Covina Swept Away

By Christopher S. Chenault

Covina, Swept Away

By Christopher S. Chenault, M. D.

A number of towns in the Midwest and South have changed little over the last one hundred years. It is possible to return to ones hometown and see the town and many old landmarks little changed. This is not at all true of most of the towns of Southern California.
Many areas of Southern California have been transformed from agricultural land to land for shopping centers and tract home over the past sixty years. The San Gabriel valley, east of Los Angeles, was the largest exporter of citrus fruit in the world in the 1930s and 1940s and had a hundred years history of agricultural use. In a period of fifteen years, 1950 to the mid-1960s, all of those vast acres of serene rural life were swept away in that wave of humanity that arrived after WW II to occupy the space for jobs, recreation, and raising families. There is now almost nothing left of that serenity.
As a child in the 1940s and a teenager in the 1950s, I watched as this transformation progressed. We played hopscotch, marbles, and danced to the Mexican Hat Dance during grade school. We modified cars, went to the Sugar Bowl for sodas, and danced to Big Band sounds and Rock and Roll in high school. We watched drag races on Gladstone Avenue and at the Pomona drag strip. In poodle skirts and saddle shoes or corduroys and loafers, we live the 1950s in the residual of small town, agricultural Covina and witnessed a community go from one high school and two grammar schools in 1950 to add twenty-three new schools by the early 1960s.
I have attempted to describe those years of tranquility, document our activities, and illustrated the varied attractions that would draw a family to that area. We were fortunate enough to experience swimming in the cool pacific, take trips to Arrowhead, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon, camp with the scouts at Cherry Cove on Catalina Island, Ski on Mount Baldy and go with groups of kids to Big Bear and the new Disneyland. We also endured the blackouts in Santa Barbara during WW II and sugar rations collected at the City Hall
In an autobiographical format, I have presented the move of my family to California and included the stories of families of my schoolmates whose ancestors immigrated to Southern California. And I have documented the activities of the time to give flavor to the area during this period that was to be the end of the one hundred year agricultural use of the land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479701209

Christopher S. Chenault

Born Los Angeles, California Attended Covina elementary and secondary schools Pomona College, BA 1960 Baylor College of Medicine, MD, 1964 Internship, Harbor General Hospital, Torrance, Calif. General Surgery residency, Harbor General Hospital, Torrance Calif. Orthopedic Surgery residency, University of Iowa Hospitals, Iowa City Iowa Practiced of General Orthopedic Surgery, Austin, Texas, 1971-2006. Semi-retired at present. Married forty-eight years, four children, eight grandchildren, all live in the central Texas area. Interests and hobbies: Writing, prose and poetry, wood working, choir, guitar, drawing, biking, sailing, and farming.

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Covina

Swept Away

Christopher S. Chenault, M. D.

Copyright © 2012 by Christopher S. Chenault, M. D..

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012914902

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-0119-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-0118-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-0120-9

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1      Covina, Town of Our Youth

2      Oranges and the Groves

3      The Grove

4      Mud on Our Feet

5      Tree House

6      The Tank House

7      Changes in the Grove

8      Bessie

9      Smudging

10      Sandbox, Hopscotch, and Wood Shop

11      Earthquake

12      Relationships, Dances, and Cars

13      Relationships

14      Driving

15      Disneyland to Yellowstone

16      The Mountains

17      The Beach

18      Fading Away

Bibliography

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San Gabriel Valley, taken around 1900. The orange groves do not cover the whole valley at this time. Note: Mount Baldy in the background.

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San Gabriel Valley 2011.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to my parents, Anderson Hume and Anna Rebecca (Sugar) Chenault, whose interest in raising their family in a rural community yet close to the job in Los Angeles allowed us a close community in Covina and many friends for a lifetime of enjoyment. They provided a wealth of experiences in our childhood and young adult lives in Southern California for my brother, sister and me as a springboard for our lives in the future.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to a number of people who have made this book possible. Pete Inman, Don Butler, Tom Elliott, Mary Daniels Booth, Sherry Vaughn Williams, Dixie Hoffland, Jim Price, and Jere Jobe, all provided me the information on their families and their migration to Southern California. Several of these provided pictures for the book. Mary and brother, George Daniels, provided pictures of their house. Some of the pictures were also from Dixie. Two of the grade school pictures were provided by Rick Tallman. Bill Layman, Pete Inman, Don Butler, and Ron Caraway filled me in on some of the details about the car stories. They all helped me identify some of the students in the pictures. My sister, Susy, and Donna Love Vliet have wonderful scrapbooks of their high school activities and thus I had access to some of the dance locations and details. The Covina Historical Society allowed me to use a number of the older photographs of Covina orange groves and equipment. My Dad was particularly good about taking pictures of our family activities. My brother, Larry, took several of the pictures with his Brownie camera. A number Daddy’s pictures were lost but Ann Simonton, whose family bought our grove house in 1959 after all the grove was gone, sent me the pictures of the house taken when they lived there. BJ Johnston read and edited the manuscript and made helpful suggestions.

