Kelly (6 page)

“Althea thinks you’re a snippy young kid,” the chief—and only—telephone operator, Vera Doane, told me one day. I had taken Vera dancing a few times, and she and Althea were good friends. There were only four women working at the plant then—Gross’s secretary, Rene Tallentyre; Alice Stevenson, secretary to Carl B. Squier—an executive with the earlier company and now vice president and sales manager; and Althea and Vera. Vera was the fourth hired because the other three all hated to handle the switchboard; she also was receptionist and secretary to Cyril Chappellet.

Well, privately, I considered that Althea may have had a
point. But I decided I couldn’t let criticism like that stand, so I asked her out.

“Vera told me you were a brain,” she confessed. We had a steak dinner in nearby Glendale. It cost seventy-five cents each. And we went dutch. After all, she was making twice what I was; she had been there a year before I was hired.

That evening went all right, so we repeated it. We began to go riding together, too, renting horses at least once or twice a week and riding up into the canyons in the foothills of the green Verdugo mountains above Burbank. And we both liked to dance; she was an excellent dancer.

At golf, she was much better than me. One time, I took her up on an Electra test flight. She wanted to go, and while it wasn’t exactly condoned, the rules then weren’t so strict about who might fly on an experimental flight. There were no passenger seats. She had to sit on the bare structure of the fuselage, but she was thrilled.

Althea was as active and alert mentally as she was physically in the sports she enjoyed. An extremely intelligent person. We found that we shared many interests and enthusiasms, had similar personal goals and ideals, and enjoyed each other’s company more and more. We had fun together.

It wasn’t too long before I made more money than she, and we abandoned the “dutch-treat” dates. But I wanted to be able to support a wife when I married. I didn’t want her to work. Althea agreed. So it was about four years after our first date before we were married. Though we weren’t regular churchgoers, we picked one we liked on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles for the ceremony. We honeymooned at Yosemite in the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel. The year was 1937.

We lived for several years very happily in a fine old house rented in the foothills on Country Club Drive in Burbank. Althea quit work and took care of the house. She was a wonderfully helpful and cooperative wife.

We continued to ride regularly every Sunday, rain or shine. After the stable went broke, we bought our horses and pastured them out west of town in rural Agoura for $3 a month
per horse. Later, we rented pasturage out in Malibu Canyon and rode all around that seacoast area, back up into the hills—with the rattlesnakes—where we could look out over the beautiful valleys. Althea shared my love for the outdoors. We began to think about having a ranch of our own.

The rains in winter regularly flooded the canyons in Southern California, and after one experience on Country Club Drive—when we had to leave our house and be helped by firemen to cross a raging torrent of water, leading our dog and carrying a few personal belongings, we agreed that we would rather live on high ground.

Burbank is in the flatland of the San Fernando Valley. The hills bordering the south side of the valley offer a spectacular view of the several ranges of mountains beyond, snow-covered in the winter. Althea and I had ridden over enough country to know where we wanted to live.

In 1940, we decided that we could afford to invest in a home of our own. We bought a lot on Oak View Drive high in the hills of Encino. It was a small community then of six or eight thousand people. Ours was to be the fourth house on the hill. We discovered that Clark Gable owned the property above us and a number of other theatrical people lived in the area including Alice Faye and her husband, Phil Harris. The mayor was Al Jolson.

Our lot, literally, was in some places almost solid rock. And we wanted to build not only a house but a pool and tennis court. So, to minimize excavation in what amounted to a stone quarry, I built a scale model of the site and all construction about six feet by five feet and a foot-and-a-half tall. I put in the actual contour of the lot. Then I dug out two basements on two different levels. One would house water heater and furnace; the other, a washing machine with dryer and a wine cellar. The house itself was to be on four levels, with a 12-foot-high ceiling in the living room. Digging basements only where needed saved very expensive excavation in this rocky terrain.

