The House on Lombardy Lane

By Larry B Stell

“The­ House on Lombardy Lane,” is a first person description of Larry B. Stell, teacher and school administrator who, after his service time with the U. S. Navy and many years of college; degrees in science, social studies, German, and school administration taught for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools in four di

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: May 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949169348

Larry B Stell

I, Larry B Stell lived in North Africa, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands for over twenty years.

Book preview

cover.jpg

The House on Lombardy Lane

Larry B. Stell

Copyright © 2018 by Larry B. Stell.

Paperback: 978-1-949169-33-1

eBook: 978-1-949169-34-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Ordering Information:

For orders and inquiries, please contact:

1-888-375-9818

www.toplinkpublishing.com

[e-mail]

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Moving to Little Rock in 1943

Chapter 2 Forest Park Elementary School

Chapter 3 Junior High School

Chapter 4 Little Rock High School (1947–1950)

Chapter 5 More Reflections on Little Rock and High School

Chapter 6 Hunting Days (1945–1950)

Chapter 7 Riding High in Little Rock High

Chapter 8 Departing Little Rock In 1951

Chapter 9 Going West in the 1950s

Chapter 10 Back to Little Rock, 1950–1951

Chapter 11 Return to Warren (1951)

Chapter 12 The United States Navy, (1952-1953)

Chapter 13 Back to College, (1953-1957)

Chapter 14 Living in New Orleans (1958–1959)

Chapter 15 Graduate School, (1958-1959)

Chapter 16 Living in Glendale, California (1959–1960)

Chapter 17 North Africa (1960–Late January 1961)

Chapter 18 Living in Germany (1961–1966)

Chapter 19 Italy (1966–1967)

Chapter 20 The Netherlands (1967–1971)

Chapter 21 Karlsruhe, Germany (1971–1977)

Chapter 22 Bad Kreuznach, Germany (1977–1983)

Chapter 23 San Diego/San Diego State University (Sabbatical, 1983–1984); Kitzingen, Germany (August–October 1984)

Chapter 24 Hot Springs Village, Arkansas (2001–2004)

Chapter 25 Revisiting the House on Lombardy Lane

Chapter 26 Palm Springs Area (2005-2014)

Chapter 27 Still Living in the Palm Springs Area (2014)

Chapter 28 Today in Coachella Valley and the Palm Springs Area (2016 and Future)

Preface

The concepts recorded in this book merely enhance the rich memories I had while enjoying life in a large family of nine offspring and experiences reflecting my mother and dad’s middle-class provisions for us while living in Tinsman, Warren, and Little Rock, Arkansas. The time frame was from about 1946 to 2002. What might have made it more meaningful would have been my parents’ purchase of The House on Lombardy Lane!

Chapter 1

Moving to Little Rock in 1943

When I reflect on my experience in Little Rock, Arkansas, I am looking back over fifty-plus years. But it seems like only yesterday that my brother David and my little sister Rochelle and I were riding out of Warren, Arkansas, in our 1941 maroon Dodge sedan on our way to our new home in Cammack Village, a suburb of Little Rock, in the summer of 1943, where my dad and mother had just acquired a lease on a small supermarket. My sister Wanda was driving the car, and my brother Jim was to ride up from Tinsman with my dad in the 1941 Ford pickup.

World War II had begun with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and our family was living in Warren. A year and a half had gone by, sweeping us into 1943. The season was midsummer, and the World War II days were tumultuous, to say the least. Items were scarce as was manpower since the young men and women were serving with the military. My dad and mother’s ability to manage a grocery store was most valuable during a time when manpower was allocated to the military. Both had owned and managed their own stores, my dad in Tinsman and my mother in Warren.

The new store had a pharmacy but no prescription section as one sees today in the larger markets, but it had the normal products, such as aspirin, cough medicine, toothpaste, and the usual merchandise found in a pharmacy. There were also comic books and the usual magazines, such as Look and Life.

Our supermarket also had a meat market with a nice vegetable line (produce was my dad’s favorite part of the store, so he spent most of his time caring for fresh fruits and vegetables), along with all the groceries one needed in a suburban neighborhood.

I will always remember Mr. Ellis, the butcher my dad hired back in 1943. Mr. Ellis added to the character of our store, giving it some sophistication. A supermarket in those days, somewhat rare in the 1940s and smaller than modern-day supermarkets, was a respectable and profitable way to make a living. We lived quite well from the income provided by the store.

My dad leased out our general store in Tinsman, a wide place in the road just south of Fordyce. He also had a farm with one thousand acres of timberland just a short distance from the heart of Tinsman. My mother sold our house and store on 212 Gannaway Street in Warren in the late spring of 1943, getting ready for the move to Little Rock. Warren today has a population of about 6,400 people, somewhat larger than its population in the 1940s.

