There were two grammar schools in Colton. Lincoln and Grant. Grant School was located in the western portion of town, but when we left the elementary schools we all came together at Roosevelt Junior High School for the seventh and eighth grades before going on to high school. Bob, Betty and I all went to Lincoln School which occupied the block between 8th and 9th streets and "D" and "E" streets. (Bob may have gone to school in Arizona for Kindergarten and maybe the First Grade.) I didn't go to Kindergarten but started in the First Grade in 1923-24. All of us finished up with the sixth grade at Lincoln School. The playground at Lincoln School was a hard dirt surface and we played some fairly rough games which were very rough on our clothing. I usually wore corduroy pants and a shirt to school. Only the Mexicans wore Blue Jeans in those days. I came home with my shirt torn nearly off my back so many times that my Father warned me one day that if it happened again he would give me a good "licking". I went to school the next day and advised my friends and told them I was going to be careful as I didn't look forward to one of Dad's "lickings". One of the boys, in fun, pulled on the back of my shirt to make it sound like it was tearing - and actually tore it. I was scared to death of going home but, because it was only a tear of about two inches, Dad was so pleased to see that most of the shirt was intact that he didn't punish me. My best friend at Lincoln School was Jim (?). He was a year or two older than I was but still in the same grade. He was the best fighter in the school and the only white boy who could walk through the Mexican section of town (South Colton) without some Mexican kid or gang of Mexican kids picking a fight with him. I got mad at him one time and hit him, and he beat me up quite handily, but we remained the best of friends. Patsy Robbins was a girl I had a crush on. I even carved her initials in my left forearm and rubbed ink into the wound, but decided in a few days that our "affair" might not last so I scrubbed it out. The scar no longer shows. On May 1st each year Mother would allow Bob, Betty and me to go barefoot for the Summer. No matter what the weather was, we had to wait until May 1st. My Second Grade teacher was Miss Oliver; Third Grade was Miss Curtis; Fifth Grade was Miss Hansen; Sixth Grade was Miss Neavitt. Our Music teacher for the six grades was Nellie M. Hubrich. Miss Hubrich liked me and I sang in several student light operettas during my time at Lincoln School. I was the Town Crier in "The Pied Piper of Hamlin" a Musical Operetta that Miss Hubrich arranged and directed. I had a singing part - a special number identifying myself as the Town Crier. Then throughout the operetta I would appear - ringing a loud bell - and make "important announcements". The announcements were usually directed at prominent local townspeople -most of whom were present. One was: "Dr. Whitmer has lost his suspenders." Dr. Whitmer was one of the few doctors in our town and everyone knew him so it brought down the house. Nellie was still our music teacher in Junior High School but she quit using me. I finally found out that it was because my voice was changing and I couldn't sing high enough anymore. In 1927 Lindbergh made his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Nellie Hubrich wrote and published a song for his triumphant return to the United States. It was entitled: "Oh Lindy, Our Lindy." It began: "Oh Lindy, Our Lindy, we're glad that you have come. We greet you with music and rolling of the drum." I can't remember the rest of it. Nellie also taught us several humorous songs to sing, most of which I have forgotten. One went like this: "Just like Sinbad the sailor and Robinson Crusoe I left my native land in search of wonders I did go. I went to be a sailor and I came back as you see A mixture of an Indian, a Turk, and a chimpanzee. Chorus: Jeh deh mah dee, jeh deh mah hoy Jeh deh mah dory pory Ika, pika, sika, crika Son of a whallop a dory - Repeat Chorus "I'd been at sea a fortnight when a dreadful storm arose Upon an island I was cast, to wind and rain exposed. By savages surrounded, it was their island home. They dressed me in a language decidedly their own. Chorus: "Three years upon the island I roamed about the land. And then one day when I was out a walking on the sand I saw a ship a sailing upon the ocean blue. I signalled her to rescue me and now I sing to you. Chorus: When I was in the Sixth Grade I attended a parent's night at Lincoln School one evening with Herman Peterson who worked for my Father who was a good friend of our family. After the program was over, Mr. Peterson, or "Pete" as we called