Growing Pains (Click most images for larger versions.)
We decided to begin a family in our bungalow on Harvard Boulevard.
The business was doing well; we felt comfortable in Santa Paula, both with the town and our new friends; and I was feeling the urge. So, it seemed like the right time.
Here again, we were fortunate to find a wonderful osteopath who became our family doctor until he retired more than thirty years later. His name was Silas Williams, and I loved his gentleness and common sense approach to medicine. I think he needed it all for my first pregnancy.
Everything that's said about first births applied to me. I was a nervous Nellie, constantly worrying about this or that, bugging Doctor Williams, and wearing Bob to a frazzle. They survived it, however, and our first child, Christine, was born May 31, 1940. I gave birth in a maternity home located on the North side of town in a section called the Oaks, a large, virtual forest of oak trees interspersed with upscale homes.
Unfortunately, Chris suffered through my nervousness, too, then through my education in the lessons of motherhood. And due to my inexperience, Chris probably didn't feel as secure as she would've liked.
For instance, I remember once putting her down to do housework and then hearing sirens going down the street. Without thinking I went outside and saw a fire nearby. I was moving down the sidewalk when a neighbor asked me where Chris was. I came up short, hand to my mouth, stunned. I had forgotten all about her. I ran back to the house feeling guilty and afraid. She was fine, still lying in her crib, but incidents like that kept me off balance and second guessing myself.
The other thing that sticks out in my mind from those first years with Chris is hauling her everywhere. I didn't have a car, so I walked to do errands, buy groceries, get exercise or just to get out of the house—people got used to seeing us all over town. I remember a beer joint diagonally across Harvard from the house that used to play polkas and so often as I walked Chris in her stroller the Beer Barrel Polka would be wafting through the neighborhood. It was a great feeling.
A few days more than two years later, on June 9, 1942, June was born in the same maternity home. Thankfully, I was calmer, and both Bob and Dr. Williams appreciated it. June did, too, I think, because she was so different from Chris, a more relaxed child.
When June arrived we had purchased from the Joy's—a long established family in Santa Paula—an old house set far back on a large, deep lot at 622 Main Street. It was a well built, Craftsman-style home for which we paid $4010. The house was next to the Bowman Apartments with just a small alley running between that went back to some small bungalows behind the apartment building. We bought the property planning to build a new shop on the land in front of the house, but due to the war and rationing we didn't get approved. So, we moved Bob's radio service and sound business out of the old shop down the street and into the front half of the house. Then Bob built French doors on the side facing the alley to act as an entry to the family's part of the house.
Chris and June loved the yards of the house. In front—where we had planned to build the new shop—there was a huge lawn perfect for them to chase each other and play games. Behind the house was another large fenced yard with a cement slab patio. Bob built a swing set for the back complete with ladders, a sandbox and a teeter-totter. He also made a wood lattice awning over the slab, and we celebrated many birthday parties under it. Also, a wonderful family, the Rudolph's, lived next door and as the kids all became friends they played together endlessly—a break for me.
Behind the property was a small bluff, which dropped down to an agricultural field. It had plots for different crops plus a strawberry patch, and I remember, when the strawberries were in season, the kids would pick them right off the vine and eat themselves sick.
I loved the new house, too. It was very comfortable, and nicely furnished with our good furniture from New York, plus the few pieces we had added as the children arrived. After taking a class in color at Ventura College, I took the three-piece living room set down to Robinson's in Los Angeles to be recovered in a rose pattern. We also purchased an upright piano, so the girls could take lessons.
There was a large back porch with windows facing the backyard and two doors on the inside wall, one into the kitchen, the other into a small, rear bedroom. An old wringer washing machine was on the porch. It had an electric motor that ran a metal agitator in its tub, but I had to control the timing myself. It would empty water into the back porch's two deep sinks, but I had to refill it. I used a pump to pump up rain water that collected in a cistern under the back porch. It made wonderful suds—this was before detergents that could make suds in hard water. Next, when the clothes finished rinsing, I cranked them by hand through the wringer on top of the washer to squeeze out as much water as possible before hanging them up to dry in the backyard. At the time, all the work of wash day didn't seem so bad. Compared to wash days in Brooklyn, it was a snap. And several years later, after Bob surprised me with a completely automatic washer, I used to feel guilty walking away while it did all the work.
In the summer of 1943 a wonderful thing happened. We had just spent a week escaping the heat at a mountain resort. The day we returned home—still very hot—there was an ad in the Santa Paula Chronicle about a beach cabin on the Rincon for $1200. The owner was Marshall Dickenson, also a resident of Santa Paula, and soon he and Bob would play chess together every Monday night. Anyway, the very next day we drove to Ventura and took the Pacific Coast Highway north toward Santa Barbara until we found the property.