Building the model was a splendid idea because I was able
to place the house exactly where I wanted it in relation to pool and tennis court.

One error crept in, though. The contractor dug the deep end of the pool an extra 18 inches deep. Well, at that point I wasn’t going to change all the levels I had laid out for walks around the house and the front yard by filling in that dirt, so the pool bottom has to be the strongest in the neighborhood. It has an extra 18 inches of cement.

That pool contractor also considerably over-estimated the capabilities of his unskilled laborers. Years later we discovered, and at considerable expense, that they had not understood the use of a plumbing union, which threads two pieces of pipe together. The workmen instead used tomato juice cans to join the pool drains. They then poured a wheelbarrow of cement in each of the drain connections. It took six or seven years before the ground around the pool began to sink. Then an air hammer knocking away the cement revealed the secret of the tomato cans. The pipe had to be replaced, of course.

All that rock dug up for the two basements kept me in spare-time work for years. Though I contracted for construction of the house, pool, and tennis court, I built all the retaining walls around the property myself.

As a new homeowner in Encino, I joined the Encino Chamber of Commerce. It seemed a responsible thing for a new resident to do. Later I was elected to the Board of Directors. It was an active group and usually drew 30 or 40 people regularly to its meetings—not bad for such a small community.

Here I was to learn a lesson in how subversive groups work—not the Chamber, of course, but a group seeking to use it.

The community very badly needed a building to house Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Women’s Club, and the activities of other worthy civic groups. I was a member of the committee to raise funds for such a building. We did, and bought several lots on Balboa Boulevard, just north of Ventura Boulevard, which runs along the foothills on the south side of the valley.

There is such a building there now, the Encino Community Building.

I proposed at the time that we of the community construct it ourselves, with enough members knowledgeable about contracting, architecture, and all the building trades. Donating time over weekends and odd hours, we could have undertaken the project without the need to raise additional money. Well, some of the people thought this was a fine idea but most did not because of the personal involvement required.

The time was ripe for what followed. At one of our evening meetings, an offer was made of whatever funds were needed if the building were to be known as the “World Peace Building.”

“No,” I said. “This must be a community building, for all of the various groups that need it.”

Quite a brouhaha ensued, with most members of the Chamber refusing to take a position. I suspected that in a center of the motion-picture industry, where many of the most prominent actors and actresses lived, the offer of funds might have been an attempt to influence the group. Communist infiltration, perhaps?

Fortunately, I could call on Lockheed’s legal counsel, a wise and experienced man, Robert Proctor of Boston, later to become legal counsel to Gen. H. H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps and father of the modern Air Force.

“Bob, I think this has a peculiar odor to it,” I reported. “I can’t prove anything, but there is strong and very emotional talk about world peace.”

“Well, you want to watch that, Kelly,” he responded. “Let me check out those people and see what the connections are.”

Later he called and advised, “Kelly, be sure not to call those people Communists. Don’t put yourself in a position where you can be sued for everything you’ve got.”

It was good advice. It so happened that the man who had made the financial proposal brought a court reporter to meetings to record everything I might say—that I might be sued for, presumably.

It was interesting that during this period many of my
neighbors would give me verbal support.

“We’re with you.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“Keep it up.”

But they also told me: “I have a store down here.”

“I have a lumber yard.”

“I don’t dare to antagonize people here; it’s bad for business.”

I was mad as hell, because they all agreed that there was something fishy about that offer of money. It wasn’t accepted, finally. Well, it all ended with me not being re-elected to the board of the Encino Chamber of Commerce.

About 20 miles west of our home in Encino was undeveloped ranch land, where Althea and I pastured our horses. Several years after building our home, we had the opportunity to buy the Lindero Ranch, 226 acres of rolling country with a stream bordering its west side. Lindero means line or boundary and was the northwest corner of an original Spanish land grant.

We built a small house on a mountain top with a view of the Pacific Ocean to the southwest and a range of mountains in the other direction.

