We often greatly simplify family history down to lists of names, dates, and places listing births, marriages, and deaths. We can do much better by passing on to future generations stories of our lives the surroundings in which we lived, the challenges we faced, and the goals we achieved. Such information acquaints our heirs with real people. Descriptions of who past generations were go a long way toward telling who we are. It satisfies a yearning to know our heritage and it helps our children and grandchildren understand where they came from.
* * *
MY EARLY LIFE
I was
born on August 4, 1936 in Stockton California, at the height of the peach
harvest; and during 1936, my father was working for the MorPak Cannery where
his brother Albert held a management position. After the peach harvest ended in
September, Father returned to continue his education at Stanford Law School. However, our country was in the midst of the
Great Depression. While Father made it through the 1936-37 school year, he
lacked funds for the fall term in 1937. We returned to Denair CA, where both my
James and my Spencer grandparents lived, and moved in with my mother’s parents,
Dana and Pearl Spencer. For 1937-38, Father rented out our Palo Alto home in
hopes of returning. At Denair, he was employed in the orchards of both of my
grandfathers. The main jobs were first pruning the apricots at the Spencer farm
and then pruning the peaches at the James farm.
* * *
Adding a Little Sister: I well remember the day my parents brought Diana home from the hospital in April 1939. For the first year and a bit, she was limited to crawling around the living room floor while I could walk all over the house, ride my tricycle outside, and roam outside. When I became old enough to have a “real” bed, Diana got my crib. It
was a great day when I was playing in the yard and saw a delivery truck bringing a new bed for a “big boy.” That bed is still used by my grandson Alexander Kelsey in Illinois.
* * *
Boyhood Wanders over Sixty
Acres: From ages four through eight, my parents gave me freedom
to wander over our yard, orchards, and fields. I climbed our hill,
strolled along the lake, rested in the shade of the eucalyptus grove, but
avoided the smelly hog pens. I enjoyed the springtime blooms of golden
poppies and red paintbrush flowers that covered the fields before they were
cultivated for planting. Father taught me the names of the many plants
that grew wild in the fields and near the lake.
I carried water to our animals and played with the lambs and
kittens. I climbed a favorite walnut tree and gained additional nerve to
go higher as I grew older. My father
bought a kite and helped me fly it.
After the wind carried the kite high into the air, we felt that it would
be such a shame to bring it down that we tied the string to my walnut tree and
let the kite fly for days until it came down during calm weather. During
winter rains, my outdoor explorations were limited by mud that soiled clothing and
ruined shoes, but I still wandered outside wearing “galoshes” over my
shoes. It was a great spring day when
the weather warmed enough to permit swimming, and I would pester Mother until
she was free to go down to the lake to watch me swim and perhaps go in herself.
Other memories include
befriending a Mexican apricot picker named Sixto, learning some Spanish while
teaching him some English. At another time, we harvested watermelons,
loaded them onto a truck, and drove the truck to the Denair railroad station
where we unloaded the melons onto a railroad car on a side track. One
year, we planted a row of artichokes along the farm road from the house to the
lake, and dining on their harvest made me enjoy eating artichokes for the rest
of my life. One day, Mother and I were
driving home from school with news from town, and I got to run out to the field
to tell Father that President Roosevelt had just passed away.
As I look back, I am very grateful that my parents allowed me to roam so freely; and I feel sorry for today’s children whose outdoor activities are increasingly limited by safety concerns. In June 2018, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal called “The Overprotected American Child.” When I was 7 & 8, I spent many hours by myself out in fields and orchards only instructed that I was to report back to the house at meal times.
* * *
Gratton School: I began my formal education by entering the
first grade in 1942 at Gratton School. Academically, I learned quickly and soon
completed my first-grade work listened to the interesting lessons Mrs. Dorian
was presenting to the higher grades and learned much of the more advanced
material. Thus, I started with an advantage when I transferred to the
second grade class in Denair. My
weaknesses were in penmanship, art, and music.