him, and I were walking in front of the school. Pete was smoking a cigarette and he threw it down about half finished. I picked it up and began puffing on it. Pete said: "I don't think your Dad would approve of that." I shrugged it off saying: "Oh, he doesn't mind." The following day when Dad came home from work he took me by the arm and, without saying a word, took my pants down and laid me across the bed with a bare backside and took his razor strop and gave me a sound beating. I knew exactly what it was for from the beginning. When he had finished, he said: "Don't you smoke again!" One summer when I was about 10 or 12 years old Dad rented a beach bungalow on Collins Island in Balboa Bay. Collins Island is a very small island just north of Balboa Island and they are connected by a small bridge. Mother and we children stayed there for a whole month and Dad would come down on weekends from work. We could swim, fish, rent sailboats, etc., but the one thing that I remember most of all was the time I caught a stingray on my line fishing off the boat landing at the island. It was only about a foot long and I hauled it up onto the dock. I didn't really take a good look at it and put my hand on its back to facilitate taking the hook out of its mouth. It hit me with its tail stinger on the outside of my right palm. It stung a bit but mainly made me so mad that I went back to our bungalow and got a butcher knife and hacked it to pieces. In a short time my hand began to throb and I ended up spending most of the night walking around Balboa Island with my elbow on Mother's shoulder and my hand up in the air to keep my hand from throbbing so much. If I let it hang down at my side in the normal manner I could hardly stand the pain. Bob and I, and sometimes Betty, would go out in a rowboat early in the morning when the tide was out and gather butter clams from the sand bars. They were from an inch and a half to about two inches across. We would bring a sack full back and Mother would fry them in butter for us. We also caught razor clams with a heavy wire with a hook on the end. We could see the hole where the clam was located and run the wire down the hole until we could feel that we were passed the clam, turn the hook about 90 degrees and pull up the clam. They made good bait for fishing. We also caught baby octopuses and sold them to a Chinaman at a fish market for ten cents a piece. I rented a sailboat, only once I think, and turned it over in the middle of the bay and had to swim and pull it back to the island so we could upright it and return it to the rental store.
I entered Roosevelt Junior High School in 1929-30. Robert Gray was the Principal of the Junior High School and also our Science teacher. He was a nice man. He married one of the teachers at the school but I can't remember her name. Miss Hatcher was our spelling and penmanship teacher. She was a very tall woman (at least to us) and very strict, but a fine teacher. She used to tie me in my seat in class with a rope to make me sit up straight while writing. Due to my nearsightedness (which I didn't realize until I was about fifteen) I would practically have my nose on my paper while writing. We had spelling bees, and penmanship drills on the blackboard. Miss Hatcher would give us tests in spelling where she would name a word and we would have to write it. One time she gave the word "fatigue" and I pronounced it out loud "fat-tee-goo". She looked at me and said: "Cheater." The Mexicans and whites were always at odds at school and many fights broke out on the playground during recesses and after school. The playground, again, was dirt and we played touch football which sometimes got pretty rough. Most of the Mexicans dropped out of school while in Junior High and only a very few went on to high school. They called us whites "gringos" and we called them "greasers." The Mexicans liked to bellbottom their jeans by splitting up the leg seams about a foot from the bottom and inserting a triangular piece of red cloth to bell the legs. Today this is quite popular with some white people. We took woodshop in Junior High School. The shop was located in the Grant School, which was only a block away. I made a cedar chest for Mother the year I took shop. It was a pretty poor job but Mother accepted it with pride in her son. I have never been any good at woodworking. Betty and I both took piano lessons starting when I was in the seventh grade. We took them for two years but when I entered high school there were too many other interests to attract me and Mother finally let me drop it. Betty continued on for five more years but she says it didn't rub off on her very much. Our teacher was Eleanor Larsen. Her younger sister, Evilo, was a classmate of mine. COLTON UNION HIGH SCHOOL: In September of 1931 I entered Colton Union High School as a Freshman in the Ninth Grade. Bob at this time was a Senior in the school and was the valedictorian of his class. He was also the Editor of the 1932 School Annual. He would always be a hard act for me to follow scholastically. Donald H. McIntosh was the principal and as he had at one time been the athletic coach, he continued to take a great interest in sports. He was all business and didn't take to any monkeyshines by the students. I had to go to his office several times in the course of the four years I spent in high school. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for misunderstandings on his part. Nevertheless, he was a good man and I learned to respect him. When I first registered for classes as a freshman Dad had told me what subjects to take but my advisers told me that from my record in Junior High School I should take some easier courses. Sounded good to me so I followed their advice. When I got home that day and Dad asked me what I was taking and I told him, he hit the ceiling and told me to go back the next day and insist on the courses he had prescribed. So I ended up taking the basic college preparatory course. Fortunately for me. I had four years of English, two years of French, four years of mathematics, one year of chemistry, history, biology and physics. I also took a half year of typing in my senior year which paid off over the years as I have used a typewriter ever since. When I applied to Stanford University for entrance (Bob had gone there ahead of me.) I was short a half credit of "B" grades or better. I went to summer school and took American history over again as I had only a "C" grade in it. I went to school in Riverside and there were only two of us in the class. Myself and a Japanese student who didn't know the Mississippi River from George Washington. As a result I was the star of the class. It really didn't help me any but I did get a "B+" for a grade and that got me into Stanford. I played "D" Basketball and then "C" Basketball, and one year of "B" Football at Colton High. After that my sporting interests turned to swimming. There was no swim team at CUHS, nor a pool. I trained at the YMCA in San Bernardino under Jack Spragins, my swim coach. The water for the pool came right down off the mountains and had to be heated. One night Jack and I went over to the "Y" for a workout and Jack told me to dive in and swim eight easy laps just to warm up. I dove in and when I hit the water I took off like a jack rabbit and hit the opposite end of the pool and climbed out in a hurry. Jack came up to me and asked what was the matter and I said the water was too cold. He located a thermometer and tested it and found it to be 49 Deg. Fahr. They had just filled the pool and had not run the water through the heating pipes yet. In winter time I used to go into the boiler room, which was on the same floor as the pool, and change my clothes as the building was too cold in the locker rooms, especially after coming out of the water. There was a young wrestler who worked out in the gym at the same time I worked out in the pool. He was a short fellow but he weighed 300 pounds. I asked him one time how much faking was done in the wrestling matches and he said: "Come on in the ring with me and I will show you." I told him: "Nothing doing," but if he would come in the pool with me I would wrestle him there. He refused me and we remained at a standoff. Jack had no official position with the high school but Principal McIntosh allowed me to train at the "Y" and receive my gym credit. In my senior year I took third place in the Southern California CIF swim meet held in the Los Angeles Olympic pool and, to my surprise, at the end of the school year, Mac presented me with a Varsity letter in Swimming at a student gathering in the school auditorium. We had the Annual Senior Dress Up day near the end of our Senior year. I wore only a hula skirt over my under pants and McIntosh made me go home and put on an undershirt. He didn't think a bare chest was proper at school even for a boy for dress up day. A gang of us held together for most of our high school days. This included Harlan Gough, John Stokes, Athel Miller, Joe Reedy, Albert Floyd and myself. Without Harp we formed a group we called JAJAD, which stood for John-Athel-Joe-Albert-Dick. None of our gang ever got into any serious trouble but the school officials found us a difficult group. Primarily, I believe, because of our independent attitudes and refusal to buckle down to school protocol if we felt it was unjust. John Stokes became a lawyer and