Stuck in Reverse

© 2013 by Leo Craton. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/16/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-2186-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

NOTE: All images herein are owned by Leo Craton except the palm tree on the title page http://www.clker.com/clipart-vector-palm-trees-1.html), and the thumbnail images at the beginning of Chapter 4, and the beginning of HODGE PODGE (http://e-vint.com/free2.html). These are public domain images.

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 EARLY DAYS

CHAPTER 2 STARTING SCHOOL

CHAPTER 3 SACRAMENTO

CHAPTER 4 BERKELEY

CHAPTER 5 HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER 6 COLLICH

CHAPTER 7 SURFING, SHARKS & ROGUE WAVES

CHAPTER 8 MY WALKABOUT

CHAPTER 9 A HUNTING WE WILL GO

CHAPTER 10 MARRIED LIFE

HODGE PODGE

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my children: Tracy, Eric and Andrew. They are my pride and joy and most significant contribution to the world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank my professional proofreaders and editors, Marsha Ross and Sue Clark and Deanna Craton. They all helped me construct a better manuscript, and hopefully, some of their wisdom and knowledge has rubbed off and improved my writing. My intrepid friend and colleague Linda Bello-Ruiz provided valuable editing assistance, conceptual input and support. My niece, Jobanna Salsman contributed by editing an early version that proved to be quite helpful. My nephew Kirby Curtis has been my Mac guru and solver of computer and software related problems, not just for this project but also over the years. Thank you all.

INTRODUCTION

Writing a memoir is tricky business. Its easy to fall into the trap of droning on and on about droll stuff that would put a lighthouse to sleep. I sidestepped this problem by coming up with a string of time-sequenced vignettes, snippets of interesting little happenings from the time I was born here in California to when I was in my mid-thirties. Readers and editors have universally said, Your book has no plot, no character development, and not much dialogue.

Oh, so you didn’t like it?

Oh but I did. It was fun and entertaining and I couldn’t put it down.

So I stopped letting family and paid consultants critique my stuff. The important thing is that I enjoyed writing the book and still chuckle over the stories. My family likes my style of writing, thinks I’m funny and what else could a person ask for?

I was born in Los Angeles in 1935 and in early years we moved all over the state. We were poor and I suspect our moves had something to do with not being able to pay bills. I graced six grammar schools, four high schools and three colleges with my presence. I was forever a newbie.

My parents divorced in 1940 and I was then dazzled by a revolving door through which family, semi-family, strangers and others rotated in and out of my life. Goofy things happened all the time, like the night we lifted a card table. Actually it just tilted in a puzzling display of psychic phenomenon. And danged if it didn’t respond to questions bobbing once for yes and twice for no. Mom was ecstatic!

You can start this book at the beginning and be treated to a chronological treat of my little adventures, happenings and minutia. Or, you can simply open up to any page, look for the bold title of a vignette, or story as I call them, and begin reading. Other than a few character references, the stories are independent and complete in themselves. So, read away and enjoy.

PROLOGUE

My full name is Creighton Leo Craton and my first name is pronounced the same as the last. Why I was so named is beyond me and it has caused nothing but trouble my entire life. As a young man, I sometimes walked into government offices to conduct some business and had peculiar conversations that went something like this:

What is your name, young man, a clerk would say, needing to fill out a form.

Leo Craton.

Is that C-r-a-y-t-o-n?

No ma’am, its spelled C-r-a-t-o-n. There’s no Y."

Oh, all right. Backspace, backspace, hits delete button. And your first name is Leo?

No ma’am

Well, she’d say sharply. What is it, I haven’t got all day here.

It’s Creighton

No, no, no. I need your first name, not your last name.

Creighton is my first name, It’s spelled C-r-e-i-g-h-t-o-n.

There would be a long pause while this information was processed. The clerk would bow her head and peer at me over the top of black-rimmed glasses to see if I was pulling her chain.

Soooo, your name is Craton Craton?

No, ma’am, its Creighton Leo Craton, I go by my middle name to avoid confusion.

Well bully for you. What are you, some kind of smart aleck?

I don’t really know ma’am. What’s an aleck?"

GET OUT!

No ma’am I’m not fooling. Creighton Craton really is my name.

Well, I never… mumble, mumble, click, click, backspace and delete, glare at me, click, click.

