Latitude '50: Coming of Age in 1950'S Los Angeles

By Patrick Howard

LAtitude '50 is a factual, although tongue-in-cheek, chronicle of a boy's wayward voyage from adolescence to manhood in 1950's Los Angeles as he navigates the perils of Catholic schools, racial violence, Hollywood celebrities, girls, hot rods, jet planes, and all the other reefs and shoals encountered by those growing up in this iconic city during the "Fabulous Fifties."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 5, 2007
• ISBN: 9781466958104

Patrick Howard

Patrick Howard, born in 1940, was raised in Los Angeles during that City's amazing physical transformation during the mid-'40's to the early '60's. He attended local Catholic elementary and high schools, while working continuously from age 12 in a variety of jobs. He graduated from Loyola University of Los Angeles in 1962 with a degree in Business Administration, a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force and an opportunity to fulfill a life long desire to fly. Upon his release from active militarty duty, Pat began a 30 year career with the City of Los Angeles; the last ten years of which he served as Director of the Bureau of Street Maintenance and was responsible for the City's 7,500 mile street system and 680,000 tree urban forest. In 1994, he was honored as the City's "Employee of the Year." Upon his retirement in 1997, Pat and his wife, Judith, relocated from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles to a sparsely populated rural community in the Northwest. They have two daughters and four grandchildren. Pat and Judy now spend their time enjoying their family, traveling the world, cruising in their several 1950's classic cars and maintaining their home's three acres of landscaping.

Book preview

Latitude 50

(and Later)

by

Patrick Howard

© Copyright 2007 Patrick Howard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives

Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN: 978-1-4251-1852-5 (Softcover)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5810-4 (Ebook)

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Contents

Book I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Afterthought

Book Ii

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

The Players

Final Afterthought

Endnotes:

BOOK I

Latitude ‘50

COMING OF AGE IN THE 1950’S

OR

IF YOU LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, GOD HELP YOU.

CHAPTER 1

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I AM a child of my time and my place in that time.

Simply put, each of us is defined by both the era and the location in which we spent our formative years. Those growing up during the Great Depression were deeply affected by that terrible period. These included my father and father-in-law. They were fine men, who took very different approaches to spending and saving money based on their youthful experiences and environment.

As an example, my father was pretty much of a free spender, who while taking very good care of his family, was never able to save any significant amount of money. This was, in part, probably because he never made all that much. Nevertheless, he always had a sufficient amount to pay cash for everything, but not to save any. I think this was the result of growing up in a more or less hand to mouth, rather poverty plagued urban environment, wherein you took care of your daily needs with not much thought towards the future.

My father-in-law made a comparable living as a grocer. He also took very good care of his family and, like my father, paid cash for everything. He, on the other hand, was very conscientious about saving. He had grown up in a more economically stable family far from a major metropolitan area. Folks from such predominantly agricultural areas were more likely to think about planning for the future. A farmer who didn’t put aside seed money was soon out of the farming business.

They did have another trait in common, both thoroughly disliked the concept of credit. I think this attitude towards credit was also the result of living through the Depression, when those who owed money saw their property and possessions taken in order to satisfy a debt that could no longer be reduced. In this way, they both were defined by an era. Their physical location while growing up, the Midwest, also gave them a rock solid ethical foundation and a no-nonsense approach to life. This is probably a flawed theory drawn from a very limited set of examples, but it works for me.

One of the reason I am so firm in my belief that I am right in this is that one of the legacies of my era, The Fifties, is that we became very sure of ourselves. The Fifties was the last decade where everything was like our television, black and white. We weren’t bothered by varying shades of gray messing up our beliefs. Things were straight forward and simple, either good or bad, right or wrong. You were either for us or against us, as several hot wars and the overshadowing Cold War had proved. Like our parents, our basic beliefs and value systems were being defined by our era.

