Decorating the Christmas tree is a walk down memory lane for me. Each ornament that is unwrapped has a special story. Included in this collected are “ornaments” that have been made with bits and pieces of Christmas. It was looking at these that started me thinking about popcorn.
Since I was born just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my first exposure to “gear-head-itis” was to the cars of the 1930s. At that time, all the car makers were vying for what few dollars there were available for new cars. During the Great Depression, many of America’s finest auto makers would perish from bankruptcy.
Every Reedley High School student from the late 1940s into the 1970s remembers Willie’s Drive In, directly across the street from the high school. This was the closest place, off campus, where the smokers could light up their cancer sticks.
This is the season when our patriotic blood seems to flow the strongest and we seem to pay more attention to memorials dedicated to fallen patriots. Since we celebrate the birth of our Nation in July, we often reminisce about wars and conflicts, how and where those patriots served. I’ve been thinking about ships.
There was once a time, that small family farms surrounded the Reedley city limits. Does anyone remember where the Sellers, Fast or Nickel farms were? The home Johnny Rios lives in, in the triangle of North, D and 10th streets, was once a family farmhouse. Does anyone remember horses and cattle grazing in the pasture west of the Lincoln School playground next to Frankwood Avenue? Or the Harry Shuklian farm east of Lincoln School?
As Freda Simonson looks out her bedroom window, she sees a man being tossed out on his ear from the local pub. He’s obviously had too much to drink and lands in a heap in the gutter. Before the barman can go back inside, a man rushes from the darkness and in the following scuffle, the barman falls to the ground, dead. A crowd gathers, and it’s assumed the drunken man was the murderer. Only Freda knows the truth, and no one believes her.
Here I am, continuing my school days saga, getting ready to start junior high school and evolving from adolescence into becoming a young adult. General Grant was the only junior high in Reedley, so both elementary schools attended seventh and eighth grade there.
Lincoln is my favorite elementary school. Since I have shared many stories in Kings River Life, this may be a bit repetitious, but I owe more than just an education to the school district. Since both of my parents were teachers, it provided a roof over my family’s head, clothes on our backs and food on the table.
“What if…?” is an intriguing question posed by authors of historical fiction, and more than just “changing names to protect the innocent” or avoiding libel claims, it is a way of enhancing true events and real people by providing realistic and plausible connections, interactions…love affairs? Henry VIII’s court, the Black Ladies’ Priory, Thomas Giffard, and Isabella Launder are real, but in the Roses in the Tempest the author envelopes a fictional story around them to bring to us a wonderful tale of Tudor England. “But, in the end, it is only a pleasing story.”
As the holidays beckon amid a swirl of falling leaves and sparkling frost, Fresno’s historic Meux Home Museum is gearing up for Christmas with its upcoming holiday tours and its annual Victorian Christmas Tea. Kings River Life spoke with Meux Home Museum president Quintin Hoskins about the Home and the holidays.
