Growing up in Glendale 1956 until 1969

I was born in Seattle, Washington and lived there until I was 4 and then moved to Vista and El Cajon in the San Diego Area and then at age 6 I moved to Tujunga and then finally we moved to Glendale because they had the best public schools in Los Angeles County. So from age 8 in 1956 until 1960 I went to Horace Mann grade School and graduated from Grade School into Junior High School in 1960. One of the strange rituals that were tolerated at that time was being scrubbed by lipstick by kids in 7th and 8th grade. It was a spontaneous hazing ritual that scared the girls and some boys. But if you resisted you would be knocked to the ground by several older larger and stronger boys (both girls and boys the last day of school) and lipstick was put all over your face arms and if you were a girl up your legs and under your dress or skirt. I remember being knocked down and a very pretty girl from my class laying on the ground next to my crying as they put lipstick all over her bare legs with great glee. I just thought it was all pretty insane and not useful and probably would make that girl need a psychologist like being raped might. But when many people do something you often times would have to either wait until things change or you would have to kill someone to make it all stop because the tradition had already gone on like this for 20 or more years.

However, my parents didn't want me to go to Roosevelt Junior High because there was a gang there called the Khaki boys. Their gang outfit was khaki pants and a t-shirt with black boots with a switchblade hidden inside the boot to cut anyone they thought they needed to. (Guns weren't considered manly then) except by the mafia. So my parents moved so I wouldn't have to go to a junior high with a gang that ran the school and students(so to speak).

So, since the border between junior High School districts was Colorado Blvd. where Bob's Big Boy Restaurant was where all the hot babes and cars went to their drive in every Friday and Saturday nights.  So we moved up to Harvard Blvd about 1/2 block from Glendale High School and from which I could ride my bike up Verdugo Blvd. To Wilson Junior High School and then I could eventually walk to High School (1/2 block) to Glendale High School where John Wayne (the actor) had once gone to. In fact I got to go to Glendale High School before it was burnt down by a boy in my class that I knew of. What was really sad was that he was a straight A student but he had gotten a bad grade and he burned down the high school because his parents beat him if he didn't get all As. So likely he ruined his life by burning down the school. So the Glendale High School now is all new from the one John Wayne and I went to.

Yesterday my wife and I paid for most of our God Daughter's wedding and I met someone else who had gone to Glendale High School who was about 53 years old who was coming to the wedding from southern California and was a girlfriend of one of the brothers of the father of the bride.

She was telling me about the old lamp posts throughout Glendale back in the 1960s that had little Swastikas on them on the bases of them. She asked if I knew about them. I told her I had never seen them but that I knew that during the 1950s and 1960s people in Glendale wouldn't rent or sell to black people and that there was a collusion between all Realtors in this. But by the 1970s most all of this had changed. I told her that my father and my Aunt before him had moved to Glendale because Glendale had the very best public Schools in Los Angeles County. My aunt had a college degree and so had researched all this. So, as a result my cousin Glendale High Graduate of 1960 got a very good education and went on a scholarship to USC and got his college Bachelor's degree there and then on another full Scholarship to NYU Law School from USC. So, Glendale schools took both my cousin and I quite far in life and made us both critical thinkers so we could always make excellent decisions given enough information. I also told her that even though there was a NAZI party office in Glendale that many people I knew participated in a riot and threw rocks and bricks through their windows one Weekend night. The paradox of Glendale back then was that there were a lot of very far to the right segregationists who wouldn't rent or sell  to black people then. However, since the 1970s Glendale has become like all the other places in California and integration is everywhere all over now on the west coast now since the 1970s. However, it is true that the schools wouldn't have been so strict and leading to a good college education without the strictness that came from the people then. So as always life is a paradox in all these situations. Though Integration as well as the acceptance of Gay people and Gay marriage is a part of progress, there is also a tendency for the scholastic ability of public schools in those areas to decrease in usefulness as this happens. I personally think the reason for this is as areas are integrated more parents tend to put their kids in private schools which takes money from local school systems because of student money allocation from local government and federal policies and therefore public schools suffer and become deficient during this process of degradation of public institutions through the loss of money per student. It is unfortunate for everyone but it is still a fact to be pragmatically dealt with by everyone in whatever ways they are free to choose.