It happened every time, and still does. Furthermore, once entered into a database, I could never be found. I learned to hand analysts searching for me, a Rosetta-stone card. AKA: Creighton Leo Craton, Creighton L. Craton, Creighton Craton, C.L. Craton, and my personal favorite, Leo Craton.

I never told them about being a California Boy. People can only handle so much information in a single sitting.

CHAPTER 1

EARLY DAYS

1935—The average house cost $3,450 and wages were $133 per month. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded and canned beer first went on sale. Elvis Presley, me, and Woody Allen were all born this year. President Roosevelt signed the U.S. Social Security Act into law and the China Clipper airplane made the first Pacific Airmail delivery. Volkswagens came on the market in Germany while Toyota cars were launched in Japan. They renamed Persia, Iran.

1-1 First Memories—My earliest recollection is in 1938. I would have been three-years-old. I recall standing in my crib and looking out at the world, feeling good, content with my kingdom.

Mom, Dad and I had moved from Huntington Park to the central part of Los Angeles. We lived on a hill in a little house located where Dodger stadium sits today. The staff didn’t keep me abreast of our whereabouts in those days. It didn’t seem to matter, so no-harm, no-foul.

I also recall standing on unsteady legs in the living room one day and grasping the pant leg of Dad as he and Mom hugged. They tried to swat me away, but I kept ducking and weaving and pulling until they picked me up.

One day, a man came by with a little donkey and sombrero for kiddy caballeros. He took a picture of me aboard his placid beast. Somewhere there is a copy of that photo. I kept a good seat despite little equestrian training. I do recall worrying the donkey might take off, in which case I would have been in deep carrot mush, one of my few food references at the time. I kept a tight grip on the Mexican what-cha-ma-call-it while Dad stood close by waiting for the eight-second buzzer.

I also ran into the street one time without looking. Big mistake. I had been told not to do that, of course. But, no one had told me about spankings. What a new and shocking experience, and it hurt like hell. Where was the love? What good did it do? However, to this day, I ALWAYS look in both directions before crossing a street and glance behind to see if anyone is watching.

Mom took me down our hill to some kind of kindergarten where we all sat around in a circle. I had no idea why we did such a peculiar thing, and wasn’t sure if the authorities should be notified or not. I sat there in great wonderment at the expansion of my kingdom and wondered, who are these people?

This excursion into education must have failed. I spent a few days there, out-of-pocket as it were, then BINGO, back to the old stomping grounds. What a relief. Funny how self-centered I seemed to be then. Fortunately, I grew out of this when I was 42-years-old or so.

We left Los Angeles and moved around on an irregular basis to different California desert locales and hardtack housing. I don’t remember any of it. We were following the job market I suppose, and Dad landed construction work as an electrician in such garden spots as Twenty Nine Palms, Whitewater, and Banning. These small towns were all out in the desert wastelands of outer San Bernardino County, and sometimes referred to as dumps by those in the know.

These communities were usually spawned by vacation spas sitting atop mineral springs, ar at least that’s how they were advertised. According to family legend, we lived in trailers, meaning we sat in a trailer park somewhere near a spa and sweltered. Of course, we didn’t stay in the spas themselves since they were for rich folk and crooks on the lam vacationing in these little islands of the urbane. All these locales were hot, windy and desolate as the Russian Steppe.

In later years, Dad told me he worked on the Hoover Dam project during this time. The Internet informs me the project was completed in 1935. The logistics of working on the border of Nevada and Arizona, and the family residing on the outskirts of San Bernardino County doesn’t jibe. It’s all beyond me.

Dad also said he worked in the tunnels at some dam. I had occasion later in life to see and study dam water-tunnels and tunneling operations. I did some consulting work looking at tunneling logistics in the San Bernardino Mountains, and Dad’s descriptions of such facilities and the life the men led matched what I saw. Maybe he had worked on Hoover or some other dam project. With Dad, you could never be sure. Everyone thought him to be a first class raconteur.

My parents were married in 1934 and separated sometime in 1940. When that happened, a lot of inter-personal fuss and bother occurred and Mom and I ended up at the Bide-A-Wee Home in Los Angeles. The Home served as a halfway house for transients like us. I have no memory of the Bide-A-Wee and am better off for it.

I celebrated my fifth birthday in 1940. After a short while, Mom took me from the Bide-A-Wee and dropped me off at Grandmother’s house. Grandmother, or Nana as we called her, lived in a little community next to an oil pumping station near tiny Mendota in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. This dropping off at Nana and step-father Hans’ happened from time to time over a period of several years, and the timing of any one drop-off is not clear to me at all.

