Header Graphic
SPOON ARCHIVE: Fullerton in 1960, 1-100
Copyright, Paul E. Saevig, 2016. All rights reserved. May not be copied or transmitted, in whole or part, without express written permission of author.

 

1. The WELCOME TO FULLERTON bridge was still there by Hillcrest Park but in its final days.

2. Same with Ranch Town, Jimmy Smith’s Sunny Hills Swim Club and the Barn.

3. Hillside was thriving, and so was Hilltop Market on Carhart, as well as Lakeman’s Market and the soda shop across from FUHS on Lemon.

4. World War Two (15 years ago then) and the Korean War (7 years ago then) were much on everyone’s mind, and in many books, movies and TV shows.

5. Elementary schools and high schools were still being built in town.

6. The 1940 Works Progress Administration city library on Pomona – a gem – was thriving and seemed big enough to fit our needs forever.

7. Cal State Fullerton was under construction, known as Orange State College, and its first classes were held at .. Sunny Hills High School, itself brand spanking new.

8. Most homes still had backyard incinerators

9. Few of the orange groves were still thriving, but still you saw them everywhere you went: there was nowhere you could drive 1 mile without passing groves.

10. If you were a veteran, you could buy a new house in West Fullerton for $20-30K.

11. North of Malvern for $40K and on up.

12. Fewer than 25% of homes had color TV.

13. Most families relied on clotheslines to dry clothes.

14. Our main place to shop was the Broadway Center in Anaheim, and the Orangefair Center for J.C. Penney’s and Grant’s and a few others. Otherwise it took a little more money and time to shop at Bullocks Fashion Square in Santa Ana or Bullocks La Habra, or Buffums in Santa Ana.

15. Of course when you drove into a gas station --- Richfield, Union 76, Texaco, Chevron, Shell – a guy would come out and pump the gas for you, and check your oil and tires, too. Sometimes two guys, and windshield wiping, too.

16. Regular gas would be 20 to 25 cents a gallon.

17. At least one third and maybe as many as half the dads worked in Los Angeles or LA County in places like Santa Fe Springs, Pico Rivera, Downey, Lakewood, South Gate, Huntington Park, Maywood, Bell or Compton.

18. Dozens of automobile dealers advertised regularly on TV, especially Felix Chevrolet .. Cal Worthington .. Yeakel Brothers .. Cormier .. Fletcher Jones (senior).

19. In Fullerton they were Schuth Buick .. Casey Beckham Pontiac .. Klimpel Chrysler and Studebaker and other makes .. McCoy-Mills Ford, from Anaheim .. Sierra Mercury .. American Motors on Nicholas-Euclid .. was Renick Cadillac founded yet? And many more ..

20. Milk was delivered door to door in the morning.

21. Every morning, 900 Helms Bakery trucks fanned out from their Culver City headquarters to serve LA and OC. Remember the beautiful wooden inlaid panels for the rolls and breads?

22. The Oscar Meyer Wienie-Mobile would also come around to shopping centers.

23. All of us boys went to the Boys Club and no girls were allowed!

24. The Boy Scout Jamboree in Newport Beach was right around this time.

25. Alligator viewing was available one town over in Buena Park.

26. Most rock n’ roll music was played on Top Forty radio, so it was easy to keep track of the most 100 or so songs at any one time.

27. Top rock n’ roll disc jockeys were Art Lebow .. B. Mitchell Reed .. Sam Riddle .. Bob Eubanks .. Wolfman Jack .. Kasey Kasem ..

28. A car trip from Fullerton to San Diego took at least two hours and included passing through little towns like Oceanside, Del Mar, Cardiff and others. Some of them could be bottlenecks.

29. You were never too far from belts of oil fields with wells and sometimes derricks .. the hills west of Sunny Hills .. Brea .. Yorba Linda .. Santa Fe Springs .. Whittier .. Pico Rivera .. Long Beach .. Signal Hill .. Huntington Beach .. and hundreds more.

30. The automobile was much more important in our lives compared to now. We had drive-in restaurants and hamburger stands every few blocks, and drive-in dairies and markets, too.