My father made a deal with Mr. Cammack, the developer of Cammack Village, who leased us the supermarket. We were the first to lease it, so it was brand new and very attractive and large for its time. He also provided us with a new three-bedroom house on Brentwood Road. It was only a stone’s throw from the store and under a rental contract in addition to the lease deal on the small supermarket. This provided the opportunity for my older two brothers and sister and me to walk to the store and work after school.

Wanda, James Carroll, Jerome David, Mona Rochelle, and I lived in that three-bedroom house on Brentwood Road in Cammack Village. Rochelle, the baby of the family, was not expected to join our workforce at the Cammack Village store. My parents had nine children, six of which were males who would all serve in the military and eventually receive college educations. There were three females in the family, all who eventually married and had children.

My sister Wanda finished high school in Warren and began taking courses in business at evening school in Little Rock. She also worked in defense work in Jacksonville near Little Rock. Because of the accounting classes she took in business school, Wanda worked in our store and did the accounting for my mother and dad. It was convenient having my dad as manager, my mother as cashier, and my sister, Wanda, as bookkeeper and accountant. Our family supplied the major portion of the workforce, and so we had little overhead except for our butcher, Mr. Ellis. If my memory is correct, my parents paid Mr. Ellis about $40 to $50 a week, which was the going salary in the 1940s for a butcher. He would work six days a week. Most butchers, at that time, were male.

Actually, with the wartime economy, my parents did quite well in that store. I often heard my mother boast of $400-plus days, sometimes more on Saturdays, so our gross income must have been quite good, even though it was supporting five children at home. Even with the overhead costs, my parents were probably making well over $55,000 a year (maybe even $70,000). This kept our home of seven people living well, especially with the advantage of utilizing all our food from the store.

My other brothers Harley, Cone, and Max were in the military, and my oldest sister, Judy, was married to a respectable writer. They lived in New York, but after a bout with alcoholism, her husband, Glenn, ironed out his problems via AA, known as Alcoholics Anonymous, and they returned to Little Rock. Glenn then worked for the state of Arkansas as publicity director. Later, he had other prestigious jobs throughout the state of Arkansas.

How vividly I remember those days: getting up in the early hours of the morning, walking through Mr. Cammack’s property as a shortcut, and then walking to the end of the streetcar line almost a mile from our house to catch the streetcar. I then rode to Tyler Street and walked a couple of blocks to Forest Park Elementary School where I had entered the sixth grade that September in 1943. These were difficult times for me as I tried to make up for my mathematic deficiencies because I was a teacher’s pet while going to the fifth grade in Warren and so was not forced to attack mathematics as vehemently as I should have. I finally worked my way through fractions, though, and began to function somewhat at grade level.

The exciting tone of living in a larger city and meeting endless numbers of people appealed to me more than I ever expected. Little Rock, even at my youthful age, began to grow on me and has ever since left me with a flair for seeking the challenge of a cosmopolitan setting.

One thing I did not know about was the gorgeous house that, a few years down the road, would make me yearn to stay in the vicinity of the most prestigious part of Little Rock in the 1940s and 1950s: Pulaski Heights. I did not know about The House on Lombardy Lane.

Chapter 2

Forest Park Elementary School

My experience in Forest Park Elementary School—learning songs from the Broadway play Oklahoma from Mrs. Deal and then learning English, civics, and mathematics from another teacher whose name I have long forgotten—proved to be positive.

There was also a springtime performance I participated in. My mother brought me to the performance and watched me do a dance alongside beautiful Lynn Babcock as my partner. I wore a sailor shirt with a proper collar while Mrs. Deal played our songs on the piano. I will never forget my mother sewing the stripes on that sailor collar, debating with me whether to cross the white stripes or make them like a real sailor’s collar of the U.S. Navy. We finally compromised on the collar like the U.S. Navy. Our performance costumes were to be uniform, but I remember some of those collars being not all alike, to say the least.

The performance went over well, and we were probably out of the presentation by 7:30 p.m. My mother chatted with the teachers and then brought me home, never to use the sailor outfit again. Everyone seemed pleased with our songs and dances. My dad, in his usual manner, did not value such a thing and stayed home to listen to the radio and the news. He was more interested in world events and sports, and since I was not participating in a sport, he saw not a lot of value in disturbing his rest for that fall performance.

After finally learning to multiply, add, and divide fractions, I got through my sixth grade at Forest Park Elementary School. I often played soccer out on the windy playground with a childhood buddy named Robbie Powell, admiring his nice windbreaker and athletic ability also in basketball that would make him a varsity basketball player when he and I later attended Little Rock High School.

My first kiss from Sara Lou Jones, whose father was a wealthy contractor in Little Rock, was enchanting. Sarah Lou later married a buddy with whom I attended college in Monticello, Arkansas, where I attempted to study forestry but found it beyond my comprehension. I was drawn into that field because of my love of hunting but later could not find the connection between hunting and the intrigue of the forestry curriculum. Also, my failure to grasp a course called mensuration, because of my poor mathematics skills, turned me off, so I changed my major to education and aimed for teaching.

