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100 More Things About '60
Things about Fullerton in 1960s -- the latest in a long-running series on the SPOON.

We're up to 250 things already, so we begin at 251:

251. Some teenaged girls wore "slave anklets" on their ankles, gifts from their boyfriends, presumably bearing the
boyfriend's name, e.g, "Ronnie's Love". It was a fairly common practice as early as the 1930s, at least. SEE illustration above.

[One '64 woman writes: "I remember dog collar necklaces but not slave bracelets... I also remember angora sweaters, matching skirts and tennies and tan coats with raccoon collars." Me, too.]

252. We all used the word "stingy" a lot, which seems to have faded away.

253. Swimming parties at Bob Bouchier's house on Rodeo. (Thanks to Mike Nichols, '63)

254. Many Fullerton ladies bought their clothes at Mary Millerick's Dress Shop in Anaheim, CA.

255. The thrist-quenching libations at the Royal Coach Inn proved enjoyable to hundreds of Fullerton citizens daily, including members of the business and legal community, as well as the mayors, the city councilmen, and the administrative officers of the city. Located just to the west of the corner of Valencia & Nicholas-Euclid.

256. .. and next door to a small ballet studio where some local girls studied before and during their years as SHHS students.

257. Many hundreds of thousands of young fathers who were World War Two veterans, with young wives who often helped send their husbands through college or professional school, usually with one or two young children already, namely us. In Fullerton there were probably 10,000 of those couples.

258. All restaurants, coffee shops and cafes cooked all the food they served.

259. Camps where Mexican citrus workers and their families lived. These camps had grown by now into large neighborhoods adjoining the small cities of Fullerton and her neighbors. La Habra had a very large campo.

260. Telephone books that listed names and telephone numbers, but also the occupation of the breadwinner in a family -- usually the dad -- and sometimes also Mom's name.

261. Railroad crossings at highways and roads around town. I'm thinking particularly of Nicholas/Euclid and Spadra/Harbor, where motorists and pedestrians often had to wait 5 or 10 minutes for long trains to pass. Oddly enough, in those days no one minded much. It was just part of life.

262. Through 1963 at SHHS, and at most other high schools, many of the organizations and clubs had lyrical names, such as the Palladians, the name then for our scholastic honor society. I wonder why that changed, and so suddenly.

263. Men's suits and sport coats then were almost exclusively made in the Unietd States, and the newer Italian cuts were unknown here. The designs were much fuller, and included herringbone, checks and others much more than 1970-2000.

264. Male teachers wore ties and female teachers wore dresses or skirts. Were there any exceptions, ever?

265. Physicians and dentists almost invariably wore suits, sports coats and ties, too. Bow ties were common, especially among pediatricians.

266. Generally, a large percentage of Fullerton and Sunny Hills families bought their furniture from local stores, including Chandlers.

267. No doubt "Linda" was the most popular name for girls then. There were 9 Lindas in my 6th grade class at Richman in 1960, out of 35 children. Some say it was because of the popularity of actress Linda Darnell. (Lana Turner was much more popular, though, and there were very few Lanas.) Donna, Nancy, Cathy/Kathy, Julie, Judy and Susan were also very populart girls' names. For boys, John, Robert, William and Michael were probably most popular. It goes without saying there were very few Tiffanys, Courtneys, Whitneys, Mackenzies and so on. The name Stuart, once popular, has seemed almost to vanish. "Penny" has remained somewhat popular all along.

268. In Fullerton in the 1950s and 1960s, there were virtually no bars at all where most customers were 30 years of age or younger. Then the average age of bar patrons was probably 40 to 45. Now the situation has reversed, and most bar customers in our hometown are 30 or less, or even 25 or less. We also have approximately 50 drinking establishments in downtown Fullerton, surely an all-time high. I doubt if there were more than 6 in the 1960s.

