The Early Years

My mom tells me that when I was 10 months old she entered me in a baby contest that was held in the Bell or Huntington Park area of Los Angeles. She remembers the pink dress and patent leather shoes that I wore and says that when it was my turn I walked across the stage all by myself to where the judges were and started talking to them. I won second place.

At three, I had my own little ironing board and loved to wash and iron doll clothes. Apparently I loved to wash the dolls too, hanging the clothes out to dry by the hemline and the dolls by their hair.

New York

I remember going to New York City while on one of our trips back east. We saw the Empire State Building and took the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty where we went inside and climbed a narrow spiral staircase. I had my first kraut dog while sitting on an outside bench of the Staten Island Ferry because dad said that's what people eat while in New York. A New York Dog he called it - a beef hot dog in a bun with mustard and sauerkraut piled on top. I was especially impressed with an Automat that we walked past while downtown. I think the Automat was an east coast thing because I don't ever remember seeing one again. It was a place where food, already prepared and ready to eat, and drinks were served completely by vending machines. I remember looking through the big storefront window at a large wall full of machines. People were coming in for lunch, depositing coins and then sliding glass doors open to get sandwiches, meals and pieces of pie. Funny . . . I specifically remember the pie.

Sammy Lee's

Our family belonged to Sammy Lee's Swim Club in Orange during the 1960's and we spent as many summer days there as we could. The pool was located at the corner of Tustin and Collins and had a standard diving board, a high dive and a slide at the deep end but we weren't allowed to play until we swam our laps. Since girls had to wear bathing caps in the pool, we shoved our hair up under tight rubber caps before getting in the water. The ultimate goal was to swim 52 laps of the pool, which was a mile, and we all worked hard to achieve it although sometimes the bathing caps caused headaches if they were on for too long. We also practiced swimming the length of the pool underwater and I remember taking a deep breath, shoving off the wall and looking for dad's legs as I swam towards the shallow end. If I could see his legs then I knew I was almost there.

Summer Vacation

Every two or three years our family would take a two-week vacation and drive across country to visit relatives. My parents took turns driving and, for the most part, we always drove straight through to wherever we were going. If they got tired, they pulled over to the side of the road and slept for a bit. The backseat of the station wagon folded forward creating an area where we slept, packed together like a can of sardines. At night if I couldn't sleep I got to climb into the front seat and sit between them while they drove. I remember them stopping for coffee and getting me a cup of hot chocolate that I was very careful not to spill in the dark. Grandma & Grampa Graham lived in a cottage-style home on Long Island in New York. When we visited, we slept in a room at the top of the stairs that had a sloping ceiling. The kitchen was downstairs in the back of the house and you could usually find Grandma there, in her apron, talking to her parakeet. "Pretty bird", she would say. "Pretty bird." At Uncle Warren & Aunt Charlotte Graham's house there was a bowl of wrapped strawberry candies in the living room. Charlotte let us fill our pockets with them when it was time to leave. I also remember visiting Uncle Bob & Aunt Mary Gene Rife at their farm outside Muncie, Indiana where they raised Greyhounds for racing. Thinking about it brings back delightful memories of the puppy pen, the smell of cinnamon rolls in the kitchen and the corn field.

Neighborhood Delivery

My mother didn't work outside of the home when I was in elementary school. She was a housewife like many of my friends mothers and spent her day at home caring for the house, the kids and the dog. The families in our neighborhood socially interacted with each other and our daily lives entwined. Neighbors dropped in on each other to visit, my school Emergency Card listed Mrs. Rosenbery as a contact if my mother couldn't be reached and mom took oil painting classes across the street at Mrs. Sliffe's house with Mrs. Steckley. I remember the milkman making morning deliveries and the yellow Helm's Bakery truck that came to our neighborhood. He came down the street, tooted his horn, parked at the end of the cul-de-sac or at the corner by the Gallagher's house and opened the back doors to sell bread and donuts. Adohr Dairy Products made it easy for our family to get a personalized calendar by bringing the photographer and his studio to our street in Orange. He pulled right up to the curb in front of our house in a delivery-style type of truck and we went out to the portable studio for our photo shoot. You can't see it, but mom is kneeling next to Charlie and her hand is holding him steady so that he wouldn't fall off the bench he was sitting on.

