Page 62 - People & Places In Time

Growing Up In Exeter
Not long after writing about my friend Marsha Voice, whom I had seen but once in fifty years; our friend in common Barbara Young called to tell me that Marsha was comming to Visalia for a class reunion. Our opportunity to have lunch in Exeter at Cafe Lafayette.
restaurant. For anyone who had lived in the Visalia area, this was a favorite. The original restaurant had been started in downtown Visalia by the Estrada family. To this day the recipe for their Tostada Compuesta is a holy grail to many who remember. Anyway, this lunch was the last time I saw Velma. I know my mother and her would speak on the phone, but they also would never see each other again. Velma eventually moved back to the bay area to be nearer her daughter and though I’ve not heard, without doubt she has passed on.
Marsha Voice
If not the first, then surely the second friend I knew Marsha Voice was Bert and Velma’s daughter, and though two years younger, we were playmates until the bank transferred Bert to Tulare; so, they moved be- fore Marsha could begin kindergarten. The good news is, the two families remained in contact. The families would often get together, and Marsha and I would still kind
of grow up together. While living in their home behind College of the Sequoias in Visalia, we were teenagers. I recall sharing our interest in the latest 45 rpm records, while sitting on the floor in her bedroom; with its pink shag carpeting and a canopy bed. The one record I remember listening to was “LaBomba” by Richie Valens. A good friend of mine today is Barbara Morgens-Young, and I recently discovered that she had been close friends with Marsha at Mount Whitney high school in Visalia; I can’t help but treasure serendipitous connec- tions such as this.
Time and distance take a toll on friendships without some effort, but more likely our lives take far different paths and the opportunity isn’t there. Marsha, by the end of high school was with her parents in San Francisco. She left for college at UOP and we eventu- ally lost touch. I know Marsha met her future husband in San Francisco while celebrating her graduation from stewardess training at “Perry’s” and that he is now a suc- cessful developer in the bay area. She did come down from San Francisco with her husband to my first wed- ding in July of 1972. This was a 110-degree day in Fresno, and he suffered heatstroke and I was unable to meet him during that trip. A few years ago, maybe thirteen
or fourteen, I would finally meet him at the AT&T golf tournament in Pebble Beach when we accidently ran into each other. Marsha recognized me from a distance and caught my attention, before I saw her. It was nice seeing her once again forty years since the last time, though too a briefly. Now I understand Marsha lives in Lafayette, California, so it’s up to me now, to make the effort.
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When the Voice family moved out, my aunt Pearl with husband Ralph Heckman moved in. Pearl is my father’s older sister. So now brother and sister live back door to back door nearly across the street from their parents; my grandparents. Adding to this family en- clave were my aunt Carrie Whitney and uncle Emmitt, my grandfather’s brother and sister, and they lived in a house another block north, also along ‘B’ street.
The Heckman’s were the first of our two families to have a TV, so dad would take me over on Saturday nights to watch boxing with Ralph; though I was only six or seven years old, I can still recall watching the great, Sugar Ray Robinson fight. They had a golden col- ored Australian Shepard named “Browne” that became the first dog to which I became attached. We were certainly back and forth to the Heckman home as well, but it was not the same relationship we had with Bert, Velma and Marsha.
149 North B Street
As I said, the first home on Palm that I lived
in, was not the home where I developed the sensibili- ties that served as influence on the rest of my life. This will happen at the house sitting catty-corner from my parents’ home. Both of my parents worked; dad, at his new Ford dealership, Sierra Motor Sales; and mom as
a schoolteacher at Wilson Grammar School. For this reason, I spent much of my time, when not in school, with my grandparents. Their house at 149 ‘B’ Street was next door to the Coble family home. The back yards of these two homes were not separated by a fence but ran together as one large playground for my friend Phillip Coble and me.
This special wide-open place was populated
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