The View From the Tree

I think in many ways I have led a charmed life. I was able to grow up in South Pasadena, when my mom could have just as easily stayed in downtown Philadelphia. My aunt and uncle took us in, gave us a place to live, and treated me like their own. If we weren’t rich, we were certainly comfortable.

The South Pasadena schools developed and nurtured me, and helped me to reach my potential, limited though that might have been. Whatever the individual talents of the Class of 1961, I feel that we all had opportunities to discover and develop those talents because of our schools and our city. Quite a few of us started in kindergarten and were nurtured for thirteen years. I played sports in the many city parks and playgrounds, and learned to swim at the Plunge, which is now only a memory. The new pool is at the high school. I remember when summer was forever, walking barefoot along Mission Avenue to the Plunge on a hot summer day, using the white crosswalks to avoid the scalding asphalt.

Peer groups being important to teens, my close friends, and in fact most of my peers, aspired to a college education and a certain standard of living. Their visions of what the future held for us pulled me along with them. I became the first in my family to graduate from college. I am still close to my high school friends. Marty Gafvert was an anchor for me, and he married my wife’s sister so we have stayed close. Bill Little, Kent Warner, and Dave Moore remain close friends.

I miss John Bittner, but he lives in Alaska, and we have talked a couple of times in recent years. Bill Phegley, Chuck Hubbard, a close friend since 5^th grade, and Todd Brem, who I was very close to the last part of our senior year, are gone now, but are warmly remembered, always.

There were people at school I didn’t talk to, because I didn’t think they wanted to talk to me. Perhaps I was wrong, but thanks Todd, Dave, Joanne and Aggie for always making me feel like one of the cool people, even though I wasn’t. I have no bad memories of South Pasadena, but many happy and enduring ones. One of these was pulling into the city yard with Malcolm and watching with horror as he casually filled up his car and then drove away unquestioned.

There was a girl with dark black hair and freckles that I had a huge crush on from the time I first saw her at a Little League game when we were twelve. I remember several times in high school sitting by the phone, even picking it up a few times, but never calling her, never even talking to her all those years except [finally] to ask her to sign my yearbook on June 16th.

I probably subconsciously reasoned that as long as I didn’t call her, and then inevitably listen to whatever kind excuse she would have had to make up, that she still remained a possibility, however remote. Like the guy who asks the girl out, and she says, “There’s about one chance in a million,” and he thinks, “So there is a chance.”  If that logic sounds dim-witted, well, yea, I guess it does, perhaps I was wrong about that too. Someone told me once that we regret the things we didn’t do, more than even the things we did, that went badly.

Through the magic of my basic computer literacy, I find myself checking the SPHSAA website at least every other week to see if some new classmate has checked in. The people who put that together and maintain it have given us all such a precious gift. [Thanks Mary] It's great to reconnect with old friends, especially from the classes above and below us: 62, 63, 59, 60. I had lunch with Tommie Bernard [60], breakfast with Espee football legend Jim Sheffer, [56] and a great visit with track teammate Ed Loosli, all this past year.

Our class contained some really impressive people who have gone on to lead successful and significant lives, as we knew they would. What always strikes me are the accomplishments of those of us who probably considered ourselves just average. It surprises me how good it makes me feel to see so many of our classmates alive and happy, with wonderful life stories and shared memories of growing up.

I have been lucky in love, my wife Sheila is the best thing that ever happened to me, and we have raised a wonderful family. It’s so much fun to see the seven grandchildren enjoying many of the same opportunities we had in our small communities of Redlands and South Pasadena. But I believe that there will never be a place as great to grow up in as South Pasadena. If many of us took those opportunities for granted, things that many American never dreamed of having, well, we were sheltered.

I have been fortunate to be able to enjoy retirement after teaching for 41 years in the California public school system. I remember at the ten year reunion several of my friends commented that I would never make much money as a teacher. I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Almost every day was fun and fulfilling, and I often hear from former students who never fail to warm my heart, and bring a smile to my face. Sheila and I were able to put three children through college and now we are able to travel, and see the world and our extended family. We accepted less salary than we might have made doing something else, for the deferred income that we were promised.