31. Remember suburban trout ponds, where a few seconds after you cast your line, you’d get a bite? Those were common and my grandpa co-owned one for a while on Chapman in Orange.

32. The Sizzler’s Steak House on East La Palma (or was it Lincoln?) opened to immediate success then, and was considered a real advance.

33. The long era of independent merchants, pharmacies, restaurants, coffee shops, and other enterprises was coming to an end. Franchised places replaced them more and more.

34. Yes, doctors made house calls. Sure.

35. Dentists did almost all of their own work.

36. In Orange County, Aerospace Was King. In Fullerton, Hughes Aircraft was two years old. It seemed like 25% of SHHS dads were engineers at either Hughes, Rockwell, Autonetics, Northrup or other places.

37. Leading local merchants included .. The Pillory Department Store .. Gifford’s Stationery .. First National Bank at Spadra-Harbor & Commonwealth .. Boege & Bean Sporting Goods .. Thelma Moran’s Fashions .. Mooney Andrew’s Men’s Clothing .. Back Street Fashions .. the Turntable Record Store .. the Fullerton Music Company .. Giovanni’s Pizza .. Ray’s Pets .. Frank’s Bike Shop .. Sears-Roebuck on Commonwealth .. Fullerton Auto Parts .. Melody Inn ..

38. Even the oldest homes in Sunny Hills – on Valencia Mesa – were only 20 years old.

39. No home in the Basque Tract was older than 14 years.

40. No home in West Fullerton was older than 7 years.

41. Even in Golden Hill and Fern Drive, very few homes were older than 30 years.

42. In what we called Sunny Hills beyond the immediate Valencia Mesa neighborhood, almost no homes were older than about 6 years.

43. None of the original buildings from Fullerton Junior College – built between 1913 and 1941 – had yet been demolished.

44. Atwater Realty .. Topik Realty .. Clor Realty ..

45. Two movie theaters downtown, the Fox and the Wilshire ..

46. There were still some barrancas left, unpaved. One was along Malvern, and one was just south of Valencia Drive. I think the one on Berkeley behind the JC was the same way.

47. Little League Baseball was pretty new .. West Fullerton .. Golden Hill ..

48. If we’d heard of computers at all, it was probably only the Univac computer used on the Art Linkletter show – or similar mainframes at certain technological companies.

49. Some of the popular beers were Ajax .. New Brew 102 .. Blatz .. and soon, Busch Bavarian ..

50. The Daily News Tribune came out every afternoon and was seldom 50 pages long.

51. A family could also subscribe to .. the LA Times .. LA Mirror .. LA Examiner .. LA Herald .. Anaheim Bulletin .. Santa Ana Register ..


52. At our local elementary schools, Spanish was taught by closed circuit TV on sets wheeled into our classrooms, and the teacher was Mrs. Yvette Miller of the Pasadena City School District.

53. Typing was more or less mandatory for girls and boys, too.

54. Homemaking classes for girls were popular and well-attended, maybe some even mandatory – sewing, cooking and more.

55. Almost all gardeners and lawn care workers were Japanese-American, and some Filipino-American.

56. A high percentage of young Fullerton men entered the armed services between the time they left high school and age 30. Close to 50%? More?

57. Quite a few families north of Malvern had fall-out shelters, or soon would. I don’t know of any south of Malvern but there probably were a few.

58. We’d see Mexican wedding celebrations called “chivarees” (probably misspelled), where the bride and groom and their friends would drive away from the church with streamers and tin cans on their cars, honking their horns continuously. That custom seemed to have disappeared by the 1960s, at least in Fullerton. City noise ordinances, maybe?

59. In those days, no more than a dozen or so black (Negro) families lived in Fullerton, all of them in the Lemon-Valencia neighborhood. None went to SHHS.

60. During long periods of the day and in the evening and morning, news was not available on the radio and obviously not on TV. The news would come on 3 or 4 times a day and that was it. Hourly and 24 hour news came later. In 1960 and 1961, we boys waited around for the afternoon papers to see if Roger Maris or Mickey Mantle had hit home runs the day before.

