Eighth-Grade Students Open Letter From the Past

In 1940 the eighth-grade class of Malaga Cove Intermediate School, Palos Verdes Estates, wrote a letter to the Class of 1965, telling what life was like in 1940.

Twenty-five years later, the Class of 1965 wrote a letter to the Class of 1990, telling how things had changed. The class itself had grown from 17 in 1940 to 272. Palos Verdes Estates had grown, but it was still horsy, green and uncrowded. Its population was up from 1,000 to 12,500 and the population of the peninsula had reached 48,000. Each month 100 new homes were sold: The average price in Palos Verdes Estates was $50,000.

Home construction was the most noteworthy phenomenon. “It is almost impossible to drive on any road without seeing at least one new home being built. In some areas there are as many as 30 or 40 being built at the same time.”

The Police Department founded in 1940 had grown to 20 men, two women and 10 men in reserve. The Fire Department numbered 17. There were five banks. The average interest rate was 4%. The peninsula had one movie theater, at Peninsula Center. Admission was 75 cents for children, $1.25 for juniors, $1.75 for adults.

Peninsula landmarks were the Point Vicente lighthouse, the wreckage of the Dominator, a Greek freighter that went aground in 1961, Marineland, which had been built in 1954 (and would be gone by 1990), and the Neptune fountain in the city plaza. Life on the peninsula was good but in some places precarious. A landslide at Portuguese Bend had damaged 145 houses, whose owners recovered $8 million from the county.

The pupils boasted of the state’s freeway system, which allowed cars to travel at 65 m.p.h., and International Airport, from which 1,000 planes a day took off.

The letter summarized victory in World War II, the atom bomb, Korea, the jet airplane and our unmanned landing on the moon. Project Apollo was expected to land a man on the moon by 1970. The pupils were worried by the Cold War and Communist aggression. “Germany is divided into two Germanies, East and West, with the former capital, Berlin, an isolated island in the midst of the Communist-controlled East Germany.” They took note of U.S. assistance to South Vietnam. “The rapid spread of Communism worries us very much.”

They were also concerned about “the population explosion,” noting that the world population then stood at more than 3 billion and was increasing rapidly.

On the lighter side, they noted the popularity of surfing, skateboarding, swimming, water skiing and snow skiing.

Slang was pervasive, the letter noted; it listed groovy, cool and tough --all meaning good; and wimpy , meaning bad; split , meaning to leave; pad for house, doll or bird for cute girl, sack out for sleep, and rock out for have a good time.

Much attention was paid to girls’ styles: “Sportswear for girls has a bare look. Hip-hugger pants, which come wide at the ankles, are referred to as bell-bottom, and have become a fashion rage this spring. . . . During the winter months the girls have been wearing stretch pants with stirrups made of a flexible stretch fabric. Bikinis, skimpy two-piece swimsuits, are popular with the girls at the beach. . . .”

The class was deeply committed to rock ‘n’ roll. “Our music has had a major change in it since Elvis Presley first became popular in the late 1950s. The rock ‘n’ roll of the ‘60s is a very popular pastime for the teens of America. . . . For the past 10 years social commentators with discernment have predicted that rock ‘n’ roll would pass over and die out. Yet it still remains with us. Folk music has been changed into the new beat. Most of the songs are about love, broken romances, surfing, or cars. Most adults cannot understand what we see in our music, but to us it’s the most; and we feel its quality will never be surpassed. . . .”

Finally, the Class of 1965 guessed what it would be like in 1990: “Most of us believe that Communist China will threaten the peace of the world through its aggressiveness (some students disagree with this and predict that Communist China will crumble). . . . The Republican Party, which is now weak and divided, may have been replaced. . . .”

Anyway, rock ‘n’ roll is still the most.