That kiss from Sara Lou happened as we were on the way home from elementary school. Sara Lou, a boy named Frankie, another pretty gal, and I stopped and hid behind some bushes to play a game of post office, providing an excuse for early romantic escapades in the sixth grade, helping our childhood fantasies. The weather was gentle in its April spring setting of 1944 and merely kindled my desire to hold onto and kiss this lovely young lady. This was only a preliminary experience of the coming encounters I was to have in my multiple romantic episodes that lay ahead in the wonderful city of Little Rock, Arkansas.

My sister Judy and her husband, Glenn A. Green, now deceased, a publicity director for the state of Arkansas in 1944, had just moved back to Little Rock, where they met, but both had moved to New York State where he had worked as a correspondent with the Associated Press, a news media group in Rochester. Fortunately for me, they lived right across the street from Forest Park Elementary School, and if I ever needed anything, like calling my mother for a ride if I stayed too late on the playground, it was very convenient. But my mother warned me not to wear out my welcome even though it was my oldest sister. I took little heed in the warning and went by when I felt like it. Judy always welcomed me, and we loved to sing at the piano though my musical career was short-lived when I found out I was not talented in that field. She was a good cook, so her cookies, cakes, and pies were quite enticing for my sixth-grade appetite. I enjoyed not only my sister’s cooking but also being around my niece, Suzy Green, who was an attractive person still is, as I write this book, but passed away in about 2012.

I was home every afternoon with a short ride on the streetcar then in the Cammack Village station wagon from the end of the streetcar line. After school, I went to our house on Brentwood Road for a piece of apple pie, pecan pie, chocolate cake, banana pudding, or peach cobbler that our black cook and maid had prepared. With five of the kids living at home, we always had two pies because one was not enough for this hungry bunch. It was always a snack before going over to work in our store. I would deliver groceries or try to sell things in the drugstore section of the store.

One day I screwed up on giving change to a customer and was reported by the customer, so my dad gave me a lesson in making change, and I never forgot it. Dad taught me to count up to the next denomination in bills since cash registers did not do all the arithmetic in those days. I became pretty good at making change properly, and it helped me to become a valuable part of the team running our store.

My little sister Rochelle had just started to school and was only six years old. She was in the first grade and usually got picked up by my mother each day from Forest Park, attending only a half a day of school. I found my way home by walking or riding a bus from the end of the streetcar line to Cammack Village if the station wagon was not running. Rochelle was the baby of a family of nine so was quite well protected by my mother. She was one my dad never shouted at because she was the baby—brown-eyed, beautiful, and pampered.

Attending Forest Park Elementary School was joyful because it was located in the Pulaski Heights area, the nicest neighborhood of Little Rock in the 1940s. I remember that many of the wealthier kids went to Forest Park. Some of these students were those whose parents owned the stores downtown. The Pfeifer family, owners of the exclusive department store, resided in and around that area, all with exclusive homes.

One girl in my class whom I remember was Violet Dickey, the daughter of Bill Dickey, who played with the New York Yankees in the 1940s. She was frequently absent because she would be off with her mother going to some baseball game either in New York or to a road game of the Yankees. Violet was a nice, plump, sweet girl but seemed to have some trouble with her schoolwork. I should talk because I was not the sharpest student, except in spelling, and I always did well in that part of English.

I remember my first fight in elementary, and it was a fistfight between me and Jack Rephan, whose father owned a clothing store downtown Little Rock. They lived in the Pulaski Heights area and were obviously quite well-off. Jack and I got into some dispute while sitting on the stage, waiting to be cast in one of our evening performances. I guess we could call it a draw because neither of us enjoyed getting pounded in the face. So we settled down and worked it out after a few blows and before being dragged into the principal’s office.

Those were days of gasoline and sugar rationing, but because of needing a truck for the business, we therefore had extra ration coupons, and we never seemed to want for gasoline. We always had a family automobile along with our 1941 Ford pickup truck that my dad had used with his country store in Tinsman, Arkansas. We got plenty of sugar because certain people never took their full allowance and would just hand over their ration stamps to my mother or father. My mother always commented that we had more of certain items than before the war because of our family business, so we never were short of food products or gasoline. We were told, however, to remain silent about such matters because the ration board had people with large ears!

It was church every Sunday for all our family. My dad, since he rejoined my mother in Little Rock, from their previous setup of having one store in Tinsman and the other in Warren, began to attend church with the family. We attended a rather nice Baptist church in Pulaski Heights, an exclusive area of Little Rock. It was and still is known as the Pulaski Heights Baptist Church and was located only a few blocks from my junior high school.

This was a rather intellectual church and had a pastor, Brother Hicks, who, in my mind, was of the intellectual brand of preachers because his approach to religion was certainly not Fire and Damnation as I had known