Runaway “Their Moment in Time” (2 page)

Chapter One

Southern California of today is an entirely different world than it was twenty years ago. Nothing has stayed the same, and in the tumult of time, a way of life I once knew evaporated into thin air. The old Southern California, once so rich in opportunity and freedom, now feels non-existent.

I grew up in what is known as the “Inland Valley” in southern California during the 1970s. True, the 70s weren’t stylistically savvy, due to the fact we wore knee high socks with short, shorts, but the 70s were special. It was the time at the end of the Vietnam War and a few years after the women’s liberation movement.  Our values were both from our parents who grew up in the strict 1950s nuclear family, and the new values from the hippie 1960s.  Simply put, I grew up in a time when people knew and liked their neighbors. We knew all of our friends’ parents and they knew us. In fact, sometimes our friends’ parents disciplined us as much as our own parents did. We also had a great respect for them—well, for anyone who was older than us, really. Respect and decency toward one another were the norm.

This was the California of my youth—magical, innocent, and free. Skies were blue, traffic was light, people were nice, and gangs were largely unheard of.

Contrary to the common misconceptions of living in So Cal, every day was not sunny, celebrities were not constantly visible, and Disneyland was not in our back yard. I watched the re-runs of
The Mickey Mouse Club
from the 1950s with Annette Funicello on TV. And like everyone else in my youth I wanted to be in the Mickey Mouse Club, but I wasn’t a member, and going to Disneyland was a rarity.

These were the days before The Disney Store, when someone could only buy Disney mementos at Disneyland. I was also of the generation of the ticket books, when, quite literally, an E-ticket ride was just that, not a cliché, but an actual E ticket, entitling the bearer to a ride on the Matterhorn, Pirates of the Caribbean, or the Haunted House attractions. My family used to hoard those tickets so that the next time we went to the “happiest place on earth,” we might actually get to ride two of the three best rides in one day.

***

Another misconception about Southern California is that the state is one solid beach. Not so—we have a sizeable mountain range known as the San Gabriels. Actually, the majority of the area sits in a valley surrounded by them.

Beyond the mountains, however, there are miles of beaches looking out over the Pacific Ocean—which, by the way, is always so cold that it causes swimmers’ lips to turn blue and their teeth to chatter.

We “So Cals” know our mountains are not the Rockies, the Adirondacks, or even the Ozarks, although they are substantial enough. Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear, Mt. Baldy, and Cucamonga Peak are some of the more prestigious around us.

Between LA and San Bernardino run what is known in this area as “the foothills,” a smaller mountain range, wider than it is long. At the base of this particular mountain range runs a series of small cities or towns that were, at one point, nothing more than ranches managing orange and lemon groves.

Towns such as Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Claremont, Upland and Alta Loma are all situated at the base of these foothills. The main citrus groves and grape crops grew in the land around these towns. There was even a Sunkist packing plant in Ontario before it moved east to Florida. When Sunkist moved out, building contractors moved in. Now, the only way to see what remains of the groves is to peek in the back yards of people’s homes.

This over-developing of homes and the removal of the groves, in most people’s opinion, is what destroyed Southern California and its beauty.

Originally, most of Southern California’s citrus groves were located in what is known as the Inland Valley. These were small farming communities dedicated to the production of lemons and oranges. Other towns that were primarily vineyard-based were located farther east of the citrus groves. Literally thousands of acres were filled with grape vines. There were two wineries in our area, Virginia Dare, which later burned down, and Fillipi, which still produces a small yield each year.

What I remember best about the citrus groves were the months of March and April, when the sweet smell of orange and lemon blossoms was everywhere. One would be hard pressed not to notice the heavenly scent as it came through the breeze.

Glendora was one of the smaller farming communities that had been established since the early 1900s. This was where we called home.

The original Route 66 ran straight through Glendora, as it did with most other towns in our area, such as Upland, Claremont, La Verne, and Alta Loma. But Glendora was known as the “Pride of the Foothills.” Perhaps this was because of the groves, or maybe it was because the Santa Fe Railroad ran through town, or maybe it was just because it was quaint and beautiful.

We lived on an unknown, out-of-the-way street called Charford. The houses that surrounded us were old, with small, comfortable floor plans and perfect sized yards. It was a quiet, small, neighborhood, great for children, because the streets were a maze, with only one way in and one way out. Random, crazy traffic never affected us, but unfortunately, our lemonade stands never did very well.

In fact, if we did see a car on the street, we knew one of two things; the occupants of the car lived nearby, or they were lost and couldn’t find their way out of our maze-like neighborhood.

People in our town were simple, kind and unobtrusive. Moms made cakes, cookies, and pies for their neighbors. On occasion, we went to neighborhood barbecues.

Plaid shorts, knee-high socks, and surf attire were popular. We drank out of garden hoses, froze orange juice on a stick, and bought rocks as pets. Technology was minimal—video games were in their infancy. In fact, the only video game that existed was called “Pong,” and after about five minutes, the players could go insane from boredom. So we played outside as a form of entertainment. We rode bikes, played in fields, and swam in neighbors’ pools. My friends and I had a particular favorite pastime—taking out our bikes and racing down the streets with the wind in our hair and adrenaline pulsing through our veins

It was a great way to grow up. As with most kids, I spent almost all of my time with my friends. Every morning, as early as we could, we were out in our neighborhood with our bikes, ready for the day’s adventure. We stayed out until the street lights came on, without any fear of the scary outside world.