* * *
PINECREST
In the 1920s, Grandpa James leased a lot from the Forest Service at elevation 5200 feet at Pinecrest near Strawberry Lake. His sons built a cabin with three bedrooms plus a central living room and a corner kitchen with running water supplied by the community from a mountain spring. In the 1940s, the James families spent many summer days at the cabin, swam in the lake, and hiked the mountain trails. The favorite hike was two miles around Strawberry Lake. We occasionally drove up during the winter for sledding and playing in the snow as the Dodge Ridge ski are had not yet been developed. Uncle Albert acquired a nearby cabin, and our families had good times when both families occupied their cabins simultaneously. Children of my generation played back and forth between the two lots. Early in the summer of 1942, I caught whooping cough, and Diana followed shortly afterwards with a milder case. I whooped up most of my food and lost a lot of weight through June and July.Mother took me to our doctor in Modesto for weekly shots, one week in the left arm and the next week in the right arm. By the end of July, the shots had me on the mend, but both arms were painfully sore from elbow to shoulder.I needed time to recover by actually digesting my meals, regaining weight, and gaining the needed strength to start school in September. Shortly before my 6th birthday, Father took us to Pinecrest where the three of us spent a couple weeks while he returned to the valley for the peach harvest. On my August 4 birthday, Mother initiated a “present family” tradition that I continued with my daughters when they were children. The process began by presenting me only a card for my birthday.Just one lone card was a big comedown for a six-year old until I saw that the card contained a clue describing a hiding place somewhere around the cabin and lot. Since I was a poor reader before I started school, Mother read the clue to me.I interpreted the hint, not always correctly on the first try, and found a hiding place only to find another clue.This sequence was repeated until the final clue actually took me to my birthday presents. During the following years, Grandpa took six of his grandchildren to the cabin for a week or more each summer, usually in July before his peach harvest began. We would go swimming, boating, and hiking and come back to the cabin to play croquet outside or card games around a table.We would swim out to war-surplus pontoons placed in the lake. The river was only a mountain creek that we could easily cross by jumping from rock to rock and shallow enough for wading to cool our feet.From there, we could walk upstream along the creek past large granite slabs and through bands of pine forest.We were told to keep on the watch for rattle snakes and actually saw some sunning themselves on rocks from time to time. In the early years, we would drink cold water from rapids in the creek.
* * *
Years at Modesto High School: In 1949, I entered Modesto High School as a freshman. I would get up at 5:30, light the stove to heat the house (every night through the
winter, Father would turn off stove while we slept to reduce propane bills), perform my assigned chores of delivering food and water to the farm animals, eat breakfast (always a citrus fruit, eggs with a strip of bacon, and a bowl of hot cereal), and catch a bus at 7:20 for a half hour ride down Tully road to reach Modesto High where classes began at 8:30. After school, the bus brought me directly home by driving north along Tully Road. Thus, I was lucky in being nearly the last scholar to catch the bus and being nearly the first one to get off. This situation changed in my junior year. The city opened Downey as a second high school, and the bus had to transport freshmen and sophomores to Downey and then juniors and seniors to Modesto. I caught a bus that was nearly empty at 7:05, rode north along Tully Road nearly
to the Stanislaus River, rode east a mile to McHenry, rode south on McHenry, crossed over to leave students at Downey, and finally reached Modesto High. I was now on the bus nearly two hours a day. On these rides, I became close friends with my near neighbor Gary Martin who would talk me through each TV program that he
had watched the night before. He probably felt sorry for me as my parents did not have a TV until 1960. They finally bought one when they could listen to the Presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon.
I left the small country school atmosphere in a class of 38 at Salida to enter a class of about 600 on the MHS campus where I seldom saw anyof my former classmates. I was college bound, and most of the Salida class majored in trades, industries, commerce, or agriculture. Required classes were designated x (for students wanting to go on to college), y (for students pursuing occupations that did not require college degrees), and z (for students academically challenged). My circle of friends were drawn from about 50 to 75 out of the 600. I took required classes each year in English and Social Studies as well as classes I needed for college in science (chemistry and physics), math from algebra to calculus, Spanish, typing, and mechanical drawing (for use in engineering design). Every student was also required to spend one hour each day in a physical education class that devoted 6-week periods to baseball, football, swimming, track & field, or tumbling. As a consequence of having to catch my bus home after school, I did not participate in the many after-school clubs and activities that were largely populated by “town kids” who had known each other since their time in elementary and junior high schools in Modesto. Over four years, I had only three or four classes with my former classmates from Salida. Between classes and during lunch periods, my group of friends played chess, discussed games played by our favorite sports teams, and sometimes talked about homework. In my senior year, I was one of 20 students enrolled in an independent study class that met two hours a day to take English Masterpieces, Psychology, and Calculus. I ended MHS getting almost straight A’s except for my B’s in Physical Education and earned an award as the top male student in the class of 1953. I received a wrist watch that I wore daily for over 30 years and trophy cups for the top grades and also as the top student in math and science. These were presented to me before a student assembly on the last day of classes. My parents picked me up after the last day of school and were astounded by the trophies that I brought home.
[The above is excerpted from a longer family history document written by Douglas, RJK]
