California

LANCASTER #1

We moved from El Campo Texas to Lancaster, CA. It was here that I started first grade at Del Sur Elementary. I remember our address was something like "North 70th West Street" ... I am not sure how accurate that is.  My teacher (in 1st grade ... age 5) was Mrs. Georges.

A bit about the house we lived it. It was very small; very, very small. It consisted of two rooms and a bathroom with a tin shower, to be exact. There were lots of cracks in the wall and there were covered up with tin can lids, which had been cut out and nailed over the holes and cracks… and were then painted over.

Next door to us, in a large and very beautiful house by my standards at the time, were George and Stella Mandis. Stella was the sister of Augustus "Gus" Eleopoulos. Gus’ wife was Cecilia and they had two children; Pietro and Alexis. Their mother who I only knew as “Granny” lived with them. They had two daughters, Debbie and Cindy. We used to all play together (for about three years). Sometimes Granny would have us in for milk & cookies and such. She “talked funny.”  I didn’t know what her problem was, but she was very hard to understand. Eventually, I was able to understand her, but it took a while before I caught on. It was many years before I realized that she did not speak English, but only spoke Greek. I understood Greek as a child (out of necessity) but did not know that here was such a thing! 

LANCASTER #2

Then we moved BACK to Lancaster to the exact same house on Gus Eleopoulos' Alfalfa ranch. I went back to Del Sur Elementary again. Still in 1st grade, but in the room next door with Mrs. Jordan as my teacher.

When I was five years old I made my “first friend.” Up until this time in my life, I don’t think I ever actually knew any other children until I met Mark Jacobs. Mark was about my age and lived nearby at the Jacobs Dairy (owned by his family). His oldest brother was Pete, who I vaguely remember meeting, but he was killed shortly thereafter in the Vietnam War. His father was Pete, but I forget his mother’s name. He had an older brother name Corey, and an older sister named Janey. I have a picture of her somewhere.

Other friends I had while living in Lancaster were:

Vickie Bagley: She lived down the road from us and was my first “girlfriend.”  Her little brother was named Mickey and her old sister was named Bonnie. I remember visiting at their house and watching Bozo he Clown; tasting Avocado for the first time; playing with silly putty; and getting bitten by their 3-legged dog!

Mark Higgins: He lived between the Bagley’s and us. His younger brothers were Randy and Mitch. His Dad’s name was Chuck and he had an older “foster sister” named Toni. She was Ken’s girlfriend for a while and was famous to us for her use of the southern phraseology of, “y’all don’t fret none now honey chil’!” For some reason that really seemed to do something for Ken! Denise Batz: Denise was my first “true love”. She moved into the house next to us in California when the Mandis’ moved out (approx. 1965). This was right about the same time that Ken and Nana moved to CA with us and about the same time that we bought the mobile home so supplement our limited space. It provided two more bedrooms. Denise’s younger sister was name Donna, her mother and father were Diana and David. (They had two dogs; the younger one was named “Momo”). I learned many years later that Denise married and is now Denise Taylor. Other friends: At school I had some other friends that I still remember after all these years, including Paul Ullman, Joe Motorola and Chester Roloff.  Two girls I associated with were Doris (who spoke Spanish) and Elizabeth (who spoke Hungarian). Even at this early age I was fascinated by languages!

Pets I remember from Lancaster: 

Minnie:  Minnie was a small black beagle mix who received her name on the night we got her. She left “many” puddles from her excitement. Minnie was a favorite family pet who was well known for her very non-canine love for beer, lettuce and tomatoes!

Benny:  Benny was a cat … a very nondescript cat, but one that we remembered for years. From then on, whenever we saw a black & gray striped cat that looked like Benny, we called it a “Benny cat.”

Frosty:  Frosty was a black cat with long hair. Her (his?) throat was while and had white feet. Frosty was bitten by a black widow spider on the throat and died of it.

Brownie & Blackie: These were two dogs we had. I can barely remember hem. Their names reflected their colours. One of them had a broken leg at one time and one of them was attack and nearly killed by Duchess (the mean German Shepherd belonging to the Mandis’ next door).

Mouse:  When we lived in Texas, Mom had a favoured cat name mouse. While living in California, she got another cat, gray in color, which became Mouse-II.

Jumper:  Jumper was a ram that we raised from lambhood and who eventually ended up on the dinner table. For years we kept one of his horns in his memory.

Lucky:  Lucky was a cat we had at the same time that we had Mouse-II.  Mouse and Lucky both had kittens at about the same time. Lucky, however, was retarded. After she had her kittens, she just got up and left them. The poor thing had no proper instincts. Mouse ended up raising the kitten (about 14) all by herself! Lucky finally met her demise by napping in the motor of the car and suffering severe fan-choppage! She really was retarded… poor thing.

Silky:  Silky was an all-time famous family pet. Daddy found him in the barn down near the Jacobs’ dairy in a stack of hay and brought him home to Mom. He was very young and Mom had to nurse him on a doll bottle. I remember how intense that cat was on his bottle. He would turn down a cat of tuna in a heartbeat for that bottle. Once during this time, we traveled to San Francisco to visit Uncle Jesse (Jesse McGee Wingate) and Aunt Dovie (Dovie Queena Maxine Wingate) for Thanksgiving. Uncle Jesse had an 8mm-movie camera and film Silky feeding from his doll bottle. I hope he still had that film and hope that, if it has survived the years, that we can transfer it to digital form. I am on it too, as is Mom and much, much more. Silky was also good friends with Minnie (the dog). They were well known for their technique of hunting gophers on the farm in Lancaster. Minnie would find one entrance of the gopher’s burrow and start digging. Silky would find the other end and sit at it and wait until the gopher tried to escape. They were well known for their ability to kill many gophers and stack them up in a day. (Gophers were a constant nuisance/pest on an alfalfa ranch)

Commentary from Calisa:  “Didn’t Uncle Jesse live in Versailles Instead of San Francisco? (I do remember once after staying with them and they were taking me home. I was laying in the back seat of his car when we crossed the Golden Gate bridge and I looked up to watch the lights as we drove under.)”