1970s Eagle Street Christmas

Christmas in the seventies was very different than Christmas during the previous decade. We didn't know that 1970 would be our last Christmas with Dad.  By then, he and Mom had ditched the idea of buying a Christmas tree every year.  In 1968, they bought a big potted live tree and hauled it in the house using a special wheeled tool that Dad built in his workshop.  It was painful to decorate it, and I mean literally painful, because the needles were very sharp.  It really took the fun out of it, and it became a chore that was endured, not enjoyed. When Christmas was over, we carefully took everything off the tree and wheeled it back outside. It felt good to have it done and over with for another year.

 Tiny in 1968, the first year we had the potted tree. There was lots of room to stack gifts because the pot was so large. After the gifts were opened, Mom hung tiny hotdogs on the bottom branches for the dogs.  Tiny is very carefully removing her little snack.

Here I am in 1970 with the puppy I got for Christmas.  Mom had no intention of letting me keep it, but I did get to play with him for awhile until Mom sold it. This was our last Christmas with Dad.

The big difference about Christmas in the 70s was the huge void left by our father's passing.  Also, by this time the older kids were no longer coming by with their children.  Patti and her kids had moved to Arkansas, Susan and her family stayed in Los Angeles for the holidays, Lynda was beginning new traditions with her own family.  We would see them over the holidays, but not necessarily during our late night Christmas Eve gift opening time.  Tim, Skippy and Darwin were no longer at home.  So it was down to just Mom, me, and the two little kids. 

I took over where Dad left off--dragging the Christmas box up from the basement, helping Mom decorate the tree, and bringing all the presents out of hiding to put under the tree after the kids were put to bed on Christmas Eve.  Mom also gave me the fun tradition of shaking the sleigh bells to awaken the kids near midnight to open their gifts. I would walk down the hall towards their bedrooms, jingling those bells and making a racket. Then I would yell, "Wake up, wake up, Santa just left, hurry, you might still see him!" The kids would jump out of their beds and run to the tree to see what was there for them. 

During the holidays, we didn't have a lot of relatives to play with, so we created our own fun. We liked to sing.

             Tammy and Gidget. Our first Christmas without Dad, 1971.  His yellow chair, the chair he died in, is empty.

                     Christmas 1972. Look closely in the tree and you will see hidden gifts.

There was always lots of music and singing on Eagle Street. I started playing the piano at a very young age, and although I hated practicing the scales, chords, dexterity exercises and the assigned pieces, I really had fun playing songs that my little brother and sister and I could all sing together.  Mom figured out real fast that I would stay at the piano for two hours a day instead of my mandatory one hour, if I was able to have a little bit of fun in the process.  So she provided me with all sorts of song books.  During the year, we kids would sing from the Disney movie songbook.  But starting in the fall, we would start practicing our Christmas songs.  I would give the little siblings something special to do for some of the songs.  Little brother would sing a solo line here and there.  Little sister would hit a piano key when I gave her the cue.

In 1972, I had to perform at a Christmas piano recital.  Jeff sang a cute song called, "The Little Skeptic." Little sis sang "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."

Here we are at the 1972 Christmas Piano recital.  We didn't have fancy shoes for dress up, so we went to our performance wearing our tap shoes from dance class.

Mom also made cassette tapes of us singing songs to send to her prison pal boyfriend and soon to be husband.  One actually survives to this day. It was made October 10, 1974, when I was 13 and the little kids were 8.  I ran across it a few months ago and listened to it today.  It seems like yesterday that we kids were all sitting there on the piano bench belting out Christmas tunes.  It would be so much fun to do it again.

During the 70's, Mom was obviously lonely, and she started befriending an interesting variety of similarly lonely or downtrodden people.  We never really knew who was going to drop by during the Christmas season, so Mom was always ready.  She bought little gifts, like socks, flashlights, pens, and other things that everyone can use.  She would wrap these small items and write a small number on the gift. Then she would hide them in various places deep into the Christmas tree.  In her notebook, she would record the number and what was in the package.  When an unexpected person came by, she would check her notebook for an appropriate gift, and then she would pull the gift out from the inner branches of the tree to give to the visitor.  Those simple little gifts would make these people so happy.

After about 7 years of use, the potted Christmas tree was getting cramped and obviously wanted to be free.  It stopped growing and started to die.  By the end of the 70s, we had abandoned the potted tree idea and were back to bringing home cut Christmas trees.

Christmas 1977.  We are back to using cut trees.  My little sister got the unicycle, and she learned to ride it well enough to include it in her clown act the following summer. Look at that hideous carpet. Mom loved it!

1979 was my final Christmas at home.   In 1980, I had left the nest and was experiencing my first freezing cold white Christmas in Indiana. Childhood memories still pull me back to that little canyonside house in a neighborhood that has changed so much over the decades.  Something calls me home every Christmas Eve.  I don't fight that pull.  It is my yearly tradition to return to 4071 Eagle Street and pay quiet homage, unnoticed by the current owners. And this year, like every year, I will take a brief nighttime walk past the house whose walls witnessed so much pain and laughter and so much drama. Even though the street will be silent and dark, my imagination will conjure up the sight of the bright Christmas tree, the smell of a fragrant log burning in the fireplace, and the sound of our traditional Christmas Eve sleigh bells. 

A 60's Eagle Street Christmas

Mom and Dad always went all out for Christmas.  This was a special day that they seemed to enjoy just as much as we kids did.  They took tree decorating very seriously.  It was a complicated affair that we kids chose to let them enjoy without our interference.  First, someone would have to go down in the dark and dusty basement and retrieve the big Christmas Box.  In that box were old ornaments, even older electric lights, and many memories of Christmases past.

Dad would bring home a big tree.  He and Mom would go over every inch of it, deciding whether the tree would go by the window or smack dab in the middle of the room.  If it had a bad side, it would go in the corner or by the window.  If it was the perfect tree, it was placed in the center of the room.  Sometimes Dad would take some discarded branches from the tree lot and use them to fill in some bare spots.  He would drill a little hole in the trunk and insert the branch, and somehow attach it using twine.  Then they would lay out all the lights on the floor.  These were fifties-era lights that should have been thrown away years before.  The cords were frayed and taped up here and there with electrical tape.  These lights also had the annoying feature of not working if even one light bulb was a dud.  It took them at least an hour just to get the lights ready to hang on the tree.  We kids just let them go about this important job while we looked in the Sears catalog for stuff we wanted from  Santa.

Our family opened presents very late at night on Christmas Eve. But first, we had to go to bed very early.  It seemed like we had just fallen asleep when Mom would come in our rooms shouting that we need to hurry up and get out of bed because Santa was still in the living room dropping off presents.  We would jump out of our beds and run to try to see Santa.  We would get to the living room and there under the tree, piles and piles of presents had magically appeared.  Dad would be sitting in his E-Z chair, puffing on his pipe and relaxing with a drink.  Mom would guide us to our presents, suggesting to us which ones to open first.  There were always so many gifts.  Each of us had at least 10 gifts under the tree.

After we had opened everything up, Mom had us line all our stuff under the tree and go back to bed. It was probably a good strategy on their part, because they could sleep in on Christmas morning, and we would keep ourselves amused in the morning with the toys we got the night before.

Lynda recalls one Christmas that was a little bit different:

" One year, Mom and Dad decided it would be fun if the kids actually caught Santa in the act.  As usual, we were sent to bed early on Christmas Eve, then all of a sudden she came in saying, "Hurry, hurry, Santa is here!"  We ran down the hallway into the living room and there he was!  Santa was right there at our tree, putting presents underneath! It was exciting and fun to get to visit with Santa.  After a while we took our attention away from Santa and got to the business at hand--opening up all our presents.  Dad took Santa into the kitchen, poured each of them a drink, and they proceeded to have a nice cheerful little visit.  A few drinks later, both of them were feeling quite jolly.  Then little Darwin went looking for Dad and Santa and found them in the kitchen having their own celebration.  He told Mom that Daddy and Santa were in the kitchen acting very happy and Mom knew what that meant.  She didn't want the rest of the kids to see a tipsy Santa, so she told me to keep the kids in the living room while she snuck Santa out through the side door.  Dad offered to give him some regular clothes so he could stay longer without the kids knowing it was him, but Mom wasn't on board with that, so Santa went on his way.  I can't say that I ever saw Dad drunk, but on that one Christmas Eve when he was drinking with Santa, he was very jovial and happy.  I never him as relaxed and cheerful as he was during that moment in time."

Thanks, Lynda!

Here is the earliest photo I have found with Santa in our house:

From left:  Skippy, Darwin, Santa, and (I think) Susan's baby Cathy

I don't know if I was there for the 1960 Santa visit, but I was there for the 1961 visit:

Back row:Cathy, Santa, Tammy, Darwin, Skippy, Front row, Patti's kids Robby and Zina

Tim (?) on the couch, Cathy, Tammy and Susan

Tammy, Santa, and Skippy.  I don't know why Mom called me Amy in this photo

Skippy and Darwin in the Back row, Robby and Zina in the front row.

The last visit from Santa came in 1965:

Early Sixties Christmas Eves were crazy and fun.  My older sisters were there with their kids who were my age, and everyone was happy and got along  great. Here are a few more great photos:

Christmas 1963.  Tammy and Cathy.  Technically I was her aunt, but I saw her as a cousin and friend.

Christmas 1965.  I loved that inflatable red reindeer and cried like a baby when it sprung a leak a couple years later.  That cool blue  3 wheel thing was a Vroom and it was a really fun ride.  You steered it with the red tipped stick. It had some kind of button you could push and it would make a engine sound, hence the name, Vroooom! If you look real close at Dad's table, you will see the big goblet he always drank out of. Look above Dad's head and you will see some of the Victorian kissing balls that Mom had hanging on a chain attached to the walls all around the room.

Christmas eve 1968.  There's Dad in his usual spot, with his cans of tobacco, big goblet, and opening a can of his favorite fancy nuts.  Tammy and Jeff opening our gifts.

And for the final Christmas of the sixties, A typical Christmas for Dad.  Shaving Cream, Pipe Tobacco, huge bottles of booze, and a couple of new work shirts.

There is no doubt about it--Mom and Dad loved Christmas and made sure that their kids enjoyed it too.  It was always a warm and wonderful time on Eagle Street.

Rudolph is Real

Our family had a great story of a special Christmas in the fifties.  Mom told us that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is a real reindeer, and Dad proved it by catching this shot of a magical Christmas Eve night long ago when Lynda was a small girl and had the once in a lifetime opportunity to take a ride on Santa's most important helper.

Our creative Dad's 50's-era photo of Lynda's Christmas Eve ride

Christmas Away From Home

Christmas was always spent at home on Eagle Street.  Except for Christmas, 1974.  This was the time of our lives when we were going on weekend drives up north to Soledad, California, to visit Mom's fiance, who was incarcerated at the state prison for armed robbery. Visitation was allowed on Christmas day that year. So there was not going to be our usual Christmas Eve tradition of opening gifts around the tree at night.  In 1974, we would be on the road instead.

I had just turned 14, and my two younger siblings were eight.  During the past several months we had taken this trip many times already and were used to it.  Mom had discovered that motion sickness pills Dramamine and Bonine not only kept the kids from throwing up during the trip, it also knocked them out for a few hours, which was an added bonus.

My job was to sit in the front seat and keep mom awake for the drive, because one time she fell asleep on the way home and drove for about 30 minutes on auto pilot from Oceanside to San Diego. She woke up while idling at the red light at the Washington Street and Pacific Highway exit and then woke the rest of us up when she started screaming at the thought of what could have happened to us.

The challenge of this particular trip was to get the kids' Christmas presents in the car without them knowing about it.  Mom still wanted them to believe that Santa brought the gifts, so it was my job to get all these wrapped gifts packed up and in the back of the Volvo station wagon without them getting suspicious.  I managed to smuggle about 30 gifts in the car and the kids never suspected a thing.

Tammy, fall 1974, with our dependable travel car.

Once everything was loaded up, we headed out for the familiar journey north.  The kids, having received their medicine, started getting sleepy fairly soon.  All along the way, I looked for familiar landmarks--first the Disneyland Billboards, then the oil derrick pumpjacks, the Gaviota tunnel, then the Andersen's Pea Soup signs which appeared every few miles, like the Burma-Shave signs of another era.  Although the traffic was bad in Los Angeles, by the time we got to Ventura, the traffic thinned out to almost nothing.  For much of the drive, it seemed like we were the only ones driving on Highway 101 on Christmas Eve.

When we drove past Buellton, site of the Andersen Pea Soup restaurant, I always asked Mom if we could stop and try some of the soup, and she always answered the same way--"Maybe next time."  And I knew what that meant. In the many months of driving past that place, we never did find the time to stop there.

(I finally got to stop at Buellton and try the soup in 2009)

Sometime after we drove past San Luis Obispo, Mom realized we were getting low on gas.  The first two gas stations she stopped at were closed. It was Christmas Eve in 1974, and most gas stations were not open 24/7. As she drove with a nearly empty gas tank,  Mom prayed out loud that the next stop would be a charm.  By the time we reached King City, the needle was on empty.  Luckily, there was a huge truck stop called The Beacon, and it was a 24/7 fueling station. When we saw that huge Beacon sign, we both cheered out loud.  Once the tank was filled, we hopped back in the car for the final few miles of the trip.

We passed Soledad and headed for the next town of Gonzalez.  It was a tiny agricultural town that always smelled slightly of rotten tomatoes. We regularly stayed in Gonzalez at the Lamplighter Inn, a little roadside motel,  because motels in Soledad were run down and the clientele was loud and scary.  When we reached our destination, Mom pulled into the Lamplighter parking lot.  The Neon sign out front was flashing, "no Vacancy."

There was no room at the inn on Christmas Eve 1974

 It was then that Mom realized that she forgot to make the reservation. After getting the bad news from the desk clerk, we got back in the car and headed north.  The next town, Chualar, didn't have a motel. We then drove a bit further to Salinas.  Spotting a Motel 6 just off the freeway, Mom decided to give it a try.

I stayed in the car while Mom went inside to check with the front desk. The kids woke up and we all got out to stretch our legs.  Little sister went into the motel office to be with Mom.  There was a big gas station not far from the motel.  Jeff and I decided to take a walk over there to see if they had a snack machine. In the far corner of the lot, we noticed a rusty brown Chevy V-8. The engine was running, and the driver's door was open.  We walked over to the car and noticed a scruffy, unshaven man behind the steering wheel, passed out.  His greasy-haired head leaned back across the bench seat, his arms were hanging limply at his sides, and one leg was sticking out of the car.  It appeared that he had started to exit the car but fell asleep in the process. We looked at him and felt a little creepy, so we headed back to the motel just as Mom was leaving the lobby with a grin on her face.  Luckily, there were rooms available, so we would have a place to stay on Christmas Eve.

We found the room and went inside.  There was one bed, a TV bolted to the ceiling, a dresser and a big door-less closet next to the sink and bathroom. In the closet there was a wide shelf.  The room was nice and clean, bigger than what we were used to, and the walls were pure white, not dingy like the rooms at the Lamplighter.

The little kids immediately noticed the wide shelf in the closet and both of them laid claim to it.  My brother decided that he wanted to sleep on it, and of course little sister wanted to sleep there too.  Mom was exhausted from the drive and had no patience for their arguing.  She told them that no one would get to sleep on the shelf, but Jeff used the luggage stand to hoist himself up on it to show her that it was the perfect spot for him to sleep.  Little sister was not one to back down from a challenge, and she tried to climb up on the shelf too, and Jeff was not pleased.  Mom swooped in and pulled both of them down.  She told them that no one was going to sleep in the closet, and that was the end of that.

While the shelf argument was going on, I was unloading the car, bringing in our clothes and the cooler with our Christmas Eve dinner.  When we were on the road, we never ate in restaurants, not even fast food joints. 

Mom loved Kmart ham and always stocked up when it was on sale

Our travel meals consisted of ham sandwiches. The ham was always from KMart, sliced tissue paper thin.  We also had cold Oscar Meyer hot dogs,  lots of Chickin in a Biscuit crackers, and Tab, the most awful soda ever invented.  Mom whispered to me to keep the gifts hidden in the car, and then warned the kids, who were working out their pent up energy by wrestling around in the room, that Santa wasn't going to come if they didn't start behaving.

That warning had no effect.  The kids, still fixated on the closet shelf, were arguing over who should get to sleep there.  So Mom suggested that maybe they were just thirsty and told me to get the pitcher and make them some Kool-Aid.  I grabbed the plastic Kool-Aid man pitcher and a spoon out of the snack box, and emptied a packet of Black Cherry Kool-Aid and a cup of sugar into it. Then I went to the sink and filled the pitcher with water and stirred it up.  As I turned away from the sink, ready to pour the kids a drink, the kids continued their wrestling.  One kid lunged at the other, who dodged the tackle, and the kid tumbled into me and the Kool-Aid pitcher.

The pitcher flew out of my hands and hit the wall, splattering red dye number 2-stained sugar water all over the once pristine pure white wall.  We all just stood, transfixed, watching the streams of red liquid flow down the wall to the carpeted floor, making a modern splatter art design.   I got a towel and tried to wipe the stain away, but the more I rubbed, the bigger the stain became. It reminded me of the story, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," except I had no little cats XYZ to get me out of this mess.

Now Mom was really mad.  She tried threatening the kids by telling them that Santa was definitely not coming now. The kids were yelling, blaming each other, and I was still trying to wash the stain away and in doing so was making it worse.  Finally, Mom gave up and told me to just go out to the car and get their presents.  I brought the gifts to the kids, and they instantly forgot about the closet and went about ripping everything open to see what they got.  This was the Christmas they figured out for sure that Santa was not for real.

Later that night, The kids had finally fallen asleep.  Jeff was sleeping on the makeshift "top bunk" in the closet.  Mom, my little sister, and I were in the bed.  The big red splotch was still on the wall.  We watched the 11 PM news on TV.  The reporter said that Santa was somewhere over San Francisco, that everything would be closed on Christmas Day, and that the Salinas police found a dead guy in his car at the gas station just off the 101.

On Christmas morning, we hurriedly packed up and checked out of the Motel 6, leaving a stained wall and carpet, and never returned there again.  We spent the day at Soledad Correction Facility, playing with all the other convicts' kids and comparing what we got for Christmas, while the grown-ups visited.  Then the families all posed for group photos to memorialize the holiday.

1974 Christmas Day Photo. On the back of this photo it says, "Our happy family, 1974."

Around 4:00, we got back in the car for the long car ride home. 

This was our only Christmas spent away from home.  By the time Christmas 1975 came around, Paris Young had been released, married Mom, cleaned out her savings account, and vanished from our lives.

Who was Paris Burton Young?

In 1973, Mom was introduced to a criminal named Paris Burton Young, inmate number B-47978.  He was serving time in Susanville, California for committing an armed robbery in Santa Barbara.  Skippy was in the same prison, and he was the one who brought Paris into our lives.

The only remaining photo of Paris Young, Christmas day prison visit 1974

Paris was from Oklahoma.  He was soft spoken, and said sir, and Ma'am in Southern fashion.  He wasn't covered in tattoos like most convicts are. He was left-handed, and an Aquarius.  He was a skilled welder and an expert fisherman.   Because he seemed so different from most criminals, he was able to convince Mom that he was convicted of a crime he did not commit.  He also told her he had an ex-wife named Carolyn who took his beloved son James away and he did not know where they went. He was able to convince Mom that all he wanted was to start over and have a big happy family. Before long, he proposed marriage during a Sunday 5 minute phone call, and she of course said yes.

Mom did not like the fact that her name, Carol, was so similar to his ex wife's name, so she was quite happy when Paris wrote her a letter telling her since she was such a wonderful person, he was renaming her "Angel."  Mom didn't realize that Angel is a prison term for a person on the outside who puts sends care packages or deposits money in their canteen account.  She was so flattered by this renaming that she immediately began telling her friends that Angel was her original first name, but that her deceased husband Darwin did not like it and made her use her middle name.  She also told all of her friends and relatives that Paris was a welding instructor and worked at the Prison teaching the inmates a skill. They never knew he was a prisoner. Since it was a full time commitment to the inmates, she told them, it wasn't easy for him to take time off for a visit to San Diego.  So it was much easier for us to go visit him.

At first, he was in a prison that was too far away for a driving trip, so Mom would dump us kids off at various places and fly to Reno, rent a car, and drive to Susanville for a Sunday visit.  Sometimes we would stay with brother Darwin and his girlfriend Liz, and sometimes Mom would hire a Mexican woman to stay at the house and feed us.  Other times she would split us up, with my brother Jeff going somewhere and my little sister and I going somewhere else. It was starting to get expensive to do those visits, and I am sure her friends were getting tired off taking care of us for free.  She even lost a friendship because she promised to pay for our care and feeding and reneged on it.  That friend got so angry that she fed us moldy back-of-the-fridge leftovers for lunch (which we tossed off her patio and into the canyon when she wasn't looking.) So after a few months,  Mom started writing letter after letter after letter to prison officials, seeking to get Paris transferred closer to San Diego. It eventually worked.

