Part Two - Monroe Street

Part Two

Monroe Street


By the end of World War II, the economy of the United States was taking off. The military services had released most of the those inducted for the duration of the war, and they were returning home. This time was different than with earlier wars, men were returning home with the GI Bill in their “pocket”. They had the means to buy new homes, go to school and get higher paying job. Some returned from the service with marketable skills learned while in the service. Earlier I mentioned that my dad had become a grocer in San Francisco. After we moved back to San Jose and the Chicken Ranch (no, not that Chicken Ranch!), my dad took the aviation skills he had acquired over his years in the Army Air Corp, and later the Air Force, and took a job with the fledgling aviation industry. He was a flight navigator, and he began flying in DC-4, DC-6 and DC-7 aircraft for Flying Tiger Line, and later, Slick Airways. Both were cargo airlines and charter passenger airlines.

Because of his job, he was able to move his family from the Chicken Ranch (I said, not that Chicken Ranch!) to a new home he and Mom were able to buy on Monroe Street. The house was a tract home, one of many going up almost over night in housing tracts all over the country, and in our case, in San Jose. On my 6th birthday, August 27, 1951, we moved into what would be my home for the next twenty one years at 655 North Monroe Street in San Jose.

When we moved into our house, my family consisted of my parents and my sister and me. I had my own room. It was painted blue. The house had only one bathroom, which I thought was normal, and apparently was in tract homes. We didn’t have central heat, but a huge space heater in the wall between the hallway and the living room. The heater gave out heat on both sides of the wall. I remember on cold mornings that my sister and I would get dressed in front of the heater. Once the house heated up, it stayed warm. Of course, this was California and the seasons were always mild.

Our house had three bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and dining room. Of course, the one bathroom. We had a two car garage, and at times we even put two cars in it! Mostly just the 1950 Ford sedan. My bedroom was at one end of the hall, next to the bathroom. My parent’s room was at the other end of the hall, and my sister was right in the middle. When my brother was born in 1955, he shared a room with my sister! Paid off being the oldest.

We had a huge backyard. Okay, not that big, but it was big to a 6 year old. My dad and the neighbors built privacy redwood fences, so over the years my backyard became Fort Apache. My best friends were my neighbors, Eddie Cutshall and Richie Slider. I was friends with both of them, but I remember that Eddie and Richie didn’t get along. So I usually played with one or the other. The only time we really all would play together was when we had a game of softball or football going in the street. At night in the summers we would play hide and seek, and that usually ended up involving most of the kids in the neighborhood; both boys and girls, and of many ages.

Eddie’s dad and my dad were pretty good friends. Mr. Cutshall was a vice president at a branch of the Bank of America. My dad was a flight navigator for an airline, so they both made pretty good money. The Cutshall’s lived across the street from us. My dad and Mr. Cutshall went fishing a lot when my dad was home. My dad was actually home a lot in those days because of FAA regulations, he could only have so many hours of flying per month. So he usually was home for a week or so at one time. My next door neighbor was Dick Slider. He was an insurance salesman and worked in Palo Alto. I guess he didn’t make much money in those early days, as I would learn from my mother later on. I didn’t see him much because he was gone all day, having an hour or so commute each way to work everyday. Once in a while he would go fishing with my dad and Mr. Cutshall, but not very often.

I guess as kids we didn’t know who had money and who didn’t; I just thought everyone had money. We did and so did Eddie. Our fathers had good jobs and our mothers stayed home. But the Slider’s were really struggling. Mrs. Slider worked somewhere later, but I can’t remember where, or when she actually started. One day I came into our house after being called in for dinner. We were having steak…..again! In frustration I blurted out, “Steak, steak, steak! All we ever have is steak! Why can’t we have beans like the Slider’s are having?” I remember my mom laughed, but until much later I didn’t understand why. But the next day we had ham and beans for dinner.

