Chapter 4 - The Vallejo Years: High School

However, by the end of the summer of 1942 Dad had had no luck finding us a house, but he worked long hours and probably six days a week (this was wartime). Our folks were worried, because school would be starting soon. Then the Gearhart’s offered us their basement, so our first Vallejo home was a basement with a washtub for an all-purpose sink, hanging bed sheets for bedroom walls, and two families—nine people—sharing the one bathroom upstairs. Because of the war and the great influx of laborers suddenly employed by the Navy at Mare Island, housing was so scarce that often two or three families would share a house.

Mother was delighted that Vallejo had a Catholic grade and high school, and enrolled us in St. Vincent Ferrer School, which had both grade and high school. She drove us when she could; we rode the city bus, and when there was no money for bus fare, we walked home clear across town. Mom was a very devout and honest woman. However, I suspect she bribed the PG&E man who disconnected the gas and electricity at different houses, because every morning she picked up a copy of his list and followed up on it. This went on for weeks until she got lucky and found the vacancy we moved into on Santa Clara Street, the second floor of an old house converted into an apartment, which had living quarters, two bedrooms and a sleeping porch. The latter was my diminutive room into which a twin bed and dresser barely fit, and a very slanted floor. I heard and felt the trains rumbling by all the time, because the railroad to Mare Island was in a deep cut about one hundred feet north of the house.

This location, in spite of the railroad, was a great find, because now we had only a five-block walk to school and church, then another five or six blocks to downtown Vallejo. We were a half block north of Tennessee Street, the main access, across a causeway over onto Mare Island, and Dad’s transportation by jitney (shared taxis with a regular route) would be convenient and cheap. Our unpaved street had muddy ruts in the wintertime and continued north over an old wooden bridge up the hill. The bridge spanned the one-track narrow-gauge railroad, on which was transported a lot of raw materials to Mare Island. I am glad it never dawned on me in those days about all the ammunition and torpedoes those trains must have also carried. That was one reason there was a barrage balloon unit stationed on the hillside above us, one of many all over Vallejo. These sturdy, tethered balloons floated several hundred feet up in the air. They were supposed to prevent low-flying Jap (our derogatory word for them) planes from strafing vital targets.

I attended St. Vincent High School from my sophomore year until I graduated in June 1945. The school was staffed by Dominican nuns from San Rafael. Originated as a German order they were pretty straightlaced, but I loved several of them: Sr. Martin, the Principal who taught Latin (my 3 years of Latin helps me guess at Italian and Spanish words): Sr. Louise, my chemistry and biology teacher, who inspired me to major in the sciences. I kept in touch with her for years. Then there was cute Sr. Gregory, English teacher. The nuns still wore habits with wimples, and a favorite pastime was trying to guess their hair color. Sr. Gregory was quite young (this may have been her first teaching assignment), very personable, and had red, curly hair which often escaped her wimple. After class we would tease her, “Oh, Sister, your hair is showing!” She would blush red.

Near the end of one school year, a group of us girls were discussing the shocking news that Gene Burns, the handsome graduating Senior class president, was entering the seminary. Sr. Gregory overheard us, put her hands on her hips, and declared, “Do you think God wants only the “drips!”

(Our slang for nerd, downer, loser.)

My best friends were Jane Anderson, Pat Noel, perky Betty Lou Kelly, Mary Beth Gass from Benicia, Jackie Holt (her folks owned the Peter Pan ice cream parlor downtown—a teenager hangout), and Lorraine Archer. Jackie lived a block beyond me, so picked me up on the way to school, then we stopped by Lorraine’s who was an orphan and lived with her aunt and uncle. Jackie now lives in Grass Valley and Yuma, AZ, and we keep in touch. Lorraine died in her forties. Pat Noel, very tall and pretty, died at 21 of T.B. The Noels were quite well-to-do, and her father contracted it first, and died, then Pat. She was an only child, so it was devastating for her mother. Jane, who was a brain and great pianist, but very plain looking and very, very naïve (we often had fun, at her expense), graduated from Dominican College and became a teacher, then a principal. She married in her late twenties, and died in her thirties. This should impress on you the great advances in medicine. Sulfa drugs were discovered the year I graduated, 1945: Penicillin after that, then other antibiotics in the 50s.

