Memoir, part 6

King and Queen of the 1951 BHS Girl's Formal

67 years later

For the most part I am going to write about high school in this section.  I have many memories of this time of my life, not all of them particularly uplifting.  But first I am going to talk about character: what kind of person I suppose I must have been.

My father kept journals for a few years, starting during WWII.  Most of what he discussed concerned the war; current events, and his musings on them.  However, often he would include observations about the family, and especially about me and my sister.  Apparently I could be a morose, egotistical, defiant little shit.  By contrast, Susannah seems to have been an unfailing ray of sunshine.  It appears that I went around with a scowl on my face, referring to anyone who thwarted or annoyed me as a “moron”.  (Unfortunately, I know this is true; I can remember.)  Susannah, however, was a happy child.  Somewhere in my anti-cancer blog I remember writing that all my life I have “walked” in a state of constant striving and inner turmoil.  Well, I guess it started early.  I was four years older than Susannah, so I tormented her unmercifully.  Also, I often sassed my mother and was mean to her: once - only once - in the presence of my father!  So, anyway, I wasn’t a very nice guy then – totally unlike now, right?

Now let’s talk about high school.  I was a good student so I didn’t have to study much.  I played several sports: football (reluctantly), basketball (earnestly), and tennis (joyfully).  I played clarinet and bass clarinet in the band, which was a very large and sophisticated affair, led by a Mr. Schaeffer, who was the very model for the movie the “Music Man.”  I also took piano lessons (against my wishes), and learned an easy technique that allowed one to sight read from sheet music designed for guitars.  That got me into Ted Ward’s dance band, as mentioned earlier.   My family seemed to think that I was a great piano player, but I knew better.  For one thing, I had no real ear for harmony: when we were playing some piece for which I lacked the sheet music I had to rely on the guitar player to tell me what key we were in!  Lately (2014) I have been trying to teach myself piano again, but progress has been slow and difficult.  Imperceptible, really.

Like any red-blooded American boy of that age I spent most of my time and energy thinking about girls.  I have mentioned the Big Four earlier (Marjory, Patsy, Peggy, Mitzi).  There were at least another half-dozen extraordinarily lovely young ladies in my class.  But, forget it!  None of them wanted anything to do with a geeky kid they’d grown up with; someone who wore droopy glasses, had fuzzy hair, didn’t drink or smoke, and got good grades.  Of course not: they went after the few upper classmen who projected a vaguely bad-boy aura; a bit like “The Fonze”, perhaps.  (Anyone born after 1970 should ask their parents about that allusion.)   By the time I was 16 and could drive I did manage to snag a girlfriend, Janey.  Janey was two years younger than me, and in a few years became at least two inches taller than me.  No matter: she was a girl!  I also dated several other females in her class, including one I later married – Virginia.  My  girl cousins, Charlene and Ginger, were two years younger than me, so I had an “in” with girls that age.  I also dated two girls in the class ahead of mine: Hildegard Hiller and Mary Cain – but neither relationship took off: they were smarter than me, but not smart enough to hide it.

My male friends included Art and Stan, of course, Jim Walling, and also several others.  We were mostly a bit nerdy; we did things like agree to wear the same day-glow orange shirt to school on a given day.  None of us smoked, none of us drank, and only Stan had much success with the other sex.  We served on the Student Council, the Student Newspaper, the Annual, and were officers of things like the Scholarship Society.  None of this had even the slightest effect on the fact that we were – nerds!  As I look back on that era now, after 63 years, I am astounded that all this didn’t get me down, but it didn't.  I was happy for the most part, and high school rolled by with what I suspect is a minimum of agony. 

You have to realize that Beaumont Union High School in those days had no more than 250 students.  There were only about 50 kids in my graduating class.  I was Valedictorian, starting quarterback on the football team, starting guard on the basketball team, and first singles in tennis.  With a class of 50 – not much to brag about.  I got my comeuppance the next year, when I started college.

So, now I will write down some of the more interesting things I remember about high school, as they pop into my mind.   No dark secrets will be divulged.

I was elected “King” of the Senior Prom.  Younger kids were free to attend, and also to vote.  My Kingship came about because my cousins Ginger and Charlene dragooned all their friends into voting for me.  My King picture in the 1951 Annual shows a pretty odd looking guy; a bushy white-man’s Afro, glasses slid far down on nose, head cocked to one side, dressed uncomfortably in a new suit with a fashionable (I guess) tie, all supporting a sappy grin.  My Queen, however, was a true beauty – Terry Kaiser.  She and I played mixed doubles in a county-wide high school tennis tournament, and made it to the finals – where we were wiped out without wining a game.  More about Terry follows.