The cabin was on leased land, the lease $42 a year. The land was Faria Beach, and it consisted of a small colony of cabins strung along the shore about seven miles north of Ventura and twenty miles south of Santa Barbara.
The cabin came furnished, which included bedding and beds and small cupboards for the three bedrooms, a dining table with benches, rocking chairs in the living area, a wood burning stove, and other small pieces of rugged wood furniture. It also had two dressing rooms on a back porch, a large silo-like tank for catching and storing rain water, a garage and an outhouse. Ice plant formed borders on each side between the adjoining cabins. On the ocean side was another porch with a yard full of sand behind a thin but tall concrete sea wall with large timbers forming another breakwater in front of that. Later, extreme high tides would force us to move the cabin back twenty feet and build another sea wall with a short pier and a ladder down to the beach. But at the time it was perfect. We paid cash.
June was one year old and Chris three when we first started using the cabin. We'd spend our summers there with Bob commuting back and forth to Santa Paula. Of course, until World War II ended, we had to keep outside lights off and the windows covered at night. After the war, we started renting the cabin out to people for the winter months, but stopped at some point because I wanted to use it on weekends when the weather was nice. My dream was to live there some day after Bob retired. The dream came true, but Bob was no longer around to share it with me.
Before going on, I have to confess one "vice" that began during this time. Our trips and stays at the beach cabin introduced me to shopping in Ventura, and that led to me discover See's Candy! In case I haven't mentioned it, one of my many weaknesses is a terrible sweet tooth. I'm afraid it and See's were a match made in Heaven or Hades, depending on my current weight. Nonetheless, it was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship, a taste that added to my experience of life for the rest of my life. The Consumer Reports have said that there are "higher" ranked chocolates, but since my Irish-American tastes never ranged that far into the epicurean world, I've always preferred See's. And especially when I was pregnant!
When I became pregnant for the third time, Santa Paula had a small hospital: Santa Clara Valley Hospital at 404 Main Street. It was just two blocks from our house. Bob and I donated money for the hospital's nursery equipment in the memory of Dr. William's wife, who had died in an automobile accident. It happened before we met him, but because she had been pregnant at the time, the equipment seemed apropos.
Then, Bobby was born. I gave birth in the new hospital on November 6, 1944, and I couldn't believe we finally had a son. I didn't think I'd ever have a boy. The first time the nurse brought him into me I lifted the blanket and checked his genitals, just to make sure he was male. I can still recall the thrill I felt when I saw his little penis. Why it was so meaningful, or why it thrilled me so, is hard to say now, so many years removed from the event. But, it was.
For some reason, giving Bob Sr. a son was very important to me, especially after two girls. Our society, more so back then than now, preferred boys. I felt something lacking in me, because I hadn't had a son. It's a strange "tradition" that we have inherited from time immemorial: the desire for male heirs. Bobby was the answer to my prayers, and a very big answer!
He was well over nine pounds, nearly ten, yet considerate in that he entered the world around two o'clock in the afternoon: no late night calls getting people out of bed. Like June, he was a happy, relaxed baby, and I never had trouble getting him to eat. His baby pictures all attest to his appetite; a chubby, drooling little boy. But, he suffered a lot from colic, and even more from earaches, which plagued him for years. I still carry an image of him kneeling next to his bed, head resting on the sore side, his hand under it, pressing against the painful ear, and tears running down his face.
After Bobby came along, the five of us lived in half a house with only two bedrooms. Both of them were small, but the back bedroom off the porch was tiny. Nonetheless, Bob and I slept there in bunk beds, along with Bobby in his crib, so that the girls could have the larger bedroom to themselves. It gave them room to play. I didn't like it, especially the bunk beds. I couldn't wait until we could build the new shop and move into the front half of the house, so that Bob and I could sleep together in our double bed again.
Then, the war ended! We thought our building permit would come through right away, but it took more than a year. Still, how wonderful it was for the war to be over. First, the exhilaration of VE Day; the nightmare over in Europe, and victories mounting in the Pacific. VE Day gave us hope that the Japanese might surrender, too. They didn't, though; they fought on until atomic bombs convinced them to stop. It was a horrible way to end it, but the alternative was even more horrible: possibly millions of lives lost invading Japan. So, our euphoria was mixed.