One of the neat things about our house was the trap door under the house. Our house was not a slab house, but built on a foundation with real hardwood floors. And there was plenty of crawl space under the house. We didn’t have trap door in the floor like in the movies, but it was in the back of the house, outside. My dad put spare lumber under there from his projects in the backyard. As kids, we would dare each other to go under the house. Funny thing is that I remember my friends and I going under there, but I don’t remember ever going under any of their houses. I guess they weren’t allowed. I don’t think my mom ever thought about it, and I don’t remember ever being told not to go under the house.

Shortly after we moved into the house, my dad began working on the backyard. I remember the neighbors all helped each other pour patios and build fences. My dad helped Dick Slider and Jack Cutshall, and other neighbors. And when it was time to pour ours, they were all in our yard helping out. As kids we helped be staying out of the way. My dad was an artist when it came to these types of projects. He designed a large back area and a walking path around the grass and flower beds. At side of the house that is normally neglected, he poured concrete and designed a play house and fort for us kids. That was the place we spent most of our summer days. In those days they didn’t get a big cement truck, but a portable cement mixer. I remember piles of sand and gravel on the driveway, and sacks of cement stacked up. It was a whole days project pouring that yard. Maybe more.

After the yard was poured, my dad began building the flour beds and his barbeque pit. We would take Sunday afternoon drives up into the mountains and gather shale rock that was just lying on the side of some of the mountain roads. Our car would be almost bottoming out with the heavy rock in the trunk. He used that rock to finish his design. He had an arbor covering the whole patio area.

Life was perfect there on Monroe Street. I couldn’t have been happier, and I certainly couldn’t have seen the big changes that were looming on the horizon.

Although I remember starting Kindergarten while in San Francisco, when we moved to San Jose and the Chicken Ranch (not that..oh never mind), I didn’t get enrolled into the Kindergarten program. I started school in the first grade at Benjamin Cory Elementary School. The school was just three blocks from my house. My first grade teacher was Miss Nelly. I clearly remember on my first day of school I was sitting “Indian style” on the floor, talking to Richie Slider. Next thing I knew, whack! Miss Nelly hit me across the knuckles with a ruler for talking! Scared for life! For the most part, the kids I met in the first grade would be in school with me for the next twelve years. Except for Richie, whose parents got divorced somewhere about the sixth grade, and they moved away about the time we moved to Dallas. I would come back to Monroe Street via Los Angeles and Willow Glen, while in the 7th grade, and to most of my school chums.

In the first and second grades I had Miss Nelly. Third grade was Miss Pentny, (be still my heart). The fourth grade was Mrs. Landware and Miss Ealey in the Fifth grade. Mr. Patterson was my 6th grade teacher. Uncle Henry mentioned once that he had a Miss Ealey as a teacher in about the 5th grade. So I asked her if she had had my Uncle Henry as a student. She did, and she remembered him very well! Of course, she was much younger in those days. I remember she was very old, and had a reputation among the kids as being very strict. I was not thrilled to have her as my teacher, but as it turned out she was a wonderful teacher and I didn’t think she was strict.

I remember a lot of events that Cory, but one stands out in my mind and can be a very vivid memory… especially under certain conditions. I was walking to school one day when there was work being done on the school. I believe a new classroom wing was being added. Part of the process of roofing a flat roofed building was using tar. As I was walking by the tar machine the odor hit me just as my stomach cramped up and I had to go to the bathroom BADLY. I ran from the corner gate at the school to the boy’s restroom, barely making it! From then on, for years, I would hold my breath whenever I went by a tar heater. I guess I figured that it was the odor of the tar that made me sick enough to have to go to the bathroom. As a six year old you don’t understand that it was a coincidence. Now, and entire lifetime later, whenever I smell tar in a warmer, my mind races back to when I was six years old and I instinctively hold my breath. When I do, I chuckle to myself. How vivid that memory is more than fifty years later.

On November 10, 1955, my dad came to the school. I was in Mrs. Landware’s class in the portables. He took me out of class to tell me that I had a new baby brother. Henry James. I didn’t get to go home, but I did have a new baby brother. My sister and I ran home after school, but we were met by Aunt Jean, as my mother was still in the hospital. In those days a new mom stayed several days in the hospital. What seems funny, or strange, at least, is that I have more memories of Evelyn coming home from the hospital in Oakland at age three than I do of Henry coming home when I was ten!

