The sixties were a good time to be alive and a teenager in Southern California.
There were many temptations then as there are now, but those temptations didn’t seem to be as dangerous back then as they are today. My friends and I were able to stay away from drugs and to stay away from trouble… or as some might say “we didn’t get caught!”
Our interests seemed to be focused on cruising Whittier, Sunset or Van Nuys Boulevards to find girls, or cruising down Beach Boulevard to Huntington Beach to find girls, or going to High School dances or events to find girls. It seemed as though everything we did, we did for the purpose of finding or impressing some girl.
A big priority back then was to obtain a driver’s license and a car, if my car was broke down, had a flat tire or needed gas there was always the possibility of borrowing Mom’s big 9-passenger station wagon that we could use to go cruising in to find girls… which was highly unlikely, but we still had to try.
After we got our cars and drivers licenses the world of Southern California opened up to us. But we were also introduced to reality and responsibility because now we had to get a job to earn money for gas in our cars and insurance so we could pursue girls. Minimum wage jobs paid $1.35 in the early 60s… fortunately for me my Dad used his contacts to get me a summer job in the Meat Packing industry in Vernon, Calif. This summer job was full-time and paid nearly $3 per hour, in 1966 that was a lot of money. Back then we could fill up a 20 gallon gas tank for $5.
I should have been rolling in the dough, but after getting paid on Friday evening the cruising started… my buddies and I cruised from the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley, and up and down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego to Santa Monica and into Hollywood in our constant search for girls… of course we saw a lot of them, but none wanted anything to do with us… It probably had something to do with none of them wanting to get into a car with a bunch of boys out cruising. So after a weekend of constant cruising, shooting pool, going to the movies and eating a lot of hamburgers and hanging out at the beach on the weekends I usually had to borrow some gas money from Mom or Dad so I could get back and forth to work for another five days.
Another reason that I probably couldn’t attract any girls was because of my job… The place I worked was right next to a rendering plant where all the really gross parts of cows were rendered into fertilizers and other foul smelling products. My car had the aroma of Vernon, California and those dead cows embedded in the upholstery and paint of my car. It also seemed that I could never get the stench of the place out of my skin and hair no matter how many showers I took or how many bottles of English Leather cologne I used… or come to think about it maybe it was the cologne…
Another issue that I faced was that even though I had a cool Earl Schibe painted blue 1950 Chevy to cruise with, and on paydays had a pocket full of spending money, I was extremely shy around girls and was very unsure of myself. I found it very difficult to even speak to girls… so what did I do? I signed up for Drama class at Rowland High. Some of my friends’ parents worked in the movie or television industry, not as famous actors or anything; they usually worked as electricians, carpenters or sometimes as stunt people. The kids that I knew who did have famous parents usually never had any contact with them. A lot of kids I knew lived in a home with a divorced mother. I always felt sorry for them because my parents stayed married for more than 50 years. Even the “child actors” that I knew of, but never really knew were way too important to hang out with us ordinary people. Most of those kids are now dead. I figured they died because chasing their dreams killed them… or maybe drugs.
By taking Drama in school helped me get over my shyness and also led to a wasted number of years of also trying to becoming a professional actor. I finally came to the realization after several wasted years that my wife and children were more important to me then continuing to chase after a pipe dream. My children needed my attention more than I needed to Act.
Another class that really helped me in my life was “Typing.” My four years of Drama, Remedial English and one semester of typing at Rowland and years of Community Theater, led me into the career field of Journalism… I have worked on newspapers, magazines, radio and television with the American Forces Radio and Television Service…and now Public Affairs…go figure. I’m sure that my High School English teacher probably thought that I would wind up as a day laborer somewhere.
At one point in my educational career someone thought that I was smart enough to graduate directly from the seventh grade at Alvarado Junior High to the ninth grade at John A. Rowland High School . At the time I thought that it would be really cool to skip having to go to school for a whole extra year. I didn’t think about being a simple minded freshman at Rowland and not knowing anyone… and leaving my buddies behind with them having to go through the eighth grade without me… but what did I know at the time.
Mom was real proud of me for being so smart that someone figured that I would benefit by skipping he 8th grade, until she discovered in my junior year of high school that I might not graduate. I did graduate though… barely.
Summer was here, I was finished with school… forever… I thought, and life held unlimited possibilities for me. After graduating I went back to work at the meat packing plant in Vernon… I seemed doomed to work in some sort of meat processing job because during the school year I got a job at a meat market in Hacienda Heights, California… there I met some other buddies Ray and Larry. Larry’s older brother took care of him because their Dad was a professional musician and worked in Las Vegas a lot. I never knew where their mother was and never asked. We even cruised up and down Whittier Boulevard together looking for girls. Ray was a little older then Larry and I so he was eventually drafted into the Army and went off to Vietnam. We lost track of Ray then. A few years later I heard that Ray survived Vietnam, but used his Army education to get into dealing pot, which got him busted and put into prison.
I eventually figured that I had better change my career field away from meat processing… probably because I was laid off from the meat packing job.
I started working for a used car lot on Whittier Boulevard for a while… That is when destiny hit me. One of my cousins eloped from Nebraska with her new husband to California… their car broke down and they ran out of money in Rowland Heights, so they were staying with my parents until they could get on their feet.
Linda and Lou needed some help. I volunteered one day to take Lou out to see if he could find a job. On our cruise through La Puente, California on that fateful day, he spotted the Armed Services Recruiting station located near the old Star movie theater. It had been there for years and to me seemed to be a bit foreboding with the mean looking recruiters hanging out in front of the office. But Lou wanted to see what they had to offer. The Navy recruiter was the only one in at the time, so Lou talked to him. I found what he had to say fascinating, so instead of Lou signing up, I did. As I was only 17 at the time, but a recent high school graduate, I needed parental permission. Lou and I left with me holding all of the pamphlets about my future and the permission slip for my Mom and Dad’s signature. That night my Dad came home and I explained what I wanted to do… of course Mom was against it but I was able to talk them into signing that important document. Besides I needed to do something to avoid the draft.
I was too stupid to go to college to obtain a draft deferment as most of my friends did. I didn’t want to go into the Army or Marine Corps to go directly off to Vietnam. I didn’t want to join the U.S. Air Force because I would become very air sick when flying… besides in 1968 the Air Force’s waiting list along with the Coast Guard’s was two years long to get in.
The Navy had cool uniforms and it seemed the Navy went to more exotic places then any of the other services… as depicted on TV and at the movies at the time.
That was on July 8, 1968. I decided that I would get my Mom and Dad’s permission to become a Sailor with a girl in every port…little did I know. On that fateful day I finally found a girl who would give me the time of day… after my boot camp and advanced training was completed we got married. We are still married. I retired from the Navy the first time in July 1989 and returned to Rowland Heights. Then I returned to the Navy as a civilian employee and retired again in May 2013.
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