Off we went to Mission Valley. At that time, Mission Valley was an undeveloped area filled with ponds, quicksand, and horse pastures several miles from where we lived. Our parents never would have allowed us in the area. It was no secret kids sometimes drowned there.
We had to navigate thick brush, snake-filled canyons, cross a small two-lane road, and climb over various fences to get to the horse pastures. Too small to mount the horses, we climbed the fence and jumped on the back of any horse standing next to it. We were having a great time!
That all came to a screeching halt when the police showed up! We were bundled into the police car and hauled off to the school principal’s office. The dreaded principal’s office. Little did I know then what the future had in store for me.
That pretty much set the tone for my early academic endeavors. My mother met with a teacher or the principal virtually every year I was in school.
My father, the oldest of seven children, met my mother at a fraternity mixer his freshman year at San Diego State University, a teachers college at that time. He was a big guy who played football and belonged to Sigma Chi fraternity. She was a small woman who was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. At least as far as he was concerned, it was love at first sight. He and my mother dropped out of college and got married. My father started work as a tinsmith at the Naval Air Station at North Island and worked his way up the hierarchy.
I was born January 27, 1942. World War II was well underway. The government discouraged workers at North Island from joining the Armed Forces because their work was judged to be too valuable to the war effort. Both my father’s brothers served: Bob as a decorated Navy fighter pilot off a carrier and in many battles in the Pacific, and Keith in the United States Marine Corps. Keith was among the first Marines to land in Japan after the atomic bomb. Entering the harbor, he saw firsthand the devastation created by American air raids. Had not Japan surrendered, he would have been among the first invading forces with little chance for his survival.
I was incredibly lucky to have good parents. My father was a great role model who set an enviably high standard for us, but because of their service in WWII, Bob and Keith were my heroes. Keith being a Marine had a lot to do with me choosing the Marine Corps. They participated in a seminal event in American history, and sadly, their stories are lost. I never had a really good conversation with either of them about their experiences. They wrote nothing down. I have only a few letters they wrote home and their military records. I don’t want that to happen to me.
My mother gave birth to my brother Gary a year after I was born and Paul four years later. She worked part time at various jobs in order to make ends meet. Around Christmas, I remember her working at Sears, Roebuck and Company where she got a discount on our school clothes.
We lived in the house next to my mother’s parents until I was in sixth grade then moved to Spring Valley. Living next to my grandparents was both good and bad. My grandfather was a very able craftsman. At Christmas, my parents would buy secondhand toys, and my grandfather would redo them so that they looked brand new.
He also made several boats. One of them was a cabin cruiser he took out to the kelp beds fishing. He liked company, and we were the most likely suspects. Gary and I got rousted out of bed at some ungodly hour on weekends. It was pitch black when we left port, and one or both of us would invariably get seasick.
We had one of the first little black-and-white televisions in our neighborhood. My grandfather would regularly come over to watch professional wrestling and roller derby.
The downside of having them next door was that my grandfather was an alcoholic and a mean one at that. My mother carried some resentment, growing up in a house where she was afraid to bring a friend over, not knowing whether or not her father would be sober. My grandmother, whom Dad called Foxy because he said she was always one step ahead of everyone, would frequently check all of his stashes. He went on the wagon for seven years because his doctor told him if he continued to drink, it would kill him. Then one day while my grandmother was away visiting relatives, he fell off the wagon, and he started drinking again. It killed him within a year. His death was hard on our family, but it did bring my grandmother closer to us. I think, at times, my mother struggled with their relationship, but my father and the three of us enjoyed her sense of humor. Even into college, I would bring dates over to her house for her delicious homemade pancakes.
In third grade, I definitely struggled with math. I don’t think I was doing red hot with my teacher either. My parents took us out of public school and enrolled us in Saint Didacus, a Catholic school. One year, I was a nun’s favorite and the next year, not so much. Sister Mary gave me her personal prayer book and a load of encouragement. Sister Rose gave me the sharp edge of her tongue and hair-raising stories of what the devil did with misbehaving children.
My mother didn’t care for the parish priest in Spring Valley, so we went back to public school. My mother’s visits to my teachers and/or principal resumed. I was somewhat rebellious and a general pain in the ass to everyone involved. I took exception to whatever anyone in authority might suggest, particularly my parents. I also was the resident expert on most topics.
My wife claims nothing has changed.
Gary and I were a definite trial to my parents. Paul seemed to slip by without ever getting caught. Gary and I constantly got into some kind of mischief, fought each other, or did something really stupid that left one of us hurt. I showed Gary a judo move that knocked him out cold. I thought that I had killed him! On another occasion, we were playing in the canyon as we frequently did, and Gary threw a bamboo spear just as I told him not to. I ended up with a hole next to my eye resulting in the first of many stiches I acquired over the years. If my parents scolded Gary, he likely would go out and start a fire or break a window. If punished, I would run away.
I easily was in more trouble more frequently than either brother, probably because Paul was too young, and Gary figured out that whenever he did something wrong, he got caught. I was much slower to work that out.
Running away as a strategy, didn’t work out well for me. My mother would help me pack my suitcase and send me off. I would sit down in the canyon for the day, get hungry, and trudge back home, thoroughly chastened.
We were a family of ice cream-a-holics. My father even owned an ice cream shop at one point. The three of us fought a nightly running battle over who would dish out the ice cream; each of us claiming that whoever did ended up with the biggest bowl. My father, demonstrating the wisdom of Solomon, decreed that whomever dished out the ice cream got the last bowl chosen. The result was bowls so evenly divided it would have made a weights and measurement expert proud.
In San Diego, we lived in a small, two-bedroom house. The three of us slept in the same room. Gary and I had bunk beds. Nightly, we would giggle and carry on despite numerous threats and warnings from our parents. Finally, my dad would have enough and off would come his belt. Gary got the worst of it because he was on the bottom bunk well within the belt’s reach. On the top bunk, I would roll next to the wall where the belt barely reached and yell bloody murder. Paul had enough sense to lay low, thereby escaping the belt.
We moved to Spring Valley when I was twelve. Spring Valley at that time still had avocado and orange orchards. There were not a whole lot of houses around us. Behind our house was a hillside full of brush, small wild animals, and snakes. We wandered everywhere with little parental supervision. I met my best childhood friend and my parent’s all-time favorite, David Wagner. David instigated virtually all the adventures and good times I had growing up. My parents even included him on our family vacations. One of my mom’s fondest stories was waking up on a weekend morning and finding David sitting in our living room patiently waiting for us to get up and fix breakfast. He liked my mom’s waffles. In those days, no one locked their house or closed the garage door.
One of my best memories involved his junior high girlfriend. She would ride her horse over to visit David. They would sit on the rim of a canyon. While they canoodled, I would ride the horse. It worked out well for all involved.
Once we got our driver’s license, we would go surfing, or occasionally, with Gary, take our .22 rifles and head out to a shack on the Yuma