2020-04-01 Los Angeles Union Stock Yards Memories and Others in the 1950s

2020 Apr 16********My memories of the Los Angeles Union Stockyards, where I grew up. We lived in Compton, at 12812 S. Thorson Street, across the street from Stephen C Foster elementary School. There was the Compton Drive-in Theater between the school and Rosecrans avenue, now it’s a housing tract. Actually our side of Thorson Ave. was in the County, not Compton. When we first moved there in 1948 (I was a year old), our house had a different address: 1343? Locust. The house was the second one south of the corner of Thorson and McMillan, Mr. And Mrs. Ammon Hill lived in the corner house.

********Every few weeks my dad would make me get up Saturday morning and go with him to his barber shop in the LA Union Stock Yards. We would drive up Atlantic Blvd to Salt Lake, which ran alongside railroad tracks. Then up through Maywood to Downey Road, which was the address of the whole stock yards, including the barber shop. One time my dad crossed Leonis Bl. and he told me that Leonis buried his servant on the property so he could call it a cemetery. I don’t know where my dad found that out, and I don’t know if it’s true.

********In the photo, the main building can be seen with the entrance in the archway in the center. In front, in the oval that’s between the roadways, there were four large boulders piled up with bronze plaques, to make a monument to the Battle of La Mesa that took place there. When they tore down the Stockyards they moved the monument and boulders to the front of the Vernon Police Department, where they stand today. I used to climb on those boulders when I was young.********The barber shop was in a building across the courtyard from the main stockyards building. This smaller row of buildings was like a strip mall, my dad’s small barber shop was on the end, and on its left side was a gaming room, then to the left of the gaming room was a cigar store. The gaming room had round tables with wicker chairs and spitoons on the floor. There were overhead fans hanging from the ceiling, and the windows had louvers above to let the smoke out. Of course it smelled like chewing tobacco. There was a water faucet outside where Joe the gardener could connect his watering hose. Underneath it was a puddle of water where the birds came to drink. My dad felt sorry for the birds so he made a round bowl out of concrete so they could have clean water. He got angry because he found out that the cigar store guy was washing out the spitoons in the water and filling up the bowl with chewing tobacco juice. LOL!

********Outside of the cigar store there was a soda pop machine. This was the old kind, a tub of ice cold water that had metal bars holding the coke bottles in the water. I would put the coins in the slot at the end and slide a bottle over to a release mechanism where it could be pulled out. There was Coca Cola, of course, Nehi soda, Dad’s Root Beer, and a few others. Man, they tasted good on a hot day. They had heating, but not air conditioning in the buildings. Down the corridor from the cigar store was a western wear store with a sign that said Stetson hats. Of course they sold cowboy boots. Out in front of each shop was a metal boot scraper to get the cow dung out of the boot heels. In front of my dad’s shop there was a shoeshine stand, where a part-time shoe boy put a beautiful shine on your shoes.

********I had to stay there all day after I got my hair buzz cut – my dad kept my hair short up until I was in Jr. high. So my dad introduced me to Joe the gardener, and I rode around with him on his Cushman putt-putt to do his chores. Joe let me turn on this big water valve, and it let the water into a long irrigation pipe on the top of wooden poles. There were little holes along the pipe that watered all the plants with the beautiful flowers. In the aerial photograph you can see a row of cars on the left, with bushes in front of them. The bushes were all sorts of beautiful flowers.********I got to read all the comic books in the barber shop and even snuck some looks at the mens’ magazines. The job my dad gave me was to drill holes in hidden spots in some places so he could roll up and put his bookmaking receipts to hide them from the cops should they search his shop. He had a telephone and took bets using code names for his contacts. He had to collect the bets on his day off so he took me to various residences around town and I met some of the customers. I have some interesting stories to tell about them, too.

********The main building had one stairwell to the second floor and above the second floor there were bars like in a jail, with a door with a round metal sign with a picture of a lion on it. Dad told me that they kept lions there and to stay away or I might get hurt. It was actually a meeting room for the Lions Club.

********The third story of the building was a large room full of shelves, like a library. The shelves were filled with accounting ledgers from decades ago – this was before accounting was automated on computers. Joe took me up there on occasion. The building was built like an adobe with thick walls. The windows had wide windowsills where pigeons would make nests and lay their eggs. It was easter so I collected a handful of cute little eggs and took them home to boil and paint. Mom boiled them and we were shocked and grossed out when they cracked open and the yolks had already formed into chicks which had then been cooked.

********On the way home, dad would sometimes drive by Farmer John’s, which had the walls along Bandini Blvd painted with a picture of Farmer John along with the farm. I think it’s still there today.

********On occasion dad would drive to the Bethlehem Steel mill, and park across the street. We would wait for the huge furnace cover to move away, and the gantry crane would reach inside and pull out a big billet of steel glowing yellow hot, an put it on the rolling mill. The mill would roll it back and forth, making it longer and thinner until it was thin enough for whatever it was going to be used. The heat from the yellow hot billet was many times hotter than holding hands in front of a fire, and we were across the street, hundreds of feet away! It was awesome!

********Years later the steel mill closed and the workers were laid off. Those were sad days for the workers. They wrote and performed a play named Lady Beth, about their steel mill.