61. It seemed like 80% of adults smoked cigarettes, maybe more. Not many thought anything of it, either.

62. The term “juvenile delinquent” was widely used.

63. Boys – especially boys who wanted to seem “tough” – would wear taps on their shoes, the noisier the better.

64. Popular boy’s haircuts included the Butch (short hair in a s-called buzz cut, without a fringe at the hairline), the Crewcut (with the fringe, ordinarily made to stand up with pomades including ButchWax or Lucky Tiger, the Flat-Top (a crewcut with longer hairt at the sides, combed back), the Flat-Top with Fenders (an exaggerated Flat-Top with thick “fenders” combed back) and for a small percentage of boys, the Jelly-Roll (variations on the Flat Top with Fenders, and also with a clot of hair or a spit curl that was combed to hang down over a boy’s forehead).

65. A popular variation was when a boy would comb his hair so that it swept back from one ear to the top and also the other side, with a smooth pompadour included in the wave. Sometimes the pompadour would have a sharp ridge one on side of the forehead all the way to the opposite ear. The effectiveness of this hairstyle varied widely. Some boys could train their hair to stay smoothly in place with this style, while most boys had some trouble keeping it in place. When some poor guys tried it, the style collapsed almost immediately into a bunch of cowlicks. Greg Lorton, ’64, was one of the last guys who had a good, short example of this style. Tommy Jewett, ’64, had this style with longer hair and it looked pretty cool.

66. Remember at the beach or in any swimming pool or at the river, when any guy with a flat top and fenders got his hair wet? It would be very short on top, with long cocker spaniel hair on the sides, and he’d look very funny!

67. Sometimes even today you see men from 50 to 70 years old who still wear this waved style, especially in rural areas and rural states. Hahahaha!

68. The most popular haircut for boys, though, remained what barbers then called “The Gentleman’s Haircut”, which was about one inch long above the ears and on top, parted on the left, and combed to the side, with a small pompadour. A small percentage of boys parted their hair on the right, like me.

69. Most of us boys envied other boys whose hair was “trained” to go straight back, because we thought it looked cool.

70. I’m not knowledgeable enough to describe girls’ hair or clothes then, except to note that .. ponytails, pixie cuts and “Toni’s” of many varieties were popular, and hairspray was in wide usage .. all girls had to wear skirts or dresses to school then, and always had to meet standards, even if they were cheated on .. aside from shirtwaists and simple suits, the most popular outfit for girls then was a white blouse, sweater and skirt or dress, usually with low-cut white tennis shoes (pointed toes) or else Mary Janes. By junior high school, fewer and fewer girls wore socks that extended above low-cut shoe-top.

71. Getting back to mainstream 1960 in Fullerton, TV dinners were a new thing.

72. So were automatic features in cars, from windows to steering to transmissions to aerials.

73. I may be wrong, but it’s my impression that around 1960, “NO TRESPASSING” signs began to go up everywhere: throughout Brea and Carbon Canyon, in all the orange groves, in the barrancas, even in many of the open fields. Before that an owner or a foreman would yell at you to leave, but increasingly, a cop would come around, take your name and address, maybe bawl you out, and warn you not to come back again. Right, guys?

74. Around this time, Bastanchury Lake had its name changed to Laguna Lake.

75. Until 1962, Nicholas/Euclid ended at Valencia Mesa.

76. Until 1960 or just before, Spadra/Harbor became “Whittier Boulevard” at the Fullerton/La Habra border.

77. Of course, around that time, both Nicholas and Spadra got new names: Euclid and Harbor. I always wondered why, unless it was to make travel through all the towns more uniform with the same names.

78. Now and then, a jet flying overhead would “break the sound barrier” with a tremendous crashing noise. Remember?

79. Airline travel was just becoming widely popular, meaning to all the middle class. Previously routes were limited and fares were too expensive for most individuals and families.

80. Unfortunately, airline highjackings started to occur around that time, mainly to Cuba.

81. There was a helicopter service at Orange County Airport and taking passengers to LAX. I rode it myself in 1959 and 1960, and it was rickety and shook very badly, with terrible noise. There were at least two very serious crashes, and the service was stopped permanently.

