Alumni Travel Back in Time
I guess it might be said that I have been an alumnus of San Diego State since 1930. In the first and second grade I was a student in the teacher training unit of the San Diego State Normal School located at Park and El Cajon Boulevards. This school was the forerunner of San Diego State College, which was the forerunner of San Diego State University. With the opening of SDSC, the elementary school became part of the city school system and was henceforth known as Alice Birney Elementary School.
At the time, there was considerable speculation as to why San Diego State College had been located “way out there”. After all, between 30th Street and La Mesa there was little but scattered houses and chicken farms. And La Mesa, Lemon Grove and El Cajon were nothing more than hamlets. Two other “much more desirable areas” had been available. One was the undeveloped part of Balboa Park east of Park Blvd. The other was near the tip of Point Loma. It was generally thought that real estate developers were responsible for locating the college in an area in which “no one lived and no one ever would.”
Following my graduating from high school, sixteen dollars in hand for tuition, I became a student at SDSC. I immediately fell in love with the school. We freshmen were most enthusiastically welcomed by the elderly senior Associated Students president and other survivors of a previous geological age.
With an enrollment of 2,200, SDSC was a very friendly school. In spite of being a “streetcar college” there was considerable spirit. A high percentage of the student body would assemble on the east side of the Aztec Bowl to watch our football team play such powerhouses as Whittier, La Verne, Occidental, Redlands and Santa Barbara State College. Fresno State and San Jose State usually disassembled us.
Fraternities and sororities were not affiliated with nationals and there were no fraternity or sorority houses. Monday night meetings were held in the living rooms of the more affluent members. One measure of judging whether to bid a rushee was to ascertain the size of said rushee’s living room.
Most fraternities put on an annual dance, usually in the Mission Beach Ballroom. One fraternity sponsored a dance known as THE FORD FROLIC during which a Model T Ford was raffled off. There being a shortage of Model T’s, a representative of the fraternity would then negotiate to buy it back for the next year’s dance. The opening bid was usually twenty dollars.
December 7, 1941 was a warm and cloudless day in San Diego County. The fraternity to which I belonged was having a picnic at Warner Hot Springs. One member arrived late and left his date in the car to rush up the hill yelling, “It’s on the radio! It’s on the radio!” He said the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. We were most unexpectedly at war. Suddenly no one was hungry. Everybody wanted to go home. To this day I wonder what goodies might have been in that unopened picnic basket my date had brought.
Returning to San Diego, the streets seemed all but empty. There was little traffic and few children were outside playing. Families stood frozen about their radios listening to the repetitious news. How could this have happened? The Japanese had successfully bombed Pearl Harbor sinking a major portion of our fleet. Fortunately, our aircraft carriers had been out to sea or the loss would have been even more catastrophic.
Approaching SDSC the following morning, we were greeted by a manned anti tank gun at the entrance to the college and a 30 caliber water cooled machine gun at the top of the tower. An army reconnaissance unit had made the school their headquarters and had taken over the teacher education building for a barracks. Half tracks, trucks, weapon carriers and jeeps were parked behind the science wing.
To further complicate our disastrous situation, on the Thursday following December 7th, Hitler declared war on the U.S.
Car owners were ordered to cover all but one square inch of their headlights with black electricians tape. Even so, we were instructed to drive utilizing only our dim lights. Fun on a foggy night. Gasoline was rationed. All street lamps were turned off. Curtains had to be closed so that no light could escape from houses. Neon signs were turned off and store fronts became dark. Block wardens were appointed. Barrage balloons were tethered near aircraft factories. The factories were camouflaged with netting into which chicken feathers had been affixed. Lice rained down on workers stepping out into the yard during breaks. Perhaps this is where the phrase, “is something bugging you?” came from.
A preparedness draft had been in place for about a year for those at least 21 years of age. Draftees were to serve 12 months of active duty and then be placed in the reserves. There was a popular song, “Good-bye Dear, I’ll Be Back in a Year.” With the advent of Pearl Harbor they would not be discharged.
For many of the coeds the war was an exciting time inasmuch as there were hundreds of young bachelor officers anxious to escort them on dates to officers clubs. Had they possessed the stamina, the girls probably could have had a date every night of the week. Many of the girls dropped out of school to work in defense plants and returned to school when the boys came back.
A real morale booster for those of us in the service was a monthly news letter edited by geography professor, Lauren Post. We would write where we were and what we were doing and in turn would read of where others were and what they were doing. All of us looked forward to the “mail call” that would give us the latest copy.
In the hallway adjacent to the main archway there was a bulletin board featuring photos of the students in the service. Gold stars soon appeared next to some of the photos.
The war over, the school became jammed with discharged GI’s. Many were married and lived in what came to be known as “Aztec Terrace” in the Midway-Rosecrans area. This was housing initially constructed for defense workers. Most of the GI’s were very serious students trying to catch up with the years they had lost.
To provide classrooms for the ever-increasing enrollment, Quonset huts were constructed on various areas of the campus. These corrugated metal structures proved to be sweat boxes on hot days and, having no means of being heated, cold storage boxes on wintry days.
For those eligible, The GI Bill paid for everything – tuition, books, lab fees. In addition single GIs received $90 per month and married GIs received $120. The GI Bill was thought to be most generous of Congress. And, it was. But, there was a reason other than gratitude for its passage. It kept hundreds of thousands of returning veterans from seeking employment in a shrinking market changing from a wartime to a peacetime economy. Thus thousands of veterans, who might not otherwise have be able to go to college, earned degrees to fill the need of a country entering a new era.
The attitude of the veterans like me was both very serious and a bit irreverent. I wrote a “humor” column for the AZTEC, then published twice weekly. In my writings I frequently came to the edge, if not over it. The 1940s was still a bit of a Victorian era. One column in particular drew ire from on high. It was a story of a Don Quixote type character whose donkey tired of the windmill charging nonsense and turned into a monster. To which Quixote said, “Oh, my God, finals are coming up and my ass is a dragon.” Daring for the time, but nothing now.
John Orcutt
