“Auntie" Doris

The Ford family lived further down the street from the Knutsons and the Lapps. 

Bob Ford owned and operated the Chevron station in town, and in the late 1940’s he added a Pontiac dealership to the property.  Doris was another Sans Souci friend of my mother, as well as one of the local neighbors.  There were five children in the family.  Bobby, Betty, and Jimmy were all considerably older than me, so we were never close friends.  Larry, was two years older.  We didn’t see much of each other until my sophomore year at Cal Poly.  Larry was one of my roommates in an old Victorian that had been subdivided into apartments.  Larry left school after a couple of quarters, so I didn’t see him after that.  Susie was the youngest member of the family.

When my father was transferred to the Grass Valley PG&E office, we moved from the neighborhood.  I was able to continue going to Placer High School in Auburn by riding the community college bus from Grass Valley.  My mother was able to work out an arrangement with Doris where I could “board” at her house during the week, starting in the fall of my junior year (1954).

Susie was eight years younger than me.  She was in the fourth grade, and was something like a kid sister.  What’s really funny is that I ended up marrying a girl the same age as Susie.  Who would have known?

One of the big deals in the Ford family was that you got to choose what was to be served at dinner on your birthday.  When my rolled around, I requested meatloaf!  That didn’t go over very well with the other kids.  They though I was nuts if I didn’t order steak, or at least chicken.  I was kidded about that for some time.

Living with the Fords was wonderful.  I took the Sierra community college bus from Grass Valley on Monday mornings, and my parents would pick me up on Saturday mornings.  I got to not only go to high school with my childhood friends, but also participate in after school sports.

My athletic career was modest, at best.  For someone short and slow, the only sport that I could play in was football where enthusiasm somehow partially made up for talent, coordination and physical size.  I was able to letter three out of four years, in spite of the fact that in addition to my other limitations, I couldn’t see when I took my glasses off.

Somehow my management and leadership genes went to work.  All of my buddies were good at athletics, so it was important for me to figure out how to be involved, even if I couldn’t play.  Somehow, I finagled my way into becoming a student manager on the baseball, basketball and track teams.  My job description was basically picking up wet towels, and other similar low tech jobs.  But that was OK.  I didn’t have to participate in PE class, and I got to get out of school and travel to all of the team events.  By my junior year, I was the team scorekeeper in basketball and baseball, so I had the best of jobs without ever having to work up a sweat.

My unmemorable recollections about my high school athletic career include sitting on the bench at one of our football games my junior year.  Our coach, Ken Arnett, who was also a neighbor, turned to one of my teammates and asked him where the ball was being spotted on the field.  We were down close to the goal line at the far end of the field, and it looked like we could score.

My teammate squinted at the ball and said, “It’s right there by the referee’s foot, coach!”  Haw, haw.

When I was the baseball student manager, Ken Arnett told me to go out and bring in the bases off the diamond after practice.  The canvas bases were strapped on to steel stakes driven in the ground.  The home plate, of course was permanently mounted in the ground.

When I returned, Coach Arnett again asked me if I’d brought in the bases.  I said, “Yes I did, but I had a hell of a time pulling up the home plate!”  Haw, haw.  I think he hit me with his hat.

I also learned how the pressures of coaching could be hard on a man.  We had a pretty good basketball team my senior year.  We ended up loosing the league championship by two defeats by the same team.  Our coach, who we just called “Ralph,” had begun his educational career as a school janitor.  He went to night school and ended up getting his degree and teaching credential.  Ralph was a good and well respected man who was honored during his life and after his death.

Ralph usually came to our home games with a few drinks under his belt.  You could tell because you could have lit his breath with a cigarette lighter.  When things got really tough during a game, Ralph would make a quick trip to the office where he kept a half-pint in his desk.  I remember how he looked like a ghost when we lost our second game to Oroville High School along with the championship.

The last thing I want to mention about Auntie Doris concerned one of our classmates getting herself pregnant our senior year, with the help of one of my friends, of course.  The girl’s parents were devastated over the pregnancy, and it looked like they weren’t going to have the opportunity to get married.

Doris, was a good Roman Catholic, and was not going to see a child born into sin, so she stepped into the picture and surreptitiously made arrangements to spirit the nuptial couple away to Reno where they could be married.  I was always impressed by what she did, when everyone else was having trouble coming to come to grips with the situation.