269. Even adjusted for the much smaller population in Fullerton then, there were far fewer medical specialists and sub-specialists practicing then. We had general practitioners, pediatricians, surgeons of several varieties, obstetricians/gynecologists, dermatologists, radiologists, internal medicine specialists, neurologists, and psychiatrists, but probably not more than one or two urologists, endocrinologists, plastic surgeons, oncologists, hematologists, pathologists, nephrologists, gastroenterologists, nuclear medicine specialists, gerontologists/geriatricians or others.

270. Most nurses were women, then, and most doctors were married to a nurse or former nurse. That may still hold true. I don't know. Quite a few St. Jude nurses then were Roman Catholic nuns, but that hasn't been true for many years now.

271. The wealthiest families in Sunny Hills or Golden Hill then had wealth worth a total of no more than $10 or $15M. There were fewer than a half dozen of them. A family was considered highly affluent then if the husband/father earned $25K or more a year, although some earned much more. The wealthiest American resident of Fullerton/Sunny Hills/Golden Hill may have been industrialist Norton Simon, who lived on Valley View for part of the 1930s. The wealthiest foreign resident may possibly have been deposed Cambodian dictator, Lon Nol, who lived in Sunny Hills for a while in the 1970s and 1980s. We couldn't measure individual wealth of Fullerton residents that way anymore, because so many are citizens of other countries, or have dual citizenship.

272. It's highly possible that during that period, no town the size of Fullerton had as many or more new and used car dealership owners as residents, and most had children who were students at SHHS. These families included the Schuths, the Klimpels, the Beckhams, the Thralls and others. That was truly the Automobile Age.

273. It's also highly possible that no American town then had a higher percentage of registered Republicans in a population. I would guess that for Fullerton then the percentage was 90% or more, maybe 95%. Of those, a very high percentage described themselves as conservative, too. In a November 1964 straw poll among SHHS students, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) outpolled incumbant President Lyndon B. Johnson 20 to 1.

274. Yet for some years, the Chairman of the Democratic State Organization was a Sunny Hills resident, Dr. Dorman Commons. Dr. Commons was also CEO of Occidental Petroleum, and later a state leader in public edication.

275. Exact figures will never be available, of course, but we also know that throughout the history of Fullerton until the 1970s, a huge percentage of local families had Midwestern ancestry. During the 1920s and 1930s, I'd guess up to 80% of Fullerton residents had either been born in the Midwest or their parents had been. By the 1960s, that percentage was still high: perhaps 60%? Most Southern California communities then had similar percentages, but few as high as Fullerton. For over a century, the City of Long Beach has hosted an annual Iowa Picnic, and during the 1920s and 1930s, as many as 50,000 Iowans in California attended. (My maternal grandmother in Anaheim, a native of Silver City, Iowa and a 1917 graduate of Drake University, did not approve of the Iowa Picnic, however, because they served beer.)

276. People who smoked unfiltered cigarettes kept having to remove tiny shreds of tobacco from their tongues and lips.

277. Remember defrosting the freezer compartment of your refrigerator, maybe with an icepick, maybe with a pan or two of heated water? A messy job. The built up ice could be pretty disgusting, too. I don't mean the big freezer some families had in their garages. I mean the compartment where you put ice cream, TV dinners and so on.

278. Rolls of paper to line the shelves. Not as many people do that any more.

279. How about a real pantry, where Mother would store not just table clothes and maybe candlesticks or extra silverware sets, but also cans of food, soup, maybe bars of soap, depending on how many rooms and how much storage she had available. Grandma's house always had a pantry, didn't it?

280. We've mentioned wooden clothes pins, but how about the original kind without hinges? These older ones had a groove you'd slip over the item of clothing and your clothesline. I doubt if any of our children would know what we're talking about here.

281. Still use Fels Naptha? Great product for scrubbing many fabrics and stains. Only small bars available now.

282. People didn't use terms from psychotherapy, or psychobabble. If someone seemed fearful, he was not called "paranoid". If you had a problem, it wasn't called "an issue". If you were over-concerned about something, no one would say you were "obsessed". If someone was really selfish, he wouldn't be described as a "narcissist".


MORE TO BE ADDED SOON. SUGGESTIONS?