I had the hots for Terry.  (Do people still use that expression?)  We took chemistry together, so I seized every opportunity to “help” her in lab.  I remember one day we were doing an experiment involving a Bunsen burner.  I put my arm around her, crouched low to show her what to do – and stuck my Afro into the flame.  I had a neat groove burned into my hair for a few days, until I could get a haircut.  You have no idea how bad a few grams of burning hair can smell! 

Also in Chem lab, Stan and I learned how to make sulfur dioxide, which smells terrible.  Several times we brewed some up, yelled “Gas!” and dived out the nearest window, onto the lawn.  Needless to say this did not go over well with the faculty; we received a bumper crop of demerits.  In fact, I had so many demerits that they wouldn’t let me officially graduate (although I went through all the trappings).  I had to spend a day hoeing weeds around the football field to work off my demerits. 

Once I did manage to get a date with Terry.  I went to her house to pick her up and, like girls of all generations, she wasn’t ready.  Thus I was forced to sit in the living room and talk to her father.  He didn’t know who I was.  He asked me what I was doing during that summer, and I told him that I was working for the Beaumont Hardware & Lumber Company, This set him off on a tirade about what a bunch of crooks the owners were – Bebees and Becks alike.  I managed to keep quiet while he ranted on.  When Terry finally came down the stairs I said “Terry, I don’t think your father knows who I am.”  She introduced me, he turned red, and we left.  I don’t think I ever went out with her again. 

Oh, I just thought of another story that encapsulates just what a little twit I sometimes could be.  I taught myself trigonometry one summer in Colorado.  I was scheduled to take it the next semester.  I showed the teacher that I could do the work – took last year’s final, I think – so he allowed me to just sit in class and work on pre-calculus.  This must have made me even cockier than I already was.  The teacher was a big guy, and lifted weights.  One day before class I was sitting on top of my desk talking to somebody, when Mr Tierney came in and asked us to take our seats.  When I didn’t, he said “Beck.  Sit down.” And, unbelievably, I said “make me.” Next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor in the hall, right next to the girls’ lockers – and Marjory Ormsby was staring at me and beginning to laugh.  I finally got back into that class after a week – in the meantime I had to help out cleaning the study hall. 

Beaumont High School in those days consisted of about equal quantities of kids who lived in town and kids who lived in Cherry Valley, a rural area just north of town.  There was a bus that picked up the Cherry Valley kids, but – when they reached 16 and could get a driver’s license -  all the boys bought cars and drove themselves (and their girlfriends, of course).   After school these guys would hang around, “working on” their cars – showing off, actually.  None of us town kids had a car, so we were dreadfully jealous.  I got my first car the year I went off to college.

However, I could borrow the family car.  I’m afraid I made rather poor use of it – some drag racing, some mischief that will not be related, and a lot of cruising around hoping to find some girls.  The first gas I ever bought cost 25 cents/gallon.

Another thing we did when we first acquired wheels was to drive down to Palm Springs in the early evening, and go swimming.  This was in the summer months, when heat had driven out most people who had somewhere else to go.  We would simply drive down some residential street, shinny up and look over some fences, and eventually we would find a deserted house with a full swimming pool in the back yard.  Then we would climb over the fence, and have a party.  Sometimes there were girls along, but mostly not.  When not, we would splash around in the pool, then sit somewhere drinking cokes – and talk about girls.  We did talk about sports some, too, but mostly girls.  Let’s face it – we were pathetic! 

Memoir, part 5

Baby raccoon in a Wisconsin wood pile

Nothing to do with this blog, but pretty cute, huh?

Continuing with random recollections of my earliest days:

For most of my school years my best friends were Arthur Carter and Stanley Livingston.  Art is a retired minister now; Stan a very successful architect.  For our first five years of formal education we went to Wellwood School, at the west end of Beaumont.  I lived at the east end, so I took the bus to school.  (Actually, Beaumont was so small in those days that you could ride a bike from my house to Wellwood School in about fifteen minutes.)  Arthur and Stan lived much closer, so they walked.  Arthur came from a very poor family; Stan’s folks had plenty of money.  Art often went to school barefoot; Stan was very well shod.  Stan so envied Art’s barefootedness that he would take off his own shoes and hide them in a hedge by the Episcopal Church, where my Uncle Dunham held forth years later.  I imagine I envied Art and Stan fiercely, although I don’t really remember.

