Returning to My Childhood Years, Part 2

Victorville, California
February 16, 2010

Guys really do read Playboy and don’t just look at the pictures. Case in point. I still remember the ambitions of July 1982 Playmate of the Month Lynda Wiesmeier, “To revisit all the places I’ve lived in the past.” Although I read that Playmate Data Sheet long ago when I was 21, her ambition has stuck with me as I have imagined many a time returning to my childhood playgrounds – Lincoln, Nebraska; Dayton, Ohio; Victorville, California; and Hahn, Germany. But I have not expended the time or energy to return to those playgrounds except for a quick drive through Victorville several years ago. My life has been the worse for not revisiting those memories.

An opportunity was now in front of me. Victorville was not far away, only a few hours of easy driving on freeways from Carlsbad, and I had all the time I needed to seek and cherish those places waiting for me in Victorville with precious memories of my childhood.

Our first home in the desert when my family transferred to George Air Force Base. I was only six when we moved to Victorville, and I couldn’t spot our exact house on Yucca Avenue. I narrowed it down to a few which were all alike. A typical 1950’s single family subdivision with single-story ranch-style homes, the backyards backing up to the parking lot of Victor Valley High School. I remember the adventure of my brother and me camping out in the backyard, snug in our sleeping bags underneath the stars. The memory is marred, or should I say forever etched, by the hoodlums in the parking lot throwing stones at us and forcing us to skedaddle to the safety of our bedroom.

Our second home as we moved to the base. Base housing is unique to each post, and as I drove around the now-abandoned residential streets, I stumbled upon the unique characteristic of George housing. That would be painted concrete masonry blocks. They probably used concrete because it was an readily available building material with all the aggregate found in the surrounding desert, it was cheap, it was low maintenance, and it lasted in the dry desert air. The military base has been deactivated and is now the Southern California Logistics Airport. The airport does not have the need for residential homes, and those concrete blocks are frittering away into the desert , slowly but surely.

Merrill Street and the Center Street Park

Our third and last home in the Victorville area, the home from which I have the most memories. It’s still there on Merrill Street where the five of us were horned into a tiny shoebox. It is near a park where I got my first taste of baseball, watching game after game, and where I got locked into a phone booth not knowing how to operate that tricky door.

The downtown area where I would walk to my first library or go see the Saturday matinees at the theater which is now a church. The matinees had a clown as the emcee and you could win prizes if the number below your seat matched the number drawn by the clown. They showed old-style matinees with a prelude to the main feature. The preludes would have cartoons and serial movies ending in cliffhangers and you would have to come back the next week to see how the hero saved the damsel in distress from the villain.

My Childhood Matinee Movie Theater

The bowling alley where my mother worked as a waitress in the restaurant. It is now gone, only the foundation remaining, but it brings back memories of Rory, Teresa, and me walking ourselves to the bowling alley to see our mom when we missed her or when we were hungry.

Irwin Elementary School where I started on my path of education. I got off to a slow start in first grade, and there was even talk about me repeating first grade all over again. I made it to second grade by a whisker. My most vivid memory of Irwin Elementary School is a Cinco de Mayo celebration with festive colors, laughing and dancing, and Ritchie Valens singing La Bamba over the speakers.

The Mojave Narrows

The Mojave Narrows, one of the few places where the Mojave River is above ground. On another of our desert adventures, my brother and I along with his friends would play in the riverbed and create forts amongst the dense riparian vegetation. One day we hiked up to the cliffs overlooking the river along a narrow path on a ledge that went from one side of the rock to the other. I froze halfway on the trail, my first remembered experience with vertigo. I would not budge forward nor backwards on that ledge which was only two or three feet wide and tens and tens of feet above the water. My brother finally coaxed me further down the trail, but I was never again comfortable with my brother when we were around heights.

Memories are just that ... good, bad, and indifferent thoughts that we remember of our past. I was on a journey, albeit a test run, to find new experiences which would become memories. To do that, I needed to get back on the road.