Memories

By Stephen Seccombe

The book recounts events in the life of the author and relatives from his crib to the present, with experiences in flying, camping, hunting, schooling, engineering, patent law, and evangelism--a quite varied combination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886545364

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Memories

Stephen Seccombe

Copyright © 2022 Stephen Seccombe

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 979-8-88654-535-7 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-536-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Early

Move to Van Nuys

Kindergarten

First Grade

Second Grade

Third Grade

Fourth Grade

Fifth Grade

Sixth Grade

Junior High

Eighth Grade

Ninth Grade

High School

Eleventh Grade

Twelfth Grade

UCLA

Sophomore

Junior

Senior

AiResearch

Wedding

Grad School

Active Duty

Grad School

Dog Stuff

Move to Northridge

Jim Stuff

Church Stuff

Engineering Employment

Consulting

Hunting

Law School

Patent Law

Lake Arrowhead

Nathrop

Ranching

Back Home

Mentoring

More Dogs

More Biking

2021

2022

About the Author

Early

6247 Simpson St., North Hollywood, California

Mom (Virginia Elizabeth or Liz) once told me that in my high chair, I would complain (screaming) about not being fed oatmeal fast enough.

I remember pleading to be free of my crib. (Jim, a year and half older, had a bed.)

I also remember falling out of a moving Marmon V-16 sedan from the back seat and crawling up someone's driveway, bawling.

My father, Clinton Fisk Seccombe Jr. (Clint), had lived at his parents' house (where I also first lived) on Ben Avenue, two blocks away to the west. They were Edith and Pipe. Pipe (Clinton Sr.) came from Jim's fascination with the Popeye cartoons and likening him to that character (and he sometimes smoked a pipe), calling him PiePie, which got shortened to Pipe. By the way, Pipe and just about all the adults, except Edith, smoked. I also remember having to sit on a phone book to eat in Edith's kitchen. Best of all was playing with the (electric?) train on the living room floor.

One day, I was accidentally run over by a trailer that Clint was moving in the driveway on Ben Avenue, a couple of blocks to the west. I remember Mom discovering the break while trying to get me to stand.

Clint had a 1938 black Buick Roadmaster coupe, and I remember being around guys with their hot rods.

I remember walking to the beauty parlor at Victory & Lankershim, a couple of blocks to the northeast, with Mom reciting, This little pig [toe] cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home.

I remember Jim opening his pants and exposing himself at our back bedroom door. (I thought he shouldn't get away with that.)

I remember that I couldn't say napkin (makkin) or Lankershim (unintelligible).

I remember when Jim started going to school on Victory Boulevard, I was a bit jealous. I remember Jim yelling when his leg bandages were being removed. (He must have had a broken leg too.)

Mom said the cops found me wandering and brought me home several times.

There was a vacant lot next door that had a pit hideout that the neighbor kids on the back street had apparently dug, and there were big red ants and puncture vines (goat heads). The older neighbor kids on the back street basically ran it.

I remember getting a nice shiny model airplane for Christmas that Uncle Bob had made. (Bob was Clint's younger brother and was always in poor health, dying prematurely.) We also got new bunk beds. Jim instantly climbed the ladder, claiming the upper bed. I was a bit jealous about that too.

I remember hearing sirens and various echoes, hearing of war with Japan, and learning that Clint was going away (to Arizona) to fight in the war.

I remember meeting Gene (future stepdad, Eugene Miles Merwin) after Clint left and learning of Timm Aircraft where he worked. (Once, he accidentally stepped on my foot, but it didn't hurt very much.)

One of Mom's best friends was Zylpha Brent, and once, Mom was taking care of her baby son Peter. I watched as Mom changed his diaper on the living room couch.

I remember getting hand cars. There was a seat between good-sized rear wheels—a front axle pivoted, being steered with the rider's feet, and a hand yoke was coupled eccentrically to the rear axle for propulsion. Jim learned to ride fairly quickly, but I was frustrated for a day or two. (There were similar frustrations about things Jim got to do before me, but I later realized that I was able to do those things at an earlier age.)

Move to Van Nuys

6512 Colbath Avenue

I remember driving around, looking at Van Nuys Elementary School and the First Baptist Church that was across the street. That church started as an American Baptist Church in a railroad coach in the early 1900s.

I remember being sent to stay with Grandma Hazel on Ingomar Street in Reseda for two weeks when Gene and Liz were married and while Gene built a cinder wall on the north property line. The nice part was that Hazel would put sugar on our grapefruit at breakfast. Hazel (having divorced Mom's father, Curtis Withrow) was married to Walter Collings, who had worked at the water reservoir north of the valley but was in poor health with a heart condition. I saw him lying on a chaise lounge in the front yard near a clump of elephant grass with his arms vertical and hands limply bent over.

