May Day in Los Banos, the national holiday

Oh did I love May Day as a kid! It was  a week long celebration that always involved attending the fair, numerous times and both parades!

Back in the 60's the parades were so much fun. Lots of horses, lots and lots and lots of horses! That's all I wanted to see, but the floats and the marching bands were a lot of fun too. The Big Parade, as we called it, was always on the Sunday that culminated the May Day celebrations. We'd walk into town and grab a good spot on the parade route to watch. Things were pretty simple back then. No one brought lawn furniture or ice chests. Easy peasy, when it was time to leave, nothing brought, so nothing to clean up. Seems that some of the floats did have people on them that tossed candy at the parade viewers, things such as those cool gold foil wrapped chocolate coins. I could never get enough of those!

I was forced to take ballet and tap dancing lessons as a kid so a few times I was in the Saturday morning Kiddie Parade. The entire group of kids who took those lessons would march behind a banner announce that we were students of Rose House Dance and Music Studio. But the most fun I had in the kiddie parade was with my friend Judy. We both went as Mr. Ed, you know, the talking horse, anyone remember? My mother made the costume for us out of an old sheet died to resemble a Palomino gelding and she made the head out of a  paper bag and yarn. Judy and myself practiced for weeks before the parade and guess what? We won a prize! I cannot remember if it was 2nd place or 3rd place but I do remember what it was, $5, which we split. That was a ton of dough for a couple of nine year olds!

After the parade, the fair was the best thing in town for another year! All those rides! All that junk food! All the games! It was cheap entertainment and thought to be fairly safe as I recall going to the fair with my friends at a pretty young age, unsupervised by adults. I remember being told the usual, don't talk to strangers and the biggie, don't let them gyp you and lose all your money. Not that losing a dollar would have been a big disaster, but still, I recall counting the change after every transaction.

As I got a little older, I tended to enjoy other aspects of the fair. They had the 4-H displays, the paintings, the floral exhibits. Those were all pretty nice too. The last time I participated in May Day activities was probably 30 years ago. It wasn't the same. Didn't attend the Kiddie Parade that time but did attend the Big Parade and it was a let down. There were horses, but not the volume of before and instead of floats, oh there were a few, again, not the volume, they were replaced with people driving their personal cars through the parade route. Not all that exciting if you ask me.  I haven't been back since that one last time but knowing that this is May Day week brought back those memories.

My current obsession with cats and turtles (see numerous Facebook posts on my page)

I have always loved animals but it took some persuasion to get my first pet. I was very young, probably 3 or 4 years old and from somewhere, my parents found a kitten. I don't even remember his/her?? name as we didn't have the tiny creature very long. I know I did approach him, let's just call it a 'him' for simplification purposes, with apprehension as I didn't want to get scratched and yet every single time I did try to touch or hold him, I would get scratched. He was a friendly little guy but there was a point in time when he got sick. I remember him out in the backyard meowing very loudly and jumping all over the place. No idea what the poor thing had but I guess by the time my father got home from work that day and I was safely in bed for the night, the kitten had died.

So a few years go by and I'm in school by this point. We had a dime store in town that at the time sold the little water turtles for what had to have been a reasonable price, as besides the animal, one would also have to purchase  a little bowl with an 'island and palm tree' in the middle of it.

I had a lot of those little turtles at the time but none of them 'took' so to speak until I was quite a bit older, probably in junior high, when my friend Judy had gotten one that I believe was purchased on the Santa Cruz Pier but Judy will have to chime in. Anyway at some point Judy had given me that turtle and I had him for a very long time. In fact, when I went away to college, Felix, that was his name, traveled with me.

But back again to those early school years. The summer when I was around eight, we had driven east to Missouri for one of our visits with the relatives back there. That year was so much fun as I then found out that box turtles lived on my grandparents farm and heck, all over the place down there. I brought home a cardboard box filled with them that summer.  That was a fateful summer as our neighbors across the street also went to France for the entire summer and I got to feed their cat, Mama Kitty. It was like having my own cat! Somewhere in the old photos, there's one of me holding Mama Kitty and one of the box turtles. Cats and turtles get along quite well.

So once the Arbelbide's came back home from France and Mama Kitty went back home with them, I was heartbroken. I wanted a cat BADLY!  Again, my parents came through! Someone in town had one kitten left from a litter. We drove over there and there she was, Bojo, my first REAL cat as the one from the previous time wasn't around long enough for me to love. Bojo was a beauty! She had long fur, and was what I would call a shaded silver tabby. Just gorgeous! She put up with a lot from me at the time as I was just learning how to behave around animals. Learning experience for the both of us. I must have gotten hooked by her at some point in time, but I sure don't remember. She was a good girl and lived a long time as she died around the time I was in college.