My dad put a backboard and basketball hoop above our garage door. Richie, his older brother, Ronnie, Eddie and I played basketball almost everyday the summer he put it up. I think it was the summer my brother was born. We had a big wooden garage door and we also used to play dodge ball. The kid who was it would stand about half way down the driveway (short one) and throw the ball at the kids lined up against the garage. When baseball season was upon us, we would go into the middle of the street and play baseball, or softball. Monroe Street was a wide street, much wider than the other streets in the neighborhood. The city designed the street to someday be a main thoroughfare, and later was one of the busiest streets in the area. But in 1955 the only traffic was the residents. At the end of the street was an orchard. So we played softball in the street for hours at a time…stopping very seldom for a car to pass by.

At the end of Monroe Street was a prune orchard. Signs posted on the trees at the edge of the orchard warned of no trespassing. Of course, to a ten year it might as well said welcome. We would ride our bikes down to the orchard and ride through the trees. Sometimes we took a shovel and built up dirt ramps for us to jump on our bikes. And, although we would sometime find our ramps disked under as the trees were readied for irrigation, pruning or harvesting, I do not ever remember seeing a farmer.

I don’t remember how we learned that the orchard had been sold and that a shopping center was going to be built, but what adventures we had while the orchard was there. And we had even more adventures when the shopping center was being built. As kids we would ride our bikes up to the corner of Monroe and Forest Streets and watch the bulldozers as they leveled the trees and moved dirt. Huge fires burned the trees that were piled up. Almost overnight huge mountains of dirt appeared. Huge, deep holes were dug in the ground. And on the weekends, no one was working. So we would ride our bikes up to the top of the hills and ride down. The dozers always left a path to the top of the hills, so it was easy riding. Once I remember coming down the hill and breakneck speed and hitting soft dirt just where the road turned to the right. I couldn’t make the turn and over the side I went. I was riding down soft dirt and holding on for dear life. In those day there were no such things as bike helmets or pads. Anyway, I rode that bike all the way down and cashed at the bottom of the hill. My pants were torn and my knees bleeding, but I stayed and rode it again. I don’t remember my mother getting mad, but I was told I couldn’t ride down the hills anymore. I did anyway.

Once I was with Richie and Eddie and we were playing on the side of a hill. Some other kids from elsewhere were also there. Why kids try to be tougher than the other guy I don’t know, but soon a rock fight broke out. After a few tosses, WHAK! Right on the side of my head! Blood started streaming down the side of my face. Everyone scattered. Worse than bleeding, I had to go home and see my Mom, who had told me not to go to the hills. She cleaned up the wound, and then loaded me into the car. I had to have four stitches to close the wound.

Soon the hills began to disappear as the Valley Fair Shopping Center began to take shape. We would ride our bikes on the parking lot down the underground delivery areas. We only did that a time or two before a gate was put up. How we never go caught by construction workers or the police I will never know, but we didn’t.

Times were a changing on Monroe Street. With the advent of Valley Fair Shopping Center, came traffic and stop lights. Later the street was painted with white and yellow lane lines. And the quiet Monroe Street of my young life was never to be again.

When I was eleven, early in 1957, we moved to Dallas, Texas. I said good-bye to Richie and Eddie and to my friends at school. I bid Valley Fair farewell and we moved to Big D. My dad had moved a few weeks ahead of us to get us a house and car (among other things he got that I learned about later in life). He flew with us on a Western Airlines DC-7 from Oakland International Airport to Dallas Love Field. In a DC – 7, the flight was longer than a flight across country would be today. I remember the flight being seven hours. I have flown from the east coast to the west coast in 5 hours on today’s jetliners.