Beaumont in those days was about 30% Hispanic.  The little Mexican kids lived, literally, on the “wrong” side of the tracks, in what resembled a small Mexican village.  They came from big families, so the boys invariably had older brothers or cousins who taught them how to fight.  The result was that, although the Mexican kids were small, everybody was afraid of them.  I remember as one of the grand liberating moments of my life one morning on the playground when Ernesto Ochoa pushed me too hard.  I was twice as big as Ernesto, and probably twice as strong.  When the teacher pulled me off Ernesto I was sitting on his chest, trying to beat his head into mush on the concrete, using his ears as handles.  That got around and I didn’t get any more grief from the Mexican kids ever again.  Later some of them became good friends. All of our best running backs in high school football were Mexican.

In the fifth grade I graduated to Palm School (5th through 8^th), which was literally one-half block from my home.  That meant that I came home for lunch, which I didn’t like, and that I could play basketball every evening and most of every week-end on the outdoor courts attached to the school.  Parenting was so much more relaxed and comfortable then than it seems to be now; nobody worried that I would get killed, kidnapped, or run over by a car.  Sure, I was warned about crossing the highway (I did so carefully), and ordered not to play near the train tracks (which I did all the time.  We would jump on slow-moving freight cars and ride them to the end of town, then walk back.  Pretty stupid, yeah – I know.)

There was a fifth grade teacher, Miss Carhart, whom I absolutely abhorred.  She was something of a clothes horse, I have been told.  I so wanted something bad to happen to Miss Carhart that I told my mother she had fallen into a mud puddle.  My mother spread it all over town!  I was spoken-to sternly, but didn’t get into the trouble I deserved.  I often wonder why.  (I think there was a lot of secret laughing going on.)

We had what you might call “gangs” in our Palm School days.  Not like gangs now, of course – the most lethal weapon we ever used was a belt buckle.  Anyway, I was leader of what you might call the goody-goody gang.  We protected the innocent and helpless.  I could regale you with lurid tales of fights, but no need.  I was a pretty big kid in those days, and the legend of Ernesto Ochoa stayed with me.

I will tell you about an incident that helped me quite a lot later in life.  One of our teachers had some training in boxing, and he somehow got permission to teach it to us boys.  (Not in a million years, now.)  I was pretty good at it, mainly because I had become relatively strong lifting boards and sacks of cement for the Beaumont Hardware & Lumber Company.  Palm School put on an “assembly” one day; the whole school sat in the auditorium and watched boxing matches.  For the eighth grade event I found myself opposed in the championship bout by some guy whose name I can’t remember –James something - who happened to be the leader of what I will call the Bad Ass Gang.  We had enormous padded boxing gloves, so real damage was virtually impossible.  Anyway, I knocked him down and won the fight.  The next year, when I entered high school, I didn’t get hazed.

Okay, enough guy stuff.  It was probably in the seventh grade that I became aware that girls were not simply soft boys who dressed funny.  There were several very interesting girls in my class, each of whom I had gone to school with me from kindergarten on. I particularly remember Marjory Ormsby, Patsy Dale, Mitzi Beer and Peggy Jacobs.  In the seventh grade, of course, females suddenly become adults, whereas males continue to be annoying little children.  I am sure that Mitzi, Marjory, Patsy and Peggy regarded Art, Stan and myself as something akin to rodents.  In particular, I wanted Marjory to notice me so badly that I bugged her constantly.  I am in contact with her now and she doesn’t remember, but I do – and sometimes I cringe.    

I was, of course, socially a nerd.  Palm School put on a dance for 7^th and 8^th graders, and my parents insisted that I attend.  (I was in the 7^th grade at the time.)  They dressed me up and shoved me out the door.  I went to the auditorium, trying to drum up the courage to ask one of the big four (named above) to dance.  Of course, they were busy – dancing with 8^th graders..  After standing around for 30 minutes feeling like a fool I went home.  My mother was very disappointed.  I believe that my father was secretly amused.  I think kids that young shouldn’t be forced to dance.  However – are there any kids emotionally that young these days?

  So, what else before I get to high school?  I could tell you about the wonderful summer months we spent at “The Cabin”, near Lake City, Colorado, but this already has been covered by a series of “essays” written by my sister, cousins and myself, on the occasion of the first Lake City family reunion.  I will include it as a separate item in this “memoir”, which you should read after finishing this stuff

Maybe now is a good time to tell you about family dinners.  They were huge, they were fun, and to me – the oldest of the younger generation – they could be a real pain in the butt.  In, say, 1950 there were 16 family members living in Beaumont.  Shortly thereafter – as people got married and had families – the number swelled rapidly.  The entire family got together for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The most common venue was the home of The Folks, because it was the biggest place.  For Easter we had ham, for Thanksgiving turkey, and often prime rib (or turkey) at Christmas.  The women did all the cooking, of course.  Men sat around drinking “cocktails) (mostly bourbon) and shooting the breeze.  There was one ceremonial male duty, however – carving the roast thing, whatever it was.  The Man of the House was required to do this, while everybody else stood around, watched, and criticized.  Charlene and Ginger, as oldest female kids, were more or less entrusted with making sure that the littler kids didn’t get in the way.  Bill and I, as the only males (in the early days), had little to do.  Bill played around, and I sat and read something and pretended to be bored.  I thought all this familial grouping was nonsense.  Now I realize that it was wonderful.