So, life goes on for us on. Obviously, many blacks and gays have benefited in various ways through all the positive changes since the 1970s. For example, when I was in High School during the 1960s there were people (football player types or worse) who went out with baseball bats to maim or kill blacks or gays from Glendale on weekends. I knew of people like this but more than anything else they just made me sick that there were people like this. Even in California during the 1950s and 1960s blacks and gays found by people like this were found killed or maimed beside roads throughout Los Angeles. Though this kind of thing was more common in the SouthEast of the U.S. there were also people who had moved from the Southeast to California that brought these maiming and killing habits with them. Thank God those days are gone now.

When I was 16 years old I got a driving job for Ernie's Camera Shop I drove a small but powerful Oldsmobile all over Los Angeles County after School and was paid $3 an hour then (twice the minimum wage or more. 'I think the minimum wage then was about $1.16 and hour) because it required the skill of being able to drive well and navigate all over a large county dealing with rush hour traffic often and people skills of meeting people and delivering and picking up specific things. It was sort of like being a mini-UPS kind of driver for a Camera Shop in Glendale.

I greatly enjoyed this job because I loved to drive and I got to travel all over the county. Also, this meant I might drive up to 50 miles or more towards a camera or film location for pickup or delivery. I really liked this job because I didn't have to pay for the gas out of my money and I was payed really well. I was happy! and I only worked about 20 hours after school and was usually home by 7 or 8pm at night.

I was driving this job during the Watts Riots which was a really bad time in Los Angeles for race relations. The rioting burned down much of Watts in Los Angeles and for me the scariest part of this was all the white folks in Glendale practicing shooting with all their rifles (illegally) on all the hills around Glendale. It seemed like every place there wasn't a house built people were target practicing with rifles on the hills around there. I found this really scary as the black smoke of Watts burning came up in the distance deep in Los Angeles. Very Scary times!

I was 16 then but when I was 12 years old my father and I (DAd was an Electrical Contractor) were helping remodel a Catholic Nunnery near USC downtown Los Angeles when I was out by the Utility truck getting parts for the electrical part of the remodel when I noticed rocks hitting my Dad's truck and rear window. So I dodged the rocks thrown by black kids across the street and walked in and asked my Dad what to do. He said to just dodge the rocks and not say anything to anyone. He said it wasn't like being in a white or mixed area it was dangerous to say anything or to even call the cops because a riot could start and people could die. So he told me to dodge the rocks and as long as the kids didn't come across the street and approach me that I should just dodge the rocks hitting the truck near me and go about my business as if nothing was wrong.

Obviously, things around the country have changed a lot since those crazy times. So, I think we are all plenty grateful for that!

Though I liked growing up in Glendale I probably would have preferred growing up in the country away from smog and the big city. But I did get an excellent education and as soon as I was 16 I started driving my own car wherever I could on weekends or when I was free during the week and had money to buy gas to drive it. I used to drive about 400 miles a weekend going to the beach, mountains or deserts within 2 to 4 hours by car from  Glendale. My freedom to surf, ski, hike, date and live and go wherever I wanted had begun. The sky was the limit. Thanks Glendale!

Though my father was a very conservative Republican I was exposed to all different sorts of ideas, politics, religions etc. in College in California. It was a time of Black Power and I even wound up meeting Eldridge Cleaver at one point in Berkeley. So, what college did for me was to turn me from a Goldwater Republican to a Moderate Republican and when Nixon let the country down I became an Independent in my thinking. Hillary Clinton had a sort of similar experience in her life as well. So I have stayed in this more moderate way of thinking by picking and choosing things I have found practical for human life (and all other life on earth) from all politics and different philosophies and Religions. This exposure to multiple points of view taught me to pick and choose all pragmatically useful concepts from all political points of view and from all religions. I'm grateful for all the wisdom of all cultures and points of view down through the centuries that have contributed to the completely Free Thinker that I have become. Thanks Glendale and thanks to the Colleges and Universities  in California that I have attended as a student over the years.