Random Remembrances

By Louis E. Guglielmino

Random Remembrances contains forty-four autobiographical sketches picked at random, hence the title. These are all true stories based upon true events, mostly during the thirties, the period of the Great Depression, into the WW2 years and later which include my wife and family.(The first, The Birth is mostly my imagination, but its true in essence.) Growing up then wasnt easy, but that hasnt changed, its just different today. This is what it was like without television, computers, and transportation other than buses and streetcars. Very few moms had an automobile available; you walked instead of public transit, which cost about five cents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467066662

Louis E. Guglielmino

An ordinary citizen born in San Francisco, California, in 1921, Louis Guglielmino was educated at the University of San Francisco, where he majored in business administration and minored in philosophy. His education was interrupted by World War II. He was commissioned and served for four years in the air-defense artillery.

Book preview

Guardian Angel

I was almost five when I lived at 4520 California Street, San Francisco. We occupied the lower flat, which was above the garage and basement. The building sat midway in the block, with Seventh Avenue to the west and Sixth Avenue to the east. This block and the backyard were my play area. My aunt Cecina, who was rather lax in keeping tabs of where I was playing, never really knew whether I was in the backyard, in the basement, or on the street. She was a childless spinster well into her fifties, quite eccentric, superstitious, religious, and definitely not used to taking care of children. She arrived from Catania, Sicily, in 1923 and spoke only the Sicilian dialect peculiar to Catania (Sicily, up to modern times, boasted 452 dialects). I was compelled to learn and understand her Sicilian, in addition to Spanish (we had a Mexican nanny) and English. My father used to relate to his friends that I had a language of my own, because I would mix all three languages whenever I conversed with members of the family. It wasn’t until I went to school that I zeroed in on English. My Spanish was soon forgotten, but I did, sort of, continue to speak a childish Sicilian to my aunt. She never did learn to speak English, much to the annoyance of my father. Cecina did not get along with my father—or anyone else for that matter. She was peculiar and left when I was seven. I later was told that she was actually mentally ill and was sent to Imola State Mental Hospital in Napa.

One afternoon I decided to explore beyond the confines of my home and its immediate surroundings. I proceeded to Seventh Avenue, turned right at the corner, went down to Lake Street, and walked west until I reached a playground consisting of the usual swings, seesaws, slides, and ladders. The park also contained several professional-sized tennis courts, a baseball diamond, and a large expanse of lawn where children could play. At the northwest end of the playground, just off of Park-Presidio Boulevard, was a lake, named just plain Mountain Lake. This small body of water (which really seemed large to a small boy) was pristine. On the far side, nearly halfway around its perimeter, the shore was lined with bulrushes and pussy willows. On the near side, the water met a brownish sandy slope mostly devoid of vegetation. At my feet was a concrete pipe that jutted out about five feet over the lake.

It was tempting to walk out on the pipe, and that was exactly what I did. I reached the end, bent over to observe the minnows and pollywogs, lost my balance, slipped, and fell in. A cold murky pea-green world enveloped me. I sank to the bottom—how deep did not matter, since it was over my head. I became confused and frightened, not knowing what to do next. I did not know how to swim. Suddenly, a hand reached down into the water, grasped my hand, turned me around, and guided me as I walked on the bottom until my head was above the water. I looked all around, but nobody was there. I ran into the playground and asked if anyone had seen a person pull me out of the lake. They all said that I was the only person near the lake! I could not imagine who that hand belonged to or from where it had come.

By the time I arrived home, I was almost dry. I did not tell anyone in the family about my adventure. I was afraid to tell my aunt, because she’d tell my father and I’d be thoroughly chastised, or she’d tell my brothers, who would not believe me anyway. To this day, I still wonder. Was this hand my imagination? But I felt its grip. Who was it? Can it be true that we really do have guardian angels?

