and some didn’t make it through their youth.


BOOMER LEGACY
What is the Boomer legacy? The promise was they were going to change the world. Hippies, rock and roll, Vietnam demonstrations, drugs. We were self-absorbed, self-consumed, over-consuming sometimes. There was probably never a generation so blessed. WWII was over, and Dads came home and millions of families were made and the economy turned from overseas fighting an enemy to prosperity at home. Meaning Homes, Cars, TV’s, bikes, food, and bigger homes.
Tom Brokaw did a report on Boomers and when asked his opinion of the generation, he replied ‘unrealized’. Because you planned to change the world and really didn’t. well, that’s interesting. So there was the Lost Generation who fought WWI. The Greatest Generation who fought WWII. The Silent Generation who were grew up during WWII. And the boomers. Bill Clinton is a boomer – and when Brokaw asked him about being the boomer President, he didn’t shy away. And when asked about the Boomers not meeting their potential, he replied (very well, I think) “How can the Greatest Generation be considered bad parents? They fought and won WWII, how could they then be generally considered failures as parents?” Good point, I think. When asked how they could finish well, Clinton replied with lots and lots of volunteer work. I can’t argue with that. And I do enjoy serving. Volunteer work. Tom has gotten much of our family involved in Volunteer work at Shipley Nature Center and in raising money for the Huntington Beach teen homeless shelter. I have been volunteering at my Church for 10 years now.
Tom’s kids have been volunteering for years – even while still in High School. Kenny started volunteering at the Huntington Beach library and later at the Long Beach Aquarium. “Step back from the maneater!” Kenny would yell when people got too close to the sharks or rays. His younger brother Ty would volunteer with the handicapped kids helping them to ‘run’ the basepaths at baseball games by pushing their wheel chairs. And Tom got us all involved in the Special Olympics – Tom, Kyle, Kenny, Ty and I have been volunteering at the Long Beach State Summer Olympics for about 10 years now. There are times where the kids are busy with school or whatever, but we have been steady supporters.
Mom and Dad, Pop, and Katie (Dad’s 2nd wife) all loved us. We probably were very spoiled. But we also tried to help out. And we had chores. Tom and I both did the yards and also helped out with other household chores such as cleaning the carpet and the mirrors. We got nice allowances. At our peak, I think we were getting $8 a week! In the 60’s that was pretty good money! I remember when Mom loaned me money to buy a motorcycle I was working at the time. Well, then there was a time when I decided to quit and Mom even let me work around the home to pay back part of the money.


i
e

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 07.12.2010

Alle Rechte vorbehalten