ROBERT E. KEY..... SUMMER, 1952

I was welcomed with open arms by the Glendale School System to do crossing guard duty for Mark Keppel Elementery School...corner of Glenwood and Virgina Avenue....1952 A. D.   After a short interview with Norvell Hayhurst, Supt., Glendale Unified School District, I was given an orange hat, an orange vest, and a big stop sign.  He gave me the hours of operation and shook my hand.  There was no background check nor drug test....this was 1952,  and probably what helped me was that several children were killed going to school....hit by a dump truck at Concord and Glenoaks several years previously.  The Summer of 52 passed without much happening.  After the excitement over being seen flying Bob around in my space craft, I hid it in the garage all Summer and just did yard work, polished up my diary and added a few things that I had forgotten, and spent allot of time wondering when the next aftershock would hit after the violent Tehachipi quake in July.  Didn't see Bob much as his folks took their annual vacation in Oklahoma.  That, plus he went to Summer School and hung out with his friends.  He would stop by for visits and tell me about his adventures as a member of Hitler's Little Stormtroopers...a special group of neighborhood kids who held their "meetings" while sitting on their bicycles in a circle under a street light.  He had told me about the great bean attack on the Brann's house  using pea shooters and hard Navy Beans which came in a sack. And....and....I went to visit Pfeiffer's toy shop and bought a model airplane and a motor.  I selected a plane that had a fabric stretched over wing ribs instead of thin sheets of Balsa.  I chose a smaller sized plane and a size A engine.  It was an O.K, cub 0.049.  Drag racing was just begining to emerge.  They held their meets at old abandoned airport runways and sometimes on small airports that were still taking planes once in while.  These were all back yard "boys" who souped up their own engines. There were very few "rail jobs" in these beginning days.  Allot of Ford roadsters and Fiat Coupes.  The engine of choice was a 48 Merc Flathead.  Bored, stroked, hotter cam than factory, and three Stromberg 97's.  A really fast time back then was 120 mph in about 11 or 12 seconds in the quarter mile.  I thought about racing the Hudson, but it  was too heavy.  Never-the -less, I wanted to compete and I drove out on a Sunday afternoon to an abandoned strip near Saugus which was on the edge of the Mojave Desert. I just watched. I remembered Dad when we moved out there from Oklahoma in 1944.  We stopped at a gas station in the Mojave Desert on way out and he commented to the attendant about the barron land scape to the attendant and he mis-pronounced Mojave....saying it just like it looked on a sign...MO-JAVE....hard J and long A.  The attendant laughed and told my Dad how it was pronounced.  My Dad thought a moment and said " I bet it gets very hot here in Hoon and Who-lie."  I never did race the Hudson and School was starting in one week....mid September.  Hot..it always was when school started....new and stiff jeans soaked in sweat....I will never forget the smell of sweaty fabric.  I drove down to Mark Keppel one evening to get a clear picture of where I would stand.  I also stared at Jeanette's house.  No one to be seen, but front door was open.  I really felt nervous.  Here I was, an adult nervous about meeting a thirteen year old girl.  Somehow, my emotions had not kept pace with the aging of all other components.  That general area was a hot spot in a spiritual sense.  The houses were all upper middle class. Lots of Spanish architecture... tiled roofs and stucco..lots of arches.  Beautiful landscaping everywhere. Impeccible lawns...a mixture of color...the reds. the creamy stucco.  the deep greens...bushes, trees whose limbs kissed each other over the middle of the road.  The air perfumed from rich earth and blossoms.  I remembered how the transition from that smell on the way to school interfaced with a slap in the face transition with the perfume of teachers as they walked down the hall.  It made me so nauseus....it was the association of the smell and potential hurt.  But, at least, we learned.  I start my guard duty tomorrow.  I actually think I will feel like I did when I went to First grade....my most nervous year of all.  (to be continued)