When we arrived in Dallas we went to the house my dad had rented. We lived on Amherst Street in the University Park area of Dallas. University Park was, and still is, an upscale part of Dallas. My dad was buying a house just two doors down, but it wouldn’t be ready for us to move into for a few months. So we moved into our first house. Thirty plus years later, on the day Heidi got married to Shawn in the Dallas Temple, my mom and I would go to see the neighborhood again. I had been there several times in recent months. I had shown the street to Brett and the house my parents had bought. But to me something was different. Although I could find the house we owned, I couldn’t find the house we rented. I knew the address, but the house there just was not the house I lived in. When I had my mom there, we stopped and she was trying to orient herself to the house we owned. It had not changed, although the neighborhood was being renovated, with older homes being torn down and new home replacing them. As we sat in our car, a man who lived in the house next to where we were parked came up and started talking. As he and my mother talked, they realized they knew each other. He was our neighbor and remembered when we lived there. He told us the house we first lived in burned to the ground shortly after we moved away. The house now there was nearly thirty years old. We never went into the house, although we thought about it, but no one was home. Funny thing is that I have been to Dallas a lot since that day, but have never been back to Amherst Street since that day.

Across the street from our home on Amherst was a house with a vacant lot next door. On that lot was a huge horse chestnut tree. The tree had one huge limb that was about five of six feet off the ground and was parallel to the ground. As kids we would climb up on that limb with our comic books and sit there for hours. On a hot Texas afternoon, it was fairly pleasant in the shade of that tree. When I took Brett by my house years later, I found the tree, but an old house was right there. As a kid, there was no house, just a vacant lot. And that house looked like it was at least thirty years old. Then I remembered that I hadn’t been there in more than thirty years! Kind of like walking in snow that as an adult comes up to your knees and thinking how much deeper the snow was when you were a child and it came up to your chest! When I went back a couple of years later with my mom, both the “old” house and tree were gone and a huge new multi-story home was being built.

My best friend there was a boy named Steve Solomon. He lived up the street, a couple of doors from the corner, where we caught the bus to school. Steve and I were together all of the time….either I at his house, or he at mine. The Solomon’s were Jewish and I used to kid him at Christmas time because he had a Christmas tree. His mother wasn’t a Jew, so they celebrated both the Christmas and Honokaa holidays. He and I had paper routes and we used to go pick up our papers together. We delivered the afternoon paper, The Dallas Times Herald. One thing I noticed was that Steve never rode the bus to school. Sometimes I would get a ride with him and his dad, but I usually rode the bus. Some years later my mother told me that our neighbor across the street, with whom she was friendly at that time, called her and told her the she shouldn’t let me be friends with Steve, and that she shouldn’t be friendly with our other neighbor because they were Jews. I guess she had never seen bigotry raise its ugly head in San Jose because she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She thanked the lady, but didn’t have much to do with her after that. We continued to be friendly with the “other neighbor”, and I didn’t stop being friends with Steve.

When we first moved to Dallas, I was still in the sixth grade. I went to University Park Elementary School. I walked to school as it was about four blocks up the street. I didn’t ride the bus until Junior High School. Evelyn and I walked together. About half way to school we crossed over Turtle Creek. Obviously the creek was at the lowest part of the street, and would toss a rock or two in it every day. The creek wasn’t like a running brook, but a wide, slow creek, dark green. Leaves falling into the creek just sat there as the water moved very slowly. One day we were at school when the rain came and it rained and rained. It was Ark type train, which we have come to know as “a gully washer”. The streets were flooding and school was dismissed. Our neighbor came to pick up her children and Evelyn and me. As I remember, Henry was sick and mom couldn’t come. We couldn’t walk home down Amherst Street as Turtle Creek was flooding over its banks and Amherst had what I have come to know as a “low water crossing”. The street was flooded and closed. We had to walk a longer way and cross over a bridge under which was a rushing and raging Tuttle Creek…..more a river than a creek. After we got home and dried out, we watched the rain. Neighbors were outside and then came fire trucks. My dad told mom to get some things together because the streets was being evacuated as the waters rose. She packed things in the car, but in the end, we weren’t evacuated. The water finally stopped rising two doors down. Finally it stopped raining, and the next morning the street was dry, and Turtle Creek was back in its banks. A couple of days later, as we crossed Turtle Creek our way to school, it was once again a slow, wide, green body of water.