An interesting aspect of these family dinners was – no wine.  Booze before dinner, water or coffee with.  Wine was considered Frenchified, synonymous with snooty.   A family friend, an elderly Italian gentlemen who lived further north on Palm Avenue, presented my father with a gallon of home-made wine every year.  Dad poured it out.  I don’t know, but it probably was at least as good as Gallo.

As the years passed the parties changed little, but the attendance grew.  Charlene married Ed, and started adding babies to the family collection.  I married Virginia, and of course added three of my own.  Susannah, Ginger, Lynda and Bill did likewise.  In the meantime of course the original generation began to dwindle.  I wish somebody had kept an accurate record of marriages, births, and deaths, so I could calculate the maximum size ever reached.  Using conservative estimates I think it was about 25.

And, OMG, I have forgotten another family ceremony.  My Aunt Mildred (Lynn’s wife) was Swedish, and on Christmas Eve she always invited he whole family to a traditional Swedish ceremonial feast.  There were some strange fishy substances as well as various kinds of prepared meats.  The most popular attraction was something that sounded to me like “Dip in de Shmuur”, wherein you dredged little bready objects in a fluid of some sort.  It was delicious.  And of course there always was a huge dish of eggnog – and nearby, a rum bottle.  Believe it or not, I never touched that rum bottle until I was 21.  (Well, maybe a little earlier, but not much.)

Okay, in the next segment I’m going to tackle the high school years, which were far more eventful.

MEMOIR, PART 4

MORE TALES OF THE OLD STORE

Several people have asked me to elaborate on my recollections of the Old Store (5th & Grace), so – lacking anything constructive to do – I will.  Obviously most of what I recall involves me, so of necessity I will be the hero (or villain, or goat) in most of these little vignettes.  This does not imply that I was at all important, or that I undervalue the importance of others.  It’s just what I remember.   

I loved summers.  I worked at the BH&L Co six days/week, eight until after five.  I didn’t have to study anything unless I felt like it. The work I did kept me healthy and strong.   I could eat donuts every day.  Except for rare occasions I didn’t need to wear a shirt.  Moreover, I felt important: I was doing useful stuff, interacting with grown-ups about serious things.   Best of all, the girls my age all were in love with me – no shirt, muscles rippling, driving a truck.  (Actually I made that up.  To the girls I had grown up with I was still the nerdy little twerp they knew from school.  I had just wished it were otherwise.)

So, my first job was picking up sticks in the lumber yard.  Later I graduated to sweeping out the store first thing in the morning, using a big push-broom and some kind of sweeping compound.  I took pride in that job, and I enjoyed it, too – I remember trying to sweep stuff into people’s shoes.  

At perhaps age 13 I progressed to waiting on trade.  I could weigh nails, mix paint, find the right bolt or screw, load sacks of plaster or cement, load lumber (by hand) – that sort of thing.  I remember how anxious my mother was when I was allowed to use the chop-saw.  (If you wanted a 2X4 6ft.3.5in long, I would cut it for you, thereby producing a piece of firewood 20.5in long that we could never sell.  You don’t see that kind of service in lumber yards today.)  Later on I learned to use the rip saw (more gray hairs on my mother’s head) and later still the pipe-threader (metal pipe in those days, kiddo – you screwed everything together.)  And then, when I turned 16 the most glorious thing happened – I became a truck-driver!   Even though I may have been the worst truck driver in the world (as some of the following incidents will demonstrate), I loved driving truck.  It was a darned good thing that my father owned half the store!

But first, an incident from inside the Store.  (We spoke of the Store and the Yard.  I worked in the Yard most of the time.)  Anyway, we had a machine that shook up paint.  You put the can of paint in it, tightened some clamps, and then flipped a switch.  The machine jiggled the paint-can back and forth with considerable force, thereby stirring the liquid inside.  This worked well provided you followed the correct set of procedures.  One day, however, I forgot to tighten the clamp properly!  I spent the rest of the day cleaning paint off everything within a ten-foot radius.  Believe you me; I only made that mistake once. 