As anyone who knows me now, they know all about my current cats, plus neighbor cats that I tend to fall in love with also. The turtle thing may be a surprise, as we currently don't have any. The house I grew up in had the BEST backyard for the box turtles. They were safe out there. Couldn't get out. Many of them lived for a very long time and one even laid eggs and had 4 babies! Sadly they didn't live as they were born in November which is when they should have been hibernating.

Okay, time for me to go and give my cats some loving.

Learning to drive

Driving was never anything that I gave much thought to until I did the behind the wheel drivers ed course in the summer of my 15th year. Fifteen and a half to be precise. There were two other students and the instructor was Mr. Gastello, who also taught Spanish at the high school.

Mr. Gastello piled us all into a 1970's sedan and hauled us to the fair grounds where there were plenty of big, empty parking lots to give us our first crack at being behind the wheel. I can't speak for the other two kids, but this was MY first time driving.  I don't think I was behind the wheel more than ten minutes when I decided, driving was for me!

We did all the usual things, parallel parking, (boy was that hard!), making turns, braking at stop signs and lights and then the dreaded 'merge onto the freeway'. With that one we got off easy. Our freeway of choice was the then not completed, Interstate 5. If we didn't take the exit he suggested we take, the freeway would end in probably a mile or two and that would have not been a good learning experience at all!

After the two week class was completed, I spent as much time as I could driving with one of my parents. I remember my mom was pretty nervous about me being behind the wheel and would 'lunge' at the steering wheel. I didn't particularly care for that. My dad however, was a bit more relaxed. Once I  got the hang of driving the family car (automatic transmission) I begged him to let me take a stab at driving the Holt Bros. company truck which was a stick. More like a broomstick! That truck was difficult for me to drive in more ways than one. It took both my hand to shift it into gear. Not a good thing!

I didn't get my first car until I was 18 but I did 'borrow' the family car as much as I could. Ah, those were the days!

The Mystic Fire Flies

Fire flies have absolutely nothing to do with my hometown but a short conversation with a good friend of mine sparked a few memories of them. They are not native to California as I imagine they need a more humid climate.

As a child, every other year we'd drive out to Missouri to visit our relatives. It was always a fun and educational trip. We'd travel south and head east on Route 66 back when it was a big deal. There were so many interesting things to see including signs mentioning the meteor crater somewhere in Arizona. The signs for that would start out, oh hundreds of miles before the turn off to go and check it out. We never did check that out as we were on a tight schedule.

The first part of our trip was to visit with my grandparents in southwestern rural Missouri. They had a pretty old house that had just recently been fitted with electricity. They had two stoves in their kitchen, an old wood burning stove (the kind that antique collectors would drool over) and the 'new' one, the propane stove.

The washing machine was one of the old fashioned ringer ones, the dryer was a clothesline and sunshine.  The bathroom....a really stinky, creepy outhouse....boy did I *hate* that! I always feared falling through the hole (small child, smallish bottom, you get the idea).  When I was around eight, I believe my Uncle Ted was instrumental in building a real bathroom using up a portion of the covered back porch. Was I ever happy with that addition!

I was, and still am, a huge turtle/tortoise fan. Rural Missouri is ripe with Box Turtles and I would always find a few and as long as they'd eat what I'd feed them, they were allowed to come back to California with us.

So after about five days at my grandparents we would then head north to Independence to visit with my uncles, aunts and cousins. This part was always so much fun for me! We used to stay at my Uncle Ted and Aunt Mary's wonderful, cousin-filled home. This was where I saw my first fire fly. One evening, my cousins and myself were all outside playing and eating popsicles and these wonderful creatures first appeared. They were just magical and mystical to me. I had never seen them before.

I  think everyone needs fire fly magic in their life every now and then.

Eddie's, The Woolgrowers and Mings...food for thought

I'm hungry. Seems that thoughts of food from my childhood start to filter through my brain more and more these days.  Now back when I was a kid, Los Banos didn't have too  many restaurant options. Oh, I suppose there were more than I thought, as places like Carlo's, and Espana's weren't places we went to. I know I was the reason. I went  through a spell where all I'd eat would be hamburgers. Following that was Eddie's spaghetti, you get the idea.

