Central Coast Senior

With this post I am taking a new approach. I don’t plan on doing things chronologically, but instead based on what I want to be sure is remembered. And with that….

After high school I went to Santa Ana Community College (now Santa Ana College) with an intent to major in physics. This did not go well as my second semester I took Electrical Physics (now called Engineering Physics II) where I received a D for the semester, and I blame my study partner for that! After that I went in search of a new career and discovered Computer Science.

My first classes were in BASIC and FORTRAN. Fortran was done on a Burroughs B5500 mainframe, kept in it’s own air conditioned room. It was programmed using punch cards.

My BASIC programming class used an HP 2000 using what we called an old teletype machine for input. your programs were saved on a paper tape punch.

While I really enjoyed taking FORTRAN, BASIC, and ASSEMBLER programming classes, I positively abhorred my COBOL class. COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was a real pain. From my perspective, righting sentences to do a calculation was ridiculous. to add two numbers you literally wrote:

Add A to B store in C

it KILLED me. So I learned the language, aced the class tests and never ever wrote a program, which of course meant I ended up with a C in the class.

As for why I claim I could have been a billionaire, the story involves a game called Star Trek that we played on the HP computer. The game looked like this except instead of a screen you might have to use a teletype machine and have each screen printed out.

There were lots of students that spent lots of hours playing this game. Including me. Well one day after class in 1976 I was walking to my car with three of my computing friends and we were discussing the star trek game. During the discussion we dreamed up setting up a business where you would tie multiple terminals (or computers today) into a single large environment where people could play in a single star trek universe to hunt klingons alone or in groups. Boy if we had only known then that 13 years later the internet would go public we could have had the first MMORPG in the world. We would have been RICH!!!!

Looking back at High School, I sometimes can’t believe what an underachiever I was. Not a slacker, just someone who did things his way regardless of the consequences. If I had been willing to put in the work, I probably could have gone to almost any college I wanted, maybe even have made it into the Coast Guard Academy as I had hoped. But; instead I did things my way, and occasionally payed the price.

Case in point. My Sophomore year I took AP English where we had a requirement to read either Dante’s Inferno or a William Shakespeare play. I tried, I mean I really tried, for minutes I tried before I gave up and said the heck with it. So I received an incomplete for that assignment. I figured no big deal I was doing pretty good in the class. In high school the quarter grades were handed to the student to take home and share with their families. While when the grades came out for the quarter and I had a “D” for English! Wait, what? I couldn’t let mom or dad see that, they would crucify me! So with a little effort I was able to change the piece of paper and make it look like a C. Problem solved. Unfortunately, the semester grades were mailed home. Mom opened them on arrival and notice the real grade and lets just say that things didn’t go well for me that evening.

Being the responsible young adult that I was I of course blamed the teacher. During my senior year I needed to take an elective class and had no interest in any of the options and then I noticed that the teacher who had given me my only D was offering a class in Mythology. Well during my time with her as a sophomore we had dedicated a whole quarter to this subject. I knew it would be a piece of cake. So I talked my best friend Brian into signing up with me and on the first day of class the teacher looked at the two of us and couldn’t understand what we were doing there as we had already covered the material in her English class. We explained it was the only thing available that particular period that we were interested in. So she shrugged and had us take a seat.

Well….

Brian and I finished the entire semesters work in the first two weeks of class and spent the rest of the semester “studying” in the library, Towards the middle of the semester the teacher felt we should do extra credit and asked us to create a crossword puzzle for the rest of the class. So over the course of the following weeks we did and the teacher seemed pleased. When we turned it in, we forgot to mention one small little detail. The way we built the crossword puzzle was by turning to the index at the back of the book and finding names and terms that neither Brian nor I knew. Figuring if we didn’t know them, our classmates never would. So we would look up the words and them turn to the appropriate page to develop the clue. Well I am reasonable sure that the class had nowhere near as much fun solving the crossword puzzle as we did in creating it. Good news was that I ended up with an A in her class.

