NOTE: This is not a post about my photography adventures, though it does include some images scanned from 35mm slides, unretouched, to supplement the text. It is a personal memoir about a travel adventure that occurred 60 years ago this week -- August, 1965.
Early in the morning of Thursday, August 5, 1965, a chartered busload of high school kids (including me) left Oklahoma City headed for Los Angeles. We were going to join 1,200 other nerds at the 12th annual convention of the National Junior Classical League on the campus of the University of Southern California. The NJCL was (and still is) an organization dedicated to encouraging the study of Latin and Greek languages, literatures, and cultures of classical antiquity.
We were all Latin students and members of high school Latin Clubs from all over Oklahoma: Lawton, Muskogee, Bartlesville, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa (and some others; I don’t remember). We were chaperoned by my Latin teacher, Evelyn Barkholz, and another Latin teacher from Okmulgee (Okmulgee!! who knew?!), plus a couple of college classics majors.
Our first day’s travel ended in Albuquerque, where we stayed in a Holiday Inn on the east side of the city on Route 66 about 25 miles from where I now live in Corrales, NM. After we moved here in 2012, I researched where that Holiday Inn was located, and when I visited the address I found that the motel had been converted into a building of not exactly high-end studio apartments: the motel swimming pool, dining room . . . all gone.
The next night we stayed in Flagstaff, AZ, and the following day rolled into LA. We checked in to our dorm rooms on campus – girls in a modern dorm . . .
. . . boys in a dumpy brick building slated for demolition with big X’s painted on the windows:
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| The brick building behind the palm tree was the dorm I stayed in. |
After getting settled, we had Saturday night on the town. What would we do? Of course everyone wanted to see Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard, so that narrowed it down a bit. Then one of the guys from Bartlesville (gay, I learned later, but we didn’t know that . . . or even think that . . . at the time) suggested that we should humor the two Latin teachers and go to the Hollywood Palladium to see Lawrence Welk’s orchestra. (I am not making this up.) So we did.
Imagine about 20 high school teenagers and two late middle-aged female Latin teachers in a giant (11,000-square-foot) ballroom filled with hundreds – maybe thousands – of middle-aged couples dancing to the Big Band tunes of the Lawrence Welk Show. “Wunnerful, wunnerful!”
Lawrence himself was not there that night; the master of ceremonies and band leader was Lawrence’s right-hand man, accordionist Myron Floren. I’m pretty sure that the “little Lennon Sisters” made an appearance, along with some of the TV show regulars like Jo Ann Castle, Norma Zimmer, Bobby Burgess, and Dick Dale – though to be honest, I really don’t remember. We teenagers felt mostly mortified, so we didn’t do much dancing, but our teacher chaperones had a great time.
The convention began the next day. Activities throughout the week included general sessions with speakers in Bovard Auditorium . . .
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| Bovard Auditorium |
. . . as well as smaller sessions for things like competitive written tests on Latin grammar, derivatives (words, not calculus), mythology, Roman history and culture, and vocabulary. For the more athletic nerds, there were “Olympic” events such as shot put, broad jump, 100-yard dash, relays, swimming, and, yes, chariot races with carts pulled by humans. Here's a photo of a race . . . obviously I didn't time my shot right -- you can only see the girls pulling the cart, but not the chariot itself. (Also notice the news cameraman on the right.)
Even as a second year Latin student, I felt completely out of my depth in the academic tests, and needless to say I didn’t compete in any of the athletic events.
One event, however, was something new to me: oratory. Contestants had to craft and deliver a 5-minute speech in Latin or English. At age 15, I was not a big fan of writing speeches or speaking to an audience. But at some point late in the week, we gathered in the auditorium to hear the two oratory competition winners. I don’t remember the speech by the person who won the English contest, but I was completely awed by the winner of the Latin contest. His name – I still remember it now 60 years later – was Henry Stevenson, from Baytown, Texas, now a suburb of Houston.
Stevenson’s speech was unintelligible to me because it was in Latin and the vocabulary and grammar were beyond my ken. But his delivery – articulation, pace, volume, dynamics, posture and gestures – was awesome, to the point where I felt I could almost understand what he was saying. I don’t know what the second or third place winners were like, but he was amazing!
Out of curiosity, I Googled him as I was writing this story, but could find no digital trace of him – no Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, obituary . . . nothing. I wonder what he became. (If anyone reading this knows of him, please let me know.)
One afternoon during the week I broke away from the convention to visit the campus of CalTech in Pasadena.
