Part I
And in the beginning.....
I was born Edna Frahm in Bakersfield, California, in 1931. My mother had taken the train to get there to have me. She and the rest of the family lived in the small town of Mojave. It was a little town where everyone knew each other and watched over the little ones at play in the park or on the streets. There was some cars but not too much for traffic, so it was fairly safe as a kid to play step on your shadow, hide and seek, and all the children games. A few memories I had in the first 10 years of life are scattered and few, like riding a bicycle, swimming in the school, tap-dancing, tricks on the bars, acting in plays, etc. I was quite shy and got picked on a lot, but most of the ones that picked on me knew my sisters and were afraid of them, so it was done moderately. I can remember no real close friends at that time. My mom was the milk lady in town and drove the milk truck around the whole town setting out milk, butter, and whatever other products they delivered to the homes at that time, like cheese and cottage cheese. My dad somewhere in the first 10 years of my life was in my life to the point where I can remember him reading Nicodemus stories to me. They were popular kid books of the time. But, then something changed for he moved up to Tehachapi and lived alone and I would only visit on certain weekends once in a while. I was afraid of my dad, though I do not know why. He looked like Boris Karloff (a very handsome man) and was about 6 feet 4 inches or so.
I remember staying with my sister Hazel in Tehachapi and going to school alone for some time. I don't know why my mom did that to me other than my dad died about that same time and I did not see a funeral or anything, other than to be told that Dad died. I don't remember anything other than a very lonely childhood and then suddenly in school one day, a group of people came to my classroom and pointed out several children of which I was one. Next thing I knew it was a pick of several children to be taken to a location in Red Rock Canyon for a movie production that was to start Loretta Young and Robert Preston. The name of the movie was "The Lady from Cheyenne." It was fun. All us children were given different costumes to put one, which incidentally were hoop skirts, without the hoops and big brim bonnets to make us look like they did in the 1700's--in the days of the early West. IT WAS FUN. I even got to touch Loretta Young, running to her and pulling my mom to see "the tiny waist" Loretta Young had. Probably no more than 16 inches around. Mine at 10 years old was bigger I think. For the next few years I remember being on movie sets in Hollywood and being put in costumes and put in different locations, with crowds of others for filming, doing different things, walking on the sidewalk with others, playing on merry go rounds, playing ball, running, laughing, playing tag, whatever they told us to do. It was fun. Doing this had taken us to Los Angeles to live and I loved it! Streetcars to take you anywhere at all. So convenient. I would get on the streetcar on the corner where I lived and it would take me all the way to the beach going one direction and all the way to downtown Los Angeles the other way. Hollywood, if I stayed on and wanted to go that way. It was the same if you took the opposite streets that went North and South. It was a marvel of transportation. Los Angeles had it made.
The war broke out and we ended up in it in 1941 and all was suddenly changed with new laws of curfew being put upon us for our safety as well as Dark Shades to pull down to cover any lighted window and sirens to listen for. Once in a while a siren test would make everyone rush to pull down curtains and get under a table to practice, just in case one day the real thing came along--we would be used to it. But it didn't. Those years were the best years for me that I can remember. John Muir Junior High School. I had a neighbor friend to walk with and we were close. I had never had a "friend" before. Then little by little through those junior high school years, I met more and more friends and by the time we were all to high school, my friend Bonnie, who was my first friend, and lived in the same apartment four-plex, would leave together and walk about 6 blocks and pick up 2 more friends and the 4 of us would walk another 4 or 5 blocks to pick up a few more and so on and so on and by the time we got to Manual Arts High School, we had about 7 of us all together and we would do just the opposite on the way home. It was about 3 miles to school and another 3 miles home and we did have fun. Then in the 11th grade came boyfriends for us and we did not all walk together anymore. Our boyfriends would pick us up or we would take the streetcar or some such thing. We still got together though, on different occasions. I ended my school years at 11th grade, and then started my married life and the life of being a mother. My childhood days had ended.
stay tuned for part II
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