Although some of my earliest and strongest memories and impressions are from the late 1940’s, my real formative era was the 1950’s and my experiences between the ages 10-20. This works out conveniently, as I was born in 1940, which makes it easy for me to calculate my age and gives me an entire decade to work with. I won’t pontificate as to how meaningful or superficial the Fifties were as that has already been overdone by historians. Just let it be said that it was a fun time for those of us who were lucky enough to be teenagers during its passage. Also, as I previously mentioned, it was a time that made us unnaturally sure of ourselves, as if we kids had anything to do with the changes going on around us. Well, maybe we were responsible for some of the cultural changes as we did have rock and roll and Elvis, but certainly not the technological advancements. We didn’t really influence much, except by the mere fact we were there. We were along for the ride. We were hijacked onto a marvelous time machine by virtue of our parent’s predilection for procreation. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad

Chapter 2

MY PHYSICAL LOCATION WHILE GROWING up was also a major life defining influence. my Fifties were spent in Los Angeles. Dad had moved us west during World War II, where like most folks who weren’t caught up in the military, he came searching for better employment opportunities. Why LA? He had been there before on a road trip in the Thirties. We still have a bunch of photographs of this trip showing Dad with a variety of young ladies, none of which resembles mom. mom never liked these pictures, but, thankfully, never threw them away. Dad said it was a publicity trip related to the motion picture business. I think he was just a lucky guy. His car was a cool looking gangster type sedan with chrome cooling fins on the side hood flaps. He is shown in neat very dapper riding pants and boots, and seemed to be having one hell of a good time. He hadn’t gained his weight yet; however, you could see the potential.

In any event, westward we came in 1944. Although we stayed for a while with the folk’s old friends, the Yates, Fred, Amilee and their son Todd, in Westwood, our first home was on Crenshaw Boulevard in an apartment above a storefront structure that also housed the mesa Theater. It was wartime and anywhere one could find a place to stay was great, particularly if you had two little boys and an ornery Pekingese mutt, who went by the name of Togo. Terrific adventures in that place for my brother, mike, and I. Will get to those in a bit, but first a few words on Los Angeles of the late Forties and Fifties. LA was not the place you think of today, a wealthy, sprawling, overcrowded, bustling and potentially dangerous megalopolis. It, like me, was also in its adolescence. Just starting to mature. Still trying to fit into an ill-

fitting physical body and trying to figure out its place in a new, postwar, world.

As to size, geographically think of an inkblot looking somewhat like the state of Texas, but only 425 square miles in size. Split that blob in half from left to right, west to east, and you have the San Fernando Valley in the upper half separated from the lower half by the Santa Monica Mountains, or if you prefer, the Hollywood Hills. The San Fernando Valley was, and is, of no particular significance to the atmosphere of Los Angeles. It is just there. We had to go out there once to visit our Aunt Avis and Uncle Bill, when they lived in Burbank. It was summer as the temperature exceeded 200 degrees. We hated it and never wanted to go back. I recall they had a large lump of green glass on the front porch that was used as a doorstop. They claimed it was found in the desert.¹* I always thought it was just their milk bottles that had melted in the heat. Anyway, as I said, the Valley doesn’t count.

South of the dividing hills is the real Los Angeles that everyone loves or hates. It is famous for Beverly Hills, the Sunset Strip, the Santa Monica Pier, MGM Studios and miles of Malibu beaches. None of these are in the City of Los Angeles. On the other hand, that beyond famous location, Hollywood, which stands as an icon throughout the world as an independent entity, is not an incorporated municipality, but a community situated entirely within the LA City limits. By the way, no modern studios were ever located in Hollywood. LA does have the famed Hollywood sign overlooking it, which was constructed in the Twenties in anticipation of the birth of my granddaughter, who was born in the Eighties and who will always be Hollywood to me. That is LA, always ahead of its time and dimension.

Los Angeles of the Forties and Fifties wasn’t a whole lot different physically from the LA oftoday. Film noir’s Sam Spade could detective himself around the city without too much difficulty. He would just have to mentally reduce the population by four-fifths and completely ignore the freeway system. Otherwise, I think he could navigate withrelative ease. I often did that in the Nineties, when in the field with my job. I could easily find places I recalled from 40 years earlier by just ignoring the modern structures and following my instincts. movie stars’ homes and old hangouts are there if you know where to look. Also, some really infamous locations, such as where the Black Dahlia murder victim was dumped just off Crenshaw Boulevard, can still be found. Some places, unfortunately, are gone. Our apartment above the mesa Theater was torn down together with Saint mary’s Academy across the street. The latter loss was a tragedy for Catholic boys as St mary’s produced a superior breed of young lady. Like Catholic boy’s high schools, the girl’s high schools bred young ladies of specific traits. Immaculate Heart girls were somewhat straight-laced and not very attractive. Bishop Conaty girls were tough little tramps. However, St mary’s Academy produced refined, educated and terribly provocative young ladies.