82. Around the same time, however, a heliport was built at Hughes Aircraft Ground Systems Group, in Fullerton. It was located near the corner of Gilbert & Malvern, across the parking lot from Building 600, where the divisional Vice President Nicholas Begovich and the other top managers had their offices. Several times a week, on average, a helicopter would take executives either to or from Fullerton to Headquarters in Culver City, or Airport Site in Inglewood, or El Segundo site or even Canoga Park. Hughes in Fullerton, by the way, has not existed since the early 1990s and is now both a shopping center and a housing area called Amerige Court.

83. In 1960, Green Stamps and Blue Chip stamps were given away with most supermarket purchases, and were redeemable for a variety of goods, including irons, waffle irons, mops, and few things of interest to us kids except binoculars. One ’65 friend told me that to this day, her mom has kept lots of these stamps. Bless her heart.

84. In Fullerton in 1960, hitchhiking was popular and if never exactly safe, at least not extremely dangerous in most cases. Remember on Sunday afternoons how hundreds of kids would stand and hitchhike south at State Street & Highway 101 in Santa Barbara? That was a few years later ..

85. In 1960, you could still ride your bike to Huntington Beach in 30 minutes, and not go through any towns until you reached the town itself. If you knew exactly how to reach the beach between Newport and Huntington, you could do it without going through any towns at all.

86. Dairyland and Midway City were not too far off ..

87. The railroad underpasses at Harbor and Euclid were under construction, taking a long time to complete. That construction and completion meant a lot to our way of life in West Fullerton, because before that we had to wait for trains to cross. Unfortunately, many small businesses on Harbor between Valencia and Commonwealth did not survive the construction because they didn’t have enough customers. One was a small Chevron station many of our families went to.

88. The Riverside Freeway (91) also neared completion at that time,, along the southern border of Fullerton.

89. That was the era of the ball-playing Owens family at FUHS. Al was first, then came Brig, and I think Marv in ’67 was next to youngest.

90. I’d guess that around 1960, the last of our younger sisters and brothers were born into the families of ‘60s Lancers, right?

91. Of course the Jewett Brothers were at their peak, building tracts of homes in Fullerton, surrounding cities and elsewhere.

92. So many Sunny Hills and other Fullerton families were riding their own hard work and a surging, expanding economy then into prosperity and affluence, in a sustained boom never seen before even in California and nowhere else as explosively. No, in the way that boom vaulted families into the middle class or into the upper middle class was not matched even in the Silicon Valley boom of the 1980s.

93. Around this time, and between 1958 and about 1966, the modern conservative movement in the United States was born and first expanded widely in North Orange County, and with Fullerton as a leader. Soon it would grow into the Reagan Movement, and subsequently change not only our country but the world itself.

94. Fender Guitar, founded and operating in industrial Fullerton, made electric rock n’ roll possible and had already become acknowledged as the guitar of choice by musicians in many genres.

95. The long Sunny Hills HS domination in tennis was about to begin, and co-domination in water polo and swimming, also. We were among the top ten or twenty Southern California public high schools in these sports almost every year well into the 1970s, with many All American, All-CIF and all-league athletes. Perhaps the most distinguished of all was Jim Hobson, ’64, who won the singles title of the prestigious Ojai junior tournament in its first year.

96. In 1960, the Fullerton tradition of great baseball was strong, with dozens of eventually great players already officially playing for local teams: from SHHS they included Gary Carter, Don Martin, Aaron McGuire, Tommy Jewett, Rick Raczka, Bill Purvis, Larry Russell, Kendall Mills, Dan Kavanagh – and my apologies to all the guys whose names I’m not thinking of at the moment. There is no greater baseball town or city than Fullerton anywhere in the world – not in Georgia or Texas or Pennsylvania or Cuba or Taiwan or Japan or South Korea – nowhere.

97. Our highest level of excellence in academics nationwide continues to this day, and began with us, ‘60s Lancers, and with our teachers, administrators and counselors. Very few public high schools anywhere have done even slightly better.

98. We kids who lived together in Fullerton in the 1960s have not done too badly either ..

99. By the way, in 1960, Fullerton was only 80 years old, officially.

100. Most of our parents were at least ten years younger than we are NOW.