Mary Beth and I remain close friends, but do not see each other often. She is terrified of flying, and thank goodness, has finally discovered Amtrak. She and her husband would drive all the way from Chicago to see her sister who still lives in Benicia. Sometimes they could coordinate their visit with our reunions, which we had every year for a long time. Mary Beth, although not very pretty, was very outgoing, athletic, with auburn hair and an engaging personality. She always wanted to raise boys and horses. She became a teacher, met Bud Earp, helped him through college, and he eventually became a professor in the physics department, University of Chicago. They lived in a big old house in Chicago most of their lives, and Mary Beth worked in the political science department. Never had any children, but adopted six or seven mixed-race children, mostly American Indian. I admire them for that. In the wintertime they flooded their backyard for a skating rink. Upon retirement they moved to Greyslake, east of Chicago probably 50 miles. Bud lived only a couple of years there, but Mary Beth loves the sunsets over the lake, her gardening, belongs to a lively book club, and has a widowed daughter who lives nearby.

We were a very small and close class, and graduated with only about 49 students. Many of the boys had joined the service as soon as they were 18, sometimes even sooner. Remember, Vallejo was a navy town. This was wartime with great patriotism.

Our uniforms were navy blue twill jumpers (homemade) with white blouses and navy sweaters. I took sewing classes in high school, and remember one of my first projects was a pair of pink print cotton pajamas. Actually, manufactured clothes were a bit hard to come by during the war, and nylons or silk stockings almost impossible. Some handy women made extra money mending runs in our precious hosery (no pantyhose, we used a panty-belt). San a pair of hose, most of us used leg “paint,” and even painted black lines for the seams down the back. Yes, all hosiery had seams down the back and it was a job to keep them straight; even more of a job to lean over backward and “paint” those lines.

Last Friday of the month was “free-dress day.” Pat Walsh of our class was the glamour girl, and had bleached blonde hair and the latest clothes. All of us were quite envious and tried to copy her. Saddle shoes were in, and Pat Walsh had the first pair. I nagged at my folks for a pair, but ended up buying them with my babysitting money ($.25 or $.50/hour), but my mother decreed that I had to keep the white clean. Do you know how hard it is to keep the brown polish off the white, or vice-versa?

As for boys, I was extremely shy, tall and skinny, and can remember only about three dates in high school. Also, because of the war, as I became a junior and senior, girls outnumbered boys two to one (and the lower class boys were too juvenile). At school dances the nuns encouraged the fellows to dance with all the girls. Of course, there were a few couples going steady. A sophomore named Eugene was tall and heavy-set, and we wouldn’t have looked at him otherwise (a “drip”). However, he was a great dancer, did a nifty waltz step, and was immensely popular at the dances.

Another movie date was with Kenny Morrison, a tall, shy and awkward fellow from my class. He showed up with an old jalopy, and the passenger seat was a wooden kitchen chair with the legs cut down. (Car parts were very hard to get during the war years.) Kenny eventually married my younger brothers’ cute blonde baby-sitter, Patty Hines. Several years ago at a class reunion I visited with Kenny, by now a tall, nice-looking aero-space engineer from Southern California, “Kenny, I have sure owed you an apology the past 50 years,” I said. “I remember that you took me out on a date, and I was so shy and tongue-tied around boys in those days, it must have been a miserable date for you.” Kenny roared with laughter, “Oh, my word! I remember that date all these years, and I have been thinking the same thing about my shyness!”

My dad was making good money working on Mare Island, repairing submarines, so for once there was a little extra. Mother was determined we would learn social graces, so drove me, then my brothers in turn, across town to Lodena Edgecomb’s School of the Dance. There I learned ballroom dance steps. There were many more girls than boys (many joined the service at age 17, with parental permission). However, there was the son of a naval officer, who lived on Mare Island, and took a liking to me.

He was heavy and fat, and not much personality, but I did go out on one date with him, probably to a movie. He took me home and at the front door tried to kiss me. I’m not sure if I did not want to kiss him, or was in a hurry to get inside, but he ended up smacking the screen door. Needless to say, I never saw him again.