settled in Arcata, California. Athel Miller was killed in World War II. Joe Reedy joined the Navy, was accepted at Annapolis and graduated there. He got married, resigned his commission and lived in Arizona. Last report (1989) he is in a hospital in Loma Linda, California and is confined there. Albert "Bino" Floyd, a near Albino, was a talented artist. He lived in San Diego and worked for Consolidated Aircraft during World War II. He married Betty Artery and is now retired and living in the Mt. Shasta area. Harlan Gough became an aircraft pilot and flew out of Oakland Airport for many years. He retired in 1972 from his Aviation Business and flying the President of Almaden Vineyards for twenty years. He lives at Lake Tahoe, in Zephyr Cove, Nevada as a permanent home and has a condo at the Lakes Country Club in Palm Desert, California. Other friends at high school were: Mildred & Dorothy Crilly, Donald DeArmond, Arthur Bengtson, Dolly Edwards, Herma Corgill, Bert Doty, Charles Craigmiles, Priscilla Enoch, Alva Eickmeyer, Dorothy Hendrickson, Virginia Hewitt, Mary Lee Huckabay, Dorothy Jones, Dolly McKee, Glenn Missey, Evilo Larsen, Lowell Maltzberger, Lois & Eunice Olsen, Dorothy Preece, Antimeo Reyes, Nina Jean Richards, Mariano Rotolo, Phyllis Williams, Hazel Swanson, Joe Neider, Clea McPhie, Uriel Williams, Jack Allingham, Wayne Burbank, Jack Underwood, Paul Wear, Chris Ruiz, Tommy Whitfield and Harold Yates. Some of my teachers were: George Ahler, Mech. Drawing: Howard Beltz, Physics; Marguerite Brooks, Music; Evelyn Maxson, Biology; Ed Carrey, French; Josephine Atherton, English; Norm Fawley, Athletics. My high school math teacher was Miss Edna C. Battin. She was very strict and many students feared her. She had been burned with acid many years before and her face was badly scarred. This perhaps made her appear more fierce than she really was. I found her very fair and most capable after taking four years of math from her. Some of our gang would work half the night, independently, to solve the homework problems she gave us. At the end of my senior year I asked her if she thought I could become an engineer. She said yes and encouraged me to pursue it. Miss Battin drove a big buick and when she would come to a stop sign she would hit the brakes and the car would stop but the momentum would try to take the car forward. Then it would settle back and as it reached the back position she would gun the car and take off again without any waste of time. It was a pleasure to see her drive. Josephine Atherton taught me English for four years. She wasn't very pretty but she had a good figure. She was nicknamed by the boys "Venus de Milo." I took typing for a half year in my senior year at high school. Our teacher was Miss McNeill. She was always after me to keep my eye on what I was typing rather than the keys or looking around. One time she said to me: "Why are you looking at me?" I answered: "Maybe it's because you're so pretty." She was a redhead and she blushed a crimson red. The important thing about the typing class, however, was that there was a pretty little blonde girl in the class. She was a Freshman but she still caught my eye. Once a week we would have dances in the study hall on the second floor after school and I found out that she was an excellent dancer. After that we danced a lot together in the study hall. Her name was DeVonne Mayes. Harold Sharp was a year or so ahead of me in school. He was an artist and liked to draw. He and I were in the French class together so he knew me. As I developed my body swimming he took note of it and had me come down to his studio in town and he would make drawings of me. He always made my body much more developed than it really was, especially my arms. It was flattering to me and I really like to pose for him. When I entered high school as a freshman I weighed only 110 pounds, but when I graduated four years later I weighed 175 pounds. Six months later at Stanford, swimming in the cold winter I reached 200 pounds and my full height of six foot two inches.
