Dee Dee Phelps

I’ve written an article on Growing Up in Southern California, Summer Postcard Flashes of Memory. Lazy summer days remind me of my teenager years at State Beach in Santa Monica. Let me know what you think of the article. …….Dee Dee

What vivid memories a sunny blue sky and a view of the Pacific Ocean from the Palisades bluffs stir up. The sky today is the exact blue color of the sky when, holding my mother’s hand, I climbed off the Super Chief at the Los Angeles Union Train Station in the late 40’s. In my six years of life I’d known only snowy winters. Now my dark blue, furry snowsuit felt stifling. As I gazed up at the tall palm trees reaching skyward, breathed the balmy air and stared at the cobalt blue canopy overhead, I felt I’d arrived in Wonderland.I grew up in Brentwood on Bundy Drive. We didn’t have a large house. I could almost stretch out my arms and touch the walls on either side of my bedroom. Outside, in the hall, our single black telephone sat on a phone stand. The cord was just long enough to drag down the hall and into my bedroom, but the phone only reached six inches in from the door. I used to lie on the floor with my ear to the receiver, my body twisted into a pretzel position as I called my friends in elementary school. Their phone numbers were simple to remember. Our prefix was “Granite,” so I dialed GR and then a four digit number. There were no area codes.

For third grade, my parents enrolled me in Brentwood Elementary School. Some days the smog was so bad the school principal cancelled recess. We’d sit in our classroom, our heads on the desks, eyes stinging and lungs hurting with each inhalation. On those days the L.A. skies were no longer blue, but a sooty brown/gray. But still, we, along with every other family in Los Angeles, continued to burn our trash in the backyard incinerator. There was no trash pick up, so we hauled our burnable items outside to the concrete structure, piled them inside, lit them on fire and closed the metal door. Soon smoke poured from the small chimney, winding skyward. Incinerators were finally banned when I was nine years old.

In addition to smog alert days, we also had classroom atomic bomb drills. A jarring alarm bell would clang and the teacher shouted, “Drop!” We fell to the floor, curling up as small as possible, our foreheads touching our knees and hands clasped behind our heads, fingers locked over our necks. The teacher explained this was the safest position in case a bomb landed on the school! We stayed in that position until an “all clear” bell rang, indicating that this was only a test and not the real thing.

With the threat of bombs dropping any moment, it’s no wonder I wanted to stay outside all the time. On summer nights, I used to play “hide and seek” with the neighborhood kids. The adults never worried about us running around unsupervised. My friends and I used to hike all over Brentwood, sometimes walking miles to the stables at the end of Kenter, and sometimes to what we called “The Gully,” a stream that ran behind some houses just above Wilshire. We had to cross several back yards to walk the length of the stream. No one ever told us to get out.

My friend Suzie lived in a huge house on Sunset Boulevard, near what is now Paul Revere Junior High School. In those days the school was a polo field. Suzie and I used to pick tomatoes from her backyard garden, make Wonder bread sandwiches with mayo and tomatoes, and take them to the hillside overlooking the polo field. We’d watch the ponies run up and down as the men played.

Several years later, when the city bought the property and built a junior high there, I was a charter member of the first eighth grade class. The principal asked the students to make a list of famous people so we could name the school. The only caveat was that the candidates had to be dead. Even though he was still alive, I wrote Elvis Presley on the ballot, but the majority voted for Paul Revere.

After graduating from Paul Revere Junior High, I attended University High School in West Los Angeles. This was before Palisades High or Malibu High Schools were built. As a member of the early baby boomer generation, our numbers were impressive. There was no busing, but the local district for this one high school included Brentwood,West Los Angeles, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Bel-Air and Westwood. Thousands of worker bee students buzzed around the campus.

Since the school wasn’t large enough for everyone to attend at once, we went to school from either 8am to 1pm, 9-2 or 10-3. In order to enroll us, the school officials had us “run for classes.” We received a list of all the subjects offered for our grade, a map showing the class location and the name of the teacher lecturing each period. We also received a sign up sheet with instructions to go from classroom to classroom to get the teacher to sign us in.

The first day we “ran” for classes, the sky turned gray and filled with rain clouds. As we dashed around the campus it started to pour, drenching everyone. I sloshed through the mud trying to get to a bungalow to receive a teacher signature for my fourth period time slot. The lines snaked around the building outside her classroom. By the time I finally made it inside, the class was filled.

With every major requirement class already taken for fourth period, I wound up in a class the students called, “dumbbell math.” It was a remedial math class run by a former truant officer turned teacher. I missed the first week of classes due to catching the flu from the soaking I received. When I finally returned, none of the teachers even knew I’d been gone. I did, however, eventually ace “dumbbell math.” But the guidance councilor told my parents I wasn’t living up to my full potential! I should have run faster on class sign up day.

No one really knew what to do with the thousands of students, so, to keep us in the schoolyard, they locked down the campus. Trapped and bored during nutrition break and lunch, the students were always pulling pranks. We’d occasionally hear an explosion and knew another cherry bomb had been flushed down one of the toilets.

On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day some students lowered the American flag from the flag pole and raised the Japanese flag. They cut the line so no one could remove it. The school finally called the fire department and the hook and ladder operator cut loose the substitute flag.

