I was a shy child who would rather cross the street than encounter a stranger. My mother, Alberta, taught me to be wary of strangers but to respect people who were different. I didn't know any Jews, Negroes, Chinese or any other minorities. Okies were new people who came to California to escape poverty from southern states. The right wing newspapers made fun of them in cartoons about the WPA. We lived in a German town called Anaheim. Mom felt the American Indians should command our respect, and we should not fear anyone. Our father, Walker Brown, taught us to be truthful and honest, and not to lie or steal. He said, "Never be afraid to ask questions. That's a good way to learn."
Our mother taught us to sit quietly in church and to respect our elders. Dad spanked us when Mom told him to. We all learned, and our mother bragged about our good behavior. I overheard her say to a friend, "My Johnny always tells the truth. He never lies."
So, it has always been difficult for me to lie. Telling the truth often got me in hot water or perhaps hurt someone's feelings. Much later I learned to be tactful by avoiding the truth when it might hurt someone.
I was not a good boy when out of sight of my parents. I had frequent fist fights with friends at school. I stole oranges off the grove of trees behind our house and ate them one by one. Once in a while we found other fruit to steal like peaches, plums, apricots, and sometimes watermelon. We kids used to say, "Stolen fruit tastes much better that boughten food."
I was the oldest boy in our family. When I was seven I played cowboys and Indians with other boys in the neighborhood. My father brought home a live chicken once in a while for us to eat on a Sunday. I used to watch him take the chicken in the back yard to kill it. He held the chicken by it's head, whirled it around in the air like he was getting ready to pitch a soft ball underhanded. This caused the chicken's neck to stretch until finally it's head was severed, and the chicken's body flew into the air. When it dropped to the dirt it's wings flapped, and bleeding from it's headless neck, it ran in circles. I watched with horror, but I knew my father wanted me to grow up and learn about killing. On days playing cowboys and Indians some of my friends laughed at me. After they used their finger to shoot me they saw me running and jumping in circles like a chicken with his head chopped off. When I shot them they just keeled over and bit the dust like in the movies.
My older sister was a strong influence. To me she seemed almost perfect. She learned fast and behaved herself. She had talent as a dancer and a singer, and she played the piano at parties. She was given lessons and encouraged to perform at every opportunity. She was known as the best child singer in Anaheim from 1940 until 1950 when she married. In her late teens she had her own radio show in Santa Ana called Edith Browne Sings. She put the e on her last name and we all copied her so people could find us easier in the phone book. After that she sang in the Los Angeles Civic Opera Company long enough to become second lead soprano in a few grand operas. There was no money in opera singing so she sang in night clubs. One year she was the leader of a professional dance team of seven night club dancing beauties. She taught the dance routines. She was nineteen and the youngest but the older girls called her mother because she chose the costumes and taught the routines.
My brother Vic is two years younger than me, but we were about the same size. He had blue eyes and blond hair and a lot of courage. He fought back when I used to hit him. He was a good athlete, singer, tap dancer, and actor. He learned his lessons easily. We stayed friends all our lives.
My second brother, Ted, was a beautiful blue eyed, curly black headed child. My Aunt Vonnie took him to Hollywood where he had a screen test. They wanted him to play the son of Tarzan in movies. All they asked was that he learn to swim at the age of four. My grandmother gave Teddy bananas soaked in condensed milk. To me, that kind of food was too fancy. I was envious of the attention given to little Teddy, but I was able to hide the envy. It was part of my attempt to be a good boy. Teddy lived with my Aunt Vonnie and Grandma for two months. Dad brought him back home because my parents felt Teddy was getting spoiled from all the adult attention and adulation.
Tommy Brown is my third younger brother. He was blond, slender, and strong. He was a fast runner, a distance runner, a good student, and a talker. Sometimes I acted like a father to him and his younger brother Ron. Ron was chubby, friendly, and a great athlete in our neighborhood and later in high school.
My father taught us to observe the pecking order. We were encouraged to allow the strongest of us to lead. My father bought us boxing gloves to settle our disputes. It saved him the bother of constantly breaking up fights between the six of us.
