We invented the "Sidewalk Surfer".

The Boys of  Claremont were the first to make working skateboards. This was in 1961, as I recall. One member of the group saw an article in Popular Mechanic's magazine showing a simple design for converting a metal roller skate into a "Sidewalk Surfer." Like I said the design was primitive and needed refinement. The first step was to separate the the metal skate into two parts. The back part of the skate was nailed or screwed onto a 24" section of a 2X4 piece of wood. The front part of the skate was likewise attached to the front of the board. This created your "Sidewalk Surfing" machine. The device required you start by placing one foot on  the board. Then use the other foot to start pushing on the sidewalk to build up speed. When sufficient speed was achieved, the other foot was brought onto the board. This is were the surfing part began. The trick was to balance yourself on a 2X4 piece of lumber without falling off. Crashing could result in bruised egos or broken bones. Once you got the hang of how it worked, then you were ready for more speed. The search for the long run began. Incline was what you were looking for. In Claremont that was no problem. Since the city was built up against the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, finding a hill was easy.
We tried little hills. Enough to give you the speed but you still felt like you were in control. Straight run with a gentle sloping to a flat area was the ideal situation.
Were we satisfied with what we had mastered? No way!  We were the Boys of Claremont and challenge and danger was our motto.
There was a new housing development being built in the hills above Claremont. The elevation was about 200 to 800 feet above that of the city. The roads had been put in but no houses. It was the ultimate run. It had wide lanes and winding roads going to the bottom. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, since we were still in jr. high, we had not been exposed to the science of physics. We didn't understand friction or inertia. First of all,  we were a 150 to 170 lbs object standing on a 2X4X24" piece of wood supported by four narrow metal wheels with unlubricated ball bearings inside. I don't remember the formula to calculate the amount of weight/force exerted on each metal wheel but I'm sure it exceeded its design.
Anyway we started down from the top of the road. Everything seemed to be going okay for me until I felt my skateboard start to shake violently.  I bailed off the board and took giant running steps until I gained control and was able to stop. I went back and found my skateboard only discover that my rear wheel had disintegrated. No wheel, no ball bearings, just a nub of an axle. First lesson learned. Friction multiplied by the force per square inch created enough heat to melt metal skate wheel bearings. As I stood there scratching my head, I looked down the hill to see my buddies approaching the first curve in the road. Instead of turning, I saw all of them ejected off their boards and fly through the air and make unacrobatic landings in the dirt beside the road.
Since to do this was my idea, I felt a little responsible for what had just happened. I watched to see if anybody was seriously injured. Luckily, everyone got up and dusted themselves off. As I stood there watching, I saw John motioning me to come on down. When he raised his arm and I could see blood flowing down the underside of it. I held my skateboard high in the air and pointed to the broken rear wheel to indicate I could not continue, thank god!
That's when I learned about inertia. That a body in motion tends to stay in motion and to change the direction requires the ability to apply energy to change the direction of that motion. Unfortunately, those who bit the dirt, found out the hard way that rigid metal skate wheels don't turn.
This didn't stop our quest for the perfect run. That was to go down the San Antonio flood spillway. But that's another story.

The Boys of Claremont

Like I said before, we moved to Southern California in the late '50s.  Remember, Pomona because of Romona?  Anyway, we lived in Pomona for just a few months before moving to Claremont, California.  Don't asked me why. I didn't have any siblings with names rhyming with Claremont. Anyway, it turned out to be a good move on my parents part.  Claremont is located on Route 66. It's about 30 miles east of Hollywood and about 15 miles west of Cucamonga.

Claremont is best known for its five elite colleges and a number of schools of Theology.  We did have about every religion represented there.  Most noted were the Quakers who founded Claremont.  Claremont is nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains with Mt. Baldy as it highest peak at a little under 13,000 feet.

Claremont had train tracks running through it, the Santa Fe Railroad to be exact.  You later learned the tracks were also a status dividing demarcation.   You either lived below the tracks; above the tracks, which is old Claremont; or above Route 66 in the foothills. This was new Claremont.  Most of this is where the orange groves once stood, but many had been cut down to build homes.  I guess that's what they call progress?

