Hawthorne Feedback

Name: George Johnson ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 7:13 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1962
City & State: Spinnaker Coves, Ca
E-mail
Message: Here's a little bit of Hawthorne trivia that some may know about but most probably don't. When the L.A. Sheriff's Dept. SWAT team (SEB) raided the Spahn Ranch back in 1969. where Charlie Manson and his group of swine (I won't call them a gang)camped out. After and during the course of the operation when everyone was in custody, there were several vehicles that had to be inventoried and towed away. Several of the vehicles were stolen, however, there was a white XKE Jaguar that was registered to none other than your very own Dennis Wilson of the BB's. Apparently Dennis at one time or another had picked up Squeeky Fram (sp) on Hollywood Blvd. and she took him to the ranch an he became friends with the Manson family. They were supposedly one of his dope connections plus the girls were all over him when he was at the ranch visiting (remember, that was the time of free love). Why his car was there and he wasn't was a mystery at the time. If you remember back, the BB dropped out of sight for a while just after the Spahn Ranch raid. During the investigation it was learned that some of the BB's were on the death list and were scared to death.

Name: Jake N Jude ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 6:37 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1960
City & State: Pretty Nice, ID
E-mail
Message: We both loved the letter John. Sounds like our folks who we have lost over the years. God bless you all. Hug your kids and G-kids every chance you get. Today is today, tomorrow...maybe. MAY THE COUGAR BE WITH YOU! Jake N Jude.

Name: Michael M Kratz ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 5:25 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1971
City & State: Vegas
E-mail
Message: Yes, I remember the S L A. My MoM worked at Western Surplus for years on Hawthorne BLVD. I do remember in May of 74', I got home from work around 1pm, and turned on the TV set, there was a shootout between the S L A and the L A SWAT. KTLA had their camera men live at the S L A safe house at Compton & 54th st. They were broadcasting live and you good hear the bullets zinging past the camera man's head, while he was filming live. The madness went on for hours, haven't seen anyting like it since.

Name: Bob Jensen ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 3:08 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1971
City & State: Los Angeles
No E-mail
Message: FENDER PORTS - In the 50?s my dad switched from Cadillac to Buick. Our famed 1955 Super Riviera in custom ordered Chartreuse (very bright yellow green) with a black top was always a topic of conversation. Mom could never sneak around the South Bay without being seen. Many a friend would call and say ?I saw you yesterday driving down Anza, where were you going?? We also had a 55 Maroon Century Convertible. Many a race with my dad going down 120th beating our Scout Master in his 56 Ford. Bob Beckwith?s dad came in last in a 51 Pontiac straight 8. My grandmother would tell us that she saw a yellow Buick but it was only a ?3 holer so I knew it wasn?t you?. Here is an excerpt from the sales catalog for both our 55?s (yes I still have all of the paperwork on those cars): Buick's famed FENDER PORTS - 4 on CENTURY, SUPER, and ROADMASTER, 3 on SPECIAL - are smartly restyled in chromed concentric ring pattern for 1955. I hope all of you that are within driving distance come out for Cruise Night at Fosters on the 25th and all of the 71/72 graduates are planning on coming to Stick n Stien on Friday evening (24th) and the Hacienda Hotel on August 25th. See you there.

Name: Raymond Smith ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 1:57 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1981
City & State: Portland, OR
E-mail
Message: I remember the movie theater on Crenshaw Blvd (Parks Movie theater) had not one..but 2 crying rooms. Seats about 8 each I think. My mom took us kids there(sis and I) and once she sat with us in the "Crying room" and I thought it was great because I think they had a rule that no kids were allowed there unless with a parent. My mom regreted taking us to see a movie that day...it showed a 3 second nude scene. That was the last time she went to the movies there at that place. I been reading some history from my magazine "Aviation History" and read a story about comic magazines and I was just thinking how popular they were. I have NOOOoo clue what was popular reading from the boys and girls perspectives. The few I briefly read G-8 and His Battle Aces....Dusty Ayres and his Battle birds.....Sky Fighters...etc. The magazine cost only around 10 cents to 15 cents. I wonder how many pop bottles or work one kid had to do to buy one of these. And, I wonder if any kid tried to make a book report off one of them and gets an F (for poor judgement in choosing this...lol). Magazines must of been really popular since TV was near non existent in the late 40's.
Also wanted to wish a Happy Birthday to my dear and lovely friend "Diana Oach"(maiden name- Diana Hantgin c/84)....whom I met at Taco Bell while I was working and she a customer (on Imperial Hwy). I remember that day how flirty she was and I asked if she was going to HHS? (she said yes) Even though she was going to be a freshman(I was going to be a Senior.)....we've been bestest of friends since then and over the years. On that summer of 1980...we had no clue we both would be living in Oregon in the future. So Di....PARTY YOUR HEART OUT GIRL!!!!