In grade school my work was average. All my teachers called me a day-dreamer and told me I should be at the top of my class. I knew I was not interested in study. I did not read much, and almost never studied. I enjoyed listening to my teachers enough to get average grades. Two or three students in my childhood classrooms were artists. They were allowed to do most of the class art like drawing on the blackboard. The rest of us watched and respected their talent. I did not learn about oil painting until I was twenty. In sports I was a fast runner and a fairly good player. I was built strong but shorter than others my age.
My friend in grade school was the best athlete in my class, and he was a year older than most of us. Jaimi was Mexican, usually barefoot, and a fast learner. On the way to and from school we walked through orange groves that were private property. We were sneaky because we knew we were trespassing. After the Orange County River flood in 1937 we found caked silt under houses and under orange trees. We lifted up the dry silt, dug small holes and buried snail shells and other valuables. Then we replaced the crusts of silt over the treasures.
I often played basketball or shot marbles in a Mexican neighborhood. This is where I learned to pronounce Spanish words. Most of our play was on dirt yards. There were no fences and no green grass in Mexican yards. Most of the Mexican men and older children worked picking oranges. Lots of the boys went barefooted and so did I. Very young Mexican boys earned a few pennies selling papers down town. They gave all the money they earned to their fathers. From 1935 to 1940 the great depression kept most Mexican families poor. No one seemed to own a car, but many had radios and all seemed to have enough to eat. Boys my own age were friendly to me, but their parents held themselves distant to me. Most parents spoke only Spanish so that may be why they didn't communicate with me. I felt safe playing with Mexican Americans but often had fights playing with white boys.
There were three white boys my age who threw rocks at me as I walked home from school. I was afraid of rock fighting and ran away from the trio. I had fights with two of the three when I got them alone, and the third wouldn't fight me. When they were together, I had no chance of winning against all three. I could get along with any of them when we played alone. I grew up hanging out with different guys but never spent much time with a gang. At movies I usually sat alone or with my brother Vic and I often walked home alone at night.
Paul lived outside the edge of Anaheim. He was three years older than me and he owned a fast horse. He let me ride bareback on his horse. Sometimes the horse ran down between the lines of orange trees and ended up knocking me off by scraping against an orange tree. The ground was soft and the horse was trained to stop after he knocked me off. Then I climbed up the side of the horse to ride some more.
Paul had a bike that he used for jumping using a tall mound of dirt to lift the bike. He would speed as fast as he could go letting me ride on the handle bars, and then he would try to make a safe jump. We always crashed but were never hurt. Paul's brother gave me his old trumpet I kept and learned to play in the band. They invited me to join the Boy Scouts when I was eleven. They both became Eagle Scouts before joining the army. Next door to Paul was a two stall horse barn and a small corral.
Jerry was five years older than me and it was his job to clean out the stalls and keep clean sawdust on the floor for the two horses to sleep. Jerry's mother was a beautiful woman, an athlete who owned and rode both horses. The brown one was called Alejandro and the brown and white one was called Paint. Both horses were spirited. I was caught sitting on the top rail admiring them. I was told that they might bite me and to stay clear of them. I picked handfuls of green grass and enjoyed feeding them by hand. Sometimes I sat and watched them trot around the coral and wondered if ever I would own such horses. At night they wore blankets to make their coats shine in the sun during the daytime. Jerry had the family job of grooming and feeding the horses hay and oats. They were kept overweight and under exercised. Jerry did not enjoy riding and his mother seldom rode them.
One day one of the horses walked close to me as I sat at the top of the rail fence. I threw myself on to Alejandro. He bucked very slightly then trotted around the square enclosure. When he drew close to the fence I jumped back on the top rail. A few days later I did the same trick with Paint. He didn't seem to mind me riding him. Soon I was riding both horses. They didn't mind carrying a ten year old boy who weighed about eighty pounds. They also enjoyed snacking on the green grass I fed them.
It was early one evening when Jerry's father knocked on our door and spoke to my mother. He said a pitch fork was found lying in a stall and that the horse was hurt from lying on it. He said he knew that I had been playing with the horses and that I was the one who left the pitch fork in the horses stall. He told me to stay off his property. I got blamed for doing something I hadn't done. And I felt Jerry was the one who left the pitchfork and he who blamed me.
