More snippets of a young boy’s life
As you can see, the above photo was taken in December, 1958, and my sister, Janet, and I are in shorts and short sleeve t-shirts. That’s either an early indication of global warming, or another reason my mother should have been (was?) on a governmental watchlist. This time for child endangerment for letting us run around in winter with no warm clothes on. And yes, I was barefoot.
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"Get your elbows off the table. And sit up straight," mom said to me for the hundredth time.
How do you comply when someone tells you to sit up straight but has never shown you what that means? I understood the elbows off the table part, but in my mind, I was sitting up straight.
One day when I was in the third grade, mom brought home a stack of lumber and told me to build a bike rack.
"How do I do that," I asked. "I don't know, but you can figure it out," she said. That became the standard answer when I asked mom how to do most anything she asked that was beyond the obvious.
Sure, I had a hammer, but it wasn't much good except to pound in thumbtacks, definitely not a 10 penny nail. Not that it mattered. My skinny underdeveloped arms lacked the strength to even swing a hammer, let alone pound in a nail.
I don't recall if we even had a saw to cut the lumber with, even if I’d known what I was doing. My parents divorced when I was young, and mom wouldn't allow dad around - he wasn't much help, anyway. I've always joked that he didn't know which end of a screwdriver to use, which wasn't too far from the truth. The surprising thing was he was president of a large automotive repair business and had several auto parts shops throughout San Diego County. When you're management, apparently you don't need to know what your employees are doing or how they do it?
Even though I can clearly picture the wooden bike rack that held a bike for each of us four kids, I don't recall how it got built. My guess is my grandfather helped me, or he built it as I stood there handing him nails. Either way, that bike rack was around for years and held many different bikes.
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Once or twice a year, when my mom wasn’t dehydrating pork or scorching filet mignon, we’d go out to dinner. Or, maybe we went out because she overdid the dehydrating or scorching? Although, I’m not sure how she would’ve been able to tell.
The two places we’d go to were La Rancherita, a little Mexican hole-in-the-wall, or the A&P Market. Both were in La Jolla.
My only recollection of La Rancherita was its small interior and sending back a cheese quesadilla because it had ‘something weird in it,’ which thinking back was probably cilantro or some other benign ingredient. Whatever it was, I wasn’t havin’ any part of it.
At the A&P Market, in the back they had a counter where you slid your tray along to pick up your order, cafeteria style. This was my introduction to pastrami sandwiches, and possibly where I got the idea in my head to own a deli. I still remember the smell of the place and the taste of their pastrami sandwiches, served with a thick wedge of dill pickle! Ecstasy.
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Just before school would start up in the fall, mom would load all four kids into the car and we’d head off to JC Penney or Walker Scott, a local clothing chain, for new school clothes. I’d get a pair or two of Levi’s and a couple of Madras shirts. Combined with a pair of new blue tennies, my wardrobe was complete.
But there was also the dreaded hours-long stop at Golden State Fabrics where mom and my sisters would shop for fabric and sewing patterns for clothes my mom would make for my sisters. McCall’s and Butterick were household names. Apparently mom was a better seamstress than personal chef, since she was a volunteer to make costumes for The Old Globe Theater.
The only saving grace for these way too frequent pilgrimages to Golden State, was that down the street was a See’s Candy store. My reward for napping the afternoon away on a bolt of fabric was mom buying me a pound of peanut brittle.