California years – 1955-1999.
After writing about our trip from Chicago to California I suffered writer’s paralysis facing the 44+ years that ensued, which included so many events I just couldn’t face even starting. So I did a lot of current reporting, and it is now 20 years since we left California and life in southwest Oregon has been a saga of its own. But recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the past and the urge to write about it has returned. This is the first in a series about our life in southern California.
California State College, Long Beach was 6 years old when we arrived in August 1955, and had just moved up the hill from temporary quarters on the then lower campus. Most of the school was contained in an 11 story building which became a prominent landmark, and the Philosophy Department was on the 11th floor. It was manned by one professor whose background was English Lit. so Eric was facing a big expansion right away. Within 5 years there were a dozen hires, and Philosophy became a respectably diverse major. Now CSULB is a university with a huge enrollment and is the flagship in the California State System. The big earthquake (I can’t remember the date) occurred when classes were not in session and the Philosophy offices were littered with downed books, but happily noone was in situ.
Southern California in 1955 was a very different scene from 1999 when we left. Our descent into the basin was marked by the scent of orange trees. Tracts of houses were already dotting the landscape, but there were still Ag fields separating the towns. Everything looked brand new and there were gaps thatwere being filled, but schools, libraries, and shopping centers were operating. There was also smog, a rather new development that got much worse. The campus, and indeed the entire area, had been bean fields not long before. What rapid changes we observed as building progressed!
Our first need was housing, and there were so many options it was hard to choose. (How things changed in this sphere). We wanted to be within walking/biking distance of the campus if possible so rented a new house in a tract downhill from the campus on Vuelta Grande Ave, and Eric biked to work for the next 30 years. We had 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and a backyard and could hardly believe our new circumstances. Our rent was $90/month! We had promised our girls rooms-of-their-own, bikes and other amenities, and had all of August to make these things happen before school started. I will be talking with them about their own reminiscences as I write. As for me it was a dazzlingly different scene and I was engulfed – new climate, flora and fauna, ocean beaches, huge distant mountains, new neighbors and colleagues and shopping centers. I embraced it all.
A year later the bank sold the house to a veteran (Eric was not qualified, as he spent the war driving and ambulance with the British 8th Army) and we had to move. I went house shopping with a realtor and rejected a dozen possibilities. Then I looked at her list and saw a few marked ‘choice’, and one was a few blocks from where we were living. So we went to look and I fell in love at-first-sight. It had 3 bedrooms and one bath and was placed sideways on the lot so had an unusual yard, had trees as tall as we were, and was just about right in every way, including being in the same school district. We bought it for $11,000 and lived there for the next 44 years and loved it thru many happy and sad events. We did two renovations and a lot of hard work on the garden to make it a lovely outdoor room. We closed in a breezeway to make a room for Erika when she arrived after the death of her husband, and then it became a study for Eric when she got settled. A 2nd story bed-and-bath for ourselves was added in 1965 when Heath was a freshman at Berkeley. Our kids all felt it was their HOME, especially Lolly, who was born, raised, and married there.
I had difficulty finding a job but did so by November, and worked for 5 years in a research lab in the VA Hospital adjacent to the campus. It was good at first but turned sour in a few years as I realized how unethical my boss was, and how little I enjoyed killing mice. I quit in 1960 and realized soon thereafter that I was pregnant! Lyle (Lolly) was born in March 1961 and that meant no job possibilities for a few years. Pregnant women and new mothers were not employable then, so I became an active member of the League of Women Voters and a volunteer for the Fair Housing Foundation. I returned to work in 1964, thanks to a good friend Sid Klein, the bacteriologist at the hospital.
Eric was denied tenure at Cal. State in 1958 along with 5 others because he had not finished his Phd. It was a huge blow to us and there was a huge reaction on campus. The result was the resignation of the President and the hiring of a new one. Eric was re-hired a year later. Meanwhile he had started teaching at the local Junior College and really liked it and had to choose between the two systems. He chose the State College and taught there for the next 25 years, retiring in 1983 as a Professor Emeritus. He never did finish his doctorate but had a really stellar career nevertheless. He was tapped to set up several programs – Phi Beta Kappa, the Honors Program and the Student Advisory Council. He was also Department Chair. And although to everyone else he was a successful academic, he felt uncomfortable all his life for not finishing his doctorate.
Back to family, the first excursion I remember vividly was to Joshua Tree National Monument where Heath, Jenny and I spent a wonderful interlude with friends getting acquainted with the California desert. Our camping skills had been honed on the trip west, and we were ready to solo. We camped at Jumbo Rocks and I fell in love with this new ecosystem immediately. Years later we acquired 5 acres (plus trailer and bunkhouse) in Earthquake Valley in the Anza-Borrego Desert and that became our winter retreat. My oldest and best friend, Pat Flanagan, whose own trailer was moved there, lived on the property for awhile. She is now in twenty-nine Palms and works assiduously on desert conservation issues. More about her later.
We tried to camp at Anza-Borrego State Park on our first spring break, but being newcomers we didn’t know how popular spring camping was and the park was full. Instead we went to Cuyamaca State Park near Julian, in live-oak habitat and lots of spring rain. In August we visited Yosemite and were introduced to the glory and grandeur of the National Park System. The nightly firefall from Glacier Point, the daily observation of bears feeding in the open dump, and the gathering of firewood from the campground were all long-held traditions, the dawn of ecologic awareness was still ahead.Those first years we explored California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, unable to slow down. It was often just us girls, as Eric was usually wrapped up in his job, and had found he really didn’t like camping much. As I look back I realize I was intrepid, taking my kids wherever we chose without concern. The West’s great campgrounds enabled us to explore with impunity.
Leaping ahead to 1961, Lyle’s unexpected advent was our next big adventure. I thought I was too old at 38 to get pregnant and Roe v Wade was still ahead. I had many worries at the time, feeling too old to raise another child, but in retrospect Lolly was a fabulous addition to all our lives. We had already given away a small bike that Jenny, who was 9, had outgrown and of course crib, playpen, baby clothes – we started all over again. Eric worried that we would have a boy and roughhousing and playing ball were in his future, and was delighted that she was another girl. Jenny had become critical of me as a Mom, as her friends mothers wore makeup, loved to go to the mall, didn’t hike or camp, etc. But none of them had recently produced a living doll. I was reinstated.
I will try to keep this going, altho my life has been extra busy lately. The latest project is the renovation of my studio. I bought a shed to put behind it for storage and am paring down all extra ‘stuff’ that has accomulated, leaving only essentials and making me feel fine. The studio will be almost half again as large with windows and a sun source. Right now it is a mess and almost unusable. But it will happily accommodate both mosaic and watercolor when done.