Billy-Back Ride

I wore my brand new low-top tennis shoes to Centinella Sunday School over on Greene Avenue, but got blisters on my heels, so afterwards my oldest brother Billy carried me piggyback all the way home.

University Bible Church

Daddy did a lot of printing for Milo F. Jamison's Bible Fellowship, and the University Bible Church, in Westwood. The church was familiar with W.T. Oden and all of his kids.

One Christmas, a huge cardboard box was brought to our house, from the folks at UBC. One gift was a huge, pink, wooden doll cradle, and two little, woven wood, doll chairs. My sister Rachel claimed one, and I the other. (My little doll chair can be seen in the home-movie of my daughters Janice and Joanne with the pink cradle.)

Local Gossip

During recess in 6th grade, I noticed that Barbara Brown, Letty Derus, Joy Morgan, Christine Walker, and Sophie Marcus, and some others, all quit talking when I walked up to them. My feelings were hurt, because I just knew they were talking about me. My sister Rachel tried to comfort me.

On the last day before Christmas vacation, when I came into the classroom, there on my desk was a pile of Christmas gifts! Those girls had planned the surprise for me.

One gift was a 5-year diary.

I was amazed. "How much did that cost?" I asked!

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That same Christmas Daddy let each of us kids keep for ourselves the dollar that Uncle Glenn always sent to us. I searched the Sears Roebuck catalog for weeks until I decided on a 21-inch baby doll, for 93¢.

I named her Elena Raye.

Years later I took home-movies of our little Janice putting that big baby doll in a big pink cradle. Then, doing a little trick photography, I came in for a close-up showing that it was our REAL baby Joanne in the cradle.

Trading Sandwiches

In fourth grade, at Machado Grammar School, Letty Derus traded sandwiches with me. Mine was bread and Sandwich Spread—a kind of mayonnaise with sweet pickle relish in it. Hers was roast turkey with lettuce on white bread with real butter. I never forgot that taste of real butter.

The Real Thing

On the way home from school, my sister Rachel and I would buy a quart of milk for eleven cents of our own hard-earned money. Now and then, we even bought a cube of real butter, but we had to have butter ration coupons for that.

Rachel and I could drive up Alla Road and over Maxella Avenue to the dairy and get bottled milk. We would go through the drive-up and hand our empty bottles out the car window, and load the full bottles back in through the window.

Sinful Pleasures

When no one was looking, it was wonderful to lick the cream off the cardboard lid of the milk bottle.

Cold Hotdogs

Daddy bought lots of hotdogs, and when all of us were driving on our way to Grandmother Kramar's in Redlands, we would stop at a tiny "park" between the divided roads in Brea Canyon and eat cold hotdogs and swing in the swing in the giant Eucalyptus tree.