Also lost forever are such structures as the Culver City midget car raceway, the Pan Pacific Auditorium of the picture Xanadu fame, Gilmore Stadium and much of the really cool part of the Sunset Strip, as well as sections of Santa monica Boulevard that housed the famous nightclubs. However, much remains. Enough so you could still find your way around even if you had been away for years.

Even the cultural diversity of today would not throw you. I think LA has led the country in accepting people of different cultures and races. We always had a large Hispanic population by virtue of California’s Spanish and mexican history. Asian culture, both Japanese and Chinese, have always been well established. Negroes, Blacks, African-Americans, or whatever they call themselves at the moment, migrated to LA in the early Forties in droves, and to all of us seemed to have been there at least as long as we had been. That made it OK, although we kept our distance. The various races existed alongside each other. We respected their space, they respected ours. Was it right? I don’t know. What I do know is that it worked and when we did intermingle, it was with mutual respect. All that seemed to go to hell, for many reasons, a few years later.

I got my teeth knocked out in the mid-Fifties by a Black gang. The fact that they were Black had something to do with it, but not as much as would be made of it if it happened today. Back then, skin color just gave you a starting point from which something may or may not develop and escalate into hostilities. I got into a dispute with a Black kid. Needless to say, I was obviously in the right. Remember, I’m a Fifties kid. I didn’t back off from the jerk, who then advised me he was going to get his brothers. That was Ok with me as I figured this was his way of avoiding losing face as he left. Big mistake! He came back with five brothers. Must have been from a large family. My only beef with the event is that I was distracted by the numbers of adversaries and got blindsided. I never saw the guy that nailed me. By our standards of the day, if you wanted to fight you did it straight up and on the level. Chickenshit was not acceptable. A fair fight was OK regardless of the outcome, even if it was your blood, hair and teeth on the ground. I learned that day that the concept of a fair fight wasn’t in everybody’s playbook. Served me well later in life, not necessarily for the best.

Los Angeles was more of a conglomeration of individual communities than a true city. This was probably true of all large cities, where sheer size made people think in terms of their neighborhood. New York is certainly an example of this in that very small neighborhoods developed their own identity. As I mentioned, we lived on Crenshaw Boulevard in the Hyde Park area, probably because of its proximity to St John’s Hyde Park Elementary School. Michael was enrolled there, as was I a few years later when we had moved to Westchester. Crenshaw Blvd. was a major thoroughfare with streetcar tracks running down its center. Great for flattening pennies and squashing marbles. I often think what other mother would let her kids play by active railroad tracks. It also was adjacent to a nice residential neighborhood which gave us a play area away from the busy street and the alley running behind our building. One of my first recollections was playing in the trash in the alley and slicing my right hand wide open on a broken bottle. I was probably five years old at the time and remember my mother’s extreme agitation when I came running home. She had to take me to a neighbor’s house to get transportation to the hospital where I was stitched up. Like most moms, she had to handle this stuff alone. Same thing when my brother decided to run his hand through the washing machine wringer, which consisted of two motorized rollers that were used to squeeze water from the clothing. Squeezed the crap out of his hand requiring another excursion to the doctor.

We played outside a lot as there wasn’t much to do inside. The apartment was rather small. mike and I had the bedroom complete with bunk beds. mom and Dad slept in the living room in a murphy Bed that came out of the wall. Back then, there was no TV. Even radio shows did not appeal much to children. You basically entertained yourself. So we prowled the neighborhood finding friends, vacant lots, scary houses and other such amusements. I recall we were intrigued with the iceman. He had a flat bed truck filled with large blocks of clear ice that he delivered to various customers. Refrigerators were relatively common, but people still bought block ice that went into zinc lined compartments in the kitchen. We had one and it was used continuously. We would beg for shards of clear ice from the iceman, which would keep us occupied for hours juggling them from frozen hand to frozen hand and sucking on them until they were gone. Sadly, the Ice man Cometh, no more!

my last memories of living above the mesa Theater were the end of World War II and Uncle Clyde coming home from the Pacific where he had been involved in the invasion of Ie Shima and Okinawa. The war’s end I recall as a period of excitement and everyone looking at newspapers with huge, indecipherable to me, headlines. Some weeks or months later, we sat with my Aunt marian and Cousin Billy in our apartment waiting for Clyde. He came in wearing his Navy whites and was to us kids a returning warrior. He brought us all souvenirs from his travels. In the case of mike and me, we received large US Navy knives with eight-inch blades and leather sheaths. What could be neater than to get your own huge hunting knife? I still have the knives and use one on a regular basis in working around the house. I have often thought that there are very few people in the world that would be considerate enough to think of his nephews when returning to his own family after several years’ absence.

