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THE DAVE BROWN STORYJuly 29, 1971 My name is Dave Brown. I was born on Sept. 26, 1920 in Canon City, Colorado. My folks had a small cattle ranch about forty miles north of there. In 1923 my folks moved to Tacoma, Washington and in 1927, to El Segundo, Calif. where my father worked for Standard Oil. In 1929, they bought 12 1/2 acres of land south of Lancaster at what would be now 5th St. W. and Ave. K-8. It was just a little patch of alfalfa but we enjoyed summers and weekends there until 1935 when my mother and I moved there permanently. I attended high school in Lancaster for two years graduating in 1937. Followed that with two years of junior college there and graduated in 1939. The Jr. college at that time was in the building on the same campus as the Lancaster High School. I can remember that the dean of the college was David J. Roach, who later left the the college and operated the Lancaster Theatre, the only movie house in the valley at the time. He then went into the turkey business at 10th St. W. and Lancaster Blvd. When I graduated from Jr. college in 1939, there were eleven graduates in the total class. Even then it was considered a very good jr. college even though it certainly was very small. The old high school buildings have long since been torn down but the grounds were utilized and the replacements were made one building at a time. In those days, there were dormitories for students who lived a long way away would stay overnight through the week and go home weekends. Later the dormitories had to be used for classrooms and the students were bused to and from school everyday. The kids came from as far away as Boron and Gorman, and the high school district then was one of the very largest in the state. Dr. Roy Knapp, who is retired and now lives in Lancaster, was the superintendent, rather in those days, principle, of the Lancaster High School since it was the only one in the system and he was finishing his fourth year when I graduated from school in 1937. All of us thought it was a very fine school, not a wealthy one since it had to spend a great deal of its income on the school buses. Living on the small farm, I can remember some very pleasant experiences. If we wanted to get to town, we had to walk or ride a bicycle. Since in those days we had very little money and a car was a luxury we could not afford. It was about 2 1/2 miles to town and since this was such an easy walk we thought nothing about it at all. Riding a bicycle also was our main source of enjoyment, as kids. I recall when two of us on two occasions left our little cabin at 2:00 a.m. in the morning and rode to Fairmont twenty miles west of Lancaster, then to White Oak Lodge west and north of Rosamond in the Tehachapis on the side of Double Peak (all dirt roads) and back nearly to Mojave and then back to Lancaster. A total distance of 80 miles. That with the old bicycles we had with the nails stuck in for chain links, which we couldn't afford to buy new, and many flat tires, that 80 miles was a considerable day. In fact, it would be 9 or 10 p.m. before getting back. Many of my school friends from those days still live here in the valley. Some you may remember or know. Such names as Don and Jack Bones, Frank Lane, Bob Ross of Valyermo, Larry Wiskerson of Palmdale, Larry Wheeler of Lancaster, his brother Paul. Many of the young people stayed here in the area, perhaps quite a tribute to the climate and pleasant living we have here. We didn't have much money in those days but as I recall, nobody thought of us as being poverty stricken. I can remember when I later got a car. I took a date to Los Angeles and after I had bought gasoline, we had a total of 50› to spend on whatever our entertainment was to be. Really it wasn't that much of a chore, we always had enough to eat and could attend the various school functions which cost little if anything. At the time we first came to Antelope Valley, my father was always looking for land and we bought that 12 1/2 acres south of Lancaster from a Mr. Post who was a land promoter in those days. He has a nephew who is Charles Parker, now of the Antelope Valley College. We came out first and attended the typical promotion, a chicken dinner at the Antelope Valley Dude Ranch where they were promoting 2 1/2 acre orchard lots of almonds or apricots. He decided he would rather not get one of those so he bought this little alfalfa ranch instead. It was good for us as kids to grow up in that environment. I think that in 1929, there were about 500 people in Palmdale and 3,000 in Lancaster. Our big entertainment was to walk to town on Saturday night and stand on the street corners and all the farmers would come in and talk to their friends whom they hadn't seen all week. That was a large evening and a great deal of fun. There was no Antelope Valley Fair, there was its forerunner, the Antelope Valley Festival. What is now Lancaster Blvd. was barricaded from Sierra Highway, (which was Antelope Avenue) west to Beech or Cedar two or three blocks and hay bales were stacked in the middle of the street for grandstands or platforms and we had our school and other dances right in the street. It was a lot of fun in those days. Everybody knew everybody else as they do in small towns all over the nation. On one of those long bike rides that I mentioned, we left Lancaster after 2 p.m. on Hwy. 138 toward Gorman about 20 to 22 miles west of Lancaster and were treated to a very rare occurrence of the aurora borealis which I understand, rarely gets down this far south. It was a beautiful thing to see because no lights at all in the immediate area and all of these lights and their colors were all around the hills and the horizon around us. It was a rather scarey thing for two teen age boys but we finally decided what it was and enjoyed it thoroughly. My father died in 1937 and we had very little to live on so my mother, who was an accomplished pianist, began to teach piano and by the time of her death, in 1965, had graduated over 250 students from her little classes which she maintained in the home. I can remember in those days catching the school bus at what in now 10th St. W. and Ave. K on the corner where the Sears Shopping Center is now. There was nothing here in those days but sage brush. There was one house across the street and one of my friends who lived there was Edwin Evans who now lives in Juniper Hills and who is electrical foreman at Edwards Air Base. He had a dog and one of our pleasures was to ride his model "T" at night with floodlights and let the dog chase rabbits, the scourge of our little alfalfa field then and often ate 20 to 50 feet of alfalfa off all the way around the edge of the fields. So we were always after rabbits. In May of 1939, the day after I graduated from junior college, I went to work for the Edison Co. as a meter reader. This was quite a good job in those days. I wasn't going to be able to continue college and my first pay scale was $100.00 a month and that was pretty good pay for a young boy and my mother and I lived on that very well I remember. We had our own car, rented a small house and lived better (high on the hog) as the saying went. I read meters for the Edison Co. for 2 1/2 years and in June of 1942, volunteered for the draft and was in the Army for 3 1/2 years during WW II. I managed to get a lot of traveling in during that time. Gone from Sheppard Field to Denver for training in aircraft armament since I had been assigned to the air corps, then a part of the Army. I became a 2nd Lt. in Nov. 1942. Went overseas in an LST which is a landing ship for tanks to Oran, Algeria. Saw service in Tunisa Sicily (motorcycles from British for peanuts?) March 1944 to So. Italy. From Italy to Port Said, Egypt for two weeks rest leave, then to Suez to Bombay India, to Calcutta on to Assam. In India about 1 1/2 years before starting home in August 1945. I came on a liberty ship which took two months around the bottom of Australia before we could get back to San Francisco. After one month off, I went back to work for the Edison Co. and been with them since. In 1948, I married Alice Timm who was in communications for the old CAA, now the FAA. She was stationed at Palmdale Airport on the shift working the radios with the aircraft reporting the weather, a very interesting job, I would think for a girl in those days. I met her through Larry Wiskerson since Alice had roomed with Mrs. Wiskerson at her home at Sixth St. E. up the street on 6th and across from your office there, Shelton. Alice and I and our daughter Bonnie live in Juniper Hills now. I'm still working for the Edison Co. and enjoying it very much and have enjoyed all my associations with you. This is sort of a brief history but it's sort of a peep
in my "not so old tenure here" in this wonderful valley of ours. |
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