Introduction

He stopped his car and climbed out onto the street in the dark. This was Gladstone Avenue on the east side of Covina. It was the street where teenagers would go to see just how fast their cars would go—the unofficial drag strip. This evening’s event was one of the many arranged meetings for a drag race on this straight, quiet street with no streetlights, and lined with orange trees. The houses were set back from the road so there was no light from them. The orange trees lining the street seemed to absorb any light so it was very dark without the lights of the cars. On this night they were each there with their cars and friends to see how it would go. Bud Gibbs’ was a rail of a car, a Ford Roadster, or what was left of one. Larry’s was a stock, green Chevrolet coupe. Bud’s had the frame of a model A Ford with no body or fenders. The only remnant of the body was the single seat for two people with body shell, the firewall and dashboard, of course, a steering wheel and the pedals, and an engine. He had just overhauled this Ford V-Eight and had his twin exhaust pipes hooked up. The air cleaner on top of the carburetor was missing and the engine was running a little rough. But the lights worked and the tires looked okay, if not new.

Larry’s Chevrolet looked stock—a two-door coupe with headlights minimally molded into the front fenders. The trunk was a bump on the back of the body. The only exception to its stock appearance at that time was the set of twin tailpipes with chrome tips. They were a little blue on the ends from heat. When Larry got out of the car, he bent down on his knees and unscrewed caps from the side of the exhaust pipe on the driver’s side. He went around to the other side and did the same thing. What a rumble! This twin exhaust setup was a little queer since it was a six-cylinder engine with a single exhaust manifold. But just behind the single exhaust manifold he had split the tailpipe into two and, therefore, had twin exhaust pipes out of the back instead of the stock single. This was definitely a modification for show but did not improve performance.

By removing the side caps or headers, the exhaust would exit before the mufflers and bypass that resistance to airflow. This created a lot of noise and was supposed to increase the power since it reduced back flow on the engine. The car had a stick shift on the floor and three speeds.

And so they were set. Their motors were racing almost as fast as their pulses. They were nervous because of the race but perhaps more because they were doing something illegal—racing on a public street—and because there was always the possibility of being caught. But they were ready to see which machine would be faster.

One of the gang would stand on the side of the road and be the starter. He would wave his shirt or a rag and off they would go in a roar of noise. The Ford Roadster hotrod was much lighter but was untested. And so, with engines revved up, they jumped off and got an even start. Lord, it was noisy! A Chevy-6 has a very distinct roar that can be heard for blocks. Twenty, forty, sixty miles per hour in about ten seconds. That is not fast for modern standards but pretty good in 1952. Bud’s Ford was clearly pulling ahead and then he shut down suddenly. Larry sailed ahead and then shut down as the winner. He was surprised and curious as to why Bud had quit early. They both returned to the starting area to talk it all over. Bud’s suspension was not up to that kind of speed. At forty miles per hour the front wheels began to bounce and shimmy enough that he was having trouble handling the steering wheel and keeping the car straight. At sixty it became frightening and was dangerous. The shock absorbers were old and not doing the job of holding the wheels down on the pavement. The alignment was also not what it needed to be and he knew he had some work to do on the car but he was not sure before how much he had to do. He also did not have the time or money to buy new shocks and have the alignment fixed. Now he knew what he would have to do for future performance. So go back home, save some money, and plan the work to do on the car.

That is what he and many of the friends there that night liked to do in their spare time—work on their cars. And if not working on them, standing around and staring under the hood, discussing what they had done or hoped to do even if some of their hopes were just pipe dreams.

They could not linger long to dissect the race and all the aspects of the cars. That would come later at school or in the parking lot of some hamburger joint. This street was a popular place for the police to show up to interrupt these activities. They knew of the drag races since kids had been racing on this long, straight street for years. It was assumed that some of the people who lived on the street would call the cops if the noise of the racing lasted too long. So, off home they would go to return again another time. It would be different cars and different kids, but the story would be similar. Did I mention that Larry was my brother? And his car was a hand-me-down from our mother when she got a new 1952 Buick with an automatic transmission.

1

Covina, Town of Our Youth

Time changes everything. Slowly and almost imperceptibly for many and for others so quickly, it is hard to keep up. For eons the change has been slow. One generation seeing and doing very much the same as the one before. The lessons learned by older generations are applicable to the next generation, leaving those lessons intact and valuable for all. With the landscape and habitual patterns unchanging, life remained stable for most who survived.

Not so for the community in which I grew up. In three generations, the desert-like landscape was converted into large wheat farms and then transformed into mile after mile of citrus groves, vineyards, and truck farms nourished by water brought in from wells and the San Gabriel River. In later years, water was brought from the mountains two hundred miles away. The San Gabriel Valley became an immensely productive area for farming. In the next generation it was swept away by a massive influx of people looking for a paradise of good weather and good jobs following World War II. This new group of people had very different values and goals when compared to the agrarian culture that had thrived for one hundred years of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. This mid-twentieth century influx of people overwhelmed the serene agricultural valley and created a beehive of houses, streets, and freeways.

