3.36 Leaving the Hive

June 1966 • La Habra ~ In 1966, Orange County was a bastion for the John Birch Society, LBJ was President, and Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination for governor. Opposition to our involvement in the Viet Nam war was growing. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll were making inroads, but had not yet hit my graduating class with the force that it would the following year. Many of the girls were still virgins (that I knew of anyway), only the surfers smoked pot, and rock and roll was still pretty tame. The boys’ hair could not touch their collars, the girls’ hems had to skim the ground when we knelt. Minimum wage was $1.25, first class postage was a nickel, and gas was 32 cents a gallon.

Larry 1966

I graduated from La Habra High that year, but four events preceded, events so wonderful who’d have thought they could happen to me, and two of them within minutes of each other. First, at Christmas, my brother and his wife gifted me a scholarship to college. I’d saved $700 from babysitting and working for Dad, but with their gift I had enough to pay my tuition, room, and board.

Granted to Cathy Clemens—
Scholarship of $500 per year for four years,
based on full time attendance at the college of her choice
starting in 1966.
Larry and Marian, Dec. 25, 1965

Then I received a high school grant of $250 for college, an equally unexpected gift. My left front capped tooth (it was broken off at the base when I took a backswing hit by a baseball bat the summer I turned ten) had snapped off again and I was excused from the auditorium scholarship presentations to go to the dentist. I was greatly relieved not to have to stand up in front of the whole school to accept it. They gave it to me anyway, though I was willing to forgo it; the prospect of facing that many people terrified me. I received the award because Mrs. Brown, my business class and typing teacher who’d taken me under her wing, recommended me. The school counselor interviewed me to see if I qualified, though it certainly wasn’t based on grades as I was a “B” student, at best. I felt awkward when she asked about my family and why I lived with my sister; I seldom mentioned my home situation to anyone except a few friends. She asked if my sisters were as pretty as me. I hesitated, then told her no. I wished that I hadn’t said that they weren’t. It was a dumb thing to do and I felt like I betrayed them. (Years later, I found out that Mrs. Brown provided the scholarship money from her own pocket.)

Cathy, senior 1966

And then in early June, a letter from San Jose State arrived announcing my acceptance for the fall of 1966. Sallie Collier and I would be going together and I was overjoyed! Not fifteen minutes later our blue wall-phone rang.

“Clemens! My parents are sending me to Europe for the summer and they want me to take a friend. I’m inviting YOU!”

Laura 1965/66 LHHS

Laura had ferried me to and from school for two years, and now she was taking me to Europe! And her parents gave each of us $500 in spending money! I was struck by their huge generosity and at the same time embarrassed to have them do that for me. They didn’t really even know me and I felt like I didn’t deserve it, but I was ecstatic. It was the happiest fifteen minutes of my life, until I got off the phone. Carleen, holding my acceptance from San Jose State, was listening to my conversation with Laura. Her shoulders curved inward and her neck bent down. I saw the look on her face. I saw the look of resentment, of jealousy, of missed youth and missed opportunities, worse yet, of no opportunities offered to her at all, her arm hanging down, my notice in hand, her shadows passing over her saddened face. I saw it, but I wasn’t thinking about her, I was thinking about me. I wanted her to be happy for me, but she couldn’t, not right then. My feelings were hurt. I didn’t say anything; instead I turned and went down the hall to my bedroom.

Maybe the break between us needed to happen. Maybe she didn’t know how hard it was going to be for me to move away, how afraid I was, how I wasn’t looking forward to being on my own in college. Maybe it was the only way she could let me go. No longer my mother, she was my sister again, and it was time for me to leave the hive.

In June, along with 665 other seniors in my class, I graduated from high school. Never again would I have to sit in the quad and listen to a blaring “Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann” rockin’ and a reelin’ from the school sound system; for that alone, I was grateful to be leaving La Habra High.

LHHS class of 1966 senior photo, taken at Hillcrest Park

Under my cap and gown I wore a soft butter-yellow outfit that I’d worked on all semester in my homemaking class. It was a beautiful cotton/linen with satin lining, an invisible zipper up the back of the dress, and five hand-bound buttonholes on the collarless jacket. Dad and Marie drove down from San Francisco to attend my graduation ceremony and my Aunt Elizabeth came from Laguna Leisure World where she lived upon here retirment. Carleen and Chuck of course were there, and of course my mother was not; with Dad attending she probably wasn’t invited, though, I don’t think we even knew where she was.

Cathy, Chuck, Carleen, graduation

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
All rights reserved.

Aunt Elizabeth, Dad, Cathy, Carleen, June 1966