Clyde is one of the nice guys; and it was my privilege to be with him on the USS Arizona monument at Pearl Harbor some 45 years later when he threw his dog tags onto the sunken battleship as a tribute to his old shipmates. my son-in-law Steve and I were also privileged totour the USS Missouri with him. There he related some of his wartime experiences including being near the famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle, when Pyle was shot and killed by a sniper on Ie Shima. Clyde also was alongside the USS Missouri when a Japanese Kamikaze airplane struck it during the Okinawa campaign. That moment was immortalized by a photographer who took a picture of the Kamikaze just microseconds before it struck near the port bow of the ship. Reading history is one thing. Standing next to someone who lived it is another.

Shortly after the end of the war, we moved to a nicer apartment a few miles away in the Baldwin Hills area. This was a more pleasant atmosphere and Mike and I had considerably more playmates. Our stay here was relatively short lived; and was only memorable by the fact that our sister, Kathleen, was born during our residence there. This neighborhood still exists and looks much as it did in 1946.

Its other claim to fame, our living there being the first, was that it was used several years later as the neighborhood of James Dean and Natalie Wood during the exterior scenes in Rebel Without A Cause. My friends and I appropriated one of our parent’s cars and drove back to this neighborhood to watch some of the filming. We were able to meet and talk to Jim Backus*²* (Dean’s film father) and Sal Mineo (the hapless, doomed teenager) while watching the filming of some of the night scenes. We only got a glimpse of James Dean in his signature red jacket. Alas, did not see Natalie Wood at all. No one could have thought at the time that all three of these young actors would come to such untimely and violent ends. Our only thought at the time was to see as much as we could and then to get the car back to Westchester since none of us were yet old enough to drive. Apparently, we did, as there were never any repercussions from this little trek.

Chapter 3

IN 1946, THE SAME YEAR as Kathy’s birth, we moved to our new house in Westchester. I am sure this move was prompted by the growing family, as well as Dad’s desire to own a home purchased on the California low interest G.I. Calvet Loan Program. Of course Dad’s not having been in the military was, in his mind, an insignificant obstacle. He just used Uncle Clyde’s benefits as Clyde was moving back to milwaukee and could have cared less about his California G.I. Benefits. So we moved into a brand new house on Will Rogers Street in the LA community of Westchester. All streets in the new section of Westchester were named after people famous in the world of aviation. This made sense, as we were right next to the LA International Airport. Therefore, we had streets named after Croydon, DeHavilland, mcConnel, Liberator, etc. It never struck us as an ill omen that ours was named after a man who was killed in plane crash. Just seemed somewhat neat, and was better than living on a number named street. Besides I loved the aviation connection as it seemed to fit with my interest in airplanes and flying.

I recall walking downtown one afternoon and watching a twin-engine P-38 flying overhead with one engine on fire. Another time I was thrilled to see the huge multi-engine YB-49 Northrop Flying Wing, forerunner of today’s B-2 Stealth Bomber, passing over escorted by several P-80, Shooting Star, jet fighters.

Westchester, in the late Forties, was considered to be out in the boondocks. Kind of laughable today where it is viewed as a desirable close-in residential area. As I said before, there was then not anywhere near the population LA has today. It was also a kind of stand-alone community that had the appearance of a small town. It was physically separated from the rest of Los Angeles by the steep bluffs, Hughes Aircraft and Culver City on the north, the City of Inglewood on the east, the Los Angeles Airport on the south and large open fields and the ocean to the west. This isolation made it a very individual and readily identifiable community.