To get out of taking PE each semester I decided I would take up at least one sport. For some strange reason, the sport I chose was wrestling.  While I was Varsity for 2 of those years, I took my junior year off, I have to admit I wan’t very good. I didn’t win much and I only remained top of my weight class in school because I took advantage of the new kids who would be in my weight class.

You see; starting with my Sophmore season, I would spend the first few weeks of practice finding our everyone that would be in my weight class on the team. I would then spend those weeks ‘practicing’ with them and ‘teaching’ them how to wrestle, In reality I used that time to beat the snot out of them so that when it became time to challenge me for the varsity slot, no one ever would.

My senior year of high school I also took advantage of the system at least until I was caught. The way the system worked was that during your sports season you were excused from PE. When the season ended you were supposed to report back to your PE class. Well when wrestling ended that year, I forgot to go back to PE and for several weeks just hung our in the library. I was eventually caught and sent back. But at least I escaped it for a bit.

I also played football for one season. My Sophmore year, which did not start off too well. At the end of my Freshman year they held the first team meeting for the Sophmore team. During that meeting they passed around a signup sheet where we put our name, weight, and position we were trying out for. Well I had always been good at football and loved knocking people over, so I put down my name, why weight (98 lb’s), and position (linebacker). After the sheet had made the rounds the coach took the sheet and began reading it out loud so he could put a face to each of the players. When he got to my name it went like this…

”Leonard Johnson, 98 pou…Hahahahaha…linebacker? Where are you?

I raised my. Hand and he looked at me and let me know that it wasn’t happening. Instead my one year consisted of specialty teams and tackling dummy for the first string.  I also set out on a mission to show up every first string that I possibly could. Occasionally I would succeed. Where upon the coach would start screaming at the first stringer about being out played by the little guy. Of course the school had the tradition of putting stickers on the helmets for touchdowns and other significant plays. Well, I am happy to report that I was the only player on the specialty teams that earned a helmet sticker, It was for tackling a the kickoff returner who had just finished running over the rest of my team, I was the last one that could stop him and I laid him out flat. Shocked everyone, but me. When the season ended, they actually suggested I go out the following year, but I knew how it would end and didn’t want to ride the bench.

Now the last sport I played, er joined, was tennis. Now my brother Doug joined the tennis team and quickly made his way to varsity for several years. Me not so much. Junior Varsity was it and then only as a doubles player with a fellow named Joe Navarro. Poor Joe, I was probably a pretty bad influence on him. I disliked the tennis coach, probably because he was had also my Geometry Teacher, where he did not appreciate my sense of humor. So when I went out for tennis, he stuck Joe with me and then relegated our practice to the handball courts most of the time.

Now practicing tennis against the handball wall gets boring pretty fast. So what’s a fella to do? In mine and Joe’s case it meant that we would gather as many tennis balls that we could lay our hands on. From there we would locate the coach out with his varsity team and launch balls at him, seeing if we could hit him. Good news is we were never caught, bad news is we never hit him.

September 1970 I started High School in Garden Grove and the absolute best thing about it was that the school was so much closer to home than either Eisenhower Elementary or Doig Jr. High. It literally felt like it was just around the corner and this was awesome. Unless it rained, now weather was not an excuse to get a ride to school and that sucked.

I remember being amazed at how large the campus was and the number of people that were there everyday.  I also remember the warnings, from upper classmates, to stay out of the Seniors way as they seemed to enjoy sticking Freshman into garbage cans. The funny thing is that in the four years I was there, I never saw it happen and only heard it happening one time, so maybe the Senior’s goal was just to scare the crap out of Freshman. If so; it worked. I know my entire Freshman year I  kept a low profile and kept looking over my shoulders.

