This is a candidate for ugliest letter ever written, and I’m pretty sure that’s why it made it into the archives. In my defense, I was 7 years old. And as far as I can tell, there are no spelling errors! I think this was written to my grandparents while they were traveling the world. It’s (barely) readable, especially if you click on it to enlarge it.
Dad took me to my first baseball game in 1960, to see the Dodgers play at the L.A. Coliseum. I became a devoted baseball and Dodger fan, and I have remained a fan all my life. During baseball season, I used to run out front to the end of the driveway early every morning to get the L.A. Times to find out if the Dodgers had won the night before. So for my birthday in 1961, “baseball” was a natural theme for Grandma to choose for my party. You can see that our place mats are baseball gloves.
This was my 11th birthday party, Oct. 1963 at Grandma and Grandad’s house. The timing was really bad; Grandad was in the last days of his life. So I don’t think I got as much birthday party as usual that year, but I was old enough to understand. I wrote Grandad a letter so that he would know what had happened at my party. Below is a transcription of the letter.
Dear Grandad,
Since you weren’t there when I had my party at your house, I’d like to tell you what happened. First we had cake. It was a chocolate cake and had a lot of little candies on it. The table had some little tricks and it had happy birthday streamers on it.
For my presents, I got a bat, two pairs of socks, 3 pairs of jeans, The Match Game, which is a game that is played on T.V., and the Mouse Trap Game, which I have sent you a picture of.
I hope you feel a lot better soon.
Love,
David
As I approached the end of my elementary school years, I finally found an activity which I enjoyed and at which I had some measure of success. It was called Junior Theatre, and it was sponsored by the Recreation Department of the City of Whittier. They employed a wonderful lady (named Harriet) who would direct the shows and coach us kids in our acting skills. We performed scripts that had been adapted from various children’s stories and folk tales. We wore stage makeup, and had nice costumes and theater sets mde for us.
The above photo was printed in the Whittier newspaper to preview the first show I was ever in, “Rip Van Winkle.” I was the innkeeper, a small part – I had never acted before – but for me it was a big deal, especially since mine was the first line of the play: “Sounds like Rip van Winkle’s dog barkin’ out yonder.” Spoken while I was serving beer to the customers in the tavern, as shown in the photo.
Mom clipped the photo and caption, to send to Annie & Grandpa I assume, and wrote this on the top:
“Aside from his name being spelled wrong, & giving him the wrong role – we are real pleased. David is the innkeeper. We’ve kidded him about serving beer.”
I went on from that experience and came back to do several more shows over the next few years. I was never a star, but I could memorize my lines and speak loudly, and pretend to be someone else – which was really fun. So Junior Theatre was a good thing in my life.
These years were difficult for me in many ways. Family life was great, but I was physically, socially and emotionally immature in comparison to my grade-school peers. I had no skill at sports. Consequently I had difficulty making friends in any activity involving other boys in my grade range. I tried lots of different activities, but couldn’t find anything that I could succeed at until I got into children’s theater as I entered Junior High school. I did sing in the children’s choir at church, and enjoyed that very much. This paved the way for my extensive involvement in choral music which came in later years.
This photo was taken at a backyard party for my 8th birthday (1960). The boys that attended were neighbors, school friends, and my cousin Daryl. Mom and Dad put it on in our back yard; we are lined up by the garage. They had planned all sorts of pirate-themed activities for the party. It was really very creative.
Annie (my artistically gifted grandmother) enjoyed making Halloween costumes for us every year, and in 1961 she went “above and beyond” to make this Martian spaceman costume for me. On Halloween at school we’d have an annual costume parade, and the boys and girls would snake through all of the classrooms on parade so that teachers and parents could enjoy seeing how the kids dressed up. Annie’s costumes were always big hits at the parade.
In the spring of 1962 I was in fourth grade and must have had a teacher who felt that it was important to teach us how to write poems. I hated it. Still to this day I am not a poetry fan. But it was sort of a fun challenge to think up rhyming words, and then see if I could turn them into a poem. Over the many years since I’ve written one or two rhyming verses per year – that’s about all I can stand.
The poems pictured here were written (at my teacher’s request, I’m sure) to give to my parents on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in 1962. If you’ll read them, you’ll note that their contents don’t make much sense, and bear little relation to reality – but the rhymes work. That was what was important, in my thinking. Neither Dad nor I liked fishing at all.
Annie, who had a terrific sense of humor, created the above “post card form” for me to take along with me and send from camp. I don’t know if I realized how funny it was! But apparently I used it.
Dad was required to work on Saturday mornings at Pomona Box Company in La Habra. There was a bowling alley down the street. Mom and Dad were active in a weeknight bowling league during this time, and so he thought I might enjoy going to La Habra with him on Saturday mornings and participating in a kids’ bowling league while he was working. So I did, every week. After the bowling, we’d go to lunch together at the bowling alley. I usually got a strawberry shake or a cherry cola with my sandwich. It was a great time to be with my dad.
I was never a star, but I was a competant bowler. But when I heard about a Southern California doubles tournament, it was easy to find the best bowler in our league and ask him if he wanted to be my partner for the tournament. He agreed, and we entered it together. I did okay, and he was fantastic, so we won! And we got our pictures in the paper.
At about that same year (1960) I signed up for Cub Scouts at the encouragement of my father. As a boy he’d had a great time in scouting, staying in for several years and successfully moving up the ranks. My experience was not as good; I didn’t enjoy it, and I had a hard time making friends. I did not stick with it.
I received an electric football game as my “main” Christmas present in 1961. In this picture you can see we are still by the tree at Grandma and Grandad’s house, and I was so anxious to try out the game that my dad got down on the floor and figured it out for us. As I recall the game was based on some rather poor design for getting the players to move – it used vibration – and was nearly impossible to play.
This was my party at Annie & Grandpa’s for my 10th birthday (1962). I’m pretty sure that this was a shared event with Sue, whose birthday was a week later than mine. The Halloween theme would work for both of us since we were both October kids. I like how we siblings are always willing to help each other blow out birthday candles.
My dad had had a great experience being involved in the YMCA, starting with his last two years of high school after moving to California. He wanted his kids to have that experience too, and enrolled us in various activities at the Whittier YMCA. He had special memories of Camp Arbolado, the camp in the nearby mountains run by the Y. I was sent there for a week-long camp in 1963, at the age of 10, with my cousin Daryl Votaw.
You can see from the above letter that camping experiences were important to Dad, and he wanted the best for me. Unfortunately I didn’t like it. I didn’t like being outdoors, I was not good at sports, and I had a hard time making friends. I felt bad that they’d sent me to camp and I’d not enjoyed it.
I loved baseball, and I wanted to play the game. It was difficult, because I really had very little skill. They usually put me in right field where I’d do the least damage. But one year I decided that I’d like to try pitching. Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax was my favorite player, and like him I was left-handed. That was something of an advantage, because Little League batters didn’t often face lefty pitchers.
I found that I did have one small skill as a pitcher; I could throw straight. I didn’t walk people. But I had very little speed on the ball – couldn’t really throw very hard. So I wasn’t particularly effective, and soon I was back in right field.
The above photo, taken in the front yard of our house in 1964, shows me trying to pitch a baseball.
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