After a short visit at the pumping station, I returned to Los Angeles in a blur of nighttime snatch and ride. This time I ended up in a boarding home for kids, a lonesome time and not much fun. Some misbegotten child told me to be careful picking up certain rocks in the yard because they might be hot from the fires of hell. Like an idiot, I believed that wretched twit and became ever so careful at what I touched.

In the afternoons, we listened to exciting radio programs like Captain Midnight, Terry and the Pirates and other adventuresome folk. I remember the boarding home being in Los Angeles because one day Dad showed up and took me to Griffith Park. What a relief to see a loved one’s face. Griffith Park has always been a favorite recreational spot for the poor in Los Angeles. It costs nothing to go there, has green grass and trees, a rather large lake and provides a vivid contrast to the bleak urban neighborhoods of the poor. I don’t recall seeing Mom during this time but she must have been around somewhere.

My stay at the boarding home ended without warning. Thank God. After a month or two, wham-bam, Mom appeared out of the mist and whisked me back to the pumping station, reinstating me into the safe harbor of pumping station life with Nana and Hans. No more hot rocks for yours truly.

1-2 Trip to Mobile—In 1940, Mom, Nana, and my step-grandfather Hans decided to drive to Mobile, Alabama to visit Uncle Yancy and family. No one asked my opinion about going or not. Since I had never met the man or knew how he figured in the family circle, the project seemed like a rather lukewarm idea to me. I suppose everyone assumed I would come along on the trip. At five-years-old and without a driver’s license, Mom and Hans were going to have to do the driving.

We all pitched in, packed our bags and squeezed into Hans’ light green 1940 Chevrolet two-door coupe. Cramming four people into that itty-bitty car took a lot of maneuvering. To get in the back seat, folks had to open one of the two front doors and tilt the front seat forward. They would then ooze into the back seat area and plop onto a smallish bench seat. Their knees would be jammed up under their chins no matter how they shifted and squiggled. Adults were really cramped back there.

I was small. You could park me on the shelf next to the bread canister and have room left over for a big jug of mayonnaise. I crawled into my tail-gunner position, snuggled into some miscellaneous soft supplies and worked at staying out of the way. Mom had assigned me to be backseat cowboy and keep on the lookout for Indians and robbers, and to keep my mouth shut for Christ’s sake. She reminded me of this several times.

Early one summer morning, we left the pumping station bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Hans took the first shift driving. They told me the desert could be very hot this time of year. Desert? What’s a desert?

Because of the anticipated desert heat, Hans had picked up a water cooler for the car. In those days, there was no such thing as air-conditioning for cars. The closest thing was something called a water cooler, a canister-like device horizontally attached to the outside of the car along the passenger-side window. As we drove along, the oncoming airflow would make a little inside propeller whirl, blowing water vapor evaporating off an internal water reservoir into the car interior and keep everyone cool. Good idea, but the damned thing didn’t work for beans. It just boosted the humidity inside the car so we were boiled instead of grilled.

We made it to Mobile after several weeks of travel or so it seemed to me. When we arrived and got out of the car, everyone began fussing and hugging. My folks always seemed to be doing that.

The next day everyone went fishing. Everyone that is, except a few of us untouchables. I felt grumpy about the omission, let me tell you. Although no one explained matters to me, it might have been because they couldn’t find a life jacket small enough to fit a five-year old like me. Or maybe I could too easily be mistaken for bait and tossed into the waters of the Bay of Mobile.

I played with a few of my untouchable young cousins also left behind. The hours went by s-l-o-w-l-y. The day became hot, humid, and a horde of sparrow-sized mosquitoes fluttered about our heads and fed off us little kids. At last the fishing crew came back into port, sunburned and frolicking about, a successful trip under their belts. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of complaining, and I only had one helping of fish at dinner. That would teach them.

We stayed in Mobile for just a few days. After repacking the car, here came the fussing and hugging again, and waving bye-byes as our little pack of sardines squeezed into the old chicken coupe. We hit the road for home. As an aside, I’m sure we took Route 66 part way, both coming and going.

Hans was a careful driver. I mean a REALLY careful driver. He never went over 45 mph. He bore a small tolerant smile on his face as cars lined up behind us, honking and shouting encouragement, and then making Italian gestures or something as they zoomed by.