Boating

My stepfather loved sailing and maintained a membership at a Sailing Club in Newport Beach where he would charter a Cal 24 sailboat and take us all out on the water. I have fond memories of sailing on Sundays in Newport Bay, each of us getting a chance at the helm. Sometimes our neighbor, Jerry Sliffe, would come with us and bring beef jerky wrapped in white butcher paper. Mom would tether the younger kids by their life jackets to the mast, just in case they fell over, and we would tack our way down the bay towards the mouth of the harbor watching for other watercraft and swimmers. Gliding past the Balboa Pavilion, the Fun Zone and its Ferris Wheel, and maneuvering around the Balboa Island Ferry, we learned that "coming about" meant to duck and move to the other side of the boat. The boom would swing, the sail would fill and we moved back and forth from one cushioned bench to the other. Once we got past the jetty we would sit on deck, straddling the guard rails, dangling our bare feet and legs overboard. The wind would whip our hair and the boat would rise and fall with the swell of the waves, dipping our feet in and out of the water while the ocean spray left the taste of salt on our lips. I remember sailing to Catalina Island for the Fourth of July, standing on deck waving sparklers and watching fireworks while anchored at Avalon.

Slip 'N Slide

We didn't have a pool so when the weather got hot we brought out the Slip 'N Slide. A long strip of sturdy yellow plastic, unrolled on the lawn and hooked up to the garden hose provided hours of neighborhood fun, as well as some painful memories when the slide wasn't quite wet enough. The idea was simple, yet fabulous. Once the plastic got wet, water would continue to run along it transforming it into a waterslide. We would run and throw our bodies onto the plastic, riding it from one end to the other. We really had a good time when the Slip 'N Slide's hose had been on for a while and all that water made the lawn a soggy mess, allowing us to slide further across the drenched grass. It seems as though we usually ended up bruised, and always ended up coated in dirt and grass but that was part of the fun.

Christmas

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and I love the traditions that come with it. Baking cookies, sending cards, the Christmas postage stamps we lined up at the post office to buy and decorating the tree. Our Christmas tree was always the biggest one we could find for the space we had and decorated with lots of icicles, which was this silvery stuff you would gather up in your hand like spaghetti strands and drape (or, if you were an impatient child, fling) over the branches of the Christmas tree, where it would catch the light, dazzle the eye and wreak havoc on your vacuum cleaner come January. Aunt Wilma was my grandmother's sister and I remember the candy advent calendars she made for us each year. A long red ribbon, about two inches wide, laden with 24 Hershey kisses, topped with a handwritten poem on card stock, a hanging cord and a jingle bell. Starting on December 1st, we would eat one kiss each night until Christmas. I wish I could remember the poem...it was something along the line of, "Here's a candy calendar to fill you with much cheer; Eat a kiss from it each day and soon Christmas will be here." Sweet memories.

Growing Up

I remember the orange groves behind our house, when Tustin Avenue was just two lanes, the eucalyptus trees and the field at the end of our street, when they built the Orange Mall, AMC Orange Mall 6 theaters, Brownie Troop 52, Girl Scout Troop 722, walking the 57 freeway before they opened it, TG&Y, Alpha Beta, Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor, Chili Cheese Fries at Tastee Freez, Sammy Lee's Swim Club, Thrifty Drug Store ice cream cones, Taft Tigers, Peralta Junior High, Top 40, the ditch, May Festival and Parade, Gol-Mac Liquor, Caravelle candy bars, TaB soda, neighborhood block parties, trick-or-treating for hours with pillowcases, Parasol Restaurant, Anaheim Angels, Anaheim Rams, Los Angeles Raiders, Dodger Dogs, performing at Anaheim Stadium for the California Suns halftime show, the beach and 15th Street, Villa Park High School, Marching Spartans, Banner Bunnies, the Orange Circle, Fred Kelly Stadium, early morning band practice, KRAP ALLIV, marching down Taft to Tustin and turning around when we hit the crosswalk, Movieland Wax Museum, Knotts Berry Farm, Disneyland, Melodyland Theater, Buffums and Broadway, Eisenhower Park, ...

The Photo Booth

As a child I referred to my Gramma Paris as Gramma in Bell because that's where she lived - in Bell, California. She only became Gramma Paris after the city of Bell became Cudahy and Gramma in Cudahy just didn't sound right. When I would visit her she would take me to the downtown shopping district of Huntington Park and we would go to Woolworth's, a five-and-dime store, where she might pick up some pillowcases to embroider or some new embroidery thread. Sometimes she needed crochet thread to finish the ruffle edge of a pillowcase or to make doilies. Once we bought a bag of clothespins that we used to hang freshly washed sheets outdoors on the clothesline. The store had a lunch counter with bar stools where shoppers could sit and eat and we would have a soda. There was also a photo booth there, and we would have my picture taken in it. She would sit me on a swivel stool in the big steel box, pull the curtain closed, drop in a coin and then, sudden solitude, four flashes, and we waited. After a few minutes it would spit out a narrow strip of paper still wet with the smell of processing chemicals. This is you, it said, in four frames, at this very moment of time.

