AR Life in Pasadena

Life in Pasadena

After seven years in Reedley, that San Joaquin Valley town had truly become home to me, with friendships that would continue for life. Therefore, moving in with my sister and brother-in-law in Pasadena meant leaving many precious things and relationships behind. But I was welcomed very warmly into their home, found a new world to explore, and was presented with far greater educational opportunities than I could possibly have found in Reedley. Also, Upland and Ontario, where Lucille had moved, was within fairly easy reach by the red car and electric railway system that served much of southern California adjacent to Los Angeles.

Actually, the Dyck home was located in Lamanda Park, the east suburb of Pasadena. Lamanda Park was close to Eaton Wash, a generally dry desert river bed leading from one of the steep canyons of the San Gabriel Mountains. These often snow-covered mountains reached high into the sky to the north. Eaton Wash became a wonderful, very accessible birding area for me, with many hummingbirds and other avian gems. The Dyck home was also very close to the railroad track, and one more block to the south ran Colorado Boulevard, that famous street, which near the city center, is the site of the Tournament of Roses parade on every New Year’s day. Also, the campus of Pasadena Junior College was located on Colorado Boulevard about a mile west of Lamanda Park, and it is there that I enrolled for the second semester of my freshmen year.

So, I settled into a happy living situation. And at the junior college, where among other courses, I was enrolled in the second semester of General Zoology, I came under the influence of an outstanding teacher who took a very special interest in me and totally changed the course of my life. Dr. Max W. de Laubenfels, a graduate of Oberlin College, and a sponge specialist who had done his graduate work for the Ph>D. degree at Stanford University, not only taught a well-organized and fascinating course in zoology, but also directed me to read special books, including Wegner’s revolutionary book on continental drift, long before geologists conceded the possibility of moving continents, and Heilman’s “Origin of Birds”, guiding one’s thinking on whence and how the body of birds had evolved Dr. De, as we called him, also took special interest in a fellow student, Charles Bogart, who loved reptiles, and who later became the director of the division of herpetology at the American museum of Natural History in New York. For me, Dr. de Laubenfels had the advice to drop my idea of transferring to the agricultural college at Davis. Instead, he encouraged me to seek admission to Oberlin College and to major in zoology.

For the summer of 1930, Dr. de Laubenfels had accepted a position on the faculty of Hopkins Marine Station, a seaside research and teaching institution operated by Stanford University on the shore of Monterey Bay at Pacific Grove. He and his wife, Beth, invited me to live with their family in Pacific Grove during that summer, finding remunerative employment perhaps at the herring fish canneries in Monterey. Mrs. de Laubenfels owned a beautiful riding pony and Dr. De purchased a trail horse from a riding academy at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in neighboring Altadena. They suggested to me that I might ride the pony and lead the trail horse up the coast to Pacific Grove for them. This I agreed to do. So, with a food container and a bedroll, a pair of binoculars lent to me by Dr. De, and with Frank Chapman’s bird identification book, I started my ride at La Canada, across the Arroyo Seco, a dry river course, from Pasadena, and made my way from town to town until I reached Highway 101.

Following that route all the way to Salinas, I turned west to Monterey and Pacific Grove, completing the entire journey in about twelve days. In 1930, over sixty-three years ago, the 101 was the major north and south coastal highway linking Los Angeles and San Francisco, but its size and traffic load in those days was insignificant when compared to the super highway it has become since then. Certainly now such a horseback adventure would be quite unthinkable! Highlights of that trip included seeing my first white-throated swift at a cliff near the town of Saticoy, and yellow-billed magpies and a marsh full of tricolored blackbirds in Santa Maria. Near Santa Maria, I was invited to spend the night on a big cattle ranch and was fed a most generous beef steak. At another time, I bedded down with a road construction crew, and along the Salinas river saw a lone wood stork flying along the river, far out of its normal range. Approaching the city of Salinas at least one stranger accosted me presuming that my aim was to participate in the local rodeo. Not too many miles after leaving 101, I reached Monterey and soon found the de Laubenfels cottage in Pacific Grove, next door to the Asilomar Conference Center.

While back with the de Laubenfels family that summer, I lived in a large tent in their backyard and ate with the family.

