San Diego in the 1960s

 

(San Diego Zoo late 1950s.  That is my uncle and cousin from Montana on the left, my sister Kathie next to them, and me in front.)

We lived in San Diego, home of a famous zoo, beaches, and two bays (Mission Bay, which was recreational, and San Diego Bay, full of Navy ships).  My parents did not go in for recreational activities, so I rarely went any of those places unless we had relatives visiting out of town.  We did go to the Zoo a time or two with relatives from Montana, and took them to the beach as well.  I didn’t start going to any of the famous San Diego places until later in the 60s when my friends’ older siblings could drive and would take us.

Bonita Cove was a small inlet on Mission Bay.  It was quiet and felt a bit like our own discovery.  No hotels or restaurants were nearby.  It was directly across a busy street called Mission Boulevard from the ocean.  Our parents were okay with us spending all day at the bay, as it was considered safer than the ocean.  The bay was flat and calm, more like a lake than the ocean.  We used to walk across the street and sneak a dip into what we referred to as “the waves”.  Bonita Cove itself had, for many years, a large raft moored out in the middle that we could swim to.  My friend’s older brother worked in construction and had access to giant inner tubes, and we would float around in the water with 4 or 6 of us sitting on the inflated tube that we had carried down on top of the car. 

 Belmont Park was an amusement park across the street from Bonita Cove, on the ocean.  It has been somewhat restored now, but in those days, it was an old, traditional, somewhat seedy place.  There were cotton candy machines and other carnival food, a Haunted House ride, and a famous old wooden roller coaster that I never rode on until high school as it was “scary”.  The Haunted House ride was scary enough for me.

As 10, 12, 14-year-olds we would cut through the amusement park to get to the ocean from Bonita Cove.  One summer the Ferris wheel operator took pity on us and allowed a ride or two for free (we were clearly ragamuffins with no money). 

 

Balboa Park is a downtown San Diego landmark.  There had been an Exposition held there in the early 1900s to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.  Some ornate buildings (meant to be temporary) were constructed, and remain there today.  The San Diego Zoo is also within the bounds of the park, and through the 1960s children under 16 got in free (no requirement that they be accompanied by an adult.)  We would get dropped off in the morning and spend the entire day exploring the park, walking through the buildings, and going into the Zoo.  My friend Susie showed me a staircase along the back of one of the buildings by which we could access the roof.  We were on top of the world:  our own secret staircase and a place we could look down on all the unsuspecting tourists.  (I walked by there a few years ago and the top of those stairs have been blocked off.)

There was some rotation of kids through the neighborhood groups, as parents moved in and out of the houses.  Bambie always lived next door, with her older brother Mike.  Candy across the street was replaced by Annie and Laurie in about 1967.  Michelle around the corner moved in 1962, and Stevie next door moved about 20 miles away.  Our parents kept in touch, and we would visit them occasionally.   My neighborhood friends group morphed from Michelle and Stevie in kindergarten, to Bambie and Candy, to then Annie, Laurie, Susie and Robin.

Halloween was always a major “kid holiday”.  Unlike today, adults did not have parties or wear costumes.  Kids raided the closets and garages at their homes and came up with some kind of costume.  After you were 4 or 5 years old, parents did not help much.  There were costumes sold in the stores that were cheap fabric garments and a plastic mask with an elastic string to hold it on, but in my neighborhood, those were considered “boring” (and no one’s parents had money for such things anyway).  My first Halloweens were with Michelle, with her dad trailing along behind us as we trick-or-treated.  Candy cigarettes were popular then, and Michelle ran back out to the sidewalk to ask her dad what brand he smoked, so she could get the right candy version for herself.

Later I went with Bambie, and we walked for miles going door-to-door and collecting mounds of candy.  One house handed out small cups of apple cider, which we left on the sidewalk.  A house just three doors down from me handed out a Bible tract and a penny.  We kept the penny. 

Ross school always had a carnival after school on Halloween that we attended before trick-or-treating.  The year Susie and I decided we were too old to trick-or-treat, we helped Robin and Laurie get ready (they were dressing up as Dark Shadows characters that year) then they went off to the carnival.  Susie and I felt left out, so we went to her garage and dressed up in “grandma clothes” with pillows stuffed under the waists.  We went to the carnival, got in line behind Robin and Laurie, and began bumping them with our big pillow bellies.  They got nervous since they did not recognize us, and thought some big kids were picking on them. 

It is difficult to understate the importance of television in kids’ lives in the 1960s.  I know that later on computers were developed, hand-held video games, smart phones, and tablets.  Sixty years ago, we had a screen fixation also but it was quite different.  I don’t remember a time before television in the house.  We had a floor model cabinet that sat in a corner of the living room and had a small oblong screen.  The TV was black-and-white, as were most of the shows.  The back of the set, accessed by way of a detachable backboard, was full of various sized and shaped tubes.  (They looked like little light bulbs).  If one of them burnt out, the TV didn’t work, and the local supermarkets had “tube testers” where you could 1) unplug the tube you suspected might be the bad one 2) take it to the grocery store 3) plug it into the tube tester, and 4) either buy a new one or repeat the process with the next tube until you found the culprit.  The TV we had must have had loose connections on some of the tubes, because for a period of at least a year the picture would start to turn into staticky “snow”, and some member of the family would be sent to stomp on the floor vigorously in front of the set until something shook back into place and the picture resumed.

The family across the street (Candy and her brothers) were the first in my circle to get a color television.  She and I watched whenever possible and whatever was on, as long as the TV Guide indicated that the show was broadcast in color.  My family purchased a new “entertainment center” a year or two later, a long piece of dark furniture with the TV in the middle, a stereo record player on one end, and a radio on the other.  This was long before recording or preserving TV shows was possible in the home, although we would occasionally use a large reel-to-reel tape recorder to tape the audio segments of favorite shows.  In the fall were the new shows and the first run episodes, in the summer were re-runs.  Movies like “The Wizard of Oz” were shown once a year and it was a major event in kids’ lives.