When We Were Cowboys: Selected Stories of My Life

By Carl Allen Schoner

"When We Were Cowboys" is a collection of stories about my personal adventures growing up in Southern California after moving here from New york in 1961. While this book is intended primarily as a memoir for family and friends, there are many stories within it that will stir the fondest memories of all young people who were lucky enough to have grown up in the more open expanses of Southern California's San Gabriel Valley back in the good old days of the 1960's and 1970's.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257482504

Carl Allen Schoner

Carl Allen Schoner holds a degree in behavioral science and is a certified clinical hypnotherapist. In addition to practicing hypnotherapy, he has been a teacher, a consultant, and has conducted motivational and sales training seminars. He is also a writer and cartoonist, and his articles and cartoons have appeared in publications such as Consulting Magazine, The California Law School Journal, Chess Life Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. His brother, Steven Ronald Schoner, is an internationally known authority on meteorites, and is an avid meteorite hunter.

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When We

Were Cowboys

Selected Stories of My Life

By Carl Allen Schoner

Published by Carl Allen Schoner

CAS Associates

P.O. Box 4462

Diamond Bar, CA 91765

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www.lulu.com/carl-schoner

www.geocities.com/dreampsycles

www.trafford.com/robots/04-0177.html

All original artwork by Carl Allen Schoner

© Copyright 2009, by Carl Allen Schoner

All copyrights reserved by the author. No part of this publication

may be reproduced or copied in any way without the express

written permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

3601283-22

eISBN: 978-1-25748-250-4

This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother

who introduced me into the world in 1953 at this tiny little house

at 942 Dexter Lane in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

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To this day, the street is unpaved!

FIRST MEMORIES

I opened my eyes and found my room to be dark and silent. I could not recognize very much of what was around me. But the door leading to the next room was ajar, and a thin ray of sunlight entered through this space and sliced through my room, dividing it in two. Tiny particles of dust danced silently through this bright ray and then drifted into silent obscurity beyond its warm gaze. Presently a shadow dissected the beam, and I knew that my mother was in the other room.

I slid down off the day bed and a shiver went through my body as my bare feet touched the cold, wooden floor. I was naked except for my pajama pants, so I hugged my sides as I waddled toward the door and into the next room.

This was the white room. It had white walls, and big, square white metal boxes, and a table with two chairs where I sometimes ate, and sometimes played. My mother was standing upright next to one of the big white boxes, seemingly playing with something on its surface as I approached her from behind.

Suddenly, I was struck by searing heat! White light! Flashes of red and crimson struck like lightning in my brain. Flesh peeling from my body, my skin melting before my eyes! I ran in terror, in circles, screaming and wailing as pain seared through my body. My mother cried, chasing after me, grasping at me, trying to bundle me in a wet towel, but all I could think of was to get away from the agony of the tearing pain that was raging through me, causing my skin to bubble and peel away. I screamed louder and ran as fast as I could, hoping I would scare the pain away or at least outrun it, but it would not let go.

The pain was relentless. I grew faint and dizzy. Then I heard wailing sounds coming from outside, as though echoing my own cries. Suddenly big men wearing long white coats emerged from spaces all around me. They held me down and wrapped my body with some cold clothes. They picked me up and gave me some candy that made me tired, and then I was calm.

When I opened my eyes again I remember seeing the silhouette of my mother and one other person coming through a door into a room at the hospital to pick me up. Two weeks had passed, but I remember nothing of that time, other than the moment when I realized in a flash that my world could be a very dangerous place to live, indeed.

Very close to the time that I was burned, my father died. I don't know for certain if it was immediately before I was burned, or immediately after, but I tend to think that he died shortly before I was burned. From a philosophical standpoint I suppose it doesn't matter that much, but from a personal standpoint it matters a great deal, for my father's death completely changed the course of my life.

I don't remember my dad at all. In fact, my memory of the first two years of my life is limited to the moment I was burned, the day my mother picked me up from the hospital and a few crisp images of the furnishings inside our little house in Westmont, California where we moved after my father's death. During those few years I also lived in Alamogordo, New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and New York City, but I remember nothing of that time other that what I have already told you.

