by Lynn Ruth Miller
When 72 year old Clay Thompson was fourteen years old, his family migrated to California. Dad worked in the oil fields in Oklahoma and jobs were so spotty, he decided he had to do something about it, Thompson recalls. He hauled hay down south in the Imperial Valley at first and then, when I was a sophomore in high school, we moved to Pacifica and rented a house in Sharp Park right near the golf course.
It was a different world here in 1942. We were an isolated little pocket of goof balls and nuts down here and no one interfered with anyone else. Your neighbor might be a bootlegger but you never did anything about it.
It was a small, close-knit community and a poor one. Thompson delivered the News Call Bulletin when he wasn’t selling found golf balls to the owner of the Sixth Tee Inn. I knew everyone in town and I knew their dogs, said Thompson. About twenty kids went to high school together, said Thompson. But a lot didn’t bother. If you didn’t want to go to high school no one was going to come down here to get you.
The United States had just entered World War II when Thompson’s family came to Pacifica and everyone was all out for the war effort. We had blackouts here every night and you couldn’t drive with your full headlights on, Thompson recalls. The high school kids would go skating in San Mateo and if it was foggy when we turned down the old Sharp Park Road, one kid walked beside the car with a flashlight so the driver could make out the center white line.
There was very little overt prejudice for the Germans and Italians who lived here and Japan was a country no one had ever heard of. We had a detention camp here and we picked up their kids to take them to school in the bus, said Thompson. We knew ‘em all and it didn’t make any difference to us who they were. Dick Plate who owned a bar here was a great German sympathizer. We all wondered if his family would be detained, but it wasn’t. Someone had to run the bar so the rest of us could have a drink. We had six bars and one church at that time. It was just about the right ratio for the community.
The schools had special air raid drills and they melted down the rails from the Ocean Shore railroad for the war effort.
The high school kids all volunteered to be airplane spotters. We’d sit in the bell tower in the old firehouse.
My girlfriend and I used to watch for planes, but we never did see any.
Thompson didn’t explain if that was because he was too involved to look out the window or no enemy planes were in our skies.
Late in the war, the Coast Guard took over a square block west of Palmetto and built a barracks for the families of their men. There were always rumors of attacks, but nothing ever happened here.
In 1943, a submarine patrol dirigible crashed in Daly City and some men were missing, said Thompson. The Coast Guard occupied the castle and trained dogs there to patrol the beach. Despite the war, kids were still kids. You could get away with a lot more here than you could in the towns on the other side of the hill. The County Police were in San Mateo and they hated to come down here, recalls Thompson.
The county sheriff was supposed to keep an eye on us here, but it could take three hours to get over that hill in an emergency.
Thompson’s mother didn’t work outside the home. She was always there when I came home, said Thompson. She cooked, washed and did the shopping. She’d make out a list and give it to Dad and he’d stop in South City to buy the things that she couldn’t get here. Once a month we went to the city for clothes.
I used to go out of the house and tell my parents I was going to run on the golf course to practice for track, said Thompson. Instead, I’d run to Doug Hart’s Moris Point to have a beer. I saw the men taking girls upstairs and I thought there was another bar up there. I decided to see what was happening and as soon as my foot touched that first step, Doug grabbed me by the collar.
Where are you going, son? asked Hart.
Upstairs, said Thompson.I think you’d be better off down here, said Hart and down there is where Thompson drank his beers from then on.
Social life for everyone was limited but it did exist. All the families had a lot of children and the high school kids gathered at the Girdlers because they had such a big living room. Every kid in town would go up there and we’d turn on the radio and dance while our parents were in the other room listening to Amos and Andy, recalled Thompson.
There was a dance at the Fire House once a month for everybody. They had cake sales there and all the young men bid on each cake to eat with the cook. No one cared if she was single or not. The only thing that mattered is if she could cook.
People entertained themselves here and most of the families had so many children they stayed home nights. They all just sat around the kitchen table and talked about who died and who was sleeping with whose wife, said Thompson.
Smuggling in whiskey was big business here in Pacifica. During the Depression, there used to be rum running and smuggling off Rockaway Beach, said Thompson. They’d bring it to Shelter Cove, off load on the beach, hook a team of horses and take it to Rockaway.
The minute a young man got out of high school, he registered for the draft. Most of us went into the Merchant Marines, because they didn’t ask too many questions about age, recalled Thompson. I was out of high school five days and on the sixth, I was on the ship. You spent months on board and between trips you partied. I sailed the South Pacific and managed to get in on the last few months of fighting in Okinawa, said Thompson.
We pulled into Japan right after McArthur signed the papers. The people were very fearful of Americans then. I spent a whole afternoon talking to a Japanese Merchant Marine. He couldn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t know a word of Japanese. He had been stranded on a raft for two weeks.
In 1946, Thompson quit the Merchant Marines and worked in Mexico. In 1947, he bought a truck and hauled wheat. But then I came back home and worked for Horace Hill, he said.
I rented an apartment for $27.50 a month and moved in with my dog, Roscoe, a terrier mutt.
In 1948, Thompson married Jackie Morocco, the girl he’d dated all through high school and they rented a house on Pacific Avenue for $47.50 a month. It was owned by some circus people and there were a bunch of cages in the basement, recalls Thompson. Everything in the house was orange.
After his son and then his daughter were born, he bought a house on Adobe.
I didn’t want the kids to have far to go to school, he said. I told my wife this is where we stay until the youngest is out of high school.
In the fifties and sixties, men were men and women were . . you guessed it: women and both sexes liked it that way. In 1962, a Feminist recruiter came to the house and my wife listened to this woman’s speech about the advantage of joining the feminist movement and shook her head. Don’t you want equality? asked the outraged visitor.
My wife pointed to all the things in her comfortable home and said, Why would I give up all this for equality?
Through the years, Thompson has lived in this community, he has seen more than his share of characters come and go. There was an old Italian fellow who made his own wine, said Thompson. If I took him a pint of whiskey, he’d give me a gallon of it and I’ve never tasted better since.
Roy Jones sold sand and paved driveways around town. He was independent as all hell, said Thompson. And a free thinker. When the state wanted to put in the freeway, he refused to sell his land.
I’ll shoot the first surveyor that comes out here, said Jones.
They condemned the land and sent highway patrolmen from the State and the county police to stand there with guns when the surveyors arrived, said Thompson.
The only musician I remember was Tommy Beeson, Thompson continued.
God, could he make a horn talk. Tommy would get half loaded and go up on Castle hill to play his horn and no one ever complained. Or he’d go into San Francisco, walk into a bar and play jazz til dawn.
Pacifican’s cared about their neighbor then. If someone was in trouble, there must have been dozen people to help them, said Thompson.
When I was president of the Little League, we had 500 kids playing ball. If I needed anything, I made a couple telephone calls and got what I needed. Now everything has changed. PB&R took over and everyone thinks, They’re getting paid, let them do it.
Thompson thinks incorporation took a lot of the flavor out of life here. We lost our individuality, he said. And our feeling of community.
Change is inevitable but Pacifica is still a great place to live. No one ever contests that. I wouldn’t live anywhere else, said Thompson.
And those of us who know Clay Thompson, who have shared his jokes and watched him keep things repaired and running smoothly for the Pacifica Arts and Heritage Council events, would count his presence as our towns greatest asset.
Lynn Ruth Miller is a freelance writer from Pacifica, California. Her stories have appeared in approximately 100 different publications including Good Housekeeping, Modern Maturity and 20/20 Magazine.
Published in U S Legacies Magazine May 2005
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