"Those were the good old day!" Yeah...where have they gone? I'll tell you about mine and you tell me about yours!~ The best years of my life were in high school. You might say the same but mine were during the years of 1965 and 1969. What were your years?
I remember cruising Main Street Delano after school and on Friday nights and whenever else we could to check out the gals, Las Leonas and the other cars. My 1960 Ford Falcon was a "bomb" and was raised in the back with "shackles". In those days we were "high riding" instead of "low riding". I remember tying strings to my windshield wiper blades during the rainy season and runnning the strings through the driver and passenger front windows. The wipers weren't working so I would pull the left string one way to make the wipers go to the left and then pull the right string to pull the windshield wipers back. It worked!! And so it went as we cruised Main Street. Why fix them? The rainy season wasn't going to last that long anyway.
I had something happen to me and the "Millenium" Falcon that I will never forget. On this particular school day, I started driving the Falcon and noticed that I was having a hard time turning the steering wheel to the left. I picked up my friends, Gonzalo Venegas and Frankie Chavez at their residences and headed to school. I made a right turn into the school parking lot and as I straightened out, my left front tire, rim and all, popped out of it's axle and was rolling straight ahead into the quad while the Falcon was rolling on 3 wheels. That was the most embarassing day of my life and the funniest. Before you knew it, everyone knew about it and were making fun of my poor Falcon and/or me. Geeesh!! It was eventually repaired at the Delano School automotive shop by the students. It turned out that my wheel bearings had frozen and the tire just broke off the axle.
PE was my favorite subject. I remember my Delano PE teacher pulling on my sideburns and saying they were too long and I had to shave them to my ear lobes (Yikes!!). I remember getting detention for having my shirt tail out. I've also done detention time for kissing my girlfriend in school grounds and for chewing gum. Heavy crimes eh? I remember girls being sent home because their skirts were higher than the 4 inch limit above their knee. Teachers actually carried rulers to measure the skirt lenghts. An old classmate of mine was sent home several times because his mustache was below his lip and his head hair was touching his collar. The hair in front could also not reach down to your eyebrows. In those days, the students couldn't walk around in white T-shirts as they do now and girls could not wear shorts or anything above 4 inches above their knees. Our shirts had to be buttoned up and our shoe laces had to be tied.
I remember I had a great job during the high shool years working at a citrus farm. I was making $1.00 an hour which was more than minimum wage. Cesar Chavez was fighting for a minimum wage raise from about 50 cents to 75 cents. My father and mother were in the middle of struggle attending UFW meetings and then marching to Sacramento in 1967. I think that was the year I marched too! I remember joining the march from Lodi, CA to the State Capitol with my brother and father. Governor Edmund Brown failed to appear at the capital to receive us or answer our questions but we all had a great time.
I remember a loaf of bread being about 17 cents. Milk was at about 24 cents, gasoline was running at a high price of 17 for regular, 19 for unleaded and about 24 cents for Super. Those were very high prices compared to your earnings of about 50 cents an hour. In my job, on a good day, I would make about $8.00 a day. I remember an earlier job delivering the "Delano Record" newspaper.
It was fine during the week delivering the newspaper on my bicycle after school. I didn't like the idea that I was fined 50 cents for every complaint I received....throwing the newspaper in the bushes or on the wet grass, not landing the paper on the porch or hitting the dog with it. Sundays were very bad for me because the newspapers were very heavy and I had to make two trips to the newspaper dispatch to load up my newspaper bag again. I remember that just about every Sunday, I would end up pushing my bicycle through the newspaper route because I would always end up with a flat tire in the back wheel. I would make my own repairs and remember counting like 30 patches one time on my rear inner tube and a couple dozen in my front inner tube!!
I remember my father giving me a beautiful red 1960 Chevy Imapala for my graduation in 1969 and I drove it to Disneyland over the old grapevine with mom and my sisters. Some of you may remember the old grapevine with all the steep hills and downgrades. Tow Truck businesses were a hot business in those hills because they were kept busy towing vehicles up and over to their garages. We were about half way over the grapevine and came upon the steepest hill of all and lo and behold, my engine got hot and started smoking. By the time I stopped and parked, I had cracked the engine block.
We waited for hours for a tow truck which eventually towed us (my mother and sisters) to Castaic where we were told it would take a couple of weeks to repair. We waited for a Greyhound Bus at Castaic that did not come and we went out to the highway and hitchhiked. No one would stop to pick us up. Duh!! I wonder why? After all there were four of us. So we walked back to Castaic and decided we would take the first Greyhound Bus out of there no matter where it went to. After a couple of hours a bus finally arrived and it was going south so we continued our journey to Disneyland. Yeah, we hitched a ride back to Bakersfield after the park closed. Those were the good old days and we had a great time...after all...We learned that it was a "Small World After All" and we were going home "enchanted".
I remember teaching my youngest sister, Rosa, who had turned 16, to drive in my 60 Chevy Impala and we drove out in the country near "40 Acres". Some of you might know it as Cesar Chavez's headquarters during those times. My father help build it with Adobe brick. Anyway, my sister was driving, or trying to, and I told her to make a left turn towards the 40 Acres bridge that crossed a canal and into 40 acres.
Instead of applying the brakes to slow down and enter into the bridge, she pressed the accellerator and slammed into the adobe brick bridge guard rail, totally damaging my right front fender and bending the right front axle. I was angry but glad that we didn't get hurt. We left in a hurry before someone saw us. Up to this date I have not told anyone that the bricks that were busted off that bridge were caused by my Impala.....so don't tell anyone okay. I mean, we're talking about 1969 and it was a long time ago anyway. A few hammer blows and some red paint did a nice job of patching up the fender although it looked like "S___), but hey the car still ran, even though one of my front wheels was rolling sideways.
Yeah, just thinking of those days makes me laugh. Those were the good old days and they have been missed. They were my "Happy Days". I have so many stories to tell and like "Legend and Twinkie" may someday write a book. What was your dress code like when you were in high school? What henious crimes did you commit that you were punished with detention? What were the funiest things that have happened to you, the most embarassing moments?
