Incident at Beban's Coral

The foolish young men who in 1976 kidnapped a bus load of twenty-six school children and their bus driver, and locked them all in a buried truck body were, it was said, planning to use the five million dollar ransom to finance a movie project.  The really sad thing is that what they did, how the kids escaped, and how the idiots were captured really was the movie.  I covered the story for the San Francisco Examiner from the first day so in a way I was in the movie too.  

Press Conference after Children Escaped

The kidnapped bus was from Chowchilla, California, a small agricultural town in the Central Valley.  So when the first kidnapper was arrested, the fine newspaper I worked for sent me back to Chowchilla to cover his arraignment, the first court appearance of the many that would send him to prison where he spent more than thirty-five years.

So, in Chowchilla, waiting for the alleged to arrive from his first cell a couple of hours drive away.  Spent that wait with my pal Wayne King at Beban’s Coral, a bar on Robertson Blvd, the main drag of Chowchilla.  Wayne worked for the New York Times, usually in Atlanta, but he’d been in San Francisco for a bit helping out and we’d covered stories together before.  So we were sitting at the bar mostly, and then Wayne went to the back to use the pay phone and I was sitting at the bar by myself.

Campus Years

At its best, my childhood looked like Jean Sheperd's "A Christmas Story" with me as Ralphie.  I wanted the BB gun too, but also my school, the coal furnace, the front yard, clothes and snow suits… my life really looked like this.    Until I was ten we lived in Ann Arbor, the college town.  More than half of the time we lived at the campus.  

This is the late 40s in America.  Earth tones clothes, furniture and walls.  One telephone in the house, one electric plug per room.  Plastic was exotic.  No such thing as TV.  Behind our house was a lady who had about 30 cats.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, corner of State & Huron. In the picture, that’s it.  Dad’s Grace Bible is the ivy-covered stone building.  Our house, the parsonage, just next to the church.  Both buildings are now offices of an architectural firm.  My back yard of grass, clothes lines and rhubarb is now a parking lot .

   

This old native stone building was my playground, especially the tower.  Across the street in my time was Ann Arbor high school.