A few days later another storm (spring time in North Texas) came blowing in. I was watching television with Henry when the program was interrupted with a new bulletin. A tornado was on the ground in North Dallas. We lived in North Dallas! My dad was at work at Love Field, and we didn’t know what to do in a tornado. The radio announcer said to get into the hall and close the doors, and turn the radio on. So we did. We didn’t have a battery powered radio then, so mom, very hesitantly, went into her bedroom and turned the radio on to KLIF. The tornado was on the ground in North Dallas and was hitting homes along Amherst Street and Lover’s Lane! We lived on Amherst and Lover’s was one block over! We were gonna die! What we didn’t know until later, the part of Amherst and Lover’s Lane it was on was about three miles away. When my dad got home we drove down to the area. I remember seeing trees down and houses damaged.

That night, and for many months after, I had nightmares about the tornado. I would be in the front yard and the tornado was at my heals. My family was in the tornado shelter, a big moving box, and they were calling to me to run and get in the shelter with them. As I ran my feet wouldn’t move…they felt like each foot weighted a hundred pounds and was stuck in gooey mud. Finally, at the last minute, my dad reached out, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the shelter. Funny thing is all I knew about shelters was I had heard that we needed to get into our shelter, or a hallway. We had no shelter, so I don’t know how a moving box became my shelter. Later, when we moved to the house we bought, we had a cellar, a storm shelter. But we never had another tornado while we lived there.

School was out by the end of May and we were going to go back to California for the summer. We kids thought it was going to be a great time because we were going to be staying in Capitola, at a house my parents had rented. Over the years we have called that house “the other Capitola house.” I write about that house in another section of this narrative. What we kids could not have known was that while the summer in Capitola was to be a great adventure, it was to be a living hell for my mother. I guess that sometime around the tornado, a storm of another sort was brewing. My father was like the proverbial fly-boy…he had a “honey” at every place he landed. In those early days of aviation there were lots of layovers, mostly for him in places like Frankfort, Germany, Tokyo, and Honolulu. The layovers were sometime several days long, and in my dad’s case, “layover” took on a whole different connotation. In the end, he had had a lengthy fling with one of the flight stewardesses named Audrey. Now that Dad wasn’t flying, but in the headquarters in Dallas, Audrey and my dad came to a place they hadn’t been before…. unable to be together on those “layovers”. So my dad told my mother about Audrey. He said that he loved my mother and his children, but also loved Audrey. He wanted to have an arrangement where he could have the best of both worlds. My mother told him, to quote President Harry S. Truman, “not no, but hell no!” So, our summer in Capitola was a trial separation for my parents, so my dad could figure out what he wanted to do.

The summer was fun for us kids, but there were lots of tears for my mother. As a concerned twelve year old I tried to comfort her. She assured me time and time again that she was alright, but just sad because her brother, Uncle Henry, and his wife, Aunt Alberta were getting a divorce. Since I had no reason to doubt her, I believed her. It would be years later that Audrey would tell me the story. I believe it was here in our home when Audrey and my Dad stayed with us for a few days on their way to Costa Rica. In those days my Dad’s work was in Dallas, and Audrey had gone to work for another airline. While we were in Capitola, my Dad and Audrey decided not to see each other anymore. Audrey didn’t like the role of “the other woman”, and my Dad was not inclined to leave his family. As Audrey did not fly into Dallas, they didn’t see each other anymore.

Somewhere in the middle of the summer my Dad took some vacation and joined us in Capitola. He told my Mother that he had broken off his relationship and contact with Audrey and wanted her to come back home to Dallas. She needed some time to think things out and he later returned to Dallas. By the end of the summer, she decided we would go back to Dallas, and she forgave him and took him back. Upon our return to Dallas we had an new home. The home was two doors down from the house we were living in. And this house had a basement, or storm cellar, although we never had any more tornados. I started 7th grade at Highland Park Junior High School. My mother seemed happy. She was doing the “society” things expected of the wife of an airline executive. We had a housekeeper and a babysitter. I remember visiting my cousin Kathleen in San Jose and they had a Voice of Music Hi-Fi…and lots of 33 and 45 RPM records to go with it. That Christmas in Dallas we got our own VM Hi-Fi, and lots of 33 and 45 RPM records. My sister and I would dance and sing “You are my Special Angel”, the popular song of the day. And we had it on a 45. Marty Robbins’ “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation” was also very popular and we had that one, too! Life was good.

Then one day my parents announced that we were selling our house and moving to Los Angeles. It seems that my Dad and Audrey gotten back together again, and in those days companies did not like their executives fooling around. My dad was let go. He always said it was because navigator’s had been replaced by a “little black box” and that Slick Airways didn’t need a Chief Navigator. But in reality, he got fired for fooling around and cheating on his wife. We sold our house rather quickly and moved to Southern California. We ended up in the San Fernando Valley in a town called Sepulveda. I was still in the 7th grade and attended Northridge Junior High School in Northridge. It was while we were there that the end of Raymond and Delsa came. I have recounted this earlier, but my dad left home and my mom and kids moved back to San Jose. Since we couldn’t move back to Monroe Street because the house had been leased, we moved into a rented home in Willow Glen. My mother moved all my dad’s things into the garage when the movers unloaded. I remember him coming to pick up his things and how many tears we kids cried. It was a very hard thing. It hurt more than one can imagine. It hurt for years, and I think it still hurts. It has taken me many, many years to come to grips with this. After my father died in 1996, I could not bring myself to do his Temple work. It wasn’t until 2003 that I finally had it done. And then it was only after I found out that I could have him sealed to my mother and then have Evelyn, Henry and me sealed to them. It shouldn’t have taken that for me to do his work, and I have since repented, but it still hurts.

I was still in the 7th grade. I attended Edwin Markham Junior High School in Willow Glen. I don’t recall a whole lot about that house, or even the street it was on because we were there for such a short time. The renters of our house on Monroe Street contacted my Mother and wanted to know if they could get out of the lease early. A few weeks later we moved back to Monroe Street and home. I was still in the 7th grade and began attending Herbert Hoover Junior High School with all the friends I had grown up with. While in the 7th grade, I attended school in Dallas, Sepulveda, Willow Glen and San Jose. It must have seemed to be along year! No wonder I did so poorly in school that year. I started out with what I thought was a happy family in Dallas and ended up in a broken family on Monroe Street. Gallons of tears were shed by us all. My mother filed for divorce and my dad, now flying for Flying Tiger Line stayed in Los Angeles.

I graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in June 1963. Our graduation ceremony was held in the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. The days in high school were some of the greatest times I had as a youth. I was in the Future Farmers of America and I raised two sheep and three steers. I also had a tomato project where I raised a half acre of tomatoes and then sold them after they were harvested, at least the ones I didn’t eat. The summer between my Junior and Senior years I was hired by the San Jose Unified School District Agriculture Department to run the school farm. I was responsible for irrigating the trees and doing other farm chores. For three weeks I had to drive out to the school animal ranch to feed and care for the animals there. That chore was divided between the high schools and me. I didn’t have to worry about harvesting any fruit because that was contracted out, but I did get to harvest all the peaches and keep them. My mother was planning on canning all the peaches. We really only had a few trees, so it was a doable project. I had planned on harvesting them on a Monday, but when I got to work I found they had been harvested for me over the weekend, but I never saw a peach. Someone had come in and stolen my crop. I later found out who it was, but by then it was too late to do anything about it.

When it was irrigation time I could hire two helpers. One of the guys I hired was a friend who had a summer job working for a family friend who hauled watermelons up from the Imperial Valley. Eddie would show up to work with two watermelons everyday that week. We would put them in the irrigation ditch because the water coming out of the ground was very cold. As the day heated up, so did we. So about ten o’clock we stopped for a cold watermelon break. That was great fun and good eating!