Meanwhile, I could hear Mom’s gears grinding. She had a hair-trigger temper and it would sometimes blow like a Yellowstone geyser. As Hans drove along, I would hear faint groans and mutterings coming from Mom. Then, KAPLOOEY, Pull over, Hans, she’d snarl. Hans would steer over to the side of the road, and an exasperated change of drivers would take place.

Mom would peel rubber getting us going again and we’d hurtle down the highway at Mach 7. She’d relinquish driving duties only when she couldn’t stay awake any longer. Hans never said a word and kept a little smile on his face the entire time. He did so throughout his life, I believe.

The homeward trip now had some spice to it. Sometimes snails passed us by with their little antlers whirling about in confusion. Grind, grind, grind. Other times we’d zoom by amazed truckers, bikers with raised eyebrows who had passed us miles back, and other wayfarers on the highway. We were rocking.

We made it home in a couple of days in this herky-jerky way. The trip had been interesting, I suppose. But, to tell the truth, it hadn’t been all that much fun. I returned to life on the pumping station. Mom soon zoomed off to the wilds of Los Angeles again, and I continued to explore my small world.

Time passed and, unknown to me, Mom married her third husband, Curtis. The next thing I knew I was in the rear of an old four door pale green sedan, and my new family and I were on our way to live in Oregon.

CHAPTER 2

STARTING SCHOOL

1942—Home prices had risen to $3,770, wages to $157 per month, and gasoline went from 11 cents to 15 cents a gallon. The Voice of America began broadcasting and the UN was created. The British people were asked to bathe in five inches of water, or less, for the war effort. How that helped matters is beyond me. Montgomery defeated Rommel in the second battle of El Alamein. Meanwhile, Singapore surrendered to the Japanese and Quisling ruled Norway. As expected, gas rationing showed up in the US. Construction of the Alaska Highway had been completed, and my favorite movie, Casablanca was released. Bing Crosby sang White Christmas for the first time. Both duct tape and instant coffee were introduced.

2-1 Hermiston, OR—In the winter of 1941 I sat in the back seat of our car with another boy who turned out to be my half-brother, Lon. He was six years older than me, the product of Mom’s first marriage to a Mr. Hyde and I didn’t know anything about him. So Lon fell into the newbie category. My new stepfather Curtis, another newbie, drove while Mom sat in the right front seat as sage and mistress of ceremonies. The next day we were in the mountains and Mom pointed out the car window at white flakes falling from the sky saying, That white stuff is snow. I tried to look interested but the inside of the car was warm, I had yet to step out into the cold, so I didn’t care all that much.

We drove to Hermiston, a town near the Washington State border and Hood River. Our small house sat among tall pine trees, mounds of snow scattered about, and other houses with chimneys emitting plumes of smoke into the cold air.

Once settled in, my world changed forever. Early the next morning, Mom told me to bundle up and walk to school with Lon. Holy Mother of Marbles, SCHOOL! What had I done? What happened to my life of tended-to luxury?

School turned out to be a one-room schoolhouse, one of two I was to attend in my young life. We first graders sat all the way over on the right side next to the blackboard in old-fashioned desks. These were wooden affairs with a bookshelf underneath the top and an ink well over on the right.

Here we go again. There were new people to tolerate. Furthermore, no one paid attention to my general needs or nagging insecurities of being a newbie, and I was in a state of mind-numbing awe at having to learn stuff. I had been king. It now seemed my position lay with the hoi polloi, my status hovering at an all-time low.

I battened down the hatches, the only thing I could think to do, and tolerated matters as best I could, riding out the day. I made a mental note to complain to higher authorities when I got home, which I did. I’m sorry to report that approach didn’t work for beans. I agreed to return to school the next day but in all honesty, it seemed more like a royal command to return than a volunteering on my part. Adding salt to the wound, this attending school crappola involved the concept of regularity.

In the morning, I slugged down a bowl of lumpy oatmeal and put on my coat and galoshes. After being shoved out the front door, I had to shuffle, skip and trudge my way to school trailing behind Lon. Because of the cold we walked as fast as we could through the wooded area toward school. Our breath came out in little clouds of frozen moisture, our noses cold and running, and our hands buried deep in our jackets trying to keep them from going numb.

The school day seemed to last forever. After school, I hustled to keep up with Lon who zigged and zagged at full gallop trying to ditch the scourge of his life, me.

One