When the dirt farmers and workin’ folks got blown out of Oklahoma by the dust bowl and the great depression, it wasn’t difficult for most of them to make the choice to pack it up and head for the promise of better prospects in California. For many, that promise faded rapidly in the hard conditions and low pay they found, when indeed they found work at all.
But Rex Tanner was not running from bad weather or a sick economy. Having become an associate of unsavory characters who sustained themselves from a gambling syndicate and supplemented their incomes, unbeknownst to him at the time, by robbing banks in Kansas and Nebraska, he was following some good advice given him by an FBI agent who was investigating his employers, by packing up in the dead of night and disappearing as though he had never been there. Traveling with a friend, he stopped by a CCC camp and liberated his younger brother, Morris. It was 1933 and times were bad. Stopped and delayed at the Arizona/California border, they were advised to turn back and return to from whence they came, but after 24 hours, when it became apparent they were not going to be discouraged, they were allowed to enter the golden state, thus immediately earning the title of Okies.
Eventually the Okie boys arrived in a small central San Joaquin valley town called Modesto. Rex scuffled around, working in the orchards and fields when there was work and doing any kind of manual labor he could find and of course gambling. Eventually, he found work as a plumber’s laborer and began assimilating the skills it would take to become a journeyman. When the great war came, he attended welding classes four hours every weeknight, after his regular job, for six months, so he could become certified to work in the shipyards, to earn the big money and assist in the war effort.
Those are the first memories I have, of living in Berkeley and moving back to Modesto in 1944. I started school in 1945, a five year old in the first grade. Except for the genius lawyer’s kid, Bill Brack, I was the youngest member of our first grade class at Wilson elementary school. Bill Brack’s father, a skillful lawyer, would eventually become my dad’s best friend.
In 1948 Pappy passed his California state contractors license test and opened a plumbing shop in an empty grocery store, filling station building and lot across the street from our house at 108 Las Flores St. It was an idyllic time for a young boy and his playmates.
A block or so up the street lived Van Wilber, perhaps the greatest ten year old boy that ever lived. More creative than The Beaver, more imaginative than Mayberry’s Opie, he provided endless hours of fascinating entertainment to my young and forming mind. Van Wilber could not only verbally replicate gunshots, which was utterly essential to ten year old cowboys in those days, but could separate them into rifles, pistols and shotguns. He could play a couple of dozen old standards on a ukulele , shoot marbles, spin tops, do tricks with yo-yos, ride bikes backward, climb any tree, make up games, draw cartoons, build model cities on a dirt bank, or with modeling clay on rainy days, critique horror movies and had at least a thousand comic books. He and his older brothers also introduced me to “Daredevil Hill,” where I took one of my life’s wildest rides before receiving several stitches in my right eyebrow.
Across the street and past the plumbing shop, ran Dry Creek, an incredible supply of adventure on hot summer days. In those days, it seemed safe to allow young boys to spend an afternoon with nature and with one another, as long as they stayed together and there were at least a couple of companions. BB guns and fishing poles were the standard issue of the boys from Modesto who roamed Dry Creek from Yosemite Blvd. to Thousand Oaks, (which would eventually become an exclusive area for expensive homes), from 1946 to 1955.
And the plumbing shop; a wonderful world of characters, situations and learning experiences, that shaped young minds and built strong character. In 1953, during an intense labor dispute between the Plumbing Contractors Association of Modesto and the Plumber’s Union, Pappy’s shop was torched in the night. At the time it was the biggest fire in the area in 20 years and it burned to the ground. To make matters worse, the fire insurance policy had lapsed and the loss was staggering. When he arrived on the scene, Pappy bolted past the firemen, kicked in the front door and entered the burning building, which was by then an inferno. All he could carry out was the accounts receivable. Meanwhile my uncles were driving trucks out of the yard with tires burning.
The next morning every truck except the two that had burned were re-tired and out on jobs. It wasn’t the union that was suspected of the arson. Pappy had signed a contract agreeing to their demands, exclusive of the other contractors. The contractors had in turn sued Pappy for $100,000, an enormous sum at that time, for breaking ranks contrary to their charter. When the news of the suit appeared on the front page of the Modesto Bee, it became a local joke. If memory serves, the union was striking for $3 an hour. Not a $3 an hour raise, $3 an hour. When the association realized public sentiment was against them and they had become somewhat of a public laughing stock, there were some extremely hard feelings. A night or two later the shop was on fire. After that, Pappy always kept a loaded pistol nearby. Where he came from, you took care of your own business and he became more serious about it. It took a dozen years of hard work for our family to recover from that experience. The fire was ruled an arson, but no one was ever charged with the crime.
My younger brother’s high school pal, George Lucas, made his movie, American Graffiti about our generation’s pastime of “Dragging Main Street.” We called it “dragging 10th,” because 10th St. was what we “dragged.” Eventually, they made 10th St. one way and we dragged 10th and 11th (which was one way the opposite direction). Much of my adolescence was spent on the road between Al’s Drive In, on McHenry Ave. and the “main drag,” on 10th St. “Uptown,” as the 10th & 11th St. area was commonly referred to, was another scene with a cast of unlikely and interesting characters.
One that I remember in particular, was a fellow who rented a room at one of the boarding houses on 11th St. He was somewhat older than the usual crowd, perhaps in his mid-twenties. But he hung around outside his place and came to know some of the local cruisers. It was common practice for everyone to chip in and buy a dollar’s worth of gas for one or another’s car, to drag 10th St. for the evening. Now Jack, the older guy I mentioned, didn’t have a car. But he would sometimes buy a dollar’s worth of gas for someone, so he could join the scene and perhaps come in contact with some of the local talent. There was a Regal gas station at the turnaround across from Burgess’ Drive In that, as a promotion, gave away a new Cadillac every so often at a drawing. As fate would have it, Jack once won the drawing and won a Cadillac. From then on he was known around town as: “ Cadillac Jack.” Then of course those who had supplied Jack with transportation, earlier, were now chipping in to buy gas for him. But alas, no one else from our crowd would ever again win the Cadillac.
I’ve included some of the other friends and acquaintances from my life in Modesto, in my offering here; unfortunately space and time constraints prevent me from including everyone. I hope my effort here brings back some fond memories for others and represents my own life experience in a positive way, as well as being musically accessible and enjoyable to anyone who might happen on this work.
Gary Rex Tanner