As part of my preparation for college, I was required to take 3 years of a foreign language and as  I was planning to become a scientist or engineer, I chose German. So on the first day of class I walked into my German Class and immediately knew I  had made the right decision. German was taught by Mrs. Jenkins who I didn’t even notice that first day. The only thing that mattered was she introduced our German 1 class to the student teacher who would be teaching us that first quarter. From the moment I saw her Mrs. Jenkins voice switched from English to Charlie Brown Adult. All I heard was wah wah wah wah wah.

This also turned out to be my best quarter of German as well. The teacher was blond and beautiful and just the right person to get a geeky Freshman interested in the language. This also was the class that probably defined my entire pending high school life. The poor teacher was trying to get the entire class to make the hard h sound in German, which sounds like you are getting ready to spit. She had the class standing in the front of the room and told us that we should place our hand in front of our mouth to feel the air being expelled as we made the sound. As she walked down the line she had each of us do it. When she made it to me I put my hand in front of my mouth, made the hard h sound, then looked at my hand, said ‘ewww’ and then wiped it on my shirt. The entire class laughed except for the teacher. She just looked at me and moved on.

Looking back I have to feel sorry for Mrs. Jenkins. She had to put up with me for four years and I wasn’t the most cooperative student. While I wasn’t the lead tormentor, the true class clown took the classes with me, I gave her enough headaches. It was probably my Junior year and I was part of the Junior class spirit team. For Homecoming week we were tasked with helping the Junior class win the week long competition. One of our efforts involved playing properly themed music over the PA system before school and during breaks. I lead the effort, which meant I had the cassette tape recorder with the music on it. Also as we had picked the Pink Panther (colored Purple for school colors) as our class mascot so I had the Pink Panther song on the tape as well. One day I had the tape cued up to the Pink Panther music when I went to German Class. I stuck the machine under the desk and forgot about it. Until I was bored. Mrs.  Jenkins was at the front of the class lecturing us on something when I had a brilliant idea. As she was walking back and forth at the front of the classroom, I reached under the desk and hit play on the player. The first few notes of the Pink Panther theme song played and I quickly shut off the tape. Mrs. Jenkins looked around the room, while the class giggled, trying to figure out where the music came from. I was able to get away with that stunt just one more time. On the third attempt she caught me leaning over and quickly claimed the tape player until class was over.

My Senior year for homecoming week, one of my buddies and I spent the entire week our of German class, with the excuse that we were doing decorations for the Seniors spirit week. Actually what we did was leave class, climb on the school roof and run around for 50 minutes everyday. But hey we won spirit week!

Living in California, we always seemed to have good weather. As such; my brothers and I were always outside playing. Being sports minded we would play over the line, touch football, ride our 60’s version of skateboards, ride bikes, chase each other, or just kick balls around (at the time we hadn’t heard of soccer). Sometimes we would take a couple of dads golf clubs and play golf in the backyard, or grab our mitts to play pickle.

Now playing golf was lots of fun for awhile, until the day that mom discovered how we dug our holes for the golf balls. I preferred digging with the putter, while Doug was partial to the wedge. We had learned that the end fo the clubs when swung just right made perfect picks.

We also managed to build an underground fort with some of the other kids on the street. Pearce Ave, our street was a dead end on both sides and on the east side we felt the field was a perfect place to play. So my brothers and I with our friends managed to dig a deep hole that we covered with cardboard to build the fort. The entrance was a small hole that we could crawl through. To disguise the cardboard we covered it with some of the dirt we had dug out. This worked great until the day the someone came along and stepped on the roof. Thankfully the fort wasn’t too deep so no injuries.

Looking at the skateboards of today I have to admit some jealousy. Back in the sixties, our skateboards had wooden wheels unlike the polyurethane wheels of today. What this meant is that every little pebble, twig, or lump of paper made a perfect brake for the wheels. I can’t tell you the number of times my brothers and I would be flying down the sidewalk on our skateboards when we would hit an obstruction bringing the skateboard to an immediate stop, while we continued forward in a rather ungraceful motion, usually resulting in skinned knees. Our mom went through lots of Bactine back then.