I was as much a science and math nerd in high school as I was a Latin nerd, and seriously wanted to go to college at CalTech or MIT. So when I knew I would be within striking distance of the campus, with my parents’ help I arranged an interview with an admissions officer and got permission from the convention officials and our Oklahoma group leaders to go – on my own! – by cab to Pasadena and back – a 30-mile round-trip via freeway through downtown LA. A year later I applied to CalTech and MIT, but didn’t get in; I went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta instead. (And that’s a whole ‘nother story.)
Every day during the convention we interacted with kids from all over the U.S. Whenever they learned we were from Oklahoma, there were lots of ill-informed questions about our level of civilization: “Do you have TV there?” . . . “Are the Indians dangerous?” etc. At first we were annoyed, but we quickly learned to play along: “TV? You mean ‘singing wires’?” “Yes, on our way here the Indians attacked our bus but we outran them.”
The grand finale of five days’ immersion in Latin was a parade of all the attendees in togas and tunics from the USC campus to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for a Roman-style banquet on the football field.
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| That's me on the left. |
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| Conventioneers gathering on the quad in front of Bovard Auditorium. |
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| On the way to the Coliseum |
Tables were laid on the field and loaded with food: grapes (of course), meat, veggies, and drinks (no wine).
I don’t recall whether there was music, but USC mascot Tommy Trojan appeared in full regalia and rode around the track on his horse brandishing his sword.
The next day – Friday, the 13th! – was a sightseeing day for our group. In the morning we loaded into the bus and drove to Marineland of the Pacific, a tourist attraction and progenitor of Sea World. As we rode south on the 110 – Harbor Freeway toward Marineland on the coast, we passed a couple of long convoys of military vehicles – jeeps and troop carrier trucks – headed south. I didn’t think anything of it, since living in Lawton, next to Ft. Sill, convoys were a familiar sight on the local highways.
From Marineland we went to Disneyland, where we spent the afternoon and most of the evening having a great time. I had been to Disneyland with my family in 1958, but being seven years older I enjoyed it more this time – more freedom to move, and taller to qualify for some of the better rides.
When we returned to the campus about 10pm, the bus stopped first at the dorms where the girls were housed to let them off, but rather than driving on across campus to the dorm where we boys were staying, there seemed to be some discussion happening with a University person and our chaperones.
After 10-15 minutes, the University person stepped onto the bus and announced that all the boys should go back and pack up because we were going to be moved to a newer, 8-story dormitory across from the girls’ dorm.
At the old dorm our bus was commandeered to transport our group plus dozens of other guys and their luggage, so it was crammed full – bodies and bags everywhere, standing room only, certainly exceeding the maximum legal capacity – for the relatively short drive to the new dorm.
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| This is the new dorm to which we were moved. |
No one told us why we were suddenly being moved, but we learned later from our teacher-chaperones that a few blocks away from our dorm some people had broken into and set fire to a liquor store. Our dorm was on the periphery of the campus in those days, so the University, in an abundance of caution, decided to move us into a more central and secure location.
Living in the cocoon of the convention, we weren’t aware that two days earlier (August 11 - 60 years ago today) riots had begun in a neighborhood known as Watts about eight miles away from USC. Fires, looting, and vandalism were raging, and nearly 14,000 troops of the California National Guard were called in to quell the violence. Thus, the troop convoys we had seen on the 110.
The riots began on August 11 and lasted until August 16. They were motivated by anger at the racist and abusive practices of the LA Police Department. History tells us that over the course of six days, between 31,000 and 35,000 adults participated in the riots. Thirty-four people died; over 1,000 were injured and over 3,000 were arrested (mostly for breaking the curfew that had been imposed). Property damage was over $40 million – about $400 million in today’s dollars. The riots were the worst in the city’s history until the Rodney King riots of 1992. Le plus ça change . . .
So that night of August 13, South LA was on fire. After we moved into the new dorm, we all went up to the roof and watched as more National Guard convoys zoomed south on the Harbor Freeway which was about 500 feet east of our dorm. I counted eleven separate fires in the distance. Across the street, between the dorm and the freeway, there was a used car lot where the USC Hotel now stands. We saw four men break into and hot-wire a couple of cars, which they drove away. So much for security . . .
Eventually, of course, we went back to our rooms and slept, then rolled out of Los Angeles early the next morning. I don’t remember much about the return trip to Oklahoma, but I have pictures showing that we went through Las Vegas and literally drove across the Hoover Dam. (The bypass bridge wasn't constructed until 2010.)
We stopped by the Grand Canyon and I took a photo of our group (including the bus driver, but minus me -- see photo at the top of this post) as well as some landscapes;
We also visited the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park.
Needless to say, it was an amazing adventure for a 15-year-old kid from Oklahoma! Thanks for coming along for the trip.