One of my first trucking misadventures concerned what was known as the City Barn.  This was an enclosure about one block from the Old Store where City machinery was stored inside a very expensive chain-link fence.  I was sent over with a load of something, probably lumber, using one of the flat-bed lumber trucks.   I managed to get the truck through the gate and unloaded, but on the way home I turned too abruptly, caught one of the uprights holding the gate with my rear roller – and pulled the damned  thing right out of its concrete foundation!    I don’t remember how that fiasco got repaired, only that I wasn’t involved.  I think the City government demanded that I be kept away thereafter.

I had another rear-roller adventure a few years later.  I was sent to deliver a load of lumber to a house half-way to the nearby town of Banning.  When I got there I discovered that I had to back the truck across a narrow bridge over a deep ditch, and then maneuver around the side of the house to dump my load.  I could do that, easily, most of the time.  However, in this instance there were some little kids (about a dozen, it seemed to me) running every which way in random patterns, accompanied by at least five dogs.  There may have been cats and rabbits, too, for all I remember.  Anyway, I managed to get the truck across the bridge without killing anything.  I did a good job of keeping in mind where the ditch, bridge, kids and dogs were.  I just forgot about the house.  I put that pesky rear roller completely through the wall, stopping a few inches short of a television set.  Like I said, my dad half-owned the store.

Andy Chavez would have missed that house.  Andy was a good truck driver, as well as a good man.  I was with him when he hurt his back; from then on his back bothered him for much of the rest of his life.  Andy and I were unloading 90 lb. bags of cement, by hand of course.  The way it worked was that Andy, on the truck bed, grabbed a sack and laid it on the edge of the truck, whereupon I (on the ground) stacked it.  On the occasion I am describing, Andy – with a heavy sack of cement in his arms – lost his balance and fell off the truck bed.  Most of us would have let the cement go, but Andy held onto it.  He landed on his feet, but the additional weight corkscrewed his spine.  I would have let the damned thing go, to break in two and spill its contents (worth, maybe, $1 in those days).  Andy didn’t want to waste the cement.  What a guy!

In my previous little essay I mentioned Ted Ward.  He was with us for a short time, as yard manager.  Like his father, Joe Ward, Ted was a carpenter.  He could set a nail (in fir) with a few little taps, and then drive the whole thing home with one blow!  I was perhaps 13 when Ted was about 25.  I thought he was God!   When nobody was looking I would snatch a few nails and a hammer and try it myself.  I must have sent a few thousand bent nails flying about the Yard; fortunately, nobody was injured.  Ted also was the boss of the band I played piano for.  He played sax, I think.  On Saturday nights we would drive up to Idyllwild (a nearby resort town in the mountains) to play for a dance.  I was underage and had never tasted alcohol; my fellow band members were over 21, and unquestionably had.  They had a ball at those dances – and I drove them home.

One last truck story to close.   I wonder if many of you have any notion of how a flat-bed lumber truck with rollers works.  Probably not, now that most things nowadays are loaded and unloaded by fork lifts, self-loaders, or other kinds of machine.   Anyway, in such an antique truck there were two rollers imbedded in the truck-bed.  You stacked your lumber (by hand, until much later), tied it down, drove to the site, and backed in.  Next, using a crowbar that fit into holes in the rollers, you cranked the load toward the rear of the truck until it tipped, placing one end of the load on the ground.  Your next step – if you wanted to retrieve your tie-rope, was to place several thick boards crosswise under the load.  Then you drove forward, the load crashed to the ground,  you retrieved your rope and drove back to the Yard to eat another donut.   However, things could go wrong with this simple process, especially if you were me.  One time I stacked a large load of lumber on the truck but neglected to tie it down properly.  The delivery point was on top of a fairly high hill, and was reached by a narrow (one lane) dirt road.  About half way up the hill I hit a particularly steep segment, at which point the load rolled backwards off my truck-bed, blocking the road!  This put me in a particularly uncomfortable bind.  The load of lumber blocking the road was below me, so I couldn’t simply stack it back on the truck; obviously, it would inevitably role off again.  In the end I had to (a) move all the lumber off the road, (b)  drive the truck to the top of the hill and turn it around, (c) drive the truck back down the hill and park it below the lumber pile, (d) stack all the lumber back on the truck and TIE IT DOWN!,  (e) drive down the hill, turn around, drive to the top of the hill, dump the damned load and sneak back to the Yard to eat several donuts and drink a coke.  Good thing I hadn’t discovered gin and tonics at that tender age.