Anyway, we lived below the tracks.  We arrived in Claremont in mid June.  So I had about  three months to get acclimatized both weather wise and social wise.  I was entering into the last year of what they called "junior high." In the South, I would have been a freshman in high school.  So this "junior high,"  was made up of seventh, eighth and ninth graders.
Remember, I had just finished my eighth year of school with the-nun-from-hell. Our entire graduating class in eight grade consisted of about twenty kids or so.

I remember arriving at school on my first day. When we pulled up to unload, my first thought was "holy shit" there must be a thousand kids in this school. Back then there was no such thing as orientation.  No, you were on your own. No help, just follow the crowd and hope they led you to where you were supposed to go. 

Now Claremont being a college town and progressive, had instituted an new type of school system that year called the "modular system."  It's what they used in a college teaching setting.  Instead of having one teacher for all your subjects, you had one teacher for each subject, plus a home room teacher. 

Well,  I was entering the system blind. No friends, no social network, no previous knowledge of how things worked.  It turned out to be one the most stressful days of my life. I still have nightmares about finding my classroom or forgetting to go to a certain class. I think I got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the experience. But I had learned to endure, and made it through the first day with a few mental scares and a bad headache. As the days, weeks and months went by, I began to get the hang of it.

Go to your home room first.  This is where you got the news of the day. You found out if a class had been canceled or changed to a different room.  It was also were you went to socialize and to get to know who's who. Who is the big man on campus? Who were the most popular girls? And most of all, who were the bad asses? We had a whole lot of those.  The term "gang" became part of my vocabulary.  I quickly learned that you had to be part of a group to be protected from the gangs.  Being a loner was a very risky business.

Although I was living below the tracks, I found that I had no trouble being accepted by kids from "Old Claremont" or the foothill folks.  In fact, my best friend was from an "Old Claremont" family and lived above Route 66.

I tended to move in three circles of friends.  I had my friends in the neighborhoods below the tracks, my above the track friends and my foothill friends.  My three circles were  interwoven. Sort of like a color wheel circle or the circles you saw in a statistics class.  I easily moved in and out of the three circles and seemed to be accepted by all.  I guess I just didn't know any better. Where most kids seemed to stick with the kids from the hood, I guess I decided to expand my hood. Like I said, I just didn't know any better.

By the end of ninth grade our group had begun to gel. We were Ken, John, Dan, Steve, Richard, Stan , Phil and me.  This was the core of the group with others entering and leaving. But we pretty well stuck together through high school.  Within the group you had your inner core of friends. These were the ones you could rely on, the ones who had your back and you had theirs. For me that was Ken and Steve.

I think I met Ken in a drafting class.  We seem to hit it off immediately.  We liked the same music, sports and girls.   Even after graduation we went to the same college for the first couple of years. During the summer we were both firefighters with the U.S. Forest Service.  We both entered the military service at the same time during the Vietnam War.  After leaving the service, Ken got married and I moved to Northern California.  We stayed in touch for awhile, but then went our separate ways.  But Ken and I were like brothers and I'm sure when I do catch up with him again, we'll find that the friendship has endured. 

Steve got married after the first year of college, dropped out and became a hippie. We heard he had moved to the desert and was managing a motel or something. We all sort of lost track of him but I'm sure he's still out there doing his own thing.

I have recently made contact with Dan. We are beginning to talk about our Claremont days. Dan is an ex-marine and doesn't let me forget.  He's retired and living with his wife in Laguna Beach, California.  Dan writes stories for a local newspaper and for his nephews. He is also starting to tell the story of  "The Boys of Claremont."

Oh, by the way, I married a Claremont girl who lived below the tracks.

Mop Up and Clean Up

We had now been about five days on the fire. It had been considered fully contained. But here was still work to do before we could leave the fire line. We had gone all this time without bathing or changing our clothes. We were all dirty, smokey and bone tired. But we still had to do "Mop Up." This was when you go into burned areas and look for anything that is still burning and could reignite the fire.