A trip to my hometown of Covina, California, for a reunion of the high school class of 1956 got me to thinking of the unique era we navigated as we grew up in Southern California in the 1940s and 1950s. In retrospect, that period was to be the final twenty years of the old small-town farming era and the introduction of an entirely different use of the land. One might wonder at the value of recording these memories. The value lies in the future. The most mundane articles—a clay pot fragment, an arrowhead, and almost any fragment of daily life—when viewed in the future may give some insight into history.

I assume that many classes from high schools all over the country think of their experiences as unique. And, in fact, they are unique. We were children in the 1940s and teenagers in the 1950s in this small town in Southern California. Close to the entertainment capital of Hollywood and the beaches of Huntington, Balboa, and Laguna Beach, we were a spot of rural innocence in the path of a great wave of cultural and population shift not far in the future. We had the advantages of a close protective community with exposure to fabulous weather, comfort, music, and all the clichés of the fifties, without truly knowing these trends were in progress. A number of stories and TV shows have depicted the fifties; however, those seem to be caricatures of the time. Our experiences in a small town east of Los Angeles were considered special by most of the classmates. We have had a number of well-attended reunions over the years and we have all marveled at our positive feelings for this hometown. It seems important to try to recollect those times and to write about what I remember and what others of our community remember of those very special experiences as we grew up in the shadow of orange trees with the backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Covina was and is a small town, not far from the growing metropolis of Los Angeles, nestling near foothills to the north, behind which are the 9,000-10,000-foot mountains of the coastal range, the San Gabriel Mountains. Perhaps some may not think of Southern California and mountains but more of Hollywood and beaches. In fact, the landscape is dominated by the mountains that border the north side of the Los Angeles Basin and San Gabriel Valley. The mountains are dramatic, particularly in the winter when snow covers the peaks and thins out as it sprinkles down onto the foothills. Since the mountains are just five to ten miles from the center of Covina, they provide a monumental boundary, an ever-present orientation for direction to the north. Covina’s name comes from its position near the foothills. Early on, there were many vineyards in the area. Someone thought it seemed to be located in a cove of the San Gabriel foothills and the small range of hills between it and the Pomona Valley. Thus, the community seemed to them, a vineyard in a cover or Covina.

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San Gabriel Valley, looking north from Covina Hill.

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Mount San Antonio, also called Mount Baldy, at 10,068 feet, the tallest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Although generally a semi-desert climate with ten to thirteen inches of rain per year, the valley and town were attractive in my days, with the small community surrounded by miles of orange groves and occasional tall, slender palm trees against the backdrop of the dramatic mountains. It is no longer isolated from the growth of Los Angeles as it is completely surrounded by a huge population growth.

That megalopolis now extends from Santa Monica on the west coast of the Los Angeles Basin to Palm Springs, some ninety miles to the east. Covina is now a dot of forty-eight thousand people in that mammoth population expanse. In 1950, it had a population of about twenty thousand and was nestled in the middle of one citrus grove after another.

Garvey Boulevard, the main highway through the San Gabriel Valley, still a mile to the south, passed by and left little impression on the traffic of the main street of Covina. Seven blocks long, the main business section on Citrus Avenue consisted of the high school on one end and the grammar school on the other end. Between were one—and two-story buildings that housed the Reynold’s Buick dealership, the First National Bank, the Covina movie theater, J. C. Penny’s, the Rexall Drugstore, several barbershops, two men’s clothing stores, and several dress shops. There were the Sugar Bowl Restaurant on the west side of that first block north of Bodillo Street and the Betsey Ross Pastry and Fountain Grill on the east side. In the next block, on one corner of Citrus and College Avenue was Powell’s, the photography shop. Continuing to the north was the Vitality Shoe Store, an optometrist, Firestone Tires, Cornet 5-10-25 Cent Store (we called it the five-and-dime), Howe’s Store, and Perkin’s Hardware. The Bank of America was across the street on the east side with the 5-10-Dollar Store, another variety store, Patters Men’s Store, and the Safeway grocery store. There were several more small shops, Conlin’s service station, and finally, across from the grammar school, a grocery store, the Covina Drive-In Market. Clippinger Chevrolet was across San Bernardino Avenue on the northwest corner of San Bernadino and Citrus.

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Christmas on Citrus Avenue. Covina movie theatre showing The Big Sky with Kirk Douglas, 1952.

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Citrus Avenue, 1955.

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Citrus Avenue, 1962.

The main cross street is College Avenue, where Powell’s Camera Shop and the Bank of America flank the corners. I’m not sure why they came up with College Avenue since there was no college in the town. On that street were the post office, the city hall and fire station, and the San Gabriel Valley Water Company in one block to the east and the Magan Medical Clinic, several small businesses, and the hospital to the west. The city hall had a siren that sounded each noon. Since many of the farmworkers did not have watches, it was helpful to have a signal for the noon hour. The noon whistle could be heard for miles. It was a sound that was part of the rhythm of that community. It was not sounded in the 1950s as there were few fieldworkers who needed to know the time. It was also at the city hall where we lined up with our mother, during World War II, to receive sugar with our ration card. There were many things in short supply, but sugar was the only thing that we obtained with a card.

The Magan Clinic, named after the general practitioner that founded it, is remembered in my mind by the smell. Any time I was in that office, the smell of alcohol was pervasive. I don’t