Written By Kenneth Kinder
During my youth we had to use our imagination a lot of the time to amuse ourselves. I was trying to explain this approach to my almost six year old granddaughter who was constantly requiring my attention to keep her entertained. It was papa read to me, turn on the computer, watch me ride my bike etc. My response was to play a game that you can use your imagination, and then I realized I was going to have a problem demonstrating this ability. So I tried to tell her how as a young boy I would for hours on end amuse my self in the disguise of the CAPED CRUSADER. My mother made me a mask and cape fashioned from this striped ticking material that was used to make pillows and feather beds. I would keep this little pouch hooked on my belt and when some scoundrel appeared, I would don my out-fit and render justice where ever it was needed. I then went on to explain about the time a horse drawn buck board was left in the school play ground behind our house. The 4th of July parade ended at this location, and this wagon was left there the rest of the summer. Talk about using your imagination WOW we captured more bandits, killed more Indians, and saved more damsels in distress than ever thought possible.
This play ground was a normal size like most schools use, but in my memory it was like crossing the Mojave Desert. My brother and I would get a bunch of guy’s together and some would pull this wagon and some would ride. We would take turns doing each thing. We would also lay flat on our back and let them run over us, and just as it got past we would grab the back , pull ourselves on board and capture the wagon. Talk about fun, we were never bored. We would make rubber guns with a long piece of wood where we carved notches in the back, nailed a string along the length and then stretched strips of rubber cut from old inner tubes and placed in these notches. Each notch represented a bullet, and the more notches the more fire power you had. We then would deploy ourselves in and about the wagon, up in the many trees that were all over, behind a building and start shooting our rubber bullets. Once you got hit, that game was over for you. We had a huge tree in our back yard, and we hung a rope from one of the large limbs with knots tied all along the length of the rope. With the help of the knots it was easier to either climb up or go down from the tree. After a busy day of fighting bandits we then went in to the saloon (garage) and place our money (cut pieces of newspaper) on the bar and have ourselves a shot. Since I have grown into adulthood I have gone back to this place from my youth, what a terrible disappointment. My desert is so small, my trees aren’t as tall and every thing is different. The elevated porch that we would jump from holding an umbrella was only about six feet from the ground. I was told you shouldn’t go back because you will be disappointed, and they were right.
So after explaining this way of using your imagination to Jessica, she said I know what you mean papa. It’s like when I tell you there is a mean man living next door, and he has three inch teeth with blood dripping from them; but you can’t tell mom cause she won’t believe you right. BY GEORGE I THINK SHE HAS GOT IT. She say’s I do that all the time with Mikey and Shelby next door, so I decided to eavesdrop on their conversation and sure enough they are stretching it to the limit. Given enough time she will be as windy as her grand mother.
In my last newsletter I wrote about my maternal grand parents, and there is so much more to tell about these two people. Before they moved into the back woods by Occidental. They lived out in the country some distance from Bodega Bay, California. This is the location that Alfred Hitchcock filmed the movie The Birds. I state this so you can get a feel for the area. Any-hoo Hee-Haw was working for a man named Bob Keyes, and his primary job was sheep herding. This country was not very far from the Pacific Ocean and was pretty foggy during the mornings and night. The grandparents lived in the same kind of conditions minus all modern conveniences. This is the style of life they loved best. It was here at a very young age that Hee-haw taught Neal and I the right of passage called Snipe hunting. Visualize this, mostly barren rolling hills grossly void of vegetation eaten down by the grazing sheep. Very few trees, and some fairly steep and deep valley’s and gorges. The moon was non-existent and the fog was so thick you literally could not see your hand in front of your face.
Well these were the conditions that Hee-Haw said were ideal for Neal and I to experience snipe hunting. So after supper that night he got a couple of burlap sacks and took me and Neal way down to the bottom of one of these deep ravines. He said this was an excellent place to catch snipes, and because we couldn’t see a thing we ask how would we be able to catch them? His reply was, just hold the burlap bags open, and he would go up to the top of the hills and drive them into our open bags. He said we would feel them hit the bottom of the bag, and when we filled our bags we could come on home.
Well Neal and I sat out there in the freezing fog for what seemed an eternity waiting to catch our limit of snipes. It never dawned on us what a hoax was being perpetrated on our trusting natures. Even after we finally gave up, went back to the cabin and found Hee-Haw cocked back in his chair warming himself by the fire of the woodburning stove we didn’t realize we had been taken. No these two naive citizens had to have a picture drawn before we could accept the fact that we had been tricked. In fact this left such a strong impression on my mind that I would question any thing that sounded un-usual after this adventure. Such as much later when I was in my teens that a group of adults wanted to take me Grunion fishing. Well I was a lot smarter than bite on the suggestion that on a full moon night at certain times of the year at the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, you could in fact catch fish by the handful, and once again fill a burlap sack. The major difference being this in fact was the truth. Southern California during the 1940s, this was a great place to grow up go to school and grow into adulthood. The church we attended would on many occasions get large flat bed trucks with open wooden racks on the side, fill them partially with loose straw and take a bunch of teen-agers to the beach on a warm summers night to go grunion fishing. There would be numerous bonfires all along the beach. The water temperature was usually warmer then the evening air, making it more inviting to stay in the warmer ocean water. We would wait until late in the night when the fish would come in with the surf, burrow into the sand, lay their eggs and go back out with the returning waves that we would dig down into the loose sand grab a handful of fish and throw them in our large burlap sack.
These fish would reflect the full moon off their shining bodies like a bunch of diamonds on the beach. After a fun evening of swimming, fishing, and eating, we then had a great hay ride back home in the back of the truck. Life was much more innocent when I grew up than the gang activities that are prevalent today. Oh sure there were gangs then and we had what they called Pachukos, (Joot Suits) but we didn’t have drive by shootings. My brother Neal had gone to a movie one night in El Monte and after the movie on his walk home, a bunch of these pachukos chased him. He out ran them and hid under a bunch of hay at the El Monte hay market next to where we lived. He stayed there many hours until he was sure they had gone. Even if they had caught him all he would have received was a good whipping, not be shot by some teenager like today.
There came a time in the Los Angeles area that the military was called out to quell the uprising that this bunch was causing because most able bodied men were off fighting in the war. A large group of service-men swarmed the L.A. area and walked the streets literally chasing all of the trouble makers out of our country, and made it safe for those of us that were left at home. The same thing holds true here as it did when I was very young. You still can’t go back to the day’s of your youth. Southern California today, in no way resembles the country of my past, void of citrus orchards and open spaces. Replaced with heavy industry, commercial complexes, residential tracts and smog.