Top of Form

Like

Love

Haha

Wow

Sad

Angr

Bottom of Form

MEMOIR, PART 3: THE 'OLD STORE"

With first car, 1951.

Note blue suede shoes

This is the third "memoir" article'  It was written as commentary on an story that appeared in the Beaumont Gazette a few years ago.

The recent article in the Beaumont paper concerning the family business at 5th & Grace was entertaining and largely (but by no means entirely) correct.    I am surprised the author didn’t try to contact me; I am, I think, the last living person who worked there, unless Bill did some chores there as a little kid.  People seem to be interested in what I remember, so here goes.

Let’s get to the conspicuous inaccuracies first:  In the BH&L Co in the ‘30s and 40’s men emphatically did NOT sit around on nail kegs, smoking cigarettes.  First, the nail kegs were open, so they would have been very uncomfortable to sit on.  Second, they were stored in a dark, dank area off the loading dock; a place nobody would linger.  And, finally and conclusively, in those early days we also stored dynamite in that area; you would need to be dumber than a door knob to light up anywhere nearby.  Up in the rafters of this storage area were a few kegs of horse shoes. 

Now, for some of the things that I remember. 

I don’t remember, but I remember being told, that when my father and mother came to California to buy a business, they settled on a hardware store about a half-block west of 5th & Grace.  It didn’t have room for a lumber yard, and that was part of what Myrl Sr. was used to managing, so they promptly bought the Old Store building, which had room for lumber on its south side.  All this probably happened in 1930.  Later they expanded eastward into a building that had been, I believe, a grocery store.  There were sheds and lumber storage units in the Yard; they must have built them in the first year or two.

The OS was configured so that the cash register was near the front door.  That was where Lynn ruled; he took peoples’ money, traded wisecracks, and watched out that people like me didn’t waste too much time.  The other male partners - Dale, Earl, Myrl - waited on trade and did specialized things.  Ruth, the final partner, worked at the store some of the time, mainly as a book-keeper.  The office was small and crowded; all of the partners worked there part of the time: ordering merchandise, collecting past-due accounts (yes, it’s true – they had charge accounts), that sort of thing.  The Store (the business was configured into Store (inside) and Yard (outside)) was heavy to builder’s hardware and paint, things like that, but we did have a few pots and pans.  We also sold and installed vinyl and for a time, at another location between Beaumont and Banning, we shaped and installed sheet-metal.  The partners dabbled in other activities (contracting; real estate) from time to time.  There is a Beaumont neighborhood where the streets are named things like Myrl, Dale, Ruth, etc., and there is a similar subdivision in Cherry Valley.

I think I first worked in the Yard when I was ten, in 1943.  I picked up sticks and straightened lumber stacks for, I think, $0.25/hr.  (I doubt if I was worth it.)  I advanced to waiting on trade by the time I was in high school, and when I turned 16 I became a truck driver!  I worked every Saturday and all summer, except when we were in Lake City.  I believe I worked my way up to $2.00/hr.  However, I saw only a little bit of my earnings; most of it went into a college fund.  I did have enough to buy those 5-cent cokes mentioned in the newspaper article, with plenty left over to go down the street to a bakery and buy a half-dozen donuts nearly every day – big greasy affairs, dripping chocolate.  I stashed them in the lumber stacks and had no trouble consuming them during a shift.  When you’re in your teens and working in a lumber yard, calories are of no significance.  Some of the things I remember doing in those years: selling lumber, stacking lumber, unloading railroad cars filled with lumber (hard work; we didn’t have a fork lift), cutting lumber to length, threading pipe, loading and unloading 90 lb sacks of cement and plaster (dirty, hard work – and remember, no fork lift), throwing bundles of shingles onto roof tops from the back of our truck, stuff like that.  It was hard work, and I loved it.  Looking back at that guy from my present stage of age-modulate decay I wonder who in heck he was?  Certainly not me! 

I remember many of the people who worked for us back then, although some names I can’t spell and others I’m unsure of.  The Yard managers back then were, perhaps in this order, Ted Ward, Ted Linden, and Andy Chavez.  Ted was a carpenter and son of a carpenter; he could drive a 6-penny nail completely into a 4X4 with one blow.  Ted Linden was Bev’s father; he had lots of experience and I learned much useful stuff from him.  Andy, of course, everybody knows.  He began as our truck driver, became Yard manager, and at one time – I’m pretty sure – was a minor partner.  In point of service I believe our earliest employee was Ben Elam, who retired probably before 1950 and set up a shoe-repair business.  Possibly he was preceded by Don McLaughlin, who came to us right out of high school.  In the Store I remember Jerry (Merlin Jerrell?), Duke (DeForge?), and, of course, Mrs. Baker (Ada?  Ida?).  I’m sure there were others; sorry if I’ve forgotten you, it’s been a long time.  I remember that Don and Andy were in WWII; I suspect that Duke, Jerry and both Teds were, too.  I was too young, and my Dad was too old.