My mother and Agnes Royer had been friends since Turlock days, and I grew up knowing their two sons, Harry who was my age, and Allen, older. I was very shy and what was called a “wallflower” at dances (that’s how I met your father; his friend noticed me sitting over by the wall and dared him to go ask that tall, skinny girl to dance). Anyway, at school dances, many girls danced with girls, but I wowed everyone one night when I walked in with an older man, Allen Royer, handsome in his Air Force uniform. The Royers were also living in Vallejo and he was home on leave. I’m sure the two mothers had something to do with this date. I was probably too young and unsophisticated for him, but I was in my glory that night. His brother Harry was in the Navy and we wrote back and forth. They were friendly letters, nothing about love. However, he eventually came home on leave, and I realized he had other things in mind beyond friendship. I told him I was determined to go to college and was a “good girl,” so there went another fellow goodbye.

When I, and my friends were 16 and 17, our parents let us go to the USO, one of the parents driving and picking us up. Things there were well chaperoned, and we had a good time dancing and talking to the servicemen.

I wrote to Gene Fellows, a nice sailor I met at the USO, for a long time. When home summers from college I dated a very nice fellow Mary Beth set me up with on a blind date. Several times he took me to a lovely outdoors Big Band dance somewhere in Marin County. However, I was 2,000 miles away most of the year, and long distance romances usually fizzle.

However, back to Vallejo in the war years: 1941 to 1945. Vallejo was a typical Navy town, and none of us kids were allowed on “lower Georgia Street,” (anything west of Santa Clara Street) which was filled with bars, brothels, brawls, and lots of M.Ps. There were definitely Japanese subs off our West Coast, and a German U-boat once made it into San Francisco Bay and fired off a charge. Soon after that an anti-sub net stretched across the Golden Gate. The glass on our house windows facing west had to be painted black or have heavy blackout curtains. Now I think this ironic, because the other windows did not and they gave off a glow, which identified this as a city and a target.

One night I had just gone to bed on my converted sleeping porch with its wall of glass windows when a thunderous, loud BOOM and concussion bolted me upright. No earthquake made that ear-splitting noise, but we all ran outside, thinking we had been bombed. There was a lot of censorship of news (even letters I received from sailor friends had parts censored), and we heard nothing. However, my dad was a fisherman who regularly fished in Benicia Bay, and either he or his fishing friends noticed something odd over at Port Chicago, an ammunition depot between Crockett and Martinez. Then a couple of his friends found a human hand or body fragment along the shore, but every time they tried to get close to Port Chicago in their boats the Coast Guard chased them off. We never did know what happened, but surmised that an ammunition ship must have blown up. This was the worse discrimination: they had only African American sailors loading those ships. Some rebelled, citing very unsafe conditions, and were court-martialed and sent to prison. Only in recent years has the whole story come out, and they have been exonerated.

Because of the war, many necessities were rationed: gas, tires, sugar, meat to name a few (the best foods went to feed our servicemen). My mother was not well, so it was my job when 14 or 15 years old to take the ration stamps and go stand in line at the neighboring butcher shop. One never knew what the butcher was able to get, so Mother made me a list of cuts of meat, going from good at the top down to “not worth buying” at the bottom. One time I was next in line when two old ladies rudely pushed me aside. The butcher’s wife, who was waiting the counter, saw and reprimanded them, then fished out a nice cut hidden under the counter for favored customers. From that time on when she was working, I usually came home with something better than most.

Sugar was also rationed, so this is when I learned to drink my coffee black.

The Senior Tea (mentioned later) was coming up, and I only drank milk and Coolade. I was not going to go to tea at the Palace Hotel all dolled up and drink milk! My parents liked cream and sugar in their java. “If you want to learn to drink coffee,” my mother said, “you’ll have to drink it black, because we do not have enough sugar or cream (“cream”—canned evaporated milk, was also rationed). So, I wrinkled my nose as I first tasted the bitter black coffee, but grew to be addicted to my morning mug.

I also enjoyed going to a Teen Center weekend evenings, out near where my friend, Jane Anderson, lived. Sometimes I stayed overnight with the Andersons. Jane’s mother was a sweet, large, motherly woman, who worked at the Post Office, and she was responsible for later getting me a job there, so I could afford to come home for Christmas vacation my senior year of college (it was that Christmas your dad proposed to me). Her brother had been in the army in the Burma campaign and stayed with them for a while. One night he brought out a sack of Burmese rubies (probably a dozen)), gave Jane one and offered one to me. To this day I still regret it, but my mother had told me never to accept gifts from a man (they always expected something in return), and I stupidly refused it. My birthstone, and a Burmese ruby, at that-- the very finest! I think he was just being nice, because I was Jane’s best friend. (The one time I wish I had disobeyed.)