My early experience in construction was invaluable. With no utilities in the area at the time, we had to provide our own water, light, and power.

The house we built ourselves was of concrete block, about 900 square feet. A large living room with six-foot high windows across about 30 feet of the front provided a magnificent view. A huge fireplace heated the entire structure.

For electricity, we installed a small power plant that ran on cheap propane and also powered our stove and refrigerator. We had all the comforts.

Other jobs were to dig a septic tank and put in a water tank. That was challenging because I had to move by tractor a 1,000-pound water tank slung on a boom downhill to a position above the house. Before I began this operation, I carefully computed tilt angle of tractor and tank, to keep the whole setup from
tumbling downhill and through the new house. With a windmill at the bottom of the hill pumping up to the tank, we had a fine water system.

Althea and I ran the ranch by ourselves. She did as much work as I—such as driving tractors and taking care of the horses. She became very skilled at operating the tractor and often would mow or rake hay while I was at work. It was a real partnership.

We planted 110 acres of oat hay, plowing and discing the fields ourselves. We harvested the baled hay, too.

Althea loved animals and convinced me that we should buy a herd of registered cattle, so we invested in about 20 Herefords. She enjoyed keeping the breeding records and everything else about ranch life. We both loved Lindero. As a pet we had a scrawny calf we called “Hardly Nothing” and renamed “Almost Something” as it grew.

One day I forgot that Althea and I were equal partners! We were discing in preparation for planting oat hay. I didn’t think she was handling the C-2 caterpillar tractor properly, dragging the brakes and making hard use of the clutch. I hate to see any kind of machinery not treated very gently. So I corrected her in what I considered to be my most constructive manner.

“If you don’t shut up,” she responded, “I’m going to run over you with this thing!” And she headed for me at full speed—about four miles an hour. I quickly departed the scene to let things cool down and she finished her discing.

One great joy was riding horseback over our own land and surveying our crops. While we bought more horses for the ranch, we still had our first two, Prince and Mac. Both lived long lives, each more than 27 years, although we quit riding them long before that age, of course.

Althea and I never had children, but it was not from lack of desire. We were very compatible and had a good and happy life together.

N
EWSPAPER HEADLINES IN
A
UGUST
, 1935, saddened a nation that had loved a famed humorist-philosopher and admired a brave, pioneering aviator.

“WILL ROGERS AND POST DIE IN AIRPLANE CRASH,” bannered the
New York World-Telegram
. “Pair Forced Down by Faulty Motor; Fall in Takeoff.”

“ROGERS-POST ARCTIC DEATH CRASH RELATED” read the headline across the front page of the
Los Angeles Times
. “Plane Hits River as Engine Falters While Taking Off.” A separate story related, “Fog Blamed for Death.”

Wiley Post was one of the first of the early famed flyers I met when I began to work at Lockheed in 1933. He already had flown around the world once, with Harold Gatty, in 1931. He became the first man to make the flight twice in a challenging solo effort in July of 1933. Both flights were made in a Lockheed Vega, the famed
Winnie Mae
. Wiley earlier had been a Lockheed test pilot. And, before that, a roustabout in the oil fields of Oklahoma. That’s where he lost an eye, resulting in that identifying black eye patch.

It always was a mystery to the rest of us how anyone could fly so well and seem to have depth perception with just one eye. But he could, and he demonstrated his courage and excellence as a pilot many times.

When I met him, Wiley wanted to attempt high-altitude flying, convinced that there was a future in the stratosphere
where higher speed would be possible because of less air resistance and good tail winds.

He had persuaded the Bendix company to furnish a very high-pressure supercharger for his Vega’s engine. He planned that it would furnish not only engine air but also air for a pilot’s pressure suit he had developed—it looked like a deep-sea diver’s outfit. This was to make possible flights at high altitude where there was little oxygen. He wanted to reach 40,000 feet and fly across the country at 400 miles per hour, from west to east.