I really have only one distinct memory of this time that we spent in California. I remember there was a lake that my mother and one of her friends took us to on occasion. It was a man-made lake formed by a dam, and it was called Puddingstone Lake. There were no real facilities to speak of, other that the dam itself, which provided a concrete beach with perhaps a 30 degree incline to the water. People would lay towels out on the concrete incline and sun themselves on the side of the dam, and would carefully creep down the steep incline to take a dip in the cool water when the temperature grew too hot. This was common and acceptable practice, and in fact there were ropes and buoy’s set out that defined the extents of the swimming area. But this was no swimming pool - it was a dam - and the thing was, the dam was very steep and slippery at the point the concrete met the water, because algae tended to grow right at that point. So one day, while everyone else were sunning themselves on the steep incline of the dam, I was squatting at the edge of the water, swatting at the little crests of water that lapped at its edge. Suddenly, the slippery, slimy algae edge caught my foot, and I found myself slipping under the water. I remember my panic as the blue sky receded behind the filter of pale green lake water, and I realized I was drowning. I was still only two years old, and while I did not know how to swim I instinctively held my breath and thrashed about as the image of the sun and the sounds of life grew more and more distant. At that moment I knew, even as an infant, that I was about to die, and my panic changed to an almost calm sense of resolve as I slipped further beneath the water. But suddenly a face appeared, and then an arm, and then the big hands grabbed me, but I don't remember anything else of this incident.

After less that a year of living in California my mother grew lonely and weary of her personal isolation. She rented out the house in California and moved us back to New York to live closer to her father. We flew back to New York on an old twin engine turbo prop jetliner, but not without a fight. I was so terrified of the prospect of getting on this plane that I fought tooth and nail to avoid being brought on board; I kicked, bit, screamed and scratched at my tormenters, who were the pilot, co-pilot, and attendants as well as my mother, I really don't know how they managed to finally get me on board, but they did, and to this day I still treasure the Junior Pilot Certificate issued to Carl Allen Schoner in June of 1956.

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My mother in her late teens, and my dad with Steve the Cowboy.

NEW YORK CITY

New York was a world apart from anything I knew previously, which was the very small desert towns of Alamogordo, NM, El Paso, Texas, and Pomona, California. Suddenly I found myself in one of the largest metropolises on planet Earth, and for the longest time I just wasn’t quite sure to what to make of it all. During this time she rented an apartment and took a job as an assistant to a dentist friend that she had known for a long time. During the next year we spent a lot of time with my grandfather as my mother tried to start a new life.

I really loved my grandfather, and he really loved us kids. His wife – my grandmother – had passed away in 1942, when my mother was only twelve years old. So grandfather (Poppa Joe) enjoyed every moment he spent with his grandchildren. Every time he saw me he would first pinch and then kiss my cheeks, calling me his little Carlo and Bambino. I used to play with my little toy fort and Cowboy and Indian set on the carpet just outside the kitchen, where my grandfather loved to cook these wonderful mid-afternoon dinners of spaghetti and meatballs, minestrone soup, Italian sausages and onions sautéed in red wine sauce with bell peppers and sweet red onions. My grandfather really was a marvelous cook. After eating, everyone would take a two hour nap, and my grandfather would snore like he was sawing wood, but his snoring never bothered me. In fact I took comfort in it in that it ensured me that he was right there on his cot just outside my sleeping room. After our naps grandpa would bundle us up in the appropriate clothing for the season and take us out for a long walk, rain or shine. He loved to walk, and he walked everywhere. I don’t think he ever owned an automobile; he really didn’t need one given his enthusiasm for walking and the fact that in New York City, everything is within walking distance. His belief was that as long as you kept walking, you would keep living, so every day at around 4:00 he would take us out on his walks, sometimes around the block, sometimes to Central Park, sometimes to the Italian Deli on the corner, and sometimes to the Ice Cream and Soda fountain. After about an hour or two we would return home, and grandpa would begin preparing the main dinner for the day in his tiny but well kept little kitchen.

I remember too how I would sometimes sit at one of the two chairs in that little kitchen just under the bleached white window sill overlooking the garden behind his row house. I would watch in awe as my grandfather tended to his beloved fig trees, tomatoes, grapes, and sunflowers. I loved watching my grandfather in his garden, because it was so obvious that he loved working in it, and this made me happy.

I also remember quite well the ground floor of grandpa's row house, which was perhaps more of a basement or even a garage than it was a living space. My grandfather was an ironworker, an electrician, and an exceptional, accomplished artist. But money was tight in those days, and to make ends meet he supplemented his contracting work by crafting sculptures, ornate lamps, and other beautiful works of iron, brass, copper, and tin which he sold for profit. Because of this, he had hundreds of tools that captured my imagination.