I entered Stanford I entered Stanford University as a freshman in September 1935. Roomed at Encina Hall, where all freshmen were required to stay for the first year. My roommates were Dean Pierose, Deane Johnson, and Ashley Burns. Pierose was from Los Angeles, a bit older than the rest of us and also a good poker player. I stayed out of the poker games. Deane Johnson was from Ukiah, California and a brilliant straight "A" student. Deane became a successful lawyer in Los Angeles. Ashley Burns was the only son of the founder of the Burns Detective Agency, from Ossining, New York. Ashley was later burned to death in a hotel fire on the East Coast. In my Freshman year I took English Composition (Dumbbell English -my four years of high school English didn't help me at all), German, History of Western Civilization (required) and Analytical Geometry. Eighteen units which was a disaster. Bob should have warned me or not have advised me to take so much my first quarter. He should have realized that I was no Valedictorian in high school and would not do as well as he did. I found out afterwards that he had a rough time his first quarter, but not nearly as rough as mine. Grade points were as follows: A= +2. B= +1, C= 0, D= -1, and F= -2. In other words for 18 units of "A" grades the points would be 18+36, for "B": 18+18, for "C": 18+0, for "D": 18-18, and for "F": 0-36. At the end of the first quarter I stood at 8-19 which meant I only passed 8 of the 18 units, receiving "incompletes" or "flunks" in the other 10. The following quarter if I went minus 20 it meant I would flunk out. I went exactly minus 1 for the quarter which, added to the previous quarter's minus 19 equalled minus 20 and I was out. I returned home at the end of the second quarter (Winter) and worked in the Pacific Fruit Express ice house in Colton and for a construction crew erecting concrete silos at the California Portland Cement Company (Colton Cement Plant) and then applied for re-admission to Stanford in September 1936, being able to show that I had not wasted my time while out of school. That year began my slow process of working my way up from minus 20. I remained in Lower Division well into my third year of school because of my poor start. I finally graduated in April 1940 with an AB Degree in Engineering. I needed 180 units and had to be at least plus 1, or a "C" average. In my last two years, as I got into Engineering subjects that I liked, my grades ran more in the "B's" with a few "A's" and a few "C's". When I went home after flunking out and started working I received a phone call from DeVonne Mayes inviting me to an April Fool's dance where the girls invited the boys. It was a Mormon Church dance and my first encounter with the Church. We had a good time at the dance and I danced mostly with DeVonne. It had been her Mother's suggestion that she invite me. From April 1st 1936 we began "going together" and have continued ever since. After the construction job completed I went to work for the Pacific Fruit Express in Colton, icing boxcars of fruits and vegetables coming up from the Coachella Valley. I worked 12 to 13 hours a day, seven days a week for $0.40/hour. We would begin in the ice house at temperatures of 29 deg. Fahr. Work for 3 or 4 hours, fully clothed for the occasion. We would break out the ice (300 pound cakes) from the storage room with tongs and place them on conveyors to go out to the loading stations at the railroad tracks. After enough ice was up we would all go outside, strip naked to the waist and ice the cars. The ice would be slid across the dock onto the top of the boxcar end in 300 pound cakes. The first cakes were split in two with a large forked prong and allowed to drop into the ice storage bin on each end of the car. As the ice rose in the bin we would cut the cakes into smaller and smaller pieces until at the top of the bin the ice was broken into quite small pieces. After working in the hot sun at 100-110 deg. Fahr. we would go back into the ice house to get some more ice out. We would put on all of our clothes again and when we first entered the house the sweat on our bodies would freeze and we would be quite uncomfortable for about a half hour until we acclimatized our bodies to the cold temperature again. Working as a young man in the ice house with a strong body and tall enough to have good leverage for handling the 300 pound cakes was easy for me, but there were many older men working the same way, at the same wage, to support their wives and children during the depression years and it was a hard lot for them. Mother would make my lunch for me each day and I took seven sandwiches (14 full slices of bread) and as much fruit as I could get in the lunch sack. Later during the summer I received the better position of "pulling ice". This paid $0.45/hour and I worked only 8 hours a day. I had to pull 336 cans of 300 pound cakes of ice from the brine freezing room within the 8 hour period. At first I could not do it in 8 hours and the Mexican working the other side of the room came and helped me to get through on time. We pulled six cans at a time with an overhead electric crane. Then hand pushed the crane down to the end of the room where we placed the cans in a bath of water to loosen the ice from the cans, at the same time raising the previous batch from the water and placing