Planting roots in the Antelope Valley

Song lyricists love June because there are at least 290 words that rhyme. When I arrived in Lancaster to begin my mature employment years in 1949, I was interviewed by Ted Rupner and Bob Wood, publisher and editor of the Antelope Valley Ledger Gazette.

It was the first Saturday in June and I found a warm welcome in the town.

Ted said he’d hire me at $40 per week as the cub reporter but he would retain $5 each week, to be paid to me after I stayed a full year.

He explained that another USC graduate had left the job after two months.

I stayed in town through Monday to cover the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce meeting that night.

On the following Saturday, I suited up in a cap and gown and joined about 5,000 Trojan grads through the afternoon graduation ceremony on the campus.

I temporarily rented a room for $8 a week. I was surprised how hot it was walking to work at 8 a.m.

That was 71 years ago and the Valley has been my residence ever since, most of the years practicing journalism, hoping to get it right.

Weinie Holmes, one of the town’s barbers, gave me such a warm greeting on Tuesday, that I decided I had found a new home.

In 1952, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis and Weinie would come to our house and cut my hair, risking infection. Girlie Walters, the elementary school nurse, passed her Books of the Month to me.

The towns had not yet incorporated as cities and our lone governing body was the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

There was a beer garden just a few blocks west of Antelope Valley High School, where for $2, we could get a great hamburger and a pitcher of beer.

I was dating Val, who was for a time, the society editor.

In May of 1950, we were flown by Pancho Barnes’ ranch foreman Mac, to Las Vegas for a wedding. They later got married in a lavish celebration at Pancho’s Happy Bottom Club entertainment palace.

When I met Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, I didn’t know why he was so famous.

The Valley soon became a world-renowned hot spot for aviation, with a half dozen top aircraft companies building facilities at Edwards Air Force

Base and the Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale.

By 1957, Pentagon officials lost their enthusiasm for airplanes, concentrating more on missiles as the major defense force.

Val and I welcomed a baby boy and a girl, plus a step daughter and we bought a new house for $11,000, with $68 monthly payments that included property taxes.

Sierra Highway between what is now Lancaster Boulevard and Milling Street, was nicknamed “The Waterfront” despite being its high desert location. Beer joints dominated the business occupancy.

The U.S. government established the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, providing enormous help in support of free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

And the nation provided all kinds of benevolent programs to help Americans and others over the years in what has often been cited as “the rest is histor y.”