I remember standing by my car with the last box of stuff when my family moved from 601 Milan over thirty years ago. I looked at the tree outside the front bedroom that my uncle planted in 1944, the year I was born. The tree and I grew quickly. When I was younger I used its sturdy branches to access our roof to retrieve balls, model airplanes, and Bill’s shoes. From the peak of the roof I was able to set flight records for hand-based paper aircraft. Of course, I was probably forty pounds lighter then, and possessed a prehensile tail. At 27, having just returned from grad school at the University of Connecticut, I was much heavier and far less nimble, but I managed to scale the tree for a last look at the neighborhood from above. Retracing the path to terra firm was a far more problematical and fearsome passage, but I finally managed without the aid of the Fire Department.

Once on the roof I took a fleeting glance at yesterday and a quiet thought about how happy our family had been in that house. Like Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, [which I think we had to read in Senior English] I longed for just one day when everyone was alive and together. Emily observed,

It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. …I didn’t realize. . . . all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill ….. Oh, Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Painful nostalgia I suppose is the price, and the reward, for being happy. Thanks Thornton Wilder, I never forgot the message of that play, and I’ve carried it in my heart all these years.

Last June I wandered through the neighborhood after attending the all-class picnic at Garfield Park, a short walk to Milan Avenue. Although the house at 601 Milan has undergone a facelift, the tree is still there. I wondered if there was anyone who still lived in the old neighborhood who would remember me. The Linvilles, the McMillens, the Carlsons, and the Wilshires have all moved, and the man who lived three houses down, and didn’t want us to play on his lawn was old in the 1960s. John Denver was right: It’s good to be back home, and to feel the love that lighted my way. There are parts of South Pasadena that are my Brigadoon, and it’s true that sometimes this old town feels like a long lost friend. The grip of the past is strong, and the future for us old guys is uncertain.

When our family moved to South Pasadena, and for some years afterward, a train track ran along the outskirts of the Garfield Park. It was so seldom used that the railroad would run an old steam engine and caboose with a full crew up to Pasadena at 6:30am in the morning, then it returned to the freight yard in Los Angeles at 4:00pm. Apparently if the railroad didn’t use the route, they would lose their right of way. In those early years I used to watch the old engine puff black smoke as it rolled across Garfield Avenue and disappeared past Las Flores Elementary School. This must have a lot to do with my lifelong fascination with trains.

The train moved slowly and the bells clanged loudly when it crossed Garfield. Sometimes the engineer actually stopped to talk, and we gave the crew, which consisted of an engineer, a fireman, a brakeman, and the conductor bottled Coca Colas. While they were stopped, we got to examine the steam engine, one of the last still on the rails.

The cokes proved to be a wise investment. Once a few of the neighborhood kids were allowed to meet the train in Pasadena and ride back home in the caboose, probably a violation of some company policy even then,  and something that would never happen in today’s world.

As we grew older, we explored the wilderness along the right of way all the way to Pasadena. We could see the remains of fires where bums had camped, and occasionally one of these free spirits would ask my Aunt Helen if he could do some work for a meal. The looming memories of the Great Depression were still very strong, and she never failed to feed them. As those of the Class of 1961 know, twenty years goes by in the blink of the eye, and so it was also for our parents generation.

I looked up at the still tall tree, but wisely I did not try to scale it. I was haunted by the restless spirits of a bygone time. Moments half forgotten bubbled to the surface of my consciousness, and the words of an old Rod McKuen poem, Rusting in the Rain, echoed the soft harmonies of the Kingston Trio,

The old world is dying in the rain

Summers coming every year

No longer stops to wonder

As it goes along its’ way

Did anybody ever live here?

And we’ve all grown older

Come see where we have been

We’ve all been somewhere, making our way in the world, but every few years a few of us come together to remember the people we were, and tell of the people we became. If we have more yesterdays than tomorrows, let’s remember Thornton Wilder’s wisdom. Thanks to him, I didn’t miss a thing. Each day’s a gift.

Beautifully written, Jim.  I still have 2 cousins living in South Pas and try and get back whenever possible. In 2010, the current owner of the home the 3 Ledder boys grew up in, on Meridian Ave., led me on a tour of my old homestead.  South Pas was, and is still, a wonderful place.

Regards,

Steve Ledder '60