them on a platform, tipping them over, allowing the cakes of ice to slide out and down a chute into the storage rooms. Then we filled the empty cans with water and took them back and lowered them into the brine tank. In order to pull the full 336 cakes in an 8 hour shift one had to make full use of each operation. While the crane was raising 6 cans of ice in one location, I had to be placing the wooden covers back on the cans of fresh water I had just lowered into the brine. Once I got the hang of it I could do 336 cakes in about 7 hours. Then the Mexican and I would sit and talk until it was time to punch the clock after the full 8 hours and then we could go home. I worked the 4:00 PM to midnight shift and then would walk back into town and go the theater and catch the end of the last show. I could walk in free as the ticket takers and other attendants were all gone by then. In my second year at Stanford I lived in Toyon Hall, rooming with Shelby Leasure. I also joined "El Campo" eating club, having pledged in my freshman year. Bob was also a member before me. In my freshman year I had washed dishes in a downtown (Palo Alto) restaurant for my meals. As a member of El Campo I got a hashing job, washing dishes, setting tables, serving, etc. I was able to get the job due to my swimming ability. Usually athletes held the hashing jobs. I also worked as a life guard at the Men's pool and hour or so a day, and in the Geology Department typing catalog cards. I received $0.50/hour and could only earn a maximum of $15.00 per month for 30 hours work. This was paid by the National Youth Administration. I sometimes acted as a bouncer at off campus dances for various school affairs. Yvonne Beattie was a singer for one of the bands and while I was going with her I was able to be the bouncer and dance with her when she wasn't singing. I also got $10.00 to boot. I never had any serious problems evicting unwanted persons from dances. Yvonne also left her car with me to drive. Whenever she needed to go anywhere I would pick her up. Her grandmother was my German teacher for a couple of quarters but going with her Granddaughter didn't seem to do me any good in German. The next year my roommate at Toyon Hall was Alvah Jordan Horn. The Jordan was after David Starr Jordan who was the first President of Stanford University. Al belonged to El Capitan eating club while I was with El Campo. William A. Lambert was the second term President of Toyon in 1938, his senior year. Al and I had a weekly ritual of going to Lambert's room each Sunday Evening at midnight to listen to a radio program entitled: "The Black Chapel." It was a radio thriller which we looked forward to. At the end of the year I was elected President of the El Campo Club and also President of Toyon Hall. As I came back married the following year and lived off campus I had to forgo both positions and other men were elected. I was never certain about my election as President of Toyon Hall. I always had a feeling that Al Horn had stuffed the ballot boxes but he never would admit it. I was also a member of the Axe Society and the Circle "S" Society. I finished school at Stanford at the end of Winter Quarter 1940. I had lost one quarter in my first year when I flunked out. Then it took me an extra quarter to make up all I had lost in my first year. Dad told me that wasn't so bad as my brother, Bob, had to go one extra quarter to graduate in Geology because of a field trip requirement. I received my AB Degree in Engineering dated 5 April 1940 on our oldest son's first birthday. After graduation DeVonne and I, along with baby, Dicky, packed our belongings, shipped what we couldn't carry in the car and piled everything else in or on the car and headed for Colton. The old Ford was overloaded to be sure and as we got a few miles south of King City we blew a tire. The spare had already gone flat and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet. It was early morning but still dark so I sat in the car with DeVonne until it got light and then hitched a ride back to King City and got a new tire for the car. From there we made it to Santa Maria where we got another flat and as we were flat broke by then the garage man would not fix it until we could assure him that we could pay him. I wired Dad by Western Union with the message: "Stranded in Santa Maria, wire me $10". Dad obliged and we finally made it to Colton. Graduation exercises weren't held until June and by then I was working for the Cement Plant as a draftsman and surveyor. Dad paid my train fare and insisted that I attend the graduation exercises and wear my cap and gown. Bob had missed that opportunity with his graduation because of his field trip.