There certainly were times when I was naughty, at least for girl in those days. My dad wouldn’t teach me how to drive when I was 16, because he couldn’t take a chance with an inexperienced driver. We had only one car, a blue 1940 Chevrolet, and it was very hard to get car parts (all scrap metal, etc. was melted down for the war effort). One day the family took a picnic and went to one of my dad’s favorite fishing places, a rather hilly place on the edge of the bay. I think Jane Anderson was with us. I had watched my folks carefully when they were driving, and thought I would show off. He had evidently left the keys in the car. With Jane in the car with me, I started it and shifted, killing the motor a couple of times, then started driving down the dirt trail. But then I killed the motor again, and thank goodness I knew where the brake was, because I could have easily rolled down into the water. That attempt to drive scared me plenty, and I’m sure I was also appropriately punished. (I never learned to drive until past thirty years old and had three children. Your father had to drive all of us to the grocery store, shopping, etc. Your Uncle Ang taught me secretly, I got my learner’s permit and this was your dad’s surprise birthday gift the year we returned to California.)

Another time several of us girls were at Pat Noel’s house and her folks were out. Pat N. was the baddie and suggested we see what liquor tasted like. She knew where her dad’s stash was, so we got into a bottle of Scotch or something. Yeach—it tasted terrible! All of a sudden she heard her folk’s car in the driveway and in a panic, to hide the evidence, she poured the rest down the sink and threw the bottle into the garbage can. (What a crying waste!)

I was probably a senior and was at a party at another friend’s house. There were several underclassmen present, and I was tired of my “goody-goody” label. A couple of my classmates secretly smoked (me, never), but when one pulled out a cigarette, I asked if I could have a few puffs. I don’t know if I choked or not, but I do remember others were properly shocked.

My first real job was at Smith’s Book Store, downtown on Georgia Street, probably on Saturdays, summer vacations, perhaps sometimes after school. I think I also worked there during some college vacations. They sold office supplies, books, stationery, and greeting cards. My first paycheck I came home with so many greeting cards (cute ones put aside while stocking the shelf) that my dad asked me, in all seriousness, if they had to pay me in greeting cards.

We made our own fun. This was before TV, VCRs, or anything besides the radio and movies at a theater. We played lots of cards and other games, and I loved to read. Crime was at a minimum, and I recall with amazement that when I was in high school, our parents would let a group of us girls take the Greyhound Bus to San Francisco, then go out to Playland At The Beach, or the Sutro Baths.

The average family seldom went out to restaurants. Most could not afford it. There were “Chicken Dinner Houses” out in the country, which people would patronize on Sundays. On very special occasions, our family would drive to San Francisco and have dinner at a favorite restaurant in Chinatown.

You already know that St. Vincent’s was staffed with very proper nuns, who tried to instill the social graces in us. It was a tradition that the junior girls treated the senior girls to tea at the St. Frances or Palace Hotel in S.F. This was the social event of the year, and we planned for it all year long. We saved our money and bought special clothes and hats, also had to wear gloves. We thought we were so-o-o grown-up! All was set that Spring, 1948, when President Roosevelt died suddenly. Since the country was in mourning, the nuns decreed that it was improper to have such a thing as the Senior Tea. I cannot remember if we ever had that one or had to make do with a tea the following year as seniors. However, I look back at those pictures and laugh at how ridiculous we young girls looked with our pompadour hairdos and hats swathed with veiling.

One other event stands out, although I did not appreciate it appropriately at the time. Sister Gregory, who taught English Literature, made arrangements for the class to attend a performance of “Othello” in San Francisco. Paul Robeson played Iago, and became famous for that role and for possessing one of the most magnificent baritone voices in the history of theater. Unfortunately, he had Communist leanings and was blacklisted, never again appearing in the U.S.

After nearly seventy years, that’s about all I remember of the high school years—and probably too much. I was a good student, not brilliant but hard working, and was awarded a $100 scholarship or two (good for those days; there were no full-ride, 4-year scholarships back then), but most prized was an honors scholarship (being a close relative) which my aunt, Sr. Francis Regis, wrangled for me. It paid part of the tuition at St. Mary College, Leavenworth, Kansas, where I spent four wonderful, happy years of my life.