Paris was transferred to Soledad Correctional facility, but transfers are not quick.  It involved a brief stop at San Quentin.  Mom just couldn't wait to see him, and she packed us kids up in the blue Volvo wagon and made the long drive up the coast, through smoggy Los Angeles, to the beautiful Central Coast, past the agricultural area near Salinas and into the Bay area.  It was an all-night drive, with the little kids getting carsick before falling off to sleep. Mom got lost during the final few miles and we ended up going back and forth over a toll bridge, which really made her angry, causing her to throw the coins at the toll taker the second time across.  We finally got to San Quentin and sat in a hot and bustling big room with lots of noisy, smelly people while Mom visited briefly with her fiancé, then it was back in the car for another 10 hours for the drive home.

The next road trip was to Soledad Correctional Center.

Photo taken in 1996, 21 years after our last visit.

Soledad, California is a tiny agricultural town about 135 miles south of San Francisco.  It always smells of produce, especially in the early morning hours.  There was a rundown mom and pop motel, one of those old types that had only one level and you parked right outside your room.  We stayed there on our first visit. It was not only dirty and reeked of cigarette smoke, but it was also terrifying.  All night long, we heard people in the rooms on either side of us.  There were crying babies and toddlers. Women were screaming in Spanish and there were sounds of people smacking each other against the walls. Angry-sounding men showed up all night outside the rooms, pounding on the doors of our neighbors. All of us were afraid that they were going to break our door down and beat us up too.  After getting almost no sleep, Mom swore we would never stay in Soledad again.  And we didn't.  We stayed instead in Gonzales, the next town to the north.

Gonzales is another tiny agricultural town.  The smell of rotting tomatoes permeated the area. This town was just like Soledad--one gas station, a tiny cemetery, hardly any places to shop for food, and one little roadside motel.  The Lamplighter was another vintage one-level place.  But the Manager was a nice older lady who didn't tolerate shenanigans on her property.  The rooms were old and worn, but clean.  There weren't any scary people in the rooms next to ours.  After one weekend there, Mom always made sure she made reservations for the next time, so for almost a year, we stayed in Gonzales during visitation weekend, which was every two weeks.  We would pack the car every other Friday after school and make the long drive. We then spent Saturday and Sunday visiting Paris in a park-like setting, playing with lots of other kids and occasionally gathering for a family photo when the photographer with the Polaroid camera showed up. When visiting hours wrapped up, we got back in the car for the long ride home.  We would roll in to San Diego around midnight and be up for school Monday morning. (associated story: A Christmas Away from Home, dated December 14, 2017)

Taken in 1996, 21 years after our last stay.  It hadn't changed a bit.

Paris Young was serving an indeterminate sentence, which meant that after the minimum number of years in his sentence of 5-10 years, an inmate would go before the parole board.  If he had shown that he was rehabilitated, they could cut him loose.  This gave prisoners the initiative to improve themselves.  They could get credit for regular attendance to the AA meetings or for learning a skill like welding. Interestingly, it was Governor Gerry Brown who changed the rule in 1976 to cancel the policy of indeterminate sentencing.   After the 40 year experiment, the same Governor Brown publicly stated that he regretted that decision, because now there is no reason to improve yourself in prison because it won't get you out any faster.

Mom became obsessed with getting Paris released at his next Parole hearing.  She spent her days calling the warden, Mr. Harlan, typing letters to the parole board, and just basically making herself the biggest pest they ever experienced.   After two years of visits, letters, and phone calls, the warden told Mom if she bought Paris a new work truck, opened him a welding shop so he would have a job, and gave him a bank account for his business expenses, it would look really good at the next parole hearing.  She did just that--investing Dad's life insurance money- our only safety net- to go all in on a man she knew nothing about.

They set a release date of July 11, 1975. With only a few weeks notice, Mom went into crazed work mode.  She hired a guy to paint the entire interior of the house.  We spent days with a Rug Doctor machine washing a decade of filth out of the carpets.  She found someone who would take us three kids and all the dogs for a week so the newlyweds could have a honeymoon.  And to get Paris a change from prison issue clothing (blue jeans and blue denim shirt), she went to Sears and bought him a four-piece plaid and solid baby blue leisure suit set(it was 1975, after all.)

She bought him this set in powder blue with faint pink plaid stripes.

She picked Paris up at the bus station downtown and they immediately went to the Wedding Bell Chapel, which used to be on Fifth Ave in Hillcrest.  After having a quick confidential wedding ceremony, they spent the week getting his new business started.

When we kids rejoined them a week later, we embarked on a fun camping road trip to visit Aunt Amy and Uncle Ed in Ephrata, Washington. We were making the familiar trip up the 101 one last time, now in our huge new 4-door Chevy Camper Special Pick up Truck, with Paris behind the wheel. About the time we got past the busy southern California traffic, Paris popped open a Budweiser and started drinking it.  Mom didn't seem too happy about it, and I wondered how many beers you can drink and still be allowed to drive. A six pack later,  it became clear that Paris was an alcoholic. He drank during the entire vacation.

When we returned to San Diego in August, Mom and Paris opened their welding shop, A-1 Young's Welding on Wabash Street in North Park.

The site of A-1 Young's Welding, now a smog shop

They also started looking for property in the back country.  We kids spent weekends in the back seat of the truck while they drove  around looking at places in Ramona, Lakeside, and Alpine.  They considered buying the Pio Pico Campground in Jamul.  We drove up highway 15 almost to Baker, California to look at a desert RV and cabin campground with a man-made lake, called Tami Lakes.

Tammy at Tami Lakes. This campground is now a dry and abandoned graffiti-covered ghost town.

They also looked at Angel's Camp, California and Paris, Tennessee.  Yes, it sounds a bit narcissistic and odd. Things got bad very fast with Paris living with us. So bad, as a matter of fact, that Paris cleaned us out and cleared out of town only 5 months after they were married, so we never moved from our house on Eagle Street. (Related Article:  A Blessing in Disguise, dated  November 23, 2017)

Paris Burton Young was a mystery person with an uncanny ability to con a con-woman.  The warning signs were there that should have made Mom take a pause and think about what she was getting into.  She didn't like redheads, and he had red hair. She didn't like smokers- and he smoked.  She didn't like drinking--and he was in AA while in prison, which indicated that he had a drinking problem.  She didn't like convicts--and he was a convict.  He was young enough to be her son. And she always disparaged her oldest son Tim because he had married an older woman. The bottom line was that Mom wanted to stay young at any cost.  And this younger man flattered her, made her feel young, and promised to worship her and ultimately give her another baby. Taking a gamble on this man cost her everything.