Name: John Crotty ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 1:07 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1969
E-mail
Message: So JB, what was or is you're favorite car? Your first one? Or some other?????

Name: Jim Fox ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 1:02 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1966
City & State: Hawthorne
E-mail
Message: August 21, 1971 was a pretty exciting evening in beautiful downtown Hawthorne. For those who would like a bit of light reading, the police report of the Western Surplus heist can be found at the Charlie Manson dot com website.

Name: Karen Kuehl ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 11:41 am - HHS Time
Maiden: Graham
City & State: Vista, CA
E-mail
Message: This is one of the gals that was at Western Surplus. I got this from About.com: Crime/Punishment. It doesn't mention Western Surplus in the article but I'm sure this was the place it talks about. Catherine "Gypsy" Share was an accomplished violinist who dropped out of college just short of earning a music degree. She met Manson through Bobby Beausoleil and joined the Family in the summer of 1968. Her devotion to Manson was immediate and her role was as a recruiter to others to join the Family. During the Tate murder trial, Gypsy testified that Linda Kasabian was the mastermind to the murders and not Charles Manson. In 1994 she recounted her statements, saying she was forced into perjuring herself after Family members dragged her behind a truck, threatening her if she did not testify as they directed. In 1971, eight months after giving birth to her and Steven Grogan's son, she and other Family members were arrested after participating in a shoot out with police during a botched robbery at a gun store. Share was convicted and spent five years at the California Institute for Women in Corona.

Name: Armand Vaquer ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 10:45 am - HHS Time

Class: 1972
City & State: Tarzana, CA
E-mail
Message: Clark, that's easy. It was the Charles Manson gang (or what was left of them).

Name: Karen Kuehl ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 10:24 am - HHS Time

Maiden: Graham
Class: 1959
City & State: Vista, CA
E-mail
Message: Clark - I believe that was a few of the members of the Manson family. Western Surplus was on the corner of Hawthorne Blvd and 134 St. I lived just up the hill from that corner. On that night, we heard what we thought was a car accident. We saw a car up against a phone pole and it looked like the front window was smashed. My mother-in-law and I went down the hill to see what was happening and were met by a policeman with his gun drawn. He told us to duck down behind a brick wall and stay put. Then we heard gun shots and people running all over the place. For many years you could see the bullet holes in the back of the store where the shoot-out took place. I'm not sure if they got the whole group, but I know they got some of them. The car that was up against the phone pole had a bullet hole in the windshield. I never did hear the story on what happened there. It was quite a night, and we walked right into the middle of it.

Name: Debbie ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 10:19 am - HHS Time

Maiden: Miles
Class: 1977
City & State: Del Aire, CA
E-mail
Message: Charles Manson's followers hit the store in Hawthorne. My mom had just taken the neighbor girls (the Allen girls), my sister and me to buy her dining room table, right across the street. Kinda creepy to think it happened in so close of a time span. I later was given the table and held on to it til just a couple of years ago. It was rickety but a reminder of a little piece of Hawthorne history.

Name: Clark Millman ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 9:35 am - HHS Time

Class: 1976
City & State: Torrance, CA
E-mail
Message: Someone mentioned that Patty Hearst and her Simbianese Liberation army buddies hit Mel's sporting goods on Crenshaw. Does anyone recall who hit Western Surplus on Hawthorne Blvd. in the early 70s or late 60s?

Name:dan shulstad ~~~~~~~~~~ Fri-Aug 3, 2007, 8:33 am - HHS Time
Class: 1976
City & State: down the street
E-mail
Message: Mr. Baker, I believe those portholes you referred to on yer mom's buick were called "cruise line ventaports" or something goofy like that. My father was a Buick man, owned a whole string of 'em, '55 wagon, '56 special, 62 Le Sabre and many more, and they mostly all had those ports, the 62 had rectangular ones.

