When I was about 4 or 5y old, we moved to a little place (I think it was in Westminister, California) , an orange ranch or farm and that was called Rancho Costa Plenty. I am inserting a picture of the first house we lived in called Rancho Costa Plenty. I remember playing out in the orange trees under the branches of the trees, that brushed the ground. We had a little hideout under those branches and we played house there. I guess Father went to church when we lived there because I remember him shaving and teaching me to recite the poem “Trees” for a 2 ½ minute talk. He always made me memorize my talks for church. I remembered the poem for a long time.
TREES
by: Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
When I heard the song that had been written from the poem, many years later, it became a favorite.
I started school when we lived at that place and I remember tracing around cardboard milk bottle caps and coloring in the resulting circles. We would do something like pyramids of circles with one on top and two next etc. Milk came in bottles then, with a cardboard disk, or cap, that fit down into the neck of the bottle and had a little tab to pull it out.
Kathy was born when we lived there and I missed a lot of school because we lived in the country and we would go to Long Beach to our doctor, Harold Hinkley. I would stay with Grandma Corbridge or one of Mother’s friends when she went to the doctor.
I guess I already had crossed eyes at that time because I remember playing dirt clods, a game where one opponent was on one side of the road and the other on the other side of the road. We pulled big clumps of grass out of the ground and used the grass as a handle to throw the dirt clod on the end, as a weapon. Pretty sophisticated stuff huh? We played that game a lot as I was growing up but there were a lot more vacant lots then. Each side had their “fort” and protected themselves the best they could and then the dirt clods started flying. One time when we were playing dirt clods, I got hit in the glasses with a rock. My glasses broke and we had to make another trip to town to see if I had glass in my eye. Here are some pictures of me with glasses.
One time when I had been to the doctor to have my eyes examined, I came home with my vision still blurry from the dialation of my eyes. Grandma Corbridge was taking care of me or I was staying at her house and I was crying because I couldn’t see anything. She got out some crayons and a coloring book and we started to color. I must have really been whining about my blurry vision because she took off her glasses so that her vision would be blurred too. We colored and when we could see what we had colored, it turned out that Grandma had colored a girl’s hair green. I never forgot that, I thought it was hilarious. I wonder now if she did it on purpose to distract me or if she just didn’t know what she was coloring. I still remember sitting in her living room coloring. She was a wonderful grandma.
The doctor who operated on me was Dr. Thornberg. I was in the 4th grade at Lafayette Elementary School. The operation must have cost a lot of money because he was supposed to be a pretty good specialist in his field. He explained to my mother, and I learned by listening that he was going to take my eyeball out of the socket and lay it on my cheek and then cut some of the muscle to tighten up the loose muscles in my eyes. I had one surgery on both eyes and a second surgery to correct my right eye. I went to St. Mary’s hospital in Long Beach, California, for the surgeries. I had patches over my eyes after the surgery.
I remember going to church after the first surgery, and realizing that I was supposed to give a talk in Sunday School. That was back when we went to Sunday School in the mornng and went back for Sacrament Meeting in the evening. I was in the Senior Sunday School,not the Jr. Sunday School. I remember my “boy friend” and “rival”, Ronald Rumfallo, guided me up to the podium and I gave a talk about Joseph Smith’s first vision, that I, naturally, knew by heart. My grandmother must have been crying with pride. I know I thought I was pretty cool. All the old ladies in the ward thought I was just wonderful for doing that. Actually, I couldn’t see the audience and I knew the talk by heart so it wasn’t as great as they thought it was. This is a picture of me with my primary class, back far right. In the middle holding a placard is Ronald Rumfallo.
Anyway, one thing I remember about the operation on my eyes is that Dr. Thornberg let me pull the stitches out myself. The end of the stitches was hanging out of the inside corner of my eye and he pulled it out with a tweezer far enough for me to get hold of it. That was pretty cool. It was also great to tell other kids about how they pulled my eyeball out and layed it on my cheek. Pretty sickening concept for grade school kids. I used the stitches, artistically displayed on a piece of gauze, for show and tell.
When we lived at Grandma and Grandpa Carter’s house, in Boise, Idaho, we went to school at Garfield Elementary School on Broadway and then East Jr. High School. In case you are wondering, let me explain something about our life growing up. Father liked to fish and hunt. We would start school in Idaho and go to school there until the hunting season was over, (time for snow) then we would go back to California. We lived in a series of rented houses there until we bought our home in Los Altos, California. We would go to school in California until fishing season opened in Idaho, when we would again pack up and leave for Idaho. We finished school in Idaho (which us kids thought was great because school there closed before school in California closed) and then we camped out all summer. We must have been the original "snow birds."
In Boise, we walked to school from Grandma and Grandpa Carter’s house. I guess it was a little over a mile and a half. We measured the distance one time when Dick and I were in Boise. There was a small irrigation ditch that ran along beside the sidewalk. It made for interesting walks to and from school. We could put things in the water and see how far they would float.
We would pin Lilacs or Lillies of the Valley, from Grandma Carter’s garden, on our coats or dresses and sniff them all day at school.
We played jacks in the basement of the Garfield Elementary school during inclement weather and came home to practice on the linoleum in Grandma and Grandpa’s kitchen. I wasn’t very good at jacks but I kept trying. We played marbles out on the playground and I wasn’t much good at that either. I was pretty good at baseball and kickball though. We also played jump rope.
When I was in 5th grade, going to school at Lafayette Elementary school and living at 1959 Chestnut Ave., next door to Grandma and Grandpa Corbridge, I decided that I didn’t want to be called Barbara anymore. I think it was because the teacher, Mr. Miller, asked if anyone had a nickname that they wanted to be called. I asked them to call me Babs .I was called Babs that whole year at Lafayette. Of course I left school early and went to Idaho so the name got sidelined in the move. I just remember that I met someone years later and they said, “Babs?!”, when they recognized me, and that I was shocked that anyone would remember that youthful name.
One thing that bothered the heck out of me was when my Father would take me to school. In those days, it wasn’t cool to wear a cowboy hat and drive a pickup in Long Beach, California. It was weird, at least to a Jr. High School girl. When he drove me to school, I would beg him to let me out around the corner. I was ashamed of the pickup and my eccentric Father. Well, he would drive right up to the front of the school and make a big to-do about letting me out. Humiliating!
I went to High School at Milliken High School, when we lived in Los Altos. I started going to Seminary over at the East Long Beach Stake Center on Ximeno Ave., across from Recreation Park. Our teacher was Raymond Lindford. He was so great! He later became my Bishop. Every day, I got up and got myself ready for Seminary and I guess someone picked me up because my parents were still snoozing away when I left for Seminary. After Seminary, I went home with Dyane Miner (Burns) and we had breakfast at her house. Her Grandma always made enough food for me but never set a place for me at the table. After we ate breakfast, we walked to school. It wasn't far from her house. Dyane was my best friend in High School and after. We eventually got an apartment together.
As usual, this is a little more than you asked for.
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