After Paris left on December 1, 1975, Mom told all her friends that he died in a welding accident,and that she suffered a miscarriage from the shock of it all and never wanted to speak of it again.  Then she went to bed and cried for a week.  I was afraid he would return and woo her again.  I was also afraid he would come back and physically harm me and my dogs.  After a few years, the constant worry faded when I realized he never intended to return.  But where did he go?  He disappeared without a trace.  Did he go back to his ex-wife (with not one son, but five) in Oklahoma? Did he meet another stupid woman who thought he would be a great replacement daddy for her kids? Did he get into more trouble and go back to prison, either in California or elsewhere?  Or did he just fade into the outdoors, using his outdoorsman skills to live off the grid? I want to know the end of every story.  Until I know where this smooth-talking criminal ended up, this story, for me, is not over yet.

Rules Change when the Ruler Changes

There was no doubt that Dad was the head of the household during my first 10 years on Eagle Street.  He was the provider, the gardener, the building maintenance worker, and the disciplinarian.  I had great respect and love for him, along with a quite a bit of fear.  There were rules I had to follow in order to avoid leather belt on bare bottom. These were the biggies:

1. Never be outside when the street lights are on.
2. Always wear pajamas, not street clothes, to bed.
3. Never drink your milk until you are done with your meal.
4. Don't bring home a detention slip from school.
5. Don't make Mom angry.
6. Don't touch the daily newspaper until Dad is done with it.
7. Don't read at the table while you are eating.

Any of those offenses could get you either yelled at or spanked with the belt, depending on how pissed off Dad already was before we kids made things worse by violating the rules. And I learned about all of these things the hard way. Before he started the discipline, he would always say, "This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you."

In our authoritarian household, we rarely had friends over to play.  Some of the neighborhood kids told me that their parents would not allow them to go inside our house because we were weird. Relatives did not visit too much either.  I never met Dad's mother. I met Dad's sister June once for a minute.  Dad's nephew Guy and a great aunt visited once. 

Dad's nephew, Uncle Guy, visited sometime in '69 or '70.

Aunt Amy and Uncle Ed visited three times from Ephrata, Washington.

Uncle Ed, Aunt Amy, and their daughter Phyllis, with Tammy, summer of '64.

Home Baptism.  Aunt Amy was our Godmother.  I wore this dress for Lynda's wedding earlier in the year

Aunt Amy and Uncle Ed's last visit. 1971.Dad died later this year

And Mom's brother Dick stopped by for about an hour once while he was in San Diego on business.

Mom's brother Uncle Dick, with the littlest kid

 Mom and Dad never packed us up in the car and took a trip to visit anyone either.

We never went out to dinner when Dad was alive.  Dinner was always at home, usually TV dinners or Banquet Chicken pot pies.  Occasionally they would order in from Chicken a Go, and we would have fried chicken and soggy crinkle fries delivered to the house.  Maybe twice a month, Dad would drive up to Hillcrest to Pernicano's Italian Restaurant  and pick up a pepperoni pizza, and we would eat it while watching TV in the living room.

Dad also controlled the number of animals we were allowed to keep.  One parakeet.  One cat. No keeping any of her kittens.  Two dogs:  Tiny, the mutt who had seniority and couldn't be replaced, and Collette, the silver poodle whose puppies were sold for extra income.  When mom brought home a male poodle, dad allowed him to stay until he sired a litter, then he was sold along with the puppies.  Mom sometimes hid animals from Dad until she could sell them.  I remember my brother Darwin hid a baby alligator in the house for a while.

Once Dad was no longer alive, however, the control of the household shifted to Mom.  And suddenly things were different.

Mom started taking us out more. We would eat TV dinners at home and then we'd get in the car and drive up to El Cajon Blvd, which used to be a strong shopping district.  There were new car dealers, like Pearson Ford.  The jingle went like this, " See Pearson Ford they stand alone at Fairmont and El Cajon!" There were also many high end furniture stores there are the time, like Gustafsons. They served cookies and punch, so while mom perused the furniture, looking at things she never intended to purchase, her 3 young hooligans took care of the refreshments.

After we got back from the month-long trip to Aunt Amy's house in 1971, Mom settled in on a meal routine that went something like this:

Mondays:  Dinner at the First Southern Baptist church on Park Blvd.  For a super low price, like a dollar a plate and half price for kids, we got a really decent meal of a beef patty, a scoop of corn or green beans, a tossed green salad, a roll with butter, and a little slice of pie for dessert.

Tuesdays:  All you can eat pizza night at Pizza Hut.  They had 3 different types of pizza sliced up and ready, sitting under a heat lamp.  You could eat until you were stuffed.  Again, really cheap.

Wednesday: Perry Boy's Smorgy, another all-you-can eat place similar to Hometown Buffet.  The novel thing about this place was the drink station, and it was included with the meal.

Thursday:  This dinner depended on whatever coupons showed up in the paper.  If it was Arby's RB sandwich coupons, we had gross processed Roast beef sandwiches.  If it was Der Weinerschnitzel chili dog coupons, we had hot dogs.

Friday:  Pizza from Mona Lisa Pizza, down in Little Italy.

Saturday:  Since mom was usually selling stuff on weekends, we generally stayed home for the phone calls and strangers coming to buy and trade things.  So, dinner was either TV dinners, or leftover Arby sandwiches.

Sunday:  Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Full bucket. Regular, never extra Crispy, no matter how much I begged.  We would either eat it at home, or take it on a long car ride to visit one of the older brothers who was serving time in an honor camp in the Cleveland National Forest.

Most of Dad's rules ceased to exist almost immediately.

The animal collection started to grow in 1972.  Mom didn't really care what we wore to bed.  She didn't care if I read books while eating. She didn't notice when we drank our milk. She didn't care if we brought home detention slips from school. The newspaper rule was gone too.

We still had to be in the house when the street lights came on. That was the only Dad rule that remained. Mom had her own rules.  And you still did not want to make Mom angry, because the corporal punishments did not die with Dad.

Dad's Pipes

Dad loved his pipes.  He had two of them.  One was silver and one was brass.  I remember him using the brass-colored one more than the other.  They were odd-shaped pipes and I don't remember ever then or even now seeing any other pipes like his.

The brand name was Brial.  They were really easy to keep clean.  He would just pull the mouthpiece end off, pull out the old cotton balls, and replace them with clean ones.  After some searching, I found a You Tube video of a man who was showing off his grandpa's Brial pipe. But that's pretty much all there is out there about these weird little pipes.

One of Dad's great pleasures when he got home from work was to pour himself a drink, usually some awful bitter whiskey-type drink, get out his well-worn leather tobacco pouch and take a bit of cherry-scented tobacco out of it.  He would put that little pinch in the bowl of his pipe and light it with his butane lighter.  Then he would relax in his yellow La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, away from the ear-piercing noise of factory workroom floor, with his faithful dog Tiny sitting next to him. That was Dad's "Me time."

