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Robert Booth, An 11 Year Old Boy in Kingsburg, CA

(Personal History Snippet Example)

(Article 36)

My brother Jim at age 25 was stationed in Kingsburg, California as a Navy recruiting officer. I was 11 at the time. Urged by our parents, he took me on a 3 week vacation to Kingsburg. Even today the town extends no more than 1 mile in any direction, but in 1955, it was barely a speck on the map. Since I had not brought my own entertainment, I was BORED from the very first; and in the middle of summer, I was HOT with no air conditioning available anywhere. The office Jim worked from was stark, bare walled and empty shelved, with one lone desk and desk-chair and two chairs for potential recruits. Naval office procedures mandated Jim to sweep, dust, and polish daily so not even spiders or intruding ants were left to entertain a young boy. The recruiting office was next to a rarely used railroad spur - no entertainment there. The town had no library, museum, or other public building to liven the imagination . Not even a community swimming pool or recreation area was available for diversion. What could have been a great first opportunity for independence from my parents turned out to be Freedom - Opportunity = Boredom.

My brother sensed my deflated optimism and devised some ingenious and devious diversions, enlivening me with anticipation, a quest for manhood, and best of all, a promise of my first real date with a girl! It started one Wednesday evening when Jim and two of his naval buddies decided to go out for an authentic Mexican dinner. I was brought along as the entertainment. The restaurant was in Fresno, at the time about 30 minutes to the north on state highway 99. The restaurant was authentically decorated in deteriorating adobe walls, juicy-fruit gum advertisements on rectangular tin placards hugging the walls, and accented with red and white checkerboard table cloths covering rickety wooden tables. But Ai-Yi-Yi, the food was to die for, or so I found out. My brother and his friends had lived in the San Juaquin Valley for some time, and were accustomed to the food. I, on the other hand, was fresh from my mother's all American cooking.

The appetizers for every meal consisted of fresh tortilla chips and HOT HOT HOT peppers. No one warned me. They just each took a pepper and popped it into their mouths, then roared with laughter as I did the same. Instant tears, upon tears, upon tears until I could hardly make out the people sitting at my own table. Water was plentiful, but gave little relief. My taste buds became so numb I can't remember tasting any of the meal, and my speech was slurred for hours.

Toward the end of the meal they decided to go bowling. They aroused my interest in the fact that the bowling alley in Fresno was manually operated through the efforts of a human pin setter. Anyone in the party who wanted to set pins for the group could earn 15¢ a line (the line cost 35¢). As I had not bowled before and didn't want to embarrass myself, and the fact that I had arrived with no pocket money, I was easily persuaded to demonstrate my manly qualities at pin setting. Little did I know how heavy the balls were to lift one after another from the drop pit into the return chute at shoulder height, and how fast one had to work gathering up loose pins and setting them in the positioning rack before the next ball came pounding down the alley. Last of all, I knew nothing about scoring -- when to leave the pins in place and when to remove them after a spare. It made for a very exhausting and frustrating way to earn 45¢. Then to top it all off, there was no place in Kingsburg of interest to a small boy to spend the money.

By the end of the evening, the three of them agreed to get dates and go out on Friday. Jim said he would get me a date also, which immediately spiked my keenest interest. Oh, how I anticipated that first hug, that first kiss. When Friday came, Jim drove me to her house to spend the evening while her parents were away, and the older boys went out with their dates. Laura and I played games and had refreshments, and when Jim returned at 2 a.m., he paid the babysitter and took me home.

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36 Personal History Snippet Example