There are a few other things that I remember from Grandpa’s house. In the living room was a little end table with a door, and inside that table were the few items that mother kept stored there. There was a little round tin can that was filled with buttons and sewing needles, and one soldier’s pin of a globe with what looked like an anchor emblem. I had always thought this pin had belonged to my dad, but I realized much later in life that it actually belonged to someone else.

And in the bedroom all the way at the back of the row house grandpa had a stuffed owl. I do not know where he got it or why he had it, but it always kind of creeped me out that it was back there, forever silently staring at me while I took my naps. The double bed was draped in a white cotton bedspread that my grandmother, I think, had knitted by hand (but I could be mistaken on this point). But the bedspread was large and loosely knit, and it draped the bed all the way down to the dingy, nappy carpet floor. One afternoon I crawled under the bed and discovered a toy police car that my grandfather intended to give me for my birthday. This would have been my fourth birthday.

These are the things I remember most from those years. Soon I would be living in another world.

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My grandmother in her wedding dress, circa 1928.

MAMA FORD’S

My next distinct memory is that of myself and my brother standing on the porch of this great big, three story house. I was crying hysterically, as was my brother and my mother. There was an older, slightly plump white-haired lady wearing a grandmotherly floral print dress standing on the grand porch, too. She had a kind, grandmotherly kind of face, but she spoke in a loud voice with a deep southern accent. Now don't you’ all worry 'bout nothing! I'll take fine care 'o these two boys! With that, my mother turned and hurried away while my brother and I wailed, and the lady with the gray hair and floral dress led us by our hands into Mama Fords home.

Mama Ford's home was big, and for good reason: it was a boarding house, and with the addition of my brother and I the place was now home to a total of 13 kids. Mama Ford ran the house along with her notorious sister Edna, and Edna's two kids: Andy, who was in the military, and Bill, who was younger and not in the military. The kids boarded in the home ranged from newborn babies to teenagers around 14 years old. I was four years old, and my brother was six and a half when we were dropped off at Mama Ford's house, and it would be nearly four years that we would live there.

Despite the number of people living there, the house was not crowded at all. At the front of the house was an enclosed porch where were stored all of our rubber rain boots and overcoats. This enclosed porch allowed us to gear up for the weather in relative comfort before we ventured outside during the winter, without tracking all of the mud and sleet and snow into the house on the way back inside.

Beyond the front porch was an enormous, indeed cavernous living room with a worn but comfortable looking sofa and a number of overstuffed chairs. Even more important, they had a television set -something that I had never seen before!

Directly past the foyer was a wide wooden staircase with two turns that led to the second floor. To the left of the living room was a study room that one of Edna's kids – Andy - used as living space, so we were not allowed in that room. Beyond the living room was an over-sized dining room with a table that would seat about 10. To the right of this table was a smaller dining nook and table that would seat about six, and this is where Mama Ford served us most of her southern style cooking with fried chicken and hominy grits. I remember she also gave us brightly colored and unbreakable aluminum drinking cups, and that one nutty kid who wanted to be a priest always argued for the gold colored cup so he could pretend it was a chalice.

Beyond the dining room was the large kitchen with the deep double sided sink and linoleum flooring. There was a smaller table here that sat four more people. In the kitchen was an old door in need of painting that led down to a dark and mysterious basement. A second door opened to the nearly half-acre back yard with a swing set, a few fruit trees and grape vines, and an assortment of other small trees at the far end of the yard that separated ours from another boarding house behind us. In late springtime all the kids would use the ripened fruit from these trees to launch fruit wars with the kids on the other side. We would cut some long flexible branches from some of the younger, smaller trees and stick them securely in the ground in a vertical stance. Then we would stick a rotten apple atop it, bend the branch backward and let it rip, which would launch the fruit projectile much easier and further than what we might have achieved under arm power alone.

In that backyard, I discovered that the bugs in New York City are nothing like the bugs in Southern California. During the summer evenings thousands of lightning bugs would flash through the darkness with their eerie yellow glow that drew kids like moths to a flame. We caught them by the dozens in jars with little air holes punched in the lids, and when we then placed them on our nightstands before retiring for the evening they illuminate the bedroom as natural night lights!

The big grasshoppers and Preying Mantids (plural for Preying Mantis) in New York are much bigger than anything in California. I remember holding a large bright green preying mantis that was half the length of my forearm, and I could see the pupils of his enormous alien looking eyes as easily as I could see the pupils of the plastic puppets on the Howdy Doody show that we all watched during the evening on television. And those Earth Child potato bugs in New York are probably the most hideous, disgusting creatures on Earth, while the Cicada's that appear on the trunks of trees only once every seven years, and look like giant winged beetles but are actually found to be only empty shells on closer examination are certainly the weirdest.