A Blessing in Disguise

Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks for all the good things you have and enjoying time with family and friends.  It is usually a warm and fuzzy time, a calm before the storm of Christmas shopping season.  When Thanksgiving comes around every year, my mind always returns to 1975.  The DVR in my brain can't help but replay the events of that weekend.  Its sort of like watching a show that comes on TV only once every year during the holidays. 1975 Thanksgiving weekend was my family's worst Thanksgiving ever, but it deserves a yearly review, because it changed the course of my life.

I have to start the story by explaining the status of my family at that time.

1. Dad died suddenly in 1971 when I was 10 and my siblings were 5.

2. Older brother, career criminal Skippy, while in prison, introduced Mom to a fellow inmate named Paris Burton Young in 1973. He was convicted of armed robbery and serving an indeterminate sentence. Of course he convinced Mom he was innocent.  She did not know anything about his past.

A news clip I recently found. From Lawton Constitution, Lawton Oklahoma, Aug 29, 1962

3. Paris Young became Mom's personal obsession.  There were daily letters,  5 minute phone calls once a week, endless care packages, and long grueling drives up north to visit him in Soledad Prison on family visit days for 2 years.

Christmas Day Soledad Prison Visit 1974

4. After much badgering from Mom, the parole board granted Paris his release on July 11, 1975 and they got married that same day at the Wedding Bell Chapel in Hillcrest.

5. She added his name to her bank account, bought him a new work truck and welding equipment, and opened up a welding shop for him on Wabash Street in North Park.

6.  Within 6 weeks, he was drinking heavily, wandering away from the shop to sit in the pubs all day, and molesting me in the morning and at night.

7.  Mom was in denial about her bad choice, and did not really care what was happening to me.

8.  Paris told me that he was going to "have" me when I turned 15 on December 17th.

9.  Mom started telling her friends that she and Paris wanted a baby, and that she might even be already pregnant and was going to name it Parissa if it was a girl (she had a hysterectomy in 1959, so pregnancy wasn't possible.)

Life on Eagle Street had become a life of constant terror for me in the fall of 1975.  The only peace I had was when I was at school, and that wasn't good either because I was flunking nearly everything and my teachers were losing patience with me.  Paris insisted on driving me to school and canceled my carpool.  Then he would feel me up during the drive to school. I would try to squirm away, but he grabbed me really hard and yanked me back to him.  I was lucky that my school was only about three miles away. He threatened to dump my beloved Poodles on the side of the road while I was at school if I didn't comply. I knew he was evil enough to do it, so I stopped fighting him.

To avoid him in the morning, I started getting up at 4 AM and sneaking out of the house in the pitch black darkness. I would walk 6 blocks up to Hillcrest to wait for the first bus of the day. My breakfast was a package of uncooked crunchy Top Ramen noodles that I would pack in my bookbag the night before. I used my lunch money to buy my bus ticket, so I did not have anything to eat for lunch, but it was worth it. Every night, after the usual drunken rampage with Mom, Paris would come to my room and assault me.  I knew it was just a matter of time before I reached 15 and he would finish his mission, which was to rape and impregnate me, so that Mom could have a new baby.

As my birthday edged ever closer, I thought about several options.  One option was to run away from home.   I was trying to decide what I would take with me. But I was torn, because I didn't want to abandon my Poodles. The feeling of dread was a constant weight on me.  The clock was ticking. My stomach hurt all the time. Knowing what was coming and knowing that Mom didn't care and was even in on it was my burden and my secret.

Paris was an Oklahoma country boy and was a skilled outdoorsman.  He and Mom attempted to reboot their relationship in October by going camping for the weekend somewhere along the Colorado River.  They returned from the trip with the Coleman cooler filled with huge catfish, but their destructive relationship had not changed. After another month of nightly brawls, screaming, and smashing plates and glassware against the walls, they decided to try the camping trip again, and this time they took us kids. Instead of doing the whole turkey thing on Thanksgiving, it was decided that we would go on a Thanksgiving weekend camping trip.

This old cooler was witness to my story

The plan was to leave on Friday, November 28th.  Mom allowed me to bring a friend, and I invited my best buddy Charlie.  He had no idea what was in store, because he didn't know my family secret.

We set out on the road the day after Thanksgiving, in our huge new blue Chevy 4-door pick up truck with magnetic A-1 Young's Welding signs on each side.  The truck bed was filled with fishing poles, two tents, sleeping bags, coolers filled with soda and hamburger patties,and a big metal grill that Paris welded himself.  Charlie, the kids and I sat in the back, and Paris drove while Mom passed him cans of Budweiser, and we all sang along when "Rhinestone Cowboy" started playing on the radio.

We drove past mountains and then on a straight flat highway for hours, past cotton fields, into the desert, and then suddenly we were on a dirt road, with no sign of civilization in sight.  No cars, no houses, no people. It was just us in the middle of nowhere. Only sand, scrub bushes, and a slow river.  Paris parked the truck and we all got out and ran around in the sand, stretching our legs.  He pitched two tents, one for himself and Mom, and one for us four kids to share.  He set up the grill with charcoal and got it fired up so Mom could make dinner.  Then we followed him when he gathered a bunch of fishing stuff and headed to the Colorado River backwater, a calm narrow channel of water that wasn't too deep but was loaded with catfish.  He set up a trot line, which is a lazy way to catch fish and probably not legal, and we all went back to camp.

We ate our hamburgers as dusk settled down on us.  The desert landscape was still and cold.  The night sky was loaded with stars.  Paris and Mom shooed us into our tent and we played with flash lights and took turns telling stupid jokes and spooky ghost stories to the little kids. Then we heard it. Over in the next tent, Mom and a drunken Paris were getting all worked up and ready to fight again.  The arguing started quietly.  Charlie asked what was going on, and not thinking they were going to go full blown crazy on our fun camping trip, I downplayed it.  But we three kids knew it was probably just starting.  And then they got louder and louder.  Suddenly, Paris was shouting just outside our tent.  Mom was yelling too.  Charlie and I peeked out the tent flap just in time to see Paris grab the heavy grill, still full of hot coals from dinner, and throw it in the back of the truck.  The hot coals flew through the black night like red fireworks.  Then he pulled a pole out of his tent, collapsing it. Our camping trip was officially over.

Mom screamed at us to get out and pack up for the trip home.  One kid started whining that we hadn't finished camping yet.  The other sibling started crying, and Charlie shook with fear, and asked me what was happening. I tried to be stoic and told him that they fight every day and it's no big deal.  Then Mom yelled at us again to get out of the tent, and we scrambled out as Paris grabbed it and pulled it down.  As Paris crazily threw everything in the bed of the truck,  Mom shouted for us to get in the truck, and we all did.  Then, when Paris turned to retrieve the fishing poles, Mom jumped in the truck and fired it up.  She turned it around and headed out, and Paris ran over and jumped onto the hood, trying to stop her.  She kept driving, swerving back and forth until he fell off.  We sped off and left him there in the middle of nowhere on the night after Thanksgiving. The kids and Charlie were terrified. I was happy.  Mom cried as she drove the 3 or 4 hours home.