Name: John Baker ~~~~~~~~~~ Thu-Aug 2, 2007, 10:19 pm - HHS Time

Class: 1962
City & State: Lomita, CA
E-mail
Message: I just had to add this. Not too many can relate, in this day and age, to the work ethic of the rural 20s and 30s era. My Uncle Hargett, Mom's brother, passed away a couple of months ago of Cancer. He was a building contractor all of my life, and worked very hard into his 80s at same in the Los Angeles, and later in the San Luis Obispo area.
After he passed away, his youngest daughter, Susana, wanted to know more about the (Spoonemore) family (seems like we all neglect that part until it's too late). She emailed my Mom to ask about her (our) Grandparents. This is what my 87 year old Mother said about her family:

Hi Susana---
Me again. Late but that doesn't mean I haven't thought of you, and of doing this. I'm good at doing things when I feel like. Used to be I had to hurry to do this so I could do that but since moving to Leisure World my mind tells me you don't have to do anything until you feel like it.
On to your Grandma & Pa Spoony (as they were called by some). The finest people possible. Always kind and willing to help others, as were most people in that era in Missouri. That is the only place I lived until coming to California in 1941 at the age of 21. A neighbor friend back then told me after my dad's funeral, her father said, "I know Archie was the best friend and neighbor a person could ever have." Then, people would help each other without even being asked. The farmers up and down a road would all pitch in, in the Spring and Fall with the planting and harvesting of the crops, all going to each farmer's land until they were all completed. Then, no one had enough money to hire help. It was that way until WWII in l94l. After the war, people needed everything they hadn't had for years so factories started making stoves, refrigs etc. and employment got good.
Back to Archie and Faye, hard working people from morn to nite. Up early always. I have said many times I don't know how mom did so much. Every year she had a big garden, everything in it. Dad would plow it for planting (probably four or more times the size of the lot your dad's apartment was on, plus a potato patch twice that size.) Us kids would drop the potatoes and dad covered them with a team of mules and a harrow (I think it was called). Mom planted the veges, hoed the weeds away from them, I think four or five times before they were ready to harvest. Then pick some, dig some, etc. Then clean them, stem some for canning, no freezing then. We had a box for ice. Whatever it took to keep them until the next spring when the process started again. That's just the garden.
We had chickens to lay eggs and to eat. Many, many. That was mom's job too. To set the incubators, get up, I think once during the nite, to turn the eggs. I forget how many weeks. Then out popped those peeping varmints. Such a noise. Of course the incubators had to be in the house where it was warmer. Then to put them out in the chicken house a brooder had to be arranged with a light over them so they could cuddle under it and keep warm until they were old enough to survive on their own. See this was all Mom's doins. Of course the kids, Hargett and I mostly, helped. Harold being the baby seemed to get out of a lot of work. Your dad was a hard worker. Maybe that was why he was such a busy person and hard worker later in life. I think maybe if he had stayed able to work he might still be living. He could not stand being idle. While I'm on the subject did he suffer before he died? Or did the medication keep it down?
Back to these chickens they do grow up you know and have to be eaten so there is some more work for Mom to swing them and crack their necks, dip them in boiling water which had to be heated on the stove and carried outside. Then pluck their feathers, scrape and scrub them. See how all this sounds so easy but this is just one job in many during the day. Had to have dinner, no supper, as it was called then, on time because farmers work hard and need it, expected it and it was every day.
Then there was the washing once a week. We finally got a gas powered machine after a long time hand pumping a rig. I think they called it a washer, then running it piece by piece between two rollers calling it a drier. Get it? That was one of the kids job too. Don't think we didn't work.
Then to show you how hospitable my parents were -- my Mother and her Sister married my dad and his brother. They (Mom's Sis and Hubby) had four boys. At ages two, five, seven and nine their Mother died. So their Dad and the three older ones lived with us which was to be an ongoing thing until Mom got pregnant with Harold and found six kids was going to be far more than she could handle. The youngest went to my Dad's Sister to live. But that shows you how people would band together then to make it. Mom and Dad would never turn anyone down if they needed help. Mom loved helping sick people. She would have been a good nurse.
They were both pretty strict with us kids. There were no laws about punishment. Paddles were used in the schools as well as at home and if you got it at school you could probably depend on getting it when you got home, also. And you know what I think? I think it was quite allright. It made a better generation than todays.
Anyway, you asked for it and you got the picture. I would not change my childhood for any other. Country living is the best for children growing up. A very free life. I enjoyed writing this and reminiscing.
Will write or call later. Let me hear what you are up to.
Love, Aunt EllaV
I feel very blessed to be a part of this family. I love you, Mom.