Childhood’s Mysteries

There was a lot of building going on in the avenues of San Francisco’s inner Richmond district during the early 1920s. As a boy of four, I would marvel at the little men high up on scaffolds, plastering stucco on outside walls of newly constructed apartment houses. I could not understand how those little men could do so much work. I stopped across the street to watch when one of the little men started climbing down from the scaffold. I was amazed by how he grew as he kept coming down. By the time he was on the sidewalk, he wasn’t little anymore—in fact, he was bigger than my father!

From then on, I noticed that everything I saw grew as it came closer. Automobiles looked like toys but got bigger and bigger as they came closer. Of course, they also got smaller and smaller as they went away, just as the man climbing back up the ladders got smaller and smaller as he rose. Buildings, too, changed size—as I walked away from them they got smaller, but the buildings in front of me got bigger.

When I arrived home, the stairs leading up seemed to be about the same size as before. When my mother opened the door, she was the same size as before too. I went right to my room and sat against the wall and noticed one wall was bigger than the other. My bed was bigger than my brother’s. Everything was not the same size anymore. I was confused. How could everything get bigger and then get smaller again? I went to the window and looked down into the backyard. The same thing—it all looked smaller. My rabbit looked like a mouse with big ears.

At dinnertime, I asked my father why everything changed size before my very eyes. He chuckled and said that when I walked down the street, I looked smaller to other people, but if I looked at myself, I would find that I stayed the same size. He also said that what I noticed was really an optical illusion. I was more confused than ever. Optical illusion? I had no idea what those big words meant.

Typing Class

When I left the sixth grade from West Portal Grammar School (now known as elementary school) in San Francisco, no one made much ado about leaving grammar school for junior high (now known as middle school). Now children graduate from kindergarten, again from the sixth grade, yet again from the ninth grade, and finally from high school. All warrant celebrations. Anyway, I attended Aptos Junior High, with Balboa High as my intended destination starting with the tenth grade. The transition from grammar school to junior high was not difficult, but the school was different in that it was much less regimented. We changed class on the hour and had separate teachers for each class. In grammar school, during the thirties and earlier in the San Francisco school system, all our teachers were single women; at Aptos, though, I had several male teachers, one for a woodshop, one for physical education, and a third for mathematics. There were no recesses, but we did have ten minutes between classes. We were expected to be at the right place at the right time. Tardiness was not tolerated.

One of the mandatory classes I was compelled to take was typing. Those of you who took typing must remember those old-fashioned typewriters. None of the keys was labeled with its corresponding function. You just had to learn where qwert was as well as yuiop. Those, if I recall, were the basic positions for the left hand and the right hand, or maybe the basic positions were asdf and hjkl. Everybody was progressing quite well—everybody, that is, except me. I just didn’t get it. You could not look at the keyboard for ush goodd it swoulf doo wioout knnosing whst it wsas anuyay.

After several weeks, the teacher took pity on me and said I would not have to learn to type properly, especially since I was still in the beginner’s stage and had two left hands. The dilemma was, we were not permitted to drop a mandatory subject for some other class. My teacher came up with an acceptable solution: I would assume the role of the class typewriter repairman. There was a lot to do and not enough class time to do it, so I also worked three days during the lunch period. The students were very rough, banging two keys at once or striking the edges and causing the key to jam, bend, or actually break. Most of the girls were typing very well and inflicted much less damage on the typewriters. The boys were the ones who banged the keys too hard. I quickly learned how to remove the keys, straighten them, and replace them in their respective slots. I had a box of new keys that, in spite of the letters reading backward, I was able to identify easily. I also learned all the other parts by name and function, so I was able to do the repairs quickly. Many parts simply wore out because of the age of the typewriters, but it was the abuse that really kept me busy. The more common malfunctions occurred because of the springs that were attached to most of the moving parts. If the part didn’t break, the spring did, or just fell off. During the Great Depression, getting new typewriters was out of the question, but there were ample replacements in my spare-parts kit. I hardly ever had a backlog of work. My other duties included cleaning each typewriter at least once a month—removing the platen, rubbing a solution on the hard rubber roller, brushing out the interior, and testing them.

