I remember our activities as kids and wonder how we survived. I also wonder how my parents, and my friends’ parents, weren’t arrested for negligence or worse. The only explanation is that parents in the middle of the 20th Century, at least in California, didn’t coddle their children. They expected their kids to get up and dust themselves off, no matter how many times they fell or were knocked down. Children were expected to fight their own battles and learn from adversity. In many ways, I believe that the people who lived in California when I was a child were as ornery as a bunch of Texas wranglers who, at the end of a long day, can’t find the chuck wagon. The tough old west coast culture came apart in the mid-1960s with the Summer of Love, Age of Aquarius and the start of the wine industry as many acres of vineyards were planted in Napa and Sonoma Counties. Until this occurred, we were engaging in behavior unimaginable today. Coddling was not a virtue, but we didn’t know the difference.
“Here it comes,” yelled Alex Yandel, one of my friends from West F Street.
“Yeah, I see it,” observed Darryl Kleeberger, my best friend until we graduated from Dixon High School in 1966. “What a fog. The street lights are covered and you can’t see anything in the flat tops.”
The “flat tops” was an older housing project or subdivision that had been built soon after WWll to house returning GIs coming back from the war. They were constructed of concrete and had flat top roofs that had long since gone out of style. I had a friend or two who lived in the “flat tops” but the name dripped of “them” and “those people” and it was best to stay on our side of North Washington Street which served as the demarcation line between neighborhoods.
We gathered as a group of neighborhood friends totaling approximately ten to fourteen kids. By today’s standards, that’s a lot, but I can’t remember a house that didn’t have at least one child while most had at least two children. The Hulls had six kids, but they were needed to deliver milk every morning for the family dairy business. Our group ranged in age from 9 to 12 years old. Everyone chirped with excited conversation while waiting as the fog rolled our way. No one had been called to dinner and those who had, convinced their parents to allow them a few more minutes to stay outside and enjoy the fun. “Time to come home for dinner, Danny,” my sister yelled from our front yard.
“Tell mom that I’ll be in after we ride with the fog machine,” I responded. I stayed and no one else went home as night and darkness enveloped the streets.
The fog drifted closer as a large model pick-up truck pulled a four-wheeled trailer steadily down the street. The trailer carried a dirty white tank with a sprayer that threw out a huge cloud of a mosquito killing DDT solution. The streets of Dixon were sprayed twice a year, once at the start of summer and once at the end of the summer. We didn’t passively watch the truck and tank drive past. No, that wouldn’t have been any fun. “Are you ready?” I yelled as I scanned my friends sitting on their bicycles. “Follow me. Let’s go.”
We all took off after the tank trailer and got as close as we could to the spray apparatus while the toxic solution spewed into the air. Larry Bailey and Darryl liked to grab a hold of the side of the tank rig to be pulled up the street while the rest of us rode through the heavy mist and attempted to avoid crashing into unseen bike riders cruising a few feet away. We knew the possibility of hitting the back of the trailer and getting knocked to the street existed. We thought in terms of skill level rather than the danger we faced.
Most of us pulled out of the cloud when the truck made the turn at the end of F Street onto Adams Street and went home for dinner. Sometimes we decided to take the long route home and rode until we got tired before turning around and heading back. Finally, someone read the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and accepted mosquito abatement practices came to a merciful end, but for us, ignorance was bliss. “Wash up for dinner, Danny,” my mom always reminded me when I got home. “Be sure to fold your play clothes so you can use them to finish out the week. I’m busy washing your school clothes.”
Here’s a YouTube video showing how DDT was sprayed on children, food, pets.
As far as I know, except for Darryl, who died in a freak accident a month after graduation, members of the West F group are still alive. Somehow, we survived the fog, adversity and ignorance of the mid- 20th Century.