To make our youth even better, we were lucky in that we had a favorite hangout. It was a diner called The Oasis, and it was our special place. One of our friend’s dads owned it, and before him, it was his father’s. The diner originally had been built in the early 1950s when Brandon Thompson’s dad was just a kid.

The Oasis was located where the road forks in the town of La Verne. Route 66 continues east, and Baseline veers northeast.

The Oasis had its own history and its own memories. Besides being an authentic drive-in of an era gone by, it was also a main focal point for early street racers. Baseline was originally an old country highway that took drivers through the main part of the citrus groves. It was a simple, less-traveled street than Route 66, and early on, teens from the 50s decided it would make a better quarter-mile race track. The Oasis sat facing the track as its parking lot was next to the track itself. It wasn’t so much an official racing strip as it was a desolate strip of asphalt with a spray-painted line.

The Oasis wasn’t large and it wasn’t well known… it was just ours. It held a sense of wonder for us. On any given day, my four friends and I would find ourselves sitting in the diner, listening to Mr. Thompson tell his stories from the past. He was kind, friendly and always eager to tell a story, which usually had something to do with racing, cars, or engines.

In the middle of a story one day, Runaway blurted out, “Did they always race for pink slips?”

“Well, no,” he said. “Not always. Sometimes people would race just for fun, and they had no intention of taking their opponent’s pink slip away.”

I realized that I hadn’t been listening as closely as I thought. Looking up, I asked, “What’s a pink slip again?” I was only about eight or nine, and clearly I had gotten lost in the explanation.

“Car ownership papers,” Mr. Thompson said, smiling at me and probably realizing I was trying to process too much information.

“Like when?” Runaway persisted, completely ignoring me.

Looking back at her, he said, “Oh, sometimes when they were racing friends. Pink slips were taken when the car clubs got involved. Then, and only then, did drivers start losing cars. But,” he took a breath and, with his eyebrows raised, said, “People just didn’t race on our quarter-mile, you see—sometimes they went other places just to hang out. There are actually two other diners in this area.”

We all looked at each other. “There are?” we asked. “Where?”

I suppose, being young, we thought our small town was the entire world, and all that was in it was all that there was.

Mr. Thompson laughed, “You guys, do you think that this is the only place around? The Oasis here is the smallest.”

My curiosity was piqued. “How come we don’t know about them? Can we go see them?” I asked.

He chuckled again. “Sure, you can see them anytime—I still swing by, from time to time, just to get a glimpse. There is one just down the road, here on Foothill. It’s in Pomona, though, and it’s called Henry’s. It’s a big, round building and the parking lot just makes a circle all the way around it.” He drew a circle in the air with his finger. “The walls are all glass and the roof is covered in white rock. Cars would just drive around and around… that’s what we called cruising.” He smiled.

“Does it have a quarter-mile, too?” Runaway asked.

“No,” he smiled, quite proud. “Actually, we are the only one with a quarter-mile, because, well… it’s not really a quarter-mile—it’s just an old road that we used for racing,” Mr. Thompson explained.

“What about the other one? I mean, besides Henry’s,” Grant asked, reminding us of the other diners in this area.

“Aw, the other one is by far the most popular. It’s called Scrivener’s
.
It’s farther out—down in south Pomona—and much bigger than either The Oasis or Henry’s.”

Brandon, Mr. Thompson’s son, spoke up. “Yeah, but Dad, didn’t you tell me they all came here?” he asked, looking at his dad like maybe he had been lied to.

“Yes, son, I did. The people who came here were the locals who wanted to race for pink slips. But honestly,” he paused for clarification, “if you wanted to race the big guns—the guys with the money and the know-how—you went to Scrivener’s. They’re right near Holt Boulevard, and the racers would use that for their quarter-mile. Some people even went down to Hollywood and raced at Sunset and Vine. But the cops didn’t like it much.”

“So did people have to belong to a car club in order to race? Or could they just do it on their own?” Runaway asked.

“Well, it seems to me that I knew this one guy who used to go down to Scrivener’s on his own and look for someone to race. That’s his picture, right up there.”

Mr. Thompson pointed to an old picture of a guy standing next to what looked like a bucket of rust. It wasn’t painted, it didn’t have any bumpers or chrome, and it had no hubcaps—it looked like a piece of junk. Mr. Thompson told us it was a 1947 Ford two-door sedan. That information was lost on us, but the guy did have his picture on The Wall, so we figured his car must have been fast.

“That’s Tommy. He took that car down to Hollywood one night and cruised around, looking for a race.” His eyes flashed with excitement. “He came upon this beautiful, brand-new 1957 Corvette—it belonged to a gorgeous blonde who was leaning against the fender. Tommy drove that old, ugly car right up to her, told her she had a beautiful car, and asked if she wanted to race it.”