The second floor of Mama Ford's home had four bedrooms and two bathrooms (there was also a bathroom downstairs). Each bedroom was equipped with bunk beds, and usually three or four kids would occupy a room, but sometimes we were lucky enough to have just two to a room. Lucky, that is, unless you were unfortunate enough to share a room with a kid named Donald, who looked a lot like Alfalfa from the old Spanky and Our Gang series, and who had a serious problem controlling his bowel movements. I remember one summer when a large bulge began to appear on the linoleum floor of our bedroom (yes, linoleum) and the room began to stink with this putrid, sordid odor that hung in the air all night, and only ripened with each passing day. After several days Andy grew suspicious of the bulge, and when he peeled the linoleum away from the wall and up from the floor, he discovered several pair of Donald's soiled underwear stuffed under the flooring!

Even with two full-sized bathrooms on the second floor, it was sometimes difficult to gain access to one when you needed to. Many of the kids in the boarding house had special needs and required special attention, and this could result in a restroom being occupied for a long time. And we were prohibited from going downstairs to use a restroom after we were sent to bed. Breaking that rule could result in Andy ramming his steel tipped army boot up your rear. When it was bedtime it was bedtime, and not time to be wandering the halls. Still, there were those times when you just had to go, so kids would tip-toe through the darkened halls to go the restroom, and they would avoid flushing the toilet so as not to alert the adults to their surreptitious activities.

I remember one night when I rose from bed in my second floor bedroom and tip-toed out into the hall to use the restroom. In was in the dead of night, and the hall was completely dark. I couldn’t see my face in front of my hand, so I learned tightly against the wall as I worked my way down the hall. Suddenly I felt something under my foot, and was immediately delighted when I realized that it had to be the rabbit foot on a chain that I had lost several days earlier! In those days having a brightly colored lucky rabbit’s foot on a keychain was considered essential, and most of the kids had at least one. Mine had disappeared, but now I apparently had found it! I reached down and picked it up, and was further convinced and comforted by the familiar fur covered stiff bony structure with the nails at the tip of the toes. I carried my rabbit foot into the restroom and turned on the light.

It wasn't a rabbit foot. When I looked into my hand I saw the head end of the half-eaten body of a dead rat that Mama Ford's cat had dispatched and eaten his fill of upstairs, leaving me with the rest! What I thought were toenails were teeth, and the body had hardened with rigamortis. Screaming in horror I tossed the carcass into the air and ran back to my bedroom. I hid for safety under the covers, but Edna came up in a huff and gave me several straps with her favorite leather belt (buckle included) that left huge, angry red welts on my buttocks.

A couple of days later Mama Ford stepped on a mouse as it darted across the kitchen floor while she was carrying plates of food to the dining room. I was sitting at the kitchen table as this happened and I distinctly remember how the little gray mouse darted across the floor as if it were seeking to take refuge under the shadow of her foot, and how it turned into a blood-red streak as Mama Ford's foot slid across the floor on top it, reducing it to nothing but a smear. Then Andy and Bill went on a mouse-stomping expedition, trying to rout every mouse from the lower floors. But still, several days later, a great big fat rat bit Donald's foot as he dangled it over his bed in the middle of the night.

There were bigger rats in the house, too, and one day I walked into my second floor bedroom to find Bill - one of Edna's two boys -molesting one of the younger boys. I was only about five or six years old at the time, but I old enough to know that what I witnessed was not right, and I was frightened and disgusted by what I saw. I immediately grew sick to my stomach, and nearly vomited on the floor. That sick Bill mocked me saying "Carl's ill - what a pussy! If you say a word to anybody I will kill you!" I felt just as ill and violated as the boy he had molested, because there really was nobody I could confide in, and I believed that he really could get away with murdering me if I told anyone else. So I kept it to myself, and this is the first time I have ever felt myself able to mention it to another person.

But I also knew that I now had a kind of power over Bill, for he knew that as long as he left me alone, I probably would not talk to anyone else. But having seen my reaction, he also knew that he could not approach me without a fight, and that I certainly would tell others about him if he tried to molest me. Nonetheless, having witnessed this crime in that rat infested room I resolved that I could no longer sleep there, and I eventually made such a big fuss over my fear of that room on the second floor that Mama Ford moved me up to the third.

