MOVING TO CALIFORNIA 1944

Blythe was either being polite or she was really fascinated by my life stories..  We had gone to my three places of my best memories and I asked her if she would like to start back home to Sacramento.  She had another idea  "Let's go to Glendale ....I've never been there"   I said it sounded good to me.  We went back to the Mayo Hotel and packed and left out the next morning.  I said "We will take 66 to Albuquerque and then head South ....we will go through your namesake, Blythe, California on the border of Arizona and California.  I want to take your picture standing next to the "Welcome to Blythe"  sign. As she was a good driver, I let her drive some to give me a rest.  I asked her if I talked too much and she said  no, "It's the only way I can learn about your life, and it is anything but boring."   That was good to hear as I seemed to have something to say about every mile, every turn in the road.  We were on the Turner Turnpike which ran from Tulsa to OKC.  So, with her encouragement to blab, I started in:  After my Father left Mead Bros., he was hired by Amerada Petroleum Corp. as an accountant.  After a few years in Tulsa, he was offered a position at the Los Angeles Office, which he took.  Homer Mead of Mead Bros., had retired and lived in a nice home in Beverly Hills and offered to let us stay withy him until we found a home .  Someone mentioned Glendale as being a nice, safe town and my parents shopped around.  They finally found a house on Norton Ave.  Two bedroom and one bath..nice enough.  Good neighborhood but, there were alot of kids of all ages. Glendale was all white and people of color were tolerated, but not welcomed there. This was in 1944.  It was noised around that people of color had better be out of town by Sunset.  Our block, the 800 and 900 block, was between two major roads.  Glenoaks on the North which was two lane each way with two street car tracks down the middle.  San Fernando Rd. was to the South and it was a very heavily travelled road with lots of trucks.  To the South of San Fernando Rd., were the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks, and to the South of those was Grand Central Air Terminal which had been converted to all  military use.  Fighter planes and Bombers were flown there for re-conditioning, therefore, the sky was filled with very interesting aircraft for a kid to look at.  During the last year of the war, aircraft engines could be heard running on test blocks day and night.  It was not loud, but you could hear them when outside.  That airport became one of my favorite haunts after I grew a little older and knew my way around.  It was rather easy for an adult to move to a vastly different environment, but not so easy for a five year old.  I was moved from a quiet and familiar world of soft voices and friendly people and my little friends, to a world of strangers who did not look friendly to me.  One of the few memories I have is that when the moving van pulled up  in front of our new home, there was line of kids standing there to see what we had...it seemed.  During the first few weeks there, I longed to establish at least a couple of kids my age that I could trust.  There was a Murphy family across the street and  the youngest was Jackie.  We hit it off pretty quick.  He had two older brothers...Tommy and Charles.  One day I was with J. and T. came onto the scene and made J. mad.  J called him a "Son of a Bitch".....I had never heard that before and thought it was a compliment and I said.."He really is a Son of  Bitch"    The family to the North of the Murphys was the Morrow family.   Even back then as a five year old, I could tell that Billy Morrow was different.  He like to hide behind a bush in his front yard, and when I came out on my bicycle, he would "launch an attack" .  He came running out making some really strange war hoops and chase me.  He often times wrestled me to the ground, and one day, I came home crying and my Mom asked why.  I said that I had just beat Billy up and it broke my heart.  I can't remember that, but my Mom told me that much later in life.  There were constant war fares between different factions of kids on the block, so, one day Jimmy H. might be an enemy, and the next he would be on our side.   That time of my life was a rapid moulding of my perceptions of life.....I developed my own secret world, learned to steal, learned all the secret places to find the next frightening things......and just go on...much more to tell....(to be continued)