This was great
for us kids; close to schools, the park and shopping. However the State of
California was a little behind in paying dad his workman's compensation. Since
it was cheaper to move than to pay rent, we moved to Central and Cole, adjacent
to the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. It was a two-story apartment located on a
hill that ran down from Haight street. I mention the hill because we were into
scooters at the time and really enjoyed flying down any hill. The fastest
scooters that we made used ball bearings out of trucks for wheels. Evidently
they weren't into recycling at the time, so we got the wheels cheap. We were low
to the ground; the steering mechanism was a rope wrapped around a broomstick.
For brakes, we used a strip of inner tube suspended from the bottom of the
scooter.
My older brother Winston came by one time all decked out in a new suit. Since
he was sending us money to help with living expenses, I felt obligated to let
him have a spin down the hill. And down he came; he put it into a spin but slid
off the seat, tearing the seat out of his trousers. My mom spent an hour
patching him up, both physically and mentally.
As close as I can figure, it was about 1929 and times were getting tough.
Max, Stuart and I would get up at 5:00 am and head for a street corner to sell
newspapers. We did alright. Every morning, we'd bring home at least a dollar
each from selling the Examiner, and after school we'd make another dollar
selling the Call-Bulletin. Emily worked at the Kress Department Store and Helen
was giving piano lessons. We always had food on the table. Helen got married to
a fellow named Westfall Trisdale, but it lasted only a couple of years. Later
she was playing the piano at a radio station along with Marjorie Lee. On the
side, they were both offering piano lessons.
In 1929, Max started school at Polytechnic High; Stuart and I went to Dudley
Stone Elementary. I sure had a hard time keeping up with the rest of the class.
I always had to stay after school to work on penmanship and reading. The teacher
just wouldn't accept my chicken scratching on papers I had to turn in. Before we
left San Francisco, my penmanship improved to the point where she promoted me
into the 7th grade.
A couple of memories still stick with me from the period of about 1930-1931
when I was selling papers on the corners or hopping street cars out in the
Sunset District. I always saved one paper to give to the conductor so that he'd
give me a ride back to the school. There was one motorman who just didn't like
to slow down to pick up the newsboy, but that never stopped me. One time when he
came by, he must have been doing 30 mph, so I started running, and leaned into
the flow of the car just as I grabbed the pipe that helps you up the steps.
SPLAT! I flew cross the full width of the car to the other side. The conductor
picked me and my papers up and sent me on my way up to the front of the car. I
think I sold 8 papers just out of sympathy, but I never again tried to board at
that speed.
About 1931, when they were building the new Southern Pacific Hospital on Fell
Street, the superintendent came out and bought all my remaining papers. It was
Thanksgiving Day; he made me come in and have a full course dinner with him and
his workers. Wasn't that nice? When I got home, mom had a turkey dinner with all
the trimmings waiting. No wonder I had a tummy ache that night.
After a big boxing match, all the papers would come out with an EXTRA
edition. So we'd walk up and down the streets yelling "Extra, Extra, read
all about it, the big fight ended in the eighth round". Some guy hollered
out his window asking "Who won?". After the third guy did this, I
realized that I wasn't selling papers, I was just giving out free information.
One of the guys didn't even thank me.
For just a nickel, we could get on the street cars and ride all day provided
that we asked for a transfer. Stu and I really covered the city. My favorite
place to go was Sutro Baths. They had seven pools with hot, cold, fresh and salt
water and plenty of diving boards. Then we'd hop a car and head for Fleishacker
Pool which was a quarter mile long and had two diving platforms, the top one
being 30 feet high. I picked up my first blue ribbons for swimming and diving
there. I also got to visit some of my relatives there at the zoo. Ha ha.
On one of my trips out there, I went through the tunnel to the beach and fell
asleep. It was foggy that day, but I slept too long. I had to stand up on the
streetcar all the way home because of sunburn on my back. That night, mom took
me to the hospital with second degree burns.
Another time when Stu and I were roller skating, I got going down one of the
steepest hills in San Francisco. I was going too fast and was afraid that I
would run into the gutter on the other side of the street, so I let her go.
Little did I know that at the bottom of the hill, the street, which turned into
an uphill stretch, would be very rough going because it was paved with very
roughly laid bricks. Sure enough, I went headlong into the bricks and broke my
wrist. I went around for a week before mom sent me to the hospital to have it
set. After they took off the cast, I cried because it felt as if my arm was
going to fall off, so they wrapped the old cast around me very loosely to keep
peace and quiet around the house.
In 1932, when dad was let out of the hospital, we moved over
to Masonic Avenue just one block from Lowell High School. Thank heavens nothing
happened to me there. The doctor told dad that his knee was never going to get
better in the cold damp weather of San Francisco, so we moved to Las Vegas,
Nevada. He had been instructed by the doctor at St. Luke's to sit out in the sun
and bake it. Every day he would put up a wind break, roll up his pant leg, and
let it bake. Six weeks later, his knee was so well on the way to recovery that
we moved to Azusa, California where he went to work on the San Gabriel Dam.