The burning stumps were the hardest to deal with. If it was from a pine tree, the stump and roots had plenty of pitch and tar to keep burning for weeks. You would have to chop at it with your Pulaski tool. This tool was half axe and half pick. Other tools we used was the brush hook and the McCloud (half rake, half hoe) and, of course, the shovel.

Chain saws were beginning to be used. But they were still too big and bulky to be used for the work we were doing. The brush hook was our elite tool. It lead the way. Cutting at a 60 degree angle, it could fell a four inch diameter tree in one swing. The Pulaski came second finishing off what the brush hook started and attacking the root system. Next came the shovels clearing brush and vegetation. Last but not least came the McCloud. With the raking and hoeing motion you got the area down to dirt.

Let's see, we were mopping up the area. If we couldn't completely stop the stump from burning, we would cover it with dirt to smother the fire and prevent sparks from escaping. We did our mop up operation as we advanced down the mountain toward the fire camp. We arrived off the mountain in the early afternoon.  As soon as we approached the camp, we picked up the smell of smoke in the air. But this was a good smell of steaks cooking. The mess tent was set up and operated by the convicts. We just called them "cons". They were brought them in to do the cooking and also to fight fires. They were excellent at both jobs. We had been eating C-rations for five days and the smell of real food almost caused a panic in the ranks.

Like I said before, we had not bathed for the past five days and there were no shower facilities at fire camp. But some of the other crews had discovered what this area did have, hot springs, Willet Hot Springs, to be exact. Nature's own hot tub. For tired aching muscles, this was a Godsend.  All you saw was a trail of dirty jeans, shirts, socks, boots and yes, underwear. It was definitely skinny dipping time. In God's Country were all "al natural" and loving it. Soaking in that hot water after five days of dirt and smoke was almost spiritual in nature.

After the "Johnny Cash Fire," we adopted his "Ring of Fire," as our crew's official song. Paul, our crew leader, declared if we heard his song on the radio, we'd be going out on a fire. Remarkably, it turn out to be fairly accurate. 

In closing, I want to mention and pay tribute to the twelve members of the El Cariso HotShot crew who died on Novemeber 1, 1966. We worked with this crew on several occasions and on a fire in the Cleveland National Forest. That was their home base. We all felt a kinship with the crew. May they rest in peace.

Fire Triangle

After our leap from the helicopter, we assembled our gear and began an assault on the fire. We were going to try to get ahead of the fire and cut fire breaks in order to starve the fire of fuel. A fire has three components: Air, Heat and Fuel.  Take away any of the three elements and the fire dies. Since we  couldn't remove the air or the heat, fuel was the only solution.

An air tanker was used to drop fire suppressant liquid onto the fire. Back then it was called DAP. It was a mixture of water, seeds and fertilizer. It would cool the fire and coat the surrounding area with this thick pink compound. Plus, the fertilizer and seeds would help in the growth of new vegetation.  The crew boss, or foreman, would call in for a drop.

An airplane, called the "bird dog," would come in first. He would locate the drop zone and radio the position to the pilot in the tanker.Then the "bird dog" would fly low over us and wag his wings. This was the warning to get clear of the area where the air tanker was going to make its drop.                                                                                                    

The tanker could hold about 3,000 gallons of this liquid. The total weight would probably be around 40 tons. Something you definitely didn't want to be under it when it hit. The tanker would come in low and then open its bomb bay doors and pull up sharply, releasing a massive cloud of pink looking liquid. Being an air tanker pilot is probably the most dangerous job in firefighting.  Many tanker crews have died while fighting wildfires.

We would clear the area, although some of the guys would try to get downwind of the drop so they could get in the spray of the cloud. It would coat your hard hat and clothes with pink droplets. It was sort of a badge of courage to the other crew members, showing that we had been on the front lines and in the thick of it.

As we moved along the ridge of the mountain, we were aware there was a raging fire below us. We moved cautiously, but with confidence in our ability to get the job done. Everyone was told to stay in sight of each other. We had learned to know about fire and to know the directions of the winds. Fire travels uphill by day and downhill by night. The winds were the tricky part. In mountains, winds tended to swirl, change directions and go shooting up into the air. Wind tunnel effects were common, because of the changing terrain.