In my freshman year I raised two sheep. In my Sophomore, Junior and Senior years I raised steers. We would harness break the steers so we could lead them. Every week in school we had a field trip out to the animal farm during our Ag. class and we would take care of the animals. Shots, de-worming, grooming, etc was the order of the day. We unloaded hay, fed the animals, cleaned the stalls….not only for our steers, but for the sheep and hogs there, as well. I was smart enough not to raise a hog! At the end of the summer, we prepared to take our animals to the County Fair where we would show them and sell them at auction. The Santa Clara County Fair was always held during the first week of school. Naturally, we figured out a way to have to be at the fairgrounds with our animals the whole week. The fact that the school administration signed off on the deal was a surprise to all of us. I guess they had been doing so for so long that they figured it was supposed to be that way. We were actually only supposed to be out there for the afternoons.

At the fair we worked with our animals getting them ready for show. We wanted them to get blue ribbons so they would get a higher price at the auction. My lambs both received blue ribbons. Except of my first steer, which got a red ribbon, my steers all got blue ribbons. I remember going into the ring and showing my steer. I had bathed the steer, bleached the white parts of the hair so he was good looking. Never thought of putting some cologne on the steer, maybe I would have gotten Grand Champion. After we sold the steers we were no longer aloud to do anything with them, and they were generally taken away sometime that day. I clearly remember the next time I saw my steer after my first auction. We took a trip to the San Jose Slaughter House the day our steers were to be slaughtered. I found my steer, hanging in the cooling locker. It had its ribbon and number attached so I could identify it. Don’t know who bought it, but I hope it made good barbeque!
The summer after I graduated I got a job with the San Jose Parks and Recreation Department as a playground director. The director of playgrounds was an LDS fellow who was in love with my cousin, Linda Sawyer. She also worked for the Recreation Department. So with a good word, I got hired. The summer of 1965 I was the Recreation Leader at one of the busiest school playgrounds in the city. It was in an upscale area so there was lots of kids and lots of money. Twice during that summer we chartered school busses and took the kids to see the San Francisco Giants play baseball at Candlestick Park. Because it was a day game, and very few people in the stands, the Giants let us move from the cheap seats in right field to empty seats behind the backstop. The announcer recognized us, as well as other kids groups, over the PA system The kids loved it. We also took the kids to the public swimming pool once a week. It was there one summer afternoon that my sister came running up me with a letter in her hand. It was from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and contained my Mission Call. I had been called to serve in the New England Mission. My Mission President was President Boyd K. Packer. It was early August, and I had to be in the Mission Home in Salt Lake City in mid September, 1965. It turned out that two of my best friends, Scott Don Smith, (yes, that Scott), and Jamie Ballentine, entered the Mission Home on the same day. I will relate memories of my mission later.

I served two years and then returned home to Monroe Street. I got right into school at San Jose City College. I was called into the Institute Director’s (Brother Glen Stubbs) office and given the calling of Institute President. Since I didn’t really know anyone, I asked him to help me fill the officers positions, which I had the responsibility of selecting. He helped me choose all the eligible female students, hoping I would end up taking one of them to the Temple. I did. As my secretary he suggested Janet Hawkes. It took a few weeks and a Sadie Hawkins dance to get together, but once we did, that was all it took. One of my institute instructors, Brother Harris, who became a close friend, gave a class on love. He taught us that the Greeks had various stages and names for love. Sounded like a good line to me. So on my first real date with Janet Hawkes, I tried using the line. Of course, I botched it all up and just came out and told her I loved her. She about croaked! WHAT? She cried, and I made a feeble attempt to gloss it over. She decided it was time to go in. I hoped I would get a second date. I did, and the rest is history. However, the story of my first date is still told over and over. I feign embarrassment and everyone laughs. Usually at large family dinners, like Thanksgiving. I guess when I die they will tell that story at my funeral.