By the time the term ended, the teacher considered me a full-fledged typewriter repairman. Most of the kids got As or Bs for their typing skills. My teacher said she had special permission to give me a final grade of A for the repair work and C for typing, because in spite of not being able to coordinate the touch system, I did manage to type with two fingers of each hand and had memorized the location and function of each key, which was necessary to test my repairs. So with the A for repairs combined with the C for the typing effort, I received a final grade of B.

First Day of School

When thinking back on my first day of school, I don’t think kindergarten counts, because I really do not recall my reaction, and in retrospect it was a half day of playtime and naps. However, I will mention that is was a long walk from Seventh Avenue along California to Sacramento Street near Arguello to Madison Grammar School. At a 1996 board meeting of the Dry Creek Valley Association, I mentioned that school to one of the members and discovered that we both attended Madison at the same time. He brought a photograph of the class and there we both were, sitting in the second row.

We moved to 690 Twelfth Avenue during the summer and were within the boundaries for the Frank McCoppin Grammar School. The school was located on a block surrounded by Seventh Avenue, Cabrillo Street, Sixth Avenue, and Balboa Street. At the time, all San Francisco grammar schools included kindergarten through eighth grade.

As I made no fuss entering kindergarten, my mother decided she would not have to walk with me for first grade and instead told my two brothers to see to it I’d get there with them. They abandoned me as soon as they left the house and left me to find my own way. I proceeded along Cabrillo Street to Sixth Avenue and turned left to where the yard was. Suddenly, somebody—a teacher, I presume—rang a handbell. All the children promptly lined up according to their class, except the new kids. Interestingly, there were seventeen groups, because each grade had a high and low, plus kindergarten. Two teachers rounded the new kids up and showed us where to stand when the bell rang. The procedure only took a few minutes for most of us. It took a little longer to pry teary-eyed children from reluctantly holding on to their mothers. When the principal rang her bell, all the kids snapped to attention, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited, and a boy blew his bugle while the flag was hoisted. At the termination of the rituals, each teacher marched her class into the building and to her classroom.

Miss Bailey, my first-grade teacher, seemed like an old lady to me (and she actually was; she retired two years later). She was short in stature, somewhat plump, and wore her glasses low on her nose so you could see her blue eyes. Her hair was white. She was soft-spoken, very nice, and patient with her new pupils.

As the morning wore on, I noticed some of my classmates had attended the kindergarten at Madison, so I kept getting up to visit with them. At first, Miss Bailey gently told me I would have to stay at my assigned seat and keep quiet. I didn’t obey her. After several attempts to quell my unauthorized activities, she asked me to remain for a few minutes during lunch period. She again admonished me and warned that she would have to take drastic action to keep me down and quiet. I wasn’t listening.

Lunchtime was over, and we all returned to class. On an impulse, I got up and started to approach my friend’s desk. Miss Bailey stopped lecturing, came down the aisle, grabbed me by the arm, and led me to the front of the class. She said, Louis, I warned you, but you continue to misbehave, so now I must punish you. She pulled her chair around her desk facing the class, sat down, bent me over her lap, pulled my pants down, and proceeded to spank me right on my bare behind. Then she said, Go back to your desk and behave yourself.

The spanking didn’t hurt near as much as the embarrassment. My classmates snickered and giggled as I walked down the aisle rubbing my butt. Needless to say, I did behave for the rest of the day.

At the supper table, my mother asked me how I liked the new school. I answered that I did not like it. My father asked why. I related what had happened, adding that the teacher did not like me and kept picking on me. My big mistake! My father picked me up bodily, took me into my bedroom, and gave me another whipping accompanied by a lecture. School, he said, is a place to learn, not to socialize while in a classroom.

The following day, I was an angel with a bent halo and a sore butt.

The Golden Gate Bridge

A bridge across the Golden Gate connecting San Francisco with Marin County was a fantasy for many people and a reality in the mind’s eye of others. Some said it would be wonderful but the currents were too strong. It