One day my friend Poppy couldn’t stand school anymore and decided to ditch after second period. She tried climbing over the tall chain link fence, but her skirt got hooked on the top wire and wouldn’t pull free. When the bell rang for nutrition break, hundreds of students filed out into the courtyard to witness Poppy wobbling on the top of the fence, her legs dangling on either side. The boy’s dean finally got a ladder and escorted her down and off to the principal’s office. The crowd gave her a rousing cheer.

Among the student population were future celebrities Nancy Sinatra, Ryan O’Neil, Bruce Johnson of the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. When he was still at University High, Jan Berry created a hit record with his first singing partner, Arnie Ginsberg. When we first heard “Jennie Lee” on the radio, the students realized anything was possible. There was an attitude, “If he can make it, so can we.”

I formed a girls singing group with three other 10th graders. We’d practice songs in an alley near school each day before classes began. We thought we sounded great, but apparently the neighbors had a different opinion. When we hit one high note the kitchen window in a nearby apartment flew open and a woman’s voice shouted, “Stop that infernal racket! You’re making my dog howl.” Undaunted, we moved down the alley to another rehearsal location.

Numerous singing groups formed at University High with the hope of creating a national hit record. None of them achieved instant success but we did have fabulous school talent shows.

In 1959 my parents bought a house in Santa Monica and I transferred to Santa Monica High School. I was surprised at the normality a smaller class size brought. Samohi, as the school was called, had an open campus. The officials trusted the students to return to school if they left for lunch. It was tempting to ditch classes for the afternoon, as the school was within walking of the beach but most of the kids made it back.

As a summer job in the eleventh grade, I started working at “Neenie’s Famous Weenies,” a hot dog and hamburger concession stand located at what is now Gladstone’s Restaurant at Sunset and Pacific Coast Highway. The owner would often disappear for days at a time, leaving us student employees with all the cash. At the end of the day, I’d pile the bills and coins into a paper bag, put it in my car and bring it back the next day.

If the health department ever visited the back room, they would have shut the restaurant down for sure. Mice ate bites out of the hamburger buns and the some of the hot dogs were turning green. But the owner just told us to slap on extra mustard and mayo. “No one will notice,” he told us. He was right. No one ever did.

I loved Neenie’s juke box and played my favorite song by the Shirelles, “Dedicated to the One I Love.” over and over, until the juke box company had to come out to replace the record. Standing in the empty restaurant, listening to the Shirelles, staring out at the waves and sunny skies, I was in heaven.

In addition to my job at Neenies, my other summer activity was writing a weekly column for the local Santa Monica newspaper, The Evening Outlook. I was responsible for covering the activities of local teens. The food hang out for kids was Goodie Goodie’s drive in on Wilshire. There you could cruise in, have food delivered to the car windows in trays that attached to the side of the car, blast your radio and check out the local scene.

I wrote one column in the Santa Monica Evening Outlook complaining that Goodie Goodies currently charged extra for refilling cups of coffee, a change from the “all you can drink for one price” policy. The drive in manager called the Outlook and angrily demanded my contact phone number. After a lengthy phone tirade, she demanded I come see her at the Goodie Goodie office. I asked my lawyer father if I needed to go. He thought it was a good idea.

When I entered the woman’s office she started yelling and demanded a newspaper retraction. I asked, “Why should I retract something that is the truth?” That comment increased her fury. She finally said she’d change the coffee policy back to “free refills” if I’d announce it in the newspaper. At that moment I realized the power of the free press to affect change.

When I had a day off, I’d go to Will Rogers State Beach with my girlfriends. We’d look up at the house at the top of the bluff across PCH and marvel at how close it sat to the edge of the cliff. We leaned against the cement wall that braced the parking lot and played “Hearts” with a wrinkled, sandy deck of cards. The guys on the sand occupied themselves with volley ball and we’d all tune our transistor radios to the same station. Top forty rock and roll blasted in stereo throughout the entire beach. Some guy usually brought a set of bongos and would serenade us as we played. No one told us that too much sun exposure might cause skin cancer. We slathered ourselves with baby oil to hasten the burning/tanning process and lay in the sun all day long. Many of us have paid a price for that folly.

One summer day I decided to go to Sorrento Beach, rather than hang out with the usual crowd at Will Rogers. Sorrento was further South on PCH, near the California Incline. I’d just spread out my beach towel when I noticed everyone staring and pointing. When I looked at the stretch of sand behind the beach house next to the public beach, I saw the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, dressed in swim trunks, running from the beach house towards the water. He smiled and waved at the small crowd of high school kids. A few secret service men in dark suits watched from the balcony, but Kennedy ran alone along the sand, finally diving into the ocean. After a brief swim, he returned the way he came, still waving at the crowd. I still get chills when I think of that day.

Over forty years have passed and the population of Los Angeles has doubled. The house that used to stand on the cliff near Will Rogers State Beach slid down the hill in the 1994 earthquake. Now when I look down on the beach area from the bluffs near my residence in Pacific Palisades, I see Pacific Coast Highway crammed with cars, the stressed out drivers blasting their horns. But when I raise my eyes to the horizon I notice the same eternal skyline, with the faint image of Catalina Island in the distance. Kids still chase seagulls, surfers watch the horizon for the perfect wave, toddlers build sand castles and teenagers look to connect. If Heal the Bay gives your location an A+ rating, you can still spend a perfect summer’s day at the beach. It’s great to know some things never change.

Dee Dee Phelps lives in Pacific Palisades, California. She’s the author of Vinyl Highway, singing as Dick and Dee Dee (www.dickanddeedee.com), available through Altergate Publishing in Sept.2007, distributed by IPG.