While we had lots of fun outside, I have to admit that the main reason we were out there was that every single day, whether after school, or after breakfast in the summer, our mom told us the same thing ever day.

“Get out of the house and don’t come in until the streetlights come on!”

Needless to say she loved summer and hated winter.

After finishing the sixth grade it was time to move on to the seventh grade. So off to Dr. Leroy L Doig Jr. High. Yes back before political correctness, we went to a Junior High for the seventh and eighth grades. Today it’s now called an Intermediate school. But back then, it was a big step, we were almost in High School!!

My best memories of time here, include forgery, floods, and a few fools. I guess I should first come clean with my criminal past, in the eighth grade, I had a history class where I couldn’t stand the teacher. This was also the class just before lunch. As it turned out if your teacher approved you to work in the cafeteria for lunch, you could get oout of class 15 minutes early to help get ready. So I knew my teacher wouldn’t approve it, so I helped him a bit. I signed his name to the form and turned it in. And guess what, I was picked to work!! Well the first day came for me to report and the teached looked at me strange when I stood up and started to leave class.

“Excuse Mr. Johnson, where do you think you are going?” The teacher said.

“I have to go to the cafeteria, to get ready for lunch.” I replied.

“I don’t rememberr signing any permission slip for that” he says.

Oh-oh, I shrugged saying “Well I put the form on your desk and came by to pick up after class to pick it up and it was signed.”

He looked at me quizically and then shook his head and tells me “Fine, just don’t expect me to approve this for the next quarter”

So for a quarter I got out early.

As floods went, it maybe hard for some people to believe this, but one year we had torrential rains. It would rain hard enough that mom would actually have to get up and drive us to school, just for safety reasons. Well the school had a huge side grass area, this was so big that the Garden Grove Little League was able to build a regulation little league field for the “majors” and still have room for a snack bar and multiple other baseball fields for us non major ball players. And for the record, Doug was in the majors most of his little league career, while the closest I made it was, working in the snack bar behind home base, or working as the official scorekeeper, when my mom couldn’t make it.

Any how, with this torrential rain the main runoff was down the side of the school yard. To this day I can remember that for days the gutters were flooded. The water extended out into the school field for 10 feet in some places. It was amazing.

When we graduated from the eighth grade, I can still remember how proud my parents were that I was moving on to high school. But that was nothing compared to the joy the parents of one of my classmates. I can still remember Randy walking up to me after the ceremony and tell me that his dad was so proud that he had graduated, that he bought him a car!! A freaking car!! Turned out that Randy ended up being the only kid in our class who was old enough to drive himself home.

Doug was born on August 15th, 1957. A year and 5 months after me. We were so close that we literally grew up together as brothers, friends, and competitors. In my younger years I don’t remember a time that he wasn’t around. We both loved the outdoors and sports. Where I loved football, Doug’s passion was baseball. With these to loves we spent all our time it seemed outside playing both of these sports Any sport Where quickness and coordination was required, Doug would kick my butt. It was only in sports where strength was important did I ever outshine him.
Doug was just one year behind me in school and I think he grew tired of being my little brother, Even though there were 3 kids younger than him, they were far enough back that they really didn’t count. It’s funny but all through school we never hung out together. The few times I remember interacting with him were sort of memorable.
The first time was in elementary school where Doug was playing basketball with his friends. Somebody missed a shot and the ball rolled off the court where it was picked up by one of the other kids. Doug walked over and asked for the ball back and was told no So Doug asked again. And was told no again. Well I was standing near by and Doug yelled at me to help. So I walked over and asked the kid to give the ball back and he told me no. So then I punched him in the stomach and he bent over I hit him in the back of the head. Down he went and the ball rolled free. Doug was able to pick it up and return to the game. I wasn’t so lucky. I guess elementary school students aren’t supposed to fight, although I am sure I pointed out that in fact that there was no fight as I had laid the kid out pretty quickly. Didn’t matter I was allowed to pass the rest of the recess standing “on the line” until the school bell rung sending us back to class.
The next instance I was in middle school and Doug was still attending elementary school. I was walking home from school one day when a group of punks that were older than me stopped me and tried to pick a fight. Being smart enough to know that odd of 3 to 1 were not in my favor, I refused and then turned my back on them and continued walking. Well this seemed to irritate the two oldest ones (older than me even) so they had their sidekick who was still in elementary school proceed to kick me in the butt as I walked away. He did this multiple times. After a while it really did begin to hurt. By the time I made it home, I was in tears. So that evening I had a talk with Doug and asked him to do me a favor when he went to school the next day and have a word with the kid that had been kicking me. Doug said he would and did, the end result being that he spent some time “on the line”
Around this same time our neighbors son, John Mullins, who was Doug’s age and a friend(?). For some reason ended up hurting Doug over something stupid. It made me mad because, even though they were the same age John was big and tall and probably outweighed Doug by almost a hundred pounds. Well my brother was hurt and I found that unacceptable so I went over to their house and on their front yard, beat the crap out of him, even though he outweighed me by about the same amount, I was definitely a lot meaner. So his mom went and told my mom and I got banished to the backyard for a few days, again. As a matter of fact I think I can safely say that Doug and I spent equal parts of our youth in the front yard (not in trouble) and back yard (in trouble)
Our high school years were nothing special. With just a few highlights. First was the Tennis team. Doug of course made Varsity as a singles player, he was pretty good. I on the other hand, let’s just say I balanced it out, so I was on the JV doubles team. The only spot lower was ball boy. As one of the better players the coach, Mr. McIntosh, spent a considerable amount of time with Doug and the other varsity players getting them ready for our matches. Us lowly JV, especially the doubles players, were relegated to spending most of our time out on the handball courts hitting balls against the wall. That’s at least what we were told to do. I on the other hand had a better plan. I use to take as many tennis balls as I could gather and then spend my time on the handball courts pursuing more productive endeavors. My partner and I would take turns seeing who could hit the tennis coach with a tennis balled lobbed over the fence.

The other special highlight in high school was the trigonometry class that we shared. Doug was always a hard worker, he took his books home , studied for the tests, turned in homework when required. In other words, he did everything he possibly could to get that ‘A’. I on the other hand took my textbook out of my locker only to take to class. I was the complete antithesis of Doug. So when the final grades came out, Doug was proud that he had managed to get a ‘B’ in such a difficult class and then I showed him my grade, an ‘A’. He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

After college we both went our separate ways, I went to Santa Ana Community College and then Fullerton. Doug went straight to La Verne for his accounting degree. It was here where discovered I could be jealous and irritated at my brother at the same time. Doug was getting to enjoy the true college experience and live in a dorm, make friends, and had a place to take girls to, and he did!! And then, I had to drive up there almost every week to pick Doug up and drive him home for the weekend so he could go to his job at Disneyland. And then on Sundays drive him back to school. And of course Doug never missed the chance to tell me about his College activities. Which is funny as I don’t remember him ever talking about classes.

While at La Verne, my brother the budding entrepreneur decided that he was going to stage a skill-gimmick car rally.  Which turned into a hilarious disaster for Doug. Doug had diligently planned out the route on a map so he could figure the route, the spots for checkpoints and what the trick questions would be to help determine the reader And as usual Doug was extremely diligent in planning the route on the map. Unfortunately, the map and reality weren’t exactly the same . It turned out that one of the streets he was planning to use didn’t go over the rail road tracks like it showed on the map. So everyone following the route would have been stuck with no way to complete the race!! Needless to say Doug’s rally died a quick and ugly death.

I will continue to add more as time goes by. Doug led a full and marvelous life, I miss him and feel lucky that we were able to reconnect a bit before he passed.