Now Eddie's was one place we went to *a lot* and I loved it!! The decor was plain, the food not fancy, but boy was it good! The hot beef sandwich was something I started to really enjoy as a young teen but before that, it would be 10 raviolis, not 9, not 11, but 10 with just parmesan cheese. That was my obsession when I was around seven. As I aged out of that, I leaned more towards the ravs *with* sauce and cheese.  What an institution Eddie's was.

Another favorite of mine was The Woolgrowers. Talk about a different dining experience! First of all, one arrived at the restaurant by walking past the bar first. (Let me just say that here, in Utah, they would NOT let that happen! Alcohol here is hidden behind the Zion curtain, whatever the heck that is). Okay, back to the Woolgrowers. The meals were served family style. There weren't the small individual tables that most restaurants had or have. They had several long tables and once your party arrived, the hostess would escort you to one of the tables where you'd proceed to sit. There were no menus, as the wait staff would tell you the entrees of the day. Lamb was always an option and if you were a smart diner, you'd go with the lamb dish as Woolgrowers was a Basque restaurant.

All you had to do as the diner was wait for the massive amounts of food to arrive: These items varied over the years but expect several salads, a green salad, a macaroni salad, a potato salad, then French bread, a tureen of soup, then plates of vegetables and lamb stew, followed by the entree. There was the ever-present bottle of wine on the table, just placed there, never requested by the diner. The dinner ended with a cup of ice cream and a cup of coffee. It's been decades since I've eaten there and I honestly have no idea if the restaurant is still there. I know Eddie's isn't, as the original Eddie passed away many years ago.

Another favorite of mine was Ming's Chinese Restaurant. Boy was that place popular! Sadly it closed down a few years ago and I'm sure that closing has left a huge gap in the community.

This hasn't helped. I'm still hungry.

It's almost snow, isn't it?

Fog. That's something the San Joaquin Valley is famous for. As a kid, I always wanted to live where it snowed. Little did I know that besides making snowmen and having snowball fights, there was the down-side to snow: shoveling, driving in it, the ice sheets, frozen pipes, just to name a few. The next best thing was the ever encasing winter fog! It was kind of cool to walk to school in it, as by the time I would get there, my hair would have icicles on it. I sorta liked that.

Driving in the fog was a whole different animal. Fast-forwarding here to  my teen age years there was one time that for some reason my dad didn't have the company truck and it was up to me to take him to work. He worked at Holt Brothers Caterpillar Tractor on the highway, about two or three miles from town. He was something else, my dad. He directed me to get into the fast lane on the freeway and at some point where all I could see was white  and I couldn't see the hood ornament on the car) he said to start signaling and slowing down.

He then directed me to turn onto the turnout that divided the highway at that point. He watched the traffic from the opposite direction and then said 'go, now' and I started heading back towards town but I knew that the store was just ahead and he knew EXACTLY where it was so I'm in the slow lane signaling for a right turn. I got him safely there and it's obvious I made it home safe, but was it ever a white knuckle drive.

Little Snowfall in the Big Valley

Not sure of the year it happened but boy was it something else! Until that little snowfall that we woke up to that Sunday morning, the only snow I had seen were the remains of what had fallen in the Colorado Rockies a few years before.

I remember waking up that morning, looking out the window and saw snow on the ground! In Los Banos of all places! This was call for a celebration! I then ran into my parents bedroom and shouted, 'It snowed last night! Look!!!' My poor dad, he was sick with the flu and pretty much told me to bug off, that it was frost on the lawn, something quite common in LB.

I would not take that for an answer and insisted he get up and look out the window. By the time they both got up, it was agreed upon that yes, it was indeed snow. (Now fast forward to NOW and it doesn't entice me quite as much as I no longer live in that insular valley but in the Utah mountains where snow is needed for the snowpack that it provides, but it is not fun to remove or drive in, 'nuff said.)

Within the  hour shouts could be heard throughout the neighborhood and phones started to ring. All us kids were out there playing in the snow as happy as little wet clams. None of us had the right gear, wool gloves, boots, etc. but we made up for that with enthusiasm and played until it was time to go to church. After getting home, off with the dress and Mary-Jane's and on with the aforementioned 'snow clothing'. The Arbelbide kids, Jeanne and Martin came over and we built one helluva snowman. He probably topped off at three feet! We were so proud of our masterpiece that my mother took a photo of us and him. Sadly I cannot find that photo. I have pretty much torn this house apart for the past two days looking for it. I can 'see' the photo in my mind's eye but that doesn't work on on paper, so to speak. Just believe me that there was a photo.

Now, back to staring at the blowing snow outside right now.