We got back into San Diego around 3 AM.  My freaked out friend went home when dawn broke that morning. Paris was 200 miles away in the desert, and for the first time since August, I would be able to sleep in peace.  Mom stayed in her room crying for the whole day, and we kids just fed ourselves and didn't bother her.  Then Sunday came.  When I woke up from a peaceful night and went into the kitchen, Mom glared at me and I knew something was up.  Then she told me that she just got off the phone with Paris.  He told her he had walked to the highway, hitched a ride to Blythe.   She said he begged her for another chance and that she was going to give him that chance. She grabbed her purse and said she was going to the bus station to pick him up.  I couldn't believe it.  The monster was coming back.  Then she told me that I was not going to be able to stay with them, and that she would be finding me a new home for a while.  I was pretty glad about that part, but couldn't believe she could be so stupid.  She then left to go downtown to get him at the Greyhound bus station, and I went to pack my little suitcase.  I would be leaving home after all.

When she came back home with Paris in tow, she told me they were going to renew their vows at Presidio Park and start over, and since I was the problem, I had to go.  As Paris stood behind her,  rubbing her shoulders and smirking at me, she said I needed to pack my bag and take it to school on Monday. She said that someone else would pick me up after school.  I had no idea where I was going to go, but I didn't care, as long as I was far away from Eagle Street.

The arbor at Presidio Park, where people have had weddings for decades

Paris hung on her all day, kissing up, faking affection, and ignoring me completely. They talked about the beautiful arbor in the park where they planned to have a wedding. I prayed to just get through one more night in the house and then I would be somewhere else forever after that.  There were no drunken brawls and no breaking glass that night. He showed her much attention, and did not leave their bedroom during the entire night.  I know because I sat up all night waiting, just in case he decided to creep down the hall to my room again.

I took my little suitcase to school on Monday, December 1st.  I couldn't concentrate on classes.  I couldn't talk to my friends, who were all excitedly talking about what they did over Thanksgiving weekend. I certainly didn't want to share my weekend experience with them.  I spent my day wondering who was coming to get me.   When the last bell rang, I went out to wait on the curb for whoever.  And within 10 minutes, Mom drove up and told me to get in the car.

I refused.  She told me something was wrong and ordered me to get in the car.  I got in and asked her what happened.  She nervously said she couldn't find Paris.  I sarcastically asked if she had checked all the bars on University Avenue.  After she slapped my face, she said that she had and that he wasn't anywhere.  Then she drove to the bank.  I waited in the car while she went inside.  She soon came out hyperventilating and very upset. We sped home and Mom ran into her bedroom.  I followed her.  She pulled all the drawers out of Paris's dresser.  Every drawer was empty, his clothing gone.  On the dresser was a bank withdrawal slip, where he had written "thank you," drawn a smiley face and placed his wedding ring. During the day, he had left her to run the shop, then he emptied the bank account, packed his bags, hopped in the truck, and vanished. Mom started crying hysterically, and I just stared at her.  She tried to hug me and I brushed her off.  She asked me how I could be so unfeeling when she was hurting so bad.  I just turned around and walked away.

Three days later, we got a postcard in the mail from Paris Young, telling her where he had abandoned the pick up truck in Brawley. Since I wasn't yet old enough to drive, Mom called Skippy, the one who got us into this mess, and we all drove out to retrieve the pick-up truck.  We never heard from Paris Young again. Mom told her friends that Paris tragically died in a welding accident and that the shock caused her to miscarry their baby. The whole nightmare was never to be spoken about again in our house.

December 1st, 1975, less than 3 weeks away from my 15th birthday, was the day I got my life back.  And every Thanksgiving weekend since then, I take some time to remember the shame, the terror and the humiliation of those 4 months.  I remember the painful realization that Mom was willing to sacrifice her child in order to have what she wanted.  I remember the feeling of uncertainty, and fearing that I was going to end up pregnant, or a runaway, or in foster care.  And then I remember that in the 11th hour of my nightmare, fate stepped in and took care of everything.  The horrible Thanksgiving camping trip was truly a blessing, for it set up the end of Paris Young's control over my life on Eagle Street.  Now that's a memory worth remembering every year!

Thanksgiving on Eagle Street

Mom knew how to cook.  But by the time I came along, home cooked meals were beginning to fade away.  Even though most of our meals consisted of  fast food, TV dinners or canned Spaghetti Ohs, Thanksgiving was different.  Mom always made Thanksgiving dinner.

She would buy the frozen turkey and let it thaw in the fridge for a week.  Then the night before Thanksgiving, she would prepare the bird.  Her specialty was her stuffing.  She always used Mrs Cubbisons little dried cubes of bread.  In a huge bowl, she would throw in the cubes, chopped celery, cans of chicken broth, and the secret to big flavor- Farmer John's breakfast sausages that had been cooked in water, then pan fried and sliced into tiny pieces.  She stuffed the mix into the bird and tied its legs up.  The rest of the stuffing went in a Corningware casserole dish.

She would set the oven to a very low temperature, around 300 degrees, and put the bird and stuffing in the oven around 11 at night.  It would slowly bake all night long, and when we got up in the morning, the house smelled so good.

We usually ate around noon or 1 PM.  The menu always was:  Turkey and stuffing.  A can of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce. (I was the only one who liked it) a can of Princella Yams, (I never knew you could get a yam from anywhere but a can until I grew up) a can of corn, and a can of LeSueur baby Peas, which she mixed with butter and milk and warmed in a saucepan. And we had pumpkin pie  and French vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I don't really remember much about Thanksgiving except the food.  We never had a large gathering.  I don't ever remember sitting at a table with Mom and Dad for the meal.  We never had guests.  And I don't even remember the older kids coming home for Thanksgiving dinner either.  Black Friday and all its craziness hadn't been invented yet, so there wasn't any time spent pouring over hundreds of newspaper inserts, no planning for a predawn shopping experience.  Thanksgiving was about staying home, eating, and watching TV.

Thanksgiving night was spent removing all meat from the turkey carcass.  My job was to get every piece off and put it in a big bowl.  Mom would dig her old Moulinex food processor with the taped up electrical cord out of the deepest corner of the cupboard and grind all the meat up into mince.  Then she would mix the meat with some of the leftover stuffing and form the mix into patties, dip them into raw egg, and roll them in bread crumbs.  She could get at least a couple dozen patties out of the leftover meat.  She called them Croquettes.  The croquettes would go in the freezer, and we would be eating them for dinner for the next few weeks. You would just take a few out of the freezer, fry them in oil in a skillet, and dinner was served.

In Mom's absence, some of her Thanksgiving traditions have stuck with me, while others slipped away.  Working on holidays for decades at the USPS forced me to keep things simple.  So it's usually turkey parts instead of the whole bird.  I have ditched the peas and replaced the canned yams with fresh ones. But I still make Mom's excellent stuffing, and I must have a can of Ocean Spray Cranberry jelly.  The pumpkin pie remains on the menu every year, and I usually eat way too much of it. The old meat grinder with the dangerously damaged electrical cord was tossed in the garbage after Mom passed away in 1986.  I have never made Mom's croquettes, because I psychologically need that old Moulinex in order to make the mincing authentic.  