Back home, we explored the new house layout and furniture, its big living room and den with built-in bunk bed, full bath (bathtub and shower) and half bath, dining room, kitchen, and laundry. The living room was off-limits, except for special occasions. (I learned later that the house cost about $6,000.) The house was on a 60×120-foot lot and had a detached two-car garage.

I remember Gene bringing Jim and me to the front porch (new lawn grass was sprouting) and asking us to be our dad, to which we readily assented. We had an Easter egg hunt, and I found myself following Jim around as he picked up eggs, but for some reason, I didn't find any. More jealousy.

Dad built a balcony in the garage with a glider floor panel from Timm Aircraft that was made from thin hardwood plywood pieces, perhaps five inches between the top and bottom panels. I liked to tap on the wood with a hammer to hear the sound and eventually broke through several holes. (I also had a bad habit of making grooves in furniture and walls with my fingernails.)

We got our first puppy, Bonnie, a blond cocker spaniel, but I was mostly clueless about efforts to breed her later.

The house to the north went vacant, and tall grass grew in the backyard. Jim and I used to crawl through the grass (out of sight), and one day, Jim saw a black widow spider low on the cinder wall. He quickly grabbed a small rock and smashed the spider while I was too scared to get close. Later, we met the new neighbors, the Schmidts, who had triplets (Gene, Mervin, and Charlotte) that were four years older than me. Gene used to brag that their green Dodge sedan was a road car that he thought was better than our 1940 Buick sedan. Their dad had a Shell gas station at Victory and Hazeltine, where we used to get Cokes for 5 cents each. That station was more modern than the ones that pumped gas up into a clear-sided tank from which the fuel would be dispensed into cars. These neighbor kids tried to convince us that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were myths.

I don't remember the first people that lived in the South, but later, Bill and Jeanne(?) Kirkendall lived there with their boy Jim and girl Kate. They were younger than me, and they used to play with a Ouija board on the back porch. They invited me to join in, but I wanted no part of it because I didn't want to be controlled by that thing. Once I threw a wooden block and accidentally hit Kate on her head (sorry).

Around the corner to the southeast on Hamlin Street, I had a friend Gary Tescier whose folks had a 1030s something Plymouth. Once, he jokingly mimicked his father quipping, Too baaad about my father! Their next-door neighbors to the west had hot rods they worked on, and I liked to hear their radio playing jazz. Farther west at the corner of Hazeltine lived Gary Hampton, who was about my age and friendly. Between there and Victory Boulevard lived a girl named Paulette, who had a noticeably deformed arm. I never got to know her.

Dad had a Model A Ford Roadster, and I sometimes rode in its rumble seat in the back. He would drive Jim and me in it over roads north of Los Angeles, and once it quit, he got it going again. Dad built a utility trailer in the driveway using parts from the Cannon's machine/blacksmith shop. When anything went even slightly wrong, he would swear a blue streak, and that bothered me a lot. For example, one time, he was disconnecting the Buick rear axle as part of replacing the clutch disc. There were big coil springs, and he struggled to loosen the bolts until he discovered that they had left-handed threads.

The Cannons were Mormons. The father, Walt, had three (I think) boys, including Ted and Dick. The shop was at Walt's house, but shortly after the war, Ted built a bigger shop (Cannon Engineering) at a new North Hollywood location across secondary railroad tracks that ran from Burbank through Van Nuys and on to Chatsworth where that line joined the main Southern Pacific coastline. Sometimes at night, while in bed, I could hear steam trains on the SP Coast mainline tracks to the north, and once in a while, I would have a bad dream that a train was coming through the house! I could hear streetcars crossing the railroad tracks to the south at Van Nuys Boulevard, and sometimes I could hear the brickyard furnaces that were nearby.

When I was four, we went to Yosemite Park, camping with the Cannons. Jim and I played with an apple crate in the stream, pretending the crate to be a boat. We hiked four miles up to Glacier Point, where there was a great view of Half Dome. Every afternoon they would build a big fire, and when it got dark, they would push the burning embers over the cliff, that event being named the Fire Falls. Coming home, I wondered whether I could still operate my hand car.

Dad took Jim and me to Death Valley, where we slept under the stars in sleeping bags. The sky was clear, and the Milky Way was bright. We were about a mile from the airport, and we could hear voices all the way from there. On other rides north of LA, we saw Owens Lake, for example. Dad would often point out geologic formations, emphasizing their (apparent to him) vast ages.

When Walter Collings died, we went to Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale and saw his open casket. That was a strange experience. I also got to see the mausoleum where several of Clint's family were interred. Once, I met Curtis Withrow, Mom's father. I think Mom and Dad drove to somewhere around Cleveland to visit him once. I believe he became a minister further east after that.

Kindergarten

Year 1944

Mom sang in the choir (Dad stayed home), and I attended Sunday school where I remember lessons on the first chapters of Genesis. (This