The winds that day were fairly calm, due to it still being early morning. But we knew, when the sun heated the air and the cool sea breezes flowed in, the updrafts would start and  it would be a whole different story. Remember, that's why the Condor chose this area, because it has tremendous updraft.

It was about midday when we started down into a small valley. We were going to start making our cut across the face of the mountain. As we proceeded we began to hear this roaring sound below us. There was no visible smoke, but you knew this sound was not good. What was happening, the fire was burning clean. The fuel air mixture was just right to produce an almost smokeless fire. What was also happening, the fire was super-heating all the vegetation in front of it. The volatile oils from the plants and trees were being released into the air.

When the mixture of air and fuel reaches the ignition point, you have what is referred to as a "blowup" situation. We had reached that point. The order to evacuate the area was given. We all ran back in the direction we had come from. As we were running, the brush and trees we had been working in, suddenly burst into flames, sending fire shooting twenty feet into the air.

We had survived. Some guys had suffered a few minor burns, but nothing serious. For the next five days we fought skirmishes with this fire, doing what we could to knock down hot spots. We set backfires and did all we knew to stop the advancing flames. But Mother Nature had other ideas. The fire continued to burn despite the best efforts of all those involved.  It didn't stop until a cooling ocean fog blanketed the area. This caused the fire to give up its heat and die. All told, the fire destroyed 508 acres of the California Condor habitat and killed 49 of the endangered birds.

During the trial that followed, Johnny Cash was unrepentant.  It's reported he told the judge that it was his truck that caused the fire and that "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." Mr. Cash was sued by the federal government and charged with  $125,172 in fines. Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001. Mr. Cash never served any time in prison for this, and in fact was never in prison, although he continued to cultivate his outlaw image of the "Man in Black."

Burning Ring of Fire

As we proceeded up the canyon, it was becoming quite evident that we were not going to reach our object doing what we were doing.  The weather was hot and we were starting to get some strong breezes. You learned in basic firefighting that fire travels uphill by day and downhill by night. With these winds, we could see that the fire was building in intensity.

The mushroom cloud was being stoked by the updraft of air and there was nothing we could do but watch it. Fire is an interesting phenomenon. It acts like it's alive and has broken free from its restraints. The genie in the bottle effect. It hops, skips, dances and spins wildly. It was fascinating to watch, but always deadly. We had all learned from our fire bible what fire could do. How it would kill you if you ever forgot or let your guard down.

We proceeded up the ridge, Everyone was starting to realize that we would not be able to reach the fire before nightfall. The foreman was beginning to become concerned. Remember, communications back then was primitive at best. There were no cell phones. They used these bulky WWII radio phones to try to contact the base camp. In mountainous terrain they seldom worked. If you didn't receive a new directive, you just continued on. We ended up spending the night in the middle of a burned out area. We were carrying C-rations and water so were survived the night there.

The next morning we were recalled to base camp. A new plan had been made. We would be helicoptered up to the fire. Helicoptered?  Most of us had never been in any aircraft, let alone a helicopter. This helicopter was one of those two man versions with a big glass bubble on the front and this erector set for a tail.

You were told to duck your head, so the whirling blade would not decapitate you.  When I got into the seat and strapped in, the pilot looked at me and said, "When I tell you to jump, you jump or we'll crash! Do you understand me?" I said, "Yes, sir!" 

As we took off, I watched the ground move away from me and saw the crew members waving. As we flew towards our destination, I looked out on the terrain below. It looked so different. Where we had been just a day ago quickly went by. The view from the cockpit was of billowing clouds of smoke. The pilot circled a small patch of ground that was the  drop zone.   I could now see some of the guys who had flown in a bit earlier. The pilot said, "Okay, unbuckle your seat belt. Step out and stand on the skid." I did as I was instructed. The helicopter came within about five feet of the ground. He shouted, "Jump!" I jumped  and hit the ground and rolled. I looked back to see the helicopter exiting at about a 45 degree angle.  I thought to myself, "That was cool, lets do it again."