To give an idea of how small Los Angeles was in those days compared to the present, consider the telephone system. First of all, it was hard to get a telephone. After a waiting period, you had a two party line installed as you shared it with someone else. Not a problem as phones were not used like today where they are like a third ear. Our first phone number was Orchard 5564. Word prefixes were how areas were designated. Orchard was Westchester. Madison was downtown Los Angeles. Dad’s Boulevard Theater was in the Republic prefix area. Crestview was Beverly Hills, a very desirable prefix, which people fought for. It was like in the movie Butterfield 8, the prefix of your telephone dictated your status in Los Angeles. Late in the 1940’s we got a single party line.

As the population grew, our number changed from OR 5564 to Orchard 05564 as the demand for telephones increased. It then went, in the 1960’s, to 670-5564, as name prefixes were dropped to increase numbers. In the late 1970’s, the number was expanded to 212 6705564, and later to 1 212 670-5564. So, OR 5564 to 1 212 670-5564 in less than 20 years. Go LA!

In fact, it was years before I understood that Westchester was really a part of the City of Los Angeles, as you could use a return address just listing street address, the name Westchester , and, of course, California. Encouraging this feeling of community was the fact that Westchester had a very substantial commercial section right in its center on Sepulveda Boulevard.

The commercial strip was anchored on the north by the Loyola Theater and a miniature golf course. The Loyola was a very art-deco structure that was liberally festooned with neon lights. It was unusual enough that it was later deemed a historical building, and its exterior is relatively unchanged although it now houses businesses. It was also a Fox West Coast theater, which meant that I spent many Saturdays there as Dad got us in free. Every Saturday, Dad would give me a note addressed to the Loyola manager beginning with the phrase Please take care of my son..... This always worked and I still had him writing such notes many years later to a variety of Fox theatres, thereby reducing the cost of dating. It never embarrassed me. To the contrary, others always were impressed by it.

On the south end of the business district was a set of buildings that housed the Paradise Theater and the bowling alley, as well as several other establishments including the melody Bar and Grill. This, I believe was Westchester’s only tavern, although I think that there was another bar, the Fireside, in West Westchester. I actually preferred the Paradise Theater to the Loyola, as it seemed to show more movies that appealed to young people. These included movies like The Wild One, The Thing and man With A Golden Arm. The musical score of this latter film sparked my interest in jazz, which continues to this day. Probably another attraction of the Paradise is that if I got into trouble there it did not reflect on my Dad. The same could not be said of the Loyola.

Therefore, the Paradise was the venue of choice for my budding forays into the world of juvenile misconduct, commonly referred to as juvenile delinquency. Since my friends and I had to pay to get into the Paradise, we devised other, less costly means of entrance. The easiest way was to wait for a movie to end and as people left through the building’s various steel exit doors, we would just walk in against the flow of people. This worked well when the auditorium was fairly full as it was easy to move unseen in the crowds. This didn’t work when the crowd was very light. In that case, we used Plan B, which consisted of simply removing the exit door hinge pins. When people exited through these doors, they simply fell off their hinges. We could then stroll through the resultant gaping hole. A noisy approach, but effective. When all else failed we bought tickets like everyone else. This latter approach, while expedient, just didn’t seem as sporting as our other methods.

In between these two theaters were the remainder of most of the buildings making up Westchester’s commercial area. They included the only multi-story building, which housed the millirons Department Store. This was a two or three story structure with roof top parking.

This was very modern, by the standards of the day. We also had several drug stores, including a Thrifty’s, which had a large soda fountain section. This was probably one of the last Thrifty’s built with that convenience. Here was a place we could go to listen to the latest music on the individual jukeboxes at each booth. Radios and phonographs were a luxury then so much of your musical education came from jukeboxes. The price of admission was to drink gallons of Coke and eat tons of French fries. Contrary to popular renditions of the period, we did not stick the paper sleeves of the straws to the diner ceiling by dipping them in chocolate and using the straw like an Amazon blow gun. Why do that when you could use that same straw blow gun to put out the eye of your best friend. No shortage of common sense here!

Mid-block was the Ralph’s supermarket and a large furniture store. Other businesses were your run of the mill dry cleaners, shoe repair shop, pet shops, toy store, etc. In all, Westchester was a very self contained, self-sufficient community.

There was one other building in the business district that was important to us kids and that was the record store. Located directly across the intersection of Sepulveda Blvd. and Will Rogers Street from the Paradise Theater, the Westchester Music Center was an old fashioned, by today’s standards, record store. In addition to buying 78 rpm vinyl and 45rpm plastic phonograph records, they had