ANAHEIM : School Pals Dusting Off the Ol’ Days

Old memories of Anaheim Union High School were dusted off and embellished Friday.

Ed Portillo, Class of 1938, remembered how the teachers would shoo him and his friends out of the halls for playing marbles.

Lewis Wentz, Class of 1934, talked of how he played Grandpa Hardy before a packed house at the old Anaheim Fairyland Theater in a senior class play, the title of which he can’t recall.

Herb (Red) Hamilton, Class of 1945, remembered how the boys were let out of school early to pick produce at the farms because all of the able-bodied men were away fighting World War II.

About 35 men and two women, all graduates of Anaheim High from 1932 to 1945, gathered Friday to reminisce about a high school of 500 students and a town of 10,000 people that have changed considerably in the last 50 years.

The unnamed group, which started nine months ago when 10 men got together for coffee, now meets every three months “to go back in time a few years and tell a lot of lies,” said Portillo, a retired milkman and one of the group’s founders. Most of those who attended Friday’s gathering still live in Anaheim.

“Things were a lot different back then,” said Jane Peters Webb, Class of 1939. She married Phil (Floppy) Webb, Class of 1933. “Back then, we knew everybody and everybody knew you. And you knew your friends’ families and people would see each other on the street and you would talk and listen. But they don’t have that here anymore. My children, for example, don’t know anyone where they live.”

Indeed, things were different in Anaheim back when the Webbs and their friends were in high school. Most of the homes were still between East, West, North and South streets, not spread out. Anaheim High was the only high school in town. And everywhere you looked there were farms.

“Peaches, oranges, watermelons, you name it,” Don Baggott, Class of 1943 said. “I would go shoot rabbits in the field where Disneyland is now.”

Not everything was sweetness back then, though. There were stories of how Latino students were only allowed to swim one day a week at the public pool--the day before the water was cleaned.

“But the Mexican boys were our friends too, so we would sneak them in,” said Noel Sweeney, