September Song

My father Frank Samson in our driveway with his '57 Studebaker Silver Hawk, Pomona, Calif., 1958.  San Gabriel Mountain peaks barely visible in background. Shot with my Brownie Hawkeye camera.

September always meant going back to school following a long hot summer. In Pomona, where I grew up, it also meant the Los Angeles County Fair. 

We students were given free tickets to the fair since the Fairgrounds were located just north of the center of town. My memory tells me there was a little piggy on the face of the ticket welcoming us to the annual show of agriculture, all sorts of exhibits and of course the Midway where the giant ferris wheel was located. That Ferris wheel was so high it identified the Fairgrounds from miles away, a landmark that stood vacant and fallow for most of the year.

There was -- and may still be -- a horse-racing track at the Fairgrounds with a large grandstand. As I got older, I began to look forward to the races that were held in conjunction with the Fair. If I had earned extra cash during the summer, I would place two-dollar bets on "the ponies." I liked the long shots whose payoffs were more substantial, although I was never much of a bettor, although some of my friends were. I played my money conservatively. I enjoyed watching the horses race, their hooves pounding under long legs and slender ankles. Betting enhanced the experience. Curiously, you didn't need an ID to place a bet.

My favorite exhibit at the Fair was the photography show of mostly black and white pictures that captured unique perspectives of mundane scenes, some of people doings things as simple as eating an ice cream cone or standing on a corner. Why were they so interesting? What made me stop and study these photos? I never spent too much time wondering about it, but I was intrigued and never missed the opportunity to pass through the photo exhibit.

The Midway with its rides and music and roaming kids was a big draw for teenagers. One night I watched a girl dance, amazingly, to Ray Charles's "Hit the Road, Jack", her lithe body floating above her dazzlingly quick-moving feet, her hair hanging over her face glazed in concentration. She had become the music. Watching her, I was entranced by the rhythm and beat...  don'cha come back no more, no more... hit the road...

We met high school friends at the Midway on Friday night, hung out, enjoyed a few rides and took in the scene and when we got home our shoes were covered in black greasy oil. You never wanted to wear white shoes or pants to the Midway.

At St. Joseph's, September meant seeing kids you hadn't seen since June. The girls changed the most with their new hair cuts and smiles. Their bodies were changing, too, as they were becoming young women with budding breasts that made you realize the wonder and excitement of sexual arousal and the awkward activity of flirting, if it only meant a second look.

The nuns attempted to keep the boys and girls separated, in the classroom as well as during periods of recess. So we met at the bowling alleys and movie theaters. There was always a workaround. There were actually three bowling alleys in town! I was bowling before I knew how to drive.

September weather could be brutal in our inland valley of Southern California. Temperatures could reach into the 100s, my forearms dripping sweat on my desk and notebook after coming in from recess where we boys never seemed to stop running, playing keep-away, a crude form of rugby. We lined up at the water fountains our mouths parched from the heat, gulping and splashing each other with wonderful water, quenching every last cell in your body.

In the mid-thirties, Pomona was known as the Queen of the Citrus Belt, with groves of oranges surrounding town. We were the eastern-most city in Los Angeles County located at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains and Mt. Baldy, separated from the rest of the county by Kellogg Hill, near an Arabian horse farm and the campus of Cal Poly Pomona established on 1500 acres in 1938. The major department store was The Orange Belt. Some of the kids' parents acted on TV shows and in commercials. With its historical craftsman houses adorned with stonework from local quarries and streets shaded by leafy trees, old Pomona was early-on a taste of small-town America, a get-away from the bustle of L.A., 30 miles west. 

The rural foothills ran east from L.A. and Septembers were dry and became the peak season for wild fires. Those blazes became backdrops for L.A. noir crime novels by Ross MacDonald, The Underground Man 1971; Don Winslow, California Fire and Life 1991; and Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman, The Burning 2020, among other more recent stories.

September also meant the beginning of football season and two-a-day practices, in the morning and again in the afternoon, with full pads and blocking sleighs and drills like "blood on the moon." They began a week or so before school started and after the morning session we would meet at Pascal's hamburger stand and drain tall cups of Coke with ice. One afternoon, the coaches ended practice early because we were hacking and coughing from the heat coupled with the smog that settled against the foothills blown into the valley by onshore winds from the coast, the opposite direction of the warm Santa Ana winds that blow in from the Great Basin in winter.

The temperature reading on the bank downtown read 105 that day. The air was tinted brown.

September means life, the birth of my eldest daughter, Molly, and the loss of her mother, Linda, 29. Bittersweet September. 

My father, Frank, was also born on the 21st of the month.

September 21-24 brings the autumnal equinox, the end of summer and oncoming of fall. It announces change, a seasonal pivot. It means storms forming up north near the Aleutians, generating major swells resulting in larger waves on the West Coast, the beginning of a new season of surf. It also means the upcoming Santa Cruz County Fair, apple pie and pig races.