My efforts to find work on cannery row led to the news that the herring catch had collapsed and the canneries were no longer operating. I was, however, fortunate to find summer employment on the ground and in the gardens of the Del Monte Hotel in Monterey. It was always a long walk to work, essentially from Asilomar, across all of Pacific Grove and on to the hotel on the far side of Monterey, but the work was peaceful and in beautiful surroundings, and the walk led to many interesting bird sightings. At the summer’s end, I hitch-hiked across the coastal mountains back to Reedley for a visit and then made my way back to Pasadena.

On arriving in Reedley in February of 1923 I was, as already stated, a minor. Being without living parents, I would have to earn American citizenship on my own. Adults could be legally naturalized after a residency of only five years, and minor children could do so on the legal coattails of their parents. But I had to wait until I reached the age of twenty-one before I could apply for American citizenship. My 21st birthday occurred on January 5, 1931, and in preparation for citizenship I attended evening classes in American history and government that were given in Los Angeles, and required repeated trips by electric car into that city. On June 26, 1931, I passed all the requirements and was awarded my naturalization certificate as an American citizen!

One of the very special experiences during the spring semester of my sophomore year in Pasadena was a field trip on which Dr. De took a group of his students to the Sespe Canyon in the Ventura Mountains. While hiking in the rugged Coldwater tributary canyon of the Sespe, four California condors, now perhaps the rarest and one of the largest flying birds in the world, soared over the rim of this steep-sided canyon and across the open sky above us.

During my sophomore year in Pasadena, my social contacts consisted of my sister and brother-in-law and their teenage son, Paul. During that year, a son was born to my sister and her husband whom they named Rudolf, after our brother Rudi who had died in Russia.

The Dycks generally attended a Mennonite mission church in Los Angeles. That always required a long auto trip. So I began to attend the Presbyterian Church on Colorado Boulevard, not far from the junior college campus. There, I was invited to join their young people’s group, which in the course of time, I did. With them I especially remember a delightful winter outing of tobogganing and other fun at Big Bear Lake.

During my stay in Pasadena, I was also able to reestablish contact with Lucille, using the red electric cars that ran between Pasadena and Upland. Although I regretted that she declined my invitation to come to Pasadena to watch the Rose Parade with me, we later had a wonderful day-long outing to Mount Lowe in the mountains overlooking Pasadena, traveling via red car and the steep cogwheel railway. For a couple of days on another occasion, Lucille even accepted my sister’s invitation to visit the Dyck home in Pasadena. But during a long date shortly before my departure for Oberlin, she bade me goodbye, but did not say “Auf wieder sehen”.

But before leaving Pasadena, a word about the graduation from Pasadena Junior College. This impressive ceremony was staged in the Rose Bowl, situated in the Arroyo Seco. The theme was “the past and the new” and to illustrate the past, the background scene included an artificial lake with Indian tepees beyond. After the orations were over, there came the time for each of the graduates to receive his junior certificate. As recipients, we walked from our seats to the platform and back along a path marked by an avenue of girls in long, flowing white attire, each holding a long and graceful palm frond over our heads as we made our way to acquire that coveted diploma, which in 1931 came in scarlet, suede leather covers!

As already mentioned, Dr. De encouraged me to transfer to Oberlin College upon my graduation from Pasadena. Dr. De recommended me very highly to the Admissions Committee of Oberlin He also, as the son-in-law of Dr. Lynds Jones the retired professor of ecology at Oberlin, recommended me to Dr. and Mrs. Jones as a live-in student, who could earn his room by working an hour a day or seven hours a week in Mrs. Jones’ garden. Additionally, he arranged with the college for me to be offered a half-time job as Acting Curator of the Museum of Zoology and Anthropology that was housed in Wright Laboratory, the remodeled Second Church building that was then the home of the Zoology Department. This job would pay $600 per year, and with living quarters in the Jones’ home, I was prepared to spread my upper division work over three years by using my remaining time in scheduling my class work.

I left for Oberlin from Pasadena by train, then was still drawn by huge black steam locomotives. Crossing the southwest on the Santa Fe, and then the central states, the Mississippi, and finally Illinois, Indiana and northeast Ohio. I eventually arrived in Oberlin.