I have dozens of stories I could tell about those old days; I could be like an old codger sitting on a cracker barrel (not a nail keg), telling whoppers that are mostly true.   Like the time I backed the truck completely through a wall, stopping only inches from the TV.  Or the day that our rival, Ralph Fell Lumber Co,  overloaded a truck and, when driving past the BH&L Co to rub our nose in it, took a corner too fast and flipped over.  Or sitting on the top of the store watching the Cherry Festival parade, with Patsy Dale – certainly the most beautiful girl ever to attend Beaumont High – leading the band.  Good times.  Wish I was back there again – of course, knowing what I know now.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

  

WORLD OVARIAN CANCER DAY

Abu Beckr al-Beaumonti politely reminds you that Wednesday, May 8^th, is World Ovarian Cancer Day.

Give ‘till it hurts!

http://engage.fredhutch.org/site/TR/PersonalFundraisingPages/General?px=1148821&pg=personal&fr_id=1573

FIRST, LET'S SHUT DOWN SOME LAW SCHOOLS

Finnegan, don't eat that deer poop!

I guess I was wrong about Monsanto; Roundup really is a carcinogen.  At least, so say the courts.  If scientific studies agree, I am unaware.

The link provided below will take you to an amusing, and somewhat horrifying, story of Monsanto, Roundup, and class-action lawsuits.  In my view there are entirely too many legal eagles out there, hustling for a buck.  I have led a relatively calm and nose-clean life, but I get solemn recruiting letters from class-action law firms all the time.  In general they promise me a financial reward if “I used product (or service) X sometime in the past”.  They never ask if, having used X, I suffered any harm or discomfort.  My suspicion always has been that, if I were to join, and we won, I would end up with a pack of chewing gum, while the lawyers enjoyed their Lamborghinis.   This link confirms my prejudices. 

https://www.ehn.org/peter-dykstra-attorneys-spring-eternal-2636203316.html

MEMOIRS, PART 2

Abu Beckr al- Beaumonti cautions:  Read at your peril!

WHAT I REMEMBER, Part 2

7/26/14

So here are a bunch of things I remember from my earliest days.  I can’t put them in chronological order, nor can I even vouch for their absolute authenticity.  We’re talking about things that happened 75 or more years ago – and I have always been a pretty imaginative kid.

I remember my folks bringing my sister Susannah home.  They drove down the driveway to the back yard, where I was playing.  I was a bit perplexed.  We had a dog – Bim, by name I think.  He barked his head off.

A few months later I must have realized that this squalling creature was a threat to my comfort and supremacy.  When my mother left her out front in a baby carriage for a few minutes one day, I pushed it into the street.  Nothing subtle about me.

When I was about five, I guess, my dad was working in the garden while I looked on.  Taking a break, he looked at me and said “Buck, the soil in California is so fertile that you can push a broomstick into the ground and it will sprout.  I believed that implicitly for at least twenty years.  Later in life I wondered how it could be true, but I didn’t think about it too hard.  Only when I had kids of my own did I realize that he had been joking!  Let that be a lesson to you young fathers; your kids adore you and will believe anything you say.

“Buck”, you may have asked.  Why did he call me that?  Well, from my very earliest days my father would tell me stories before I went to bed.  (Later he read to me.)  At the time Jack Benny was the funniest thing on radio; our whole family listened to him every week.  He had a continuing skit called “Buck Benny Rides Again.”  My dad would tell me cowboy stories with Buck Benny as the hero – and I became Buck.  To this day my cousin Bill will call me Buck now and then.  To all the male employees of the BH&L Co I was Buck.  Women called me Myrl, Jr.

When we would listen to Jack Benny my mother would serve each of us a bowl of hot, buttery popcorn, with a large, warm chunk of fudge in the middle.  Lord!, what a treat.  Nobody ever made fudge the way my mother did.  Lots of fresh walnuts imbedded in something that must have been sent from heaven!  My mother also made unapproachable chocolate-chip cookies.  Her fudge and cookies were so good that they ruined the experience for me for the rest of my life.  Some imitations are good – but nothing like I remember!

Early on I had long, curly blond hair.  By high school I had shorter, brown, densely curly hair.  A few decades ago this gradually transformed itself into short, shaggy, vaguely kinky – and scarce - gray hair.  One might call this normal human progression – except that most of us don’t really regard this as progress.

