“Godforsaken Bakersfield,” Matthew thought to himself as he lay in his room at the end of the hall. “It there’s a worse place on earth, I’d like to know where it is.”
Across the hall, his mother and her husband tried to stifle the sounds of their activities, but his mother was a verbal processor and her husband tended to encourage her input as they performed the act married people had every right to perform. It was only after they moved to Bakersfield from Las Angeles that Matthew fully came to realize what was taking place across the hall and he was thoroughly disgusted by the mere thought of such a thing. When a friend at school explained the mechanics of what was involved, he couldn’t look at his mother for days, much less the man she’d married.
In late spring of 1953 Matthew was still 15. The memories of his father were limited primarily to the framed photo he kept on his dresser. He had memories of his father swinging him through the air and bouncing him on his lap. But he wasn’t sure if these were real, or if he’d made them up to make his father seem more real than just a photo. He was two when his father left to go serve. He never came back.
Of course his mother was crushed, but she wasn’t alone. Families all over the country, all over the world, in fact, were without the paternal figure they had counted on. Francis Burnet didn’t have the luxury of grief. She moved forward, a single mother in Las Angeles raising a son and doing what other women did to focus on the future. She went to work, raised her son, and grabbed small pieces of happiness and a ‘normal life’ wherever she could find them.
Don Clifford took note of the young attractive secretary at the oil company they both worked at. In order to not scare her off, he pursued her slowly. But two years later, she became Mrs. Clifford and young Matthew was no longer the man-of-the-house. The demotion was not an easy one for him to swallow. Don did all he could to warm up to the boy, but the effort was met with resistance at every turn. To his credit, that did not dissuade the new stepfather. He understood he married a family, not just a woman. The resentment Don felt from the boy was never returned.
When Matthew’s mother became pregnant and presented Don with his own child, he made sure to treat the girl no differently than Matthew; they were both his children. For his part, Matthew accepted the little sister, didn’t understand how his mother could betray the memory of his real father, and remained ambivalent to Don. Nothing seemed to feel the void he felt.
He spent more time in the neighborhood than he did in the house. Kick-the Can, Tag, Movies at the Bijou Theater, and trips to far-flung places throughout their LA neighborhood provided alternatives to thinking about his father, his mother’s new husband, or the baby that got so much attention. Over the years, Matthew settled into a routine of ambivalent acceptance of the situation. Then, over Matthew’s favorite dinner of Swedish Meatballs his mother had made, Don made the announcement that they were leaving Los Angeles. He’d received a promotion and the family was moving to Bakersfield.
Matthew had never been interested enough in exactly what Don did for a living, but had to question why he couldn’t continue to do it exactly where they were. The home he’d known since as far back as he could remember made up for the father he’d never really known. He had friends. He’d attended the same schools down the street for his entire life. Bakersfield may as well have been in another country.
They made the move regardless of his protests and had lived in Bakersfield for a couple years. Long enough for Matthew to understand the sounds from across the hall. Long enough to become protective of his sister and make a few friends, though not like the ones he left behind in LA. Bakersfield was hot and dusty and smelled like oil and loneliness. The friends he had weren’t like the ones he had in LA. They told jokes that were crude and only wanted to play baseball in the empty lot across from the school he attended. Nobody ever wanted to see a movie. In the heat of summer, Matthew spent a lot of time at the library or in his room with books, which further set him apart from kids his age. But it was a routine that worked.
He should have known something was up when his mother made Swedish Meatballs without him asking. Don made small talk about things Matthew had no interest in until eventually Francis nudged him with her foot under the table. While Matthew’s sister rolled random meatballs around her plate with her fork, Don explained that he’d received another promotion. A big one. The family would be relocating to Fort Stockton, Texas in just a few weeks. His company had already purchased the house and as soon as school was over, they’d be heading east to Texas.
Godforsaken Bakersfield all of a sudden looked like a life raft to Matthew and his life was the Titanic. He’d made sacrifices for his mother, relinquishing his role as man of the house. He’d unwillingly given up everything he knew in LA on the altar of his stepfather’s career. He’d accepted a sister and grown into the unsolicited assignment of big brother. And now, he was asked to start all over again. A new father wasn’t enough. A move from paradise to the oil field didn’t satisfy everyone. Accepting a sister didn’t fulfill the requirement. A move to Hell was apparently just the next move in a board game he no longer wanted to play.
“We’ll make a vacation of the move to Texas,” Don said. Matthew’s sister pushed a meatball off the plate and onto the table. “We’re even getting a new car for the trip. We’ll make a stop at the Grand Canyon. You’ll like it once we get to Texas. You’ll see.” Matthew nodded and asked to be excused. Don and Francis complied and he went back to his room and quietly shut the door so they wouldn’t hear him cry. He eventually drifted off to sleep.
When he woke up it was late. He heard Don and his mother talking across the hall. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but he heard his name several times. His mother sounded sad, but eventually the voices gave way to the other sounds and he put the pillow over his head to drown out the noise of their passionate exploits.