When we finally received the go ahead for construction, Bob sketched out some ideas for the shop, then took them to Roy Wilson, a well-known architect in the county. He dramatically opened the design up by slanting the roof back, which made the front tall with a bank of large showroom windows. For that era, the shop looked very modern. The local newspaper took pictures and wrote an article about the innovative design. It couldn't have turned out any better, and it helped Bob's recognition and his business. Bob was very happy with the space and its functionality, but especially with the large display room where he showcased the new technological marvel: television.
Once the store opened for business, Bob left a TV set on, day and night. It was great advertising because lots of people, who didn't own TV's, would stand outside the shop watching the flickering images, despite not being able to hear the sound. I remember nights, when Bob came home excited, explaining how people would stop to watch, then enter the shop and buy a set. The TVs didn't sell like pancakes, but we rode the wave of television, and it was very good to us.
Many years later, my youngest son, Barry, met a man who recalled it, and how much he appreciated Bob for leaving the set running. The man said that when he was young there were many nights when the only entertainment he and his friends could afford was watching "Mr. Simmons' television."
In 1947, with the increase in business, we could afford to purchase a large, beautiful home at 740 Virginia Terrace—we would always refer to the house as 740. It was a flat-roofed stucco house halfway up the 8th Street hill with views of the city, lots of trees, a huge basement, and a wonderful neighborhood. The lot dropped down the hill so that the house had one story facing Virginia Terrace and two stories in the back, although the bottom floor was mostly dirt with a small garage. Bob had the house painted inside and out, rooms wall papered and the hardwood floors cleaned before we moved in.
I was pregnant with my fourth child at the time—funny how many of our new homes coincided with newborns—and, indeed, Barry entered the world at the hospital on November 18th, 1947, about two weeks after the move. Barry was a pleasure. By then I knew what to do and what not to do; it all came naturally and easily. On top of that, Barry was not a needy baby. He was content: always happy and smiling and watching the other kids' activities for entertainment. When he could move around, he spent most of his time pursuing them through the house, his diaper loose and hanging. Each successive child reflected my level of experience and comfortableness with motherhood.
In that new house, free from the hubbub of downtown, with the war a receding memory, hot weekends and summers spent at the beach cabin, a new shop, and money coming in, it felt like we had entered a golden age. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for 740.
There was so much about it I loved. I loved the views out of the upstairs windows. I could stand at the kitchen sink and look East along the valley, or sit in the back room with a view of South Mountain and the town spread out below. I loved the luxury of space, especially the basement with its room for projects and an automatic washing machine. I also loved the large deck Bob made outside the kitchen door. The deck extended off the back of the house, doubling as a carport over the rear driveway. On pleasant afternoons, with a cup of black coffee in one hand and a piece of See's candy in the other, I would lay on our rocking contour chair and bask in our good fortune.
Over the years, we built a fence around the backyard and a concrete block wall to enclose the front—Bobby and Barry drew a strike zone on the wall and would throw tennis balls against it for hours, or shoot baskets in the basketball hoop Bob gave them one Christmas. (Bob liked to tie string to bigger presents and make the kids follow the string all over the house before finding the gift sitting right outside, like the basketball set.) We also added a small swimming pool with deck, another bedroom downstairs in what used to be the garage, and poured cement in the basement so Bob could build himself a workroom, a darkroom, a den and a small pistol range—I can still hear the sharp reports as he practiced.
There were three date palms out front that would shed large fronds once a year that the kids would use like sleds to slide down the side lawn. Along with the existing pepper tree, orange tree, pine tree and palms, I planted a plum tree, a coral tree, another orange and a tangerine in the back. Then later, when the kids were a little older, all six of us planted our own avocado tree on the side lawn. It took them a while to get established, but they're still going strong. The avocados were some of the best I've ever had.
Having four children meant being a room mother, involved in the PTA, as well as Blue Birds, Campfire Girls, Job's Daughters, Cub Scouts, and the Ebell Club. I also joined the Business and Professional Women's Club, the town's Saturday Reading Club, the Santa Paula Garden Club, plus Ventura's later, and Toastmistress. I didn't have time to pursue my own education.
Before the kids came along, I took advantage of the free junior college in Ventura, enrolling in three classes, one subject three separate mornings a week—a woman named Mildred Magill drove to classes with me and we became life long friends. But, I stopped taking classes when Chris was born. It wasn't until Barry was seven years old that I decided to go back. Mildred and I along with another life long friend, Geneva Ayers, enrolled in a night course in philosophy and completed the three unit class. I continued with a three unit class every semester for years, except whenever Bob suffered a major injury.