One of my best friends was three years older than me and Herby Strandt lived a few houses away from me. He was good with tools and he made the best skate boards of anybody. He had a crush on my sister but they were never alone together. He sketched a very good portrait of Edith from a photograph. He printed her initials with a plus sign and his own initials on a limb of a large tree in front of our house. The two of us guys started a club in a closet at the abandoned Gibbs Lumber Company just after the war started in 1941. We used candles to see in the office closet. We built a trap door on the floor to go in and out. The door was nailed shut. We decided the club would be a good place to hide if invading Japanese fighting men came.
This was right after Pearl Harbor, and housing was scarce in Anaheim. A family moved into the office room next to the closet while we had the club. They were not able to open the closet door. We had my mother make black cloaks that we wore at night. The club started when I was eleven and Herby was fourteen. Three years later my friend graduated high school and joined the army.
My other friend was four years older than me, and Harry Musser let me be one of his friends. We played monopoly and some games lasted several days. He never let me win one of those games. He was also good at checkers. He joined the Navy and got to visit Brazil during Carnival or Mardi Gras. The fiesta lasts several days with lots of music and dancing. He told me about dances that went on for days and nights with people sniffing ether to get high. He said the girls were allowed to be without a chaperone during the fiesta, and they danced until exhausted. Sometimes girls were taken out in the bushes by boys.
Later, Harry became a teacher and a principal of a school. I liked all my older buddies because they seemed smart and they treated me and showed respect.
At age ten I rode my bicycle several miles west of Anaheim to Los Alamitos where several of my uncles lived. My Aunt Audrey and Aunt Thelma had backyards that touched gack to back. Both aunts had horses and their husbands Cy and Clyde each had a horse.
I took turns riding each of the horses bareback. Sometimes I rode all the way to Seal Beach. Returning from one of those rides, Black Beauty caused me to hurt myself. Black Beauty was frisky and tall. He loved to dance in the street and was always in a hurry to go home. He used to rear up while Uncle Clyde rode him. One day about a mile from his corral, he half reared, jumped forward and landed stiff on all fours. I was bare back and landed hard on the upper back bone of the gelding. My tailbome pain was bad enough to keep me from riding for a year.
During World War Two one of my country neighbors was drafted into the Navy. He owned a two year old filly and his parents allowed me to ride her bareback in the orange groves. The filly had no respect for me and often rolled on a plowed field while I sat on her back. As she rolled I stepped off and held the reins. Just as she started to get up I threw a leg over her back ready to continue riding as she stood. Sometimes the horse would shake her body trying to shake me off as she would a fly. Unfortunately the owner of the filly was killed in battle, so he never saw his horse ridden. His parents sold the filly or gave it away. It was sad.
One of my neighborhood buddies was taller than me but a year younger. He was always getting us in trouble but never getting caught. We hunted birds with sling shots and later hunted rabbits with shot guns in the orange groves. We sold the dead rabbits to an old German lady. Sometimes our mothers cooked the rabbits for our suppers. At night we wore black capes and crept around in dark alleys. We stole canned orange juice at the packing company. It did not taste good. We also stole some watermelons from a farm owned by a policeman. We broke the melons by dropping them in the street, then we ate them with our bare hands. Once we pored a line of gas running across a dark street. We lit the gas just as a car was coming. Then we ran. We did a lot of bad tricks. I won't list them. When I turned fifteen I stopped being friendly to my tall neighbor. I decided to reform.
I enjoyed attending Anaheim Union High School. There were freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors and about a thousand of us all together. I played trumpet in the band, sang in a chorus, played football, basketball, track as a pole vaulter, boxed my junior and senior years and was a high diver at the swimming pool. I was chosen as the outstanding actor by the drama department before graduating. My girlfriend was a real beauty. I walked her home from the teen canteen dances, and I guess there was some necking with her at her doorstep. But I wouldn't go steady with any girl because a breakup would be too painful. I was also proud of being a virgin and frightened of catching something. My father warned me, "If you cannot resist having sex with a girl, just let me take you to a doctor to get medicine. The doctors take a Hippocratic oath and will not tell anybody about your condition."
That was my sex education. Others boys took time out from gym to learn about sex. Most athletes had no time for sex education. We were too busy learning sports. But at night in bed we dreamed of being intimate with a female.