When I was three years old  I contracted cerebral meningitis.  We were visiting in Grand Junction, Colorado, at that time – my mother’s father and mother lived there.  Apparently I was stuck in bed for about a month, and when I finally was cleared to walk, I couldn’t.  I had lost the hearing on my left side (permanently, as it happens) and my sense of balanced was all messed up.  It took me quite a while to relearn the skill of walking.  To compensate for my hearing loss I developed the habit of tilting my head to one side.  I still do it today.  By now the muscle on one side of my neck is so overdeveloped relative to its counterpart that I actually can’t keep my head upright for more than a few minutes. 

Being deaf in one ear, while clearly a bad thing, had its compensations.  For instance, if I ignored my mother when she said things like “Myrl Jr., Come and dry the dishes”, she might convince herself that I actually hadn’t heard her.  (“Poor little deaf kid!”)  Also, if I was at table and somebody annoying was on my left, I could just turn to him/her and say:  “Sorry, but I won’t be able to talk to you – I can’t hear out of my left ear.  If you want me to pass something, punch me in the shoulder.”  Normally they didn’t punch too hard.

One disadvantage of directional deafness is that, if you truly want to be part of a large dinner table conversation, you have to insist on sitting at a corner seat, good ear pointed inward.  People who know me well simply cede the corner seat automatically.  The only serious problem with this arrangement is that I insist on the very seat that left-handed people covet.  Fortunately, there are very few left-handed people, and most of them are polite.

I was good in school, but that cut very little ice with me.  What I wanted to be was a star athlete.  My father tried to help.  He was unsuccessful.  He had been an excellent basketball player (high school and college), in the two-handed set shot and center-jump after each basket era.  By the time I was ten, I had a pretty good two-handed set shot – which got blocked 90% of the time because I was short and slow.    I became good enough (shooting otherwise, of course) to start on the Beaumont Union High School varsity my senior year.  But I was never a star. Dad also tried to teach me how to swim, but finally gave up, speculating that -unlike most people – I was simply a lot denser than water.  To this day I could swim 50 ft. only if my life absolutely depended on it.

I was fairly good at tennis, on the high school level.  I played into my 30s, but the constant overhead shots played hob with my back and I had to quit.  I still miss tennis.  I play golf now, but I stink.  I have come to terms with the fact that the only sports I am any good at are those in which the key to success lies simply in working your ass off.  I was good at distance running and weight lifting.  Now, of course, I am best at getting into and out of the recliner. 

What else?  Well, I excelled at duck tossing.  Actually, what I did was toss rings (at a nickel for three tries) at coke bottles; if one ringed the neck of the bottle you won a baby duck.  This occurred at the annual Cherry Festival, which (in my youthful memories) was a real hoot.  I would spend my allowance and anything I could borrow until I had won two little ducks, which I then brought home to raise. 

There is nothing in this world cuter than a baby duck.  Hold one under your chin for a few minutes, then set it down – and it will run after you, peep peeping its little heart out.  They think you’re their mother, poor little things.

 However, a fully grown duck is not cute.  They are, in fact, downright annoying.  They leave little green globs of duck poop wherever you are likely to walk.  They are pathologically curious, so if you are having an outdoor dinner party or you and your friends are screwing around in the back yard, they are right there – going “Quaaack?”  And depositing more of those little green globs. 

Thus it was a blessing, then, that, shortly after reaching adulthood our ducks invariably “flew away.”  I never noticed that, without exception, we had fried chicken the very next day.  I figured out what was going on when I was about eight.  My aunt Florence was staying with us while she went to summer school in Redlands, I think.  I used to pop out of bed at some God-awful early hour and get in bed with her.  One morning as I lay there I heard a duck making a terrible racket.  Florence was still half asleep.  I asked her “Why is that duck making so much noise?”  She replied, “He’s calling for his mate.  Where is his mate,” I asked?  “In the refrigerator.” I couldn’t believe such evil and treachery could possibly exist!  Sure enough, there in the refrigerator was a cleaned and plucked “chicken”, ready for that evening’s meal.  I didn’t eat anything remotely resembling chicken that night, nor for months thereafter.  Now, of course, I order duck in Thai restaurants all the time.  Duck is good.  Just not your pet duck. 

All of which reminds me that during WWII we kept chickens in the back yard – for eggs, of course, but also for meat.  My father had built some nice coops and we had perhaps a half-dozen chickens, maybe more.  The eggs were fine, but Susannah and I soon made pets of the chickens and my dad, old farm boy that he was, could not summon the strength of character to slaughter them.  They, too, flew away – to a nearby chicken ranch.