The Third floor was much more private, consisting of a small bedroom at one end of a short hall, and an attic at the other. The bedroom window provided a great view of not only our own backyard, but of our neighbor's backyards as well. There was a nice old black man who lived next door to us, and he spent most of his time tending to the green apple and pear trees in his backyard. Sometimes, in the cover of early evening or even during the day, when we knew he was away from home or napping several of us kids would squeeze our little bodies between the side of the house and the wooden fence that was suppose to keep us out of his yard, and we would raid his trees for all of the sweet fruits we could gather.

I remember how utterly petrified with fear I was as a six year old when we returned home from a trip to the beach one day to find that the house had been burglarized! Mama Ford was the first to enter the house, and as soon as she saw evidence of the break-in she ran out yelling We’ve been robbed! Andy and Bill then went into the house to investigate and call the police, and we waited outside until they arrived and conducted their investigation, finally telling us it was okay to go back inside. But then I heard one of the police tell Mama Ford, Well, we got some footprints. It looks like the burglar squeezed into your yard through that space between your house and your neighbor's fence. We'll go over and talk to him. I was terrified that the police might arrest the nice black man for something he didn't do. Worse yet was my fear that in talking to the police the old man might discover that we kids had been raiding his fruit trees all along by squeezing through the fence. And worse of all, the police might discover that the footprints were mine, and they would then arrest me for the crime! But time passed, and nothing more was ever said of the matter.

My mother usually came to visit us on the weekend; sometimes she would load us into a taxi for a trip to grandpa's house. Most of the time, though, she would just come to visit and stay for dinner at Mama Ford's. On those days when I knew she was coming I would frequently sit at the top of the stairs looking down at the front door, waiting for the doorbell to ring and for Mama Ford to then open it and invite my mother into the foyer. My mother was about 28 at the time, but I didn't really know this. All I knew was that she really was the most beautiful lady in the world. She had a real sense of style and fashion about her, and she always arrived wearing bright clothing, a fancy scarf, and fine heels. She had an hourglass figure that other women could only envy, although I didn't know what the allure of an hourglass figure was at the time. I only knew that she was gorgeous, and that everyone in the house knew this as well. All of the kids were infatuated with her looks, and many envied me for having her as a mother, for while it was true that she left me at the boarding house, she still came to visit me, and promised that one day we would leave together. Most of the other kids were completely abandoned never to see their birth parents again. They came to accept the fact that Mama Ford was their mother, although they could not have known at the time that it was a legal foster parenthood destined to end when they turned eighteen. They could not have known this, but Mama Ford really was a pretty good person and most of the kids fully accepted her as their own mother.

One day, when I was about seven I was in the backyard on the swing set swinging just as high as I could. I decided to jump off the seat on the upswing, and in doing so I lost my balance and fell sharply forward. I placed my hands out in front of myself to break the fall, and felt a very sharp pain in the palm of my right hand as I slid to a stop. I stood up and looked at my hand and was horrified to see that a very deep gash about two inches long and 1/4 inch wide had splayed open the heel of my hand. Initially, there wasn't much blood visible; just a wide gash that went right through the skin to the red muscle below, separating it as cleanly as a butcher's knife might separate muscle from a bone. Then blood began gushing out of the open wound, and I ran screaming to the back door of the house, crying for Mama Ford to help me. Presently, she and Edna frantically descended on me with a first-aid kit and bandages. They kept me out of the house to avoid my bleeding on the floor, and instead washed my hand off with the garden hose and then doused it with a stinging antiseptic solution. Mama Ford was saying Don't you worry none, this ain’t nothing I ain't seen before as she doctored the wound with a black axel-grease like salve and wrapped it tightly in clean bandages. I asked if we would go to the doctor or if we should call my mother to tell her what happened, but Mama Ford would have none of that; insisting that the wound was properly dressed, and nobody else needed to know about the incident.

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Top row: Mom, and Mama Ford in New York; and Mom at Christmas Bottom: Mom, about 25 years old at home in Westmont around 1955.

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This is an aerial view of the section of Queens where we lived. To the far right of the photograph is Mama Ford’s house (circled). In the lower center of the photo is P.S. 55 Queens (also circled), the public school that Steve and I attended. To the left is a big baseball diamond where we would sometimes go on warm summer afternoons to watch a game and collect a few stray baseballs from the surrounding streets.

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Left: Close up aerial view of Mama Ford’s house (the lower house of the two larger ones in the upper center part of the photograph. Right: P.S. 55 Queens, about 3 and a half blocks west of Mama Ford’s house.

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