Growing up in Burbank, California
in the Sixties and Seventies
By Wesley Harry Clark
What are "Avocado Memories?" My collection of family photographs, documenting the changes we inflicted on our little stucco-covered Burbank, CA home during the period 1966 -1980. Some people have asked why I took photographs of the interior of our house while I was growing up - to that, I can only answer that I knew, someday, I would want to look back on the place where I grew up. You can, too.
Added to this are little essays about various aspects of growing up in Southern California in the Sixties and Seventies.
Why this web page?
It's the result of a brief conversation between my father and me when I was eleven. We were watching a 1967 episode of the Sixties TV sitcom "Family Affair" entitled "Fat, Fat the Water Rat"; the story was that the normally pampered and sheltered Buffy and Jodie began playing with some kids from a poorer New York City neighborhood. One street kid called up for his Ma to throw down a piece of buttered bread sprinkled with sugar, and chanted "Fat, fat the water rat/Sixteen bullets in his hat!" Dad reacted to this line by stating that he used to chant this as a boy, and ate buttered bread sprinkled with sugar as well. We had just watched the Dead End kids swim in the East River the previous night during the film "Dead End," and Dad had made similiar comparisons with his own Brooklyn childhood in the 1920's. As he told me these things I knew something precious was in danger of being lost, but I didn't know what to do about it. Twenty years later, as I sat around with nothing to do in a new job, awaiting my security clearance, I started writing up captions for the photographs I had taken as a kid. This web site is the expansion of my impulse to make sure my own kids know what it was like for me to grow up. (I hope they compose something like this for their own kids when they're grown.) So "Avocado Memories" is really for my kids, and for that reason is as extensive, personal and as complete as I can make it. If it's entertaining enough for complete strangers to wander through, so much the better!
Won't you come tour our home?
1631 N. Lincoln Street
The Living Room
The Kitchen
My Bedroom
The Den
The Pool Hall
The Patio
The Back Yard
The Back House
The Alibi Pictures
Home Sale
Postscript
Essays and Other Memories
"Nutrition" recipes (Some school food was good!)
Book review: Class - A guide through the American status systems by Paul Fussell
Cast of Characters, Part One
Cast of Characters, Part Two
Wes Clark in Germany During World War II
Those Juvenile Delinquents!
Patio Culture and the Promise of Joining the Adults' Club
Two Unsettling Stories
Locomotion for kids, Sixties style
The Spy Game
Hollywood Boulevard was Our Backyard!
1966: The Chat
1966: The Chat, Part Two
Kraft Cheese and Great Art
Sixties Toys
The Tiki Hut
The Aurora Monster Models
Shasta Summers
To the Final Frontier - In a Cardboard Box
My Career in the Boy Scouts of America
With Dad at Del Mar
Captain Russian vs. Miss Johnson
The Death of Ferro Lad at the Corner Drug Store
Standard Brands: Paint Central in Burbank
The Second Battle of Cahuenga Pass and the War Lords of Burbank
In Praise of Rolaids!
Local Television
The Farm House - the Real and the Fake
Madeleinese
Sargents
Beautiful Muzak
Clorox's Best Customer
Bums, Tumbleweeds and the Empire Avenue Overpass
The Burbank-Hannibal Connection
Clark Family Cars
Drug Abuse and Hotsy Alley
Sav-On: Focal Point for the Occult in Burbank.
King Farouk
Quadraphenia
KBHS - Radio Free Burbank
El Miradero
The Lincoln Cafe (the family business)
My Stint in the Marine Corps: 1974-1978
Citizen's Banditry
"The Cruise"
Holding Up My Pants
It's coming back.
Dad's Gag Photos!
Web Noir (and Mom Noir)
The Carroll County Accident on the Tallahatchie Bridge the Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
More memories on the 2009 Letters Page
Letters archive from 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998 and 1997
Topical guide to some letters I have received.
Various Avocado Memories reviews.
Do not use without permission.
One day you're in diapers; the next day you're gone.
But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.
I remember a place... a town... a house like a lot of houses...
A yard like a lot of other yards...
On a street like a lot of other streets.
And the thing is... after all these years,
I still look back... with wonder.
(Kevin's voiceover from the final scene in the final episode of The Wonder Years.)