Summertime

Warm summer evenings always bring back memories of growing up in the 1960's and 70's and playing hide-and-seek until dark with the neighborhood kids. There were a lot of kids that lived on Shattuck, especially in the six houses at the end of the cul-de-sac where we lived, and there was simply no worse punishment given at our house than having to go to bed after dinner and not being able to go out and play. There was, of course, six of us and the Malone's lived next door. After they moved the Buscaglio family lived there. I remember sitting with Claudia Malone in her den and watching Dark Shadows, a daytime show that featured a vampire named Barnabus Collins. The Rosenbery's lived two doors down, on the other side of the Malone's, had nine children and a mean little black dachshund named Tina. First the Merrill's, then later the Perlick's and their five children lived across the street from the Rosenbery's and the Canaday's lived next door to the Perlick's. They had a pool in their backyard and we would sometimes go swimming there. Carol Canaday was our babysitter when our parents would go out for an occasional dinner or party. Next door to the Canaday's and directly across from our house lived the Sliffe's, who also had nine children. We would run, hide, laugh and play until the street lights came on. That was our curfew and time for everyone to go home.

1875 Shattuck Place

Our family moved from Downey to the city of Orange in 1964 when I was seven years old and in first grade. My mother was having another baby and we needed a larger house. A two-story home with five-bedrooms and three-baths, this house provided enough room for a family with six children and it was my home until I married in 1975. Tugboat is one of my most vivid memories of the Shattuck house. He was the cookie jar that sat on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen and held matchbooks safely out of reach. I think my brother, Hal, has our original Tugboat but Warren and I found one quite by accident at an antique store on Glassell down by the Orange Circle in 2001 and he surprised me by going back to purchase it without my knowledge. He paid $63 for it but the childhood memories it evokes each time I look at it are priceless. By the way, it holds our matchbooks.

9512 Horley Avenue

The first house I remember living in as a child was in Downey, California and we had a dog named Rags. I don't remember the house as being large, maybe 2 or 3 bedrooms, and all five of us kids slept in one room that held two bunkbed sets and a crib. That front window, to the left in the picture, was our bedroom and it seems like there were purple and blue hydrangeas planted around the corner on the side of the house. The garage was set in the backyard at the end of a long driveway and there was a tree in the back corner that we would climb and play in. The boy next door, Greg, was always Tarzan, I was Jane and Cathi was Cheetah. I wonder if she remembers that.

Growing Up Graham

I don't remember my father but have studied enough photographs to see the resemblance in my sons. Thomas Dougald Campbell was a 23-year old salesman for the Encyclopedia Americana Company when he drowned on October 15, 1959 after he and two companions; Roy Yates, 40, of Carlsbad and Harold Graham, 32, of San Marino were caught in an undertow while swimming near Oxnard in California. The other two men managed to swim to shore. A newspaper headline on Friday, October 16, 1959 in the Oxnard Press-Courier, "Friends Can't Save Man, Nearly Drown Themselves" and articles in the Huntington Park Daily Signal, "H.P. Man Drowned Off Oxnard" (October 16, 1959) and "H.P. Man's Body Found in Ocean" (October 26, 1959) tell the story of how he, a non-swimmer, was wading in waist deep water at the beach when he was caught by a riptide and dragged out.

Three frogmen, two Navy crashboats from Port Hueneme and a Navy helicopter from Point Mugu searched the area, aided by a light plane flown by Ed Deidrich of the Sheriff's Air Rescue Squad. The search ended at sundown without locating the man's body. Members of the fire department rescue squad used the resuscitator on the exhausted Mr. Graham until his strength returned. 'I saw Campbell just under the surface and pulled him up. He was almost unconscious and was having trouble breathing. I could just see him dying right there and there was nothing I could do about it. He kept sliding under the water and I'd pull him up again. Finally all the strength went out of me and I had to let him go.' The search was resumed this morning.

His body washed ashore nine days later at Seaside Park in Ventura. He left my, then, very young mother with three daughters all under the age of three. She eventually married Harold Graham and had three more children.