Blog 18: The Move 1970

Mom & Dad having fun.

In my last blog, I summed up my college experience and crazy times in Isla Vista near UCSB.  Things were indeed crazy everywhere.  It was tough to navigate the waters of the 60's and 70's.  Sometimes I felt like I was gasping for air to rise above the clouds of confusion and sometimes the despair of my generation.   Flower generation meets false euphoria through drugs, meets bullets, meets civil unrest, sprinkled with hope.   Even before many of us started life outside the diploma circle of high school, we had to face the deaths of many young men that went to Viet Nam.  They were our friends.   I had to just tell myself to keep moving forward.  That meant making sure that my education didn't stop with an AA degree.   

From there I transitioned into the next phase of my life as a newlywed. We wouldn't leave Santa Barbara for another several months.   San Diego State College as it was known then had accepted us into the tag program.    My husband and I accepted my parents generous offer to move back in with them.  It was awkward to move back into my old bedroom, but we all got used to it.   They were very gracious, but it is always difficult to go back home.  At least that was the case with my generation, that seemed to clamor for independence.  

Classes started pretty quickly when we got there.  It was engineering for my husband and art for me.  With an art major/history minor decision, all I had left to do was to pick my classes.  I chose to take a little different direction within the arts, and focused on sculpture and ceramics.  This would round out my experience, having taken mostly drawing, design and painting at SBCC.  My art classes were in the original art building at San Diego State. 

It was kind of funky building and a place of refuge in a huge sprawling campus.   Perched above the 8 freeway the art department sat on the perimeter of the campus.  After my ceramics class I had to make my way across campus to other classes.   I was the recipient of many looks, not because I was hot, ( wink, wink) but because I wore seemingly more clay on my clothing than I left on the potter's wheel.   Often I would see the same people in the elevator.   As I began to utter the words of an explanation someone would say "Ceramics huh?" 

The year I/we graduated, San Diego State College changed their status to what we now know it as San Diego State University. It wouldn't seem a big deal now I guess, but it changed the status of the degree on the diploma. My most recent endless journey through memory boxes found me arriving at the catalog of names of those that graduated with me. One of the people now in my life was there then too, in the art department at the same time.  We graduated the same year and didn't know it.  She, a couple years younger didn't take any breaks as I did.  Regardless when I saw her name it was exciting, even many years later.  She has been my good friend for about 50 years.  She reminded me of something I had forgotten about that day, it was pouring down rain on us during the graduation ceremony. There is a life's  analogy there somewhere.  

After about a semester with my parents we decided to find a place away from Solana Beach, nearer to campus.  So we ventured out and it just so happened another friend of mine and her daughter needed a place to stay so we decided to rent a place in Southeast SD County.  I am not sure if we were exactly aware of this fact when we rented, but we were the only white people in the Euclid neighborhood.  It truly was an experience.  We made friends with one of our neighbors but mostly kept to ourselves.  One night the three of us were going out for the evening, and discovering we had forgotten something ran back to and into the house with the engine running.   Sadly, I had left my purse on the floor board and someone took the opportunity to take it in the few minutes we were inside.  The purse was later discovered in the alley, and the contents thrown about.  Lesson learned.  Or so we thought.  

 We decided that we would move even closer to San Diego State.  One afternoon we completed our packing after having rented a sweet Spanish style house, closer to campus.  We had asked one of our neighbors from the Euclid neighborhood who we had made friends, with to help us with the task.  Looking back I am not exactly sure how the events unfolded that led to the assault, but we believed that our landlord thought we were all moving in together.  Our friend of color prompted an immediate eviction. The woman showed up and started yelling for us to "get out".  She didn't want an explanation.  We were in shock.  She pushed me as I stood in the living room at the screen door, and I nearly fell down a flight of stairs as the screen door opened.  She was crazy.  In this day and age her actions would have prompted a law suit.  Our minds weren't focused on such things then, and we needed to find a place fast.  No one wanted a repeat of the insanity that ensued when we were evicted.

We stayed there for about a month then found another rental, in University Heights.  We had a great landlord.  They were Greek and I don't remember if they had a pet goat or they grilled goat on the barbeque.  Either way, more on that later.   In comparison to the last two places we lived in or attempted to live in, this would be home for a while. 

Getting settled in our last rental hopefully.