“At least there’s a new car to be had in the deal,” Matthew thought to himself. He got on his bike and peddled down to where most of the new car dealerships were located. He walked his bike past the Studebaker store, and on to the Hudson dealership. He left the bike outside and actually went into the Buick dealership to see the new Skylark on the showroom floor. He gazed through the plate glass into the Cadillac dealership, trying to guess just how big Don’s promotion was. He figured the Cadillac was probably out of the question, but held out hope.
Having whetted his appetite for the nugget of good news in the bucket of crap he’d been handed, he hopped on the bike and peddled over to the Kern County Library and scooped up every car magazine on the rack and carried them over to the table. Leafing through each one, he got a little more excited about the prospects that lie ahead. He put them back on the rack and went over to the card catalog to see if they had any books on Texas. Turns out they did. But he slid the drawer closed without taking the information down. Best to stick with new cars. Texas would take care of itself.
That night, there was a honking horn in the driveway of the pale yellow rambler home Francis and Don owned. When the honking didn’t stop, Francis, Matthew, and his little sister went out front to see what the noise was all about. There sat Don in a brand new car. The car he’d promised. The car that would deliver them to their new life by way of the Grand Canyon.
It was a Ford. Worse, it was a Ford Ranch Wagon. About as far as you could get from a Cadillac, or a Buick Skylark. A two-door wagon. Matthew and his sister would be held hostage in the backseat not even able to exit at will. They knew his sister was prone to car sickness. It turned out Matthew had pinned his only hopes for the future on a cheap, boring, blue box on wheels. Wheels that sported garish wide whitewalls and poverty hubcaps.
They’d leave for Fort Stockton in only a few days.
8 responses to “SUMMER ’53, PART I: Godforsaken Bakersfield”
Matthew has no idea how different his life is going to be living in Fort Stockton. Perhaps we see Matthew was in a previous story and we’re coming full circle. Or he could be a new character making his presences known to the locals. Either way, my seatbelt is securely fastened, tray table is stowed, and my seat is in the upright position.
Be careful. Contents may shift during the flight.
At this point, Matthew refuses to accept, that despite life’s twists and turns, how fortunate he really is. The likelihood that his mother might not have been able to find and keep a decent job nor a good man to help care for them both, potentially having to move to worse neighborhoods and deal with Los Angeles Inner City issues and a series of “uncles” who might mistreat Matthew and his mother. At this point he’s lucky to have Don in his life but is yet to accept it.
My Dad losing his father at age six always managed to remain positive, never referring to his stepfather as anything but “Dad”. He once gave strong advice to someone who had called Harry his stepfather.
Dad’s older sister Norma had, from her earliest years, dealt with her own physical issues but always stayed positive, often reminding me with one of her favorite sayings:
As you travel through life, my son,
Let this be your goal-
To look upon the doughnut,
And not upon the hole !
Then again, my maternal grandmother, having fled European issues at the start of the last century, gave sage advice to her eight grandchildren:
I cried because I had no shoes,
until I met a man who had no feet.
In the mid-1950s any new car, even a dark blue Ranch Wagon would have been a step up from the well used 1950 Nash Statesman which replaced our black ’42 Chevy. Dad wouldn’t have chosen a Ford back then anyhow, and after the Nash was T-boned, a stylish new black and white ’57 Plymouth Savoy graced our suburban driveway, along with monthly payments to the credit union.
Will Matthew go down the dark path as a loner?
Will he learn to always “Look on the Bright Side of Life”?
I’m looking forward to this series.
Not arguing with you, but it’s easier to take the long view at our age than as a youth. I remember some of the things I did and/or said to my parents and cringe.
I was born a year after this car. My dad came home from the war – US Navy on a LST (Landing Ship Tank). He was shipwrecked in the Azores on the way to not so (at the time) merry old England for D-Day. Ended up making a bunch of landfings in the Pacific.
Anyway, my parents made the ill-conceived decision on 1965 to move us (2 sisters , I was in the middle and our oldest step-sister did not go with us) from Miami to podunk smaller than Mayberry if you ain’t Southren (spelled phonetically) Baptist you aint sheet (Episcopalian here) Shelby NC. Not gon lie – not the best of times. I got my love of sports cars from my dad and my love of muscle cars from Shelby. Some call me twisted, sick even. Some call me the gangsta of love. Who TF knows?
And none call me Maurice . . .
Great car for the Pacific Northwest, but a greenhouse worth of glass and daaaark blue in SW Texas… not so much especially as a daily driver. I’m with Matt on this one. It could be worse though, the interior could have been dark blue, too.
No matter, I’d be at the library checking out the National Geographics where one photo would take you anywhere else. Grandpa always had a knee-high stack of them within arm’s reach of his rocking chair. They were a ’50s era virtual tour for a five year old.
Good story, El Capitan!