James Laird - "Settling in at Lark Ellen Home for Boys" - Page 2

The window between Ken and my beds made a good place to run a long antenna for our crystal sets and later home build radios. A small room at the end of the dorm was a study area and craft room. We made rubber band powered model air planes and flew them from the top of the outside stair landing to the room. If the wind was right they would go quite a ways or dive into a disaster crash. Mom Cassidy got us some butcher paper to line two walls of the room where we drew pictures of WWl as seen in the movie "All's Quiet on the Western Front" and hung our planes from the ceiling. All were WWI types.

Ken and I discover the library down stairs and used the many great volumes of encyclopedias to research on making parts for radios. That led us to all the other books like the Motor Boat Boys series, Tom swift and many others. I often sat reading into the small hours before going to bed and as long as I was up on time and did okay in school it was approved.

We often had what we call coaches living there. They lived in the old bungalow and were advance teacher students at UCLA. One was Mr. Peek. I did not know him while he was there, but later when he worked for the summer at Camp Seely where we slept out under the stars a couple weeks during the summer. He was the boys vice principal a Emerson Jr. High while I attended there. Another was Chet Whitney. He was there once before I arrived and came back for an advanced degree. He taught me and another boy to drive his Plymouth. Later while the principal of the Santa Anna High School he rescued flood victims and housed them in the high school gym and received national recognition for it.