Thanksgiving on Eagle Street was not fancy, and we kids ate alone in the kitchen.  But this day always brings back many warm and happy memories of helping Mom in the kitchen and of eating a home cooked meal instead of our usual TV dinners.  I am thankful for her efforts to give us that one special meal each year. 

 

This is the only photo of Mom showing off her Thanksgiving turkey.  It was taken in 1974, specifically to be sent to her prison pen pal.

Halloween on Eagle Street

Mom was born on October 31, 1921.  She was a Halloween baby, and as such, she was convinced that this fact gave her special powers.  She was a "good" witch, she told me, with psychic powers.  Mom didn't really celebrate her birthday as one normally does, with a cake, party,  or special dinner.  I think it was because she had a real issue with the fact that each birthday made her older.  This was a fact she could not and did not accept. So Halloween, even though it was her birthday, was all about the kids.

For some reason, I never remember Dad being around on Halloween.  He did not take part in a birthday celebration, nor did he take us Trick-or-treating.  It was probably because he was either at work on the evening shift or sleeping because he was working a super-early morning shift.  Whatever the reason, he was never in any of my Halloween memories.

Unlike today, where everyone, even adults, dresses up in expensive costumes and party on Halloween, Trick-or-Treat was really just a kid thing.  The mood would start a few days before, when the elementary schools in the neighborhood would have their Halloween Carnivals.  Yes, we were allowed to call it what it was.  No Fall festival, no Autumn multi-cultural happiness day.  No worrying about offending someone-it was an unapologetic celebration of the pagan holiday Halloween.  These simple school carnivals were so much fun, with costume contests, games, and my all-time favorite event where I spent all my money, the Cake Walk. Grant Elementary sat right next to the old, dying Calvary Cemetery.  It was just on the other side of the original abode wall.  We would get up on tip-toe to look at the gravestones, some huge and ornate, some crumbling and half collapsed in a grass-less dirt field, and imagine that ghosts were all there, listening to the fun we were having just on the other side of the wall, and wishing they could come over and scare us.

In October, if mom happened to take us to Sav-on Drug store, KMart, or Fed-Co, we would make a bee-line to the Halloween aisle to ogle the boxed costumes. Costumes were cheap and simple.  They typically consisted of a flimsy rayon "pajama style" flame-resistant costume. And it had a mask which was plastic and fastened to your face with an elastic band.

A 1970s newspaper ad for cheap costumes

 The cheapest ones were generic things like ghosts, devils, cats dogs, bunnies, and witch costume sets. For an extra dollar, you could get a cartoon character like Casper the Friendly Ghost or Batman and Robin.  But we never got to pick out a new box set for Halloween.  Because we had the Halloween box at home.

The Halloween box was a large cardboard carton that normally resided on the dusty dirt floor of the crawlspace under our house.  It was about about a yard high and a foot wide. This old box had held various Halloween objects for the older siblings who came before us, and was now creased and torn from being dragged to and from the basement for countless years.  It waited quietly all year below the floorboards until October 31st, when someone would retrieve it. If Darwin was home, he would usually be the one to go get it, because he was the only one who wasn't afraid of the being in the basement.  Once he left home, however, the task fell to me.

Just peeking inside the basement door was scary enough for me.  It was dark and isolated from the living part of the house. There were spider webs and sometimes skittering grey mice. I hated going down there, but if I didn't, there would be no Trick-or-treat that night, because there was no way Mom was going to go down there and get it herself.  So I would calm my nerves, grab the flashlight, and go searching in the dark crawlspace.  Somewhere in the dark, tucked behind the Easter box, the Christmas box, and a moldering trunk that Mom said contained her father's Coffin flag, was the box that would enable us kids to gorge on candy for the next month.  That was enough incentive for me to find it.

Once I lugged the Halloween box into the house, Mom opened it up.  We kids stood there in anticipation, as though she was opening a newly discovered treasure chest. The thing was, we already knew what was in there.  It was the same stuff from last year, and the year before: Old vintage robes, hats, gloves, gowns, and cheap little masks that were once brand new and sitting on the Sav-on drug store shelf in their own little boxes, but eventually ended up at someone's garage sale for mom to find, buy for a nickle and add to the hodge-podge collection.   Everything was old and tattered, from years of trick-or-treating by other kids during the fifties and sixties.  But this was what we had to work with, and we always figured out some way to utilize these cast-off costumes.

Tammy's first treat-or-treat, 1963

My worst costume ever-tiny poodle mask and a threadbare 20 year old clown suit that didn't close in the back.  Recognize the leopard outfit? I wore it 7 years prior.  We got the free trick-or-treat bags from Jack in the Box.

These days, people start working on their costumes a month in advance, but back then we usually had about an hour to get it figured out, grab our plastic pumpkins and head out for an hour or so of candy hunting.

Mom used to let us go out by ourselves at dusk and do Eagle and Falcon streets.  At that time, Eagle Street had mostly elderly homeowners. They usually gave out treats from their era--popcorn balls, apples or raisin boxes, stuff we were not interested in eating.  One old lady would offer us ribbon candy, left over from the previous Christmas, stuck in one fused chunk in a glass candy dish.  Another old lady handed out gross orange circus peanut candy, tootsie rolls and Double Bubble gum.  The younger home owners usually had jack-o-lanterns on their porches and gave us real candy bars, sometimes even full sized ones.  A lonely old widow on Falcon Street would invite every kid into her house and scoop them up a real ice cream cone. You just had to sit on her couch and visit with her a few minutes while you ate it. A reasonable request.  One old man always handed out beautiful tiny polished stones, which some kids hated, but I loved getting to pick out the prettiest stone in the bowl.

After we were done with the two streets, we went home and mom drove us up to Arbor Street by the County Hospital (now its called UCSD Hospital).  We visited an elderly couple who we called "Aunt Dorothy" and "Uncle Jim."  Aunt Dorothy would greet us exuberantly with her peculiar Edith Bunker -accented voice. Her husband Jim, who had a metal hook instead of an arm, just sat quietly on the couch watching TV with Mugsy, their Boxer dog  She gave us lots of candy and then we were allowed to go to some of the Arbor Street houses for more treats while Mom sat with Aunt Dorothy and talked about antiques.

After that, we needed to get home, because after 8 o'clock, the big kids came out and you had a good chance of being egged.  During the six-block drive home from Aunt Dorothy's house, we passed lots of big kids and just imagined that their pockets were full of eggs.  We would get home and hurry inside the house, and Mom turned out the lights so no more kids would come knocking on the door.

We would all go to the kitchen, strip off the sweaty costumes and throw them back into the big box. All candy, coins, rocks, popcorn, apples, and raisins were dumped into big bowls for mom to sort through, and the empty plastic trick or treating pumpkins were tossed into the box as well.

1974-After Trick-or-Treat, dump the pumpkins out, ditch the costumes, and off to bed.

The next day, Mom would tape up the Halloween box, and it would be placed once again in the dark, dusty, creepy basement, next to the Easter box and the Christmas box. There it would wait, amid the spiders and the mice, for next year.