Growing up in southern California

4th Grade, El Centro Elementary School: I'm in the middle of the back row.


My 40th high school reunion came and went this summer--Allison and I hoped to go, but couldn't. In preliminary emails we were asked to "briefly describe what it was like, growing up as a teenager in Southern California." Here's what I jotted back:

Everything's so terribly half-remembered!--and (to steal from book titles) those teen years in the '60s were both "days of heaven" and "chronicles of wasted time!" Here's a short history.

I mostly relished the '60s--I realized even then that I basked in all sorts of beauty right there around me--physical, intellectual, spiritual--the palms, magnolias, eucalyptus, bougainvillea--hummingbirds, a fish pond, my dog Kim in the backyard--the architecture of El Centro, SPJHS, the Plunge--swimming, skating--biking to the Arroyo and all round town with my little brother Jimmy. The joys of playing piano, reading wonderful books in and out of school, the thrill the first time I heard the Beatles over a transistor radio as I biked home from SPJHS. The steadfast, uncomplicated loyalty of school chums and caring teachers taught me so much about (steady, good-humored) human kindness--I realized later this was pretty much Augustine's "to be faithful in little things is a big thing"...

And yet and yet and yet--the sad effects of divorce continued to cascade into my teen years--troubled, unsteady, ungainly in some ways--though through it all I was mostly happy. The '60s--what an eclectic confluence: I was a kid with buckteeth, braces and glasses--loved his folks and couldn't wait to leave; enthralled with the Gospels, the beach and Beach Boys; reading Kierkegaard, Huck Finn; loving the Boy Scouts, hiking the mountains, mile swim in Catalina; poolside Saturnalia; playing B football, lobbing Salvo detergent into the SM pool with the guys; loving Chopin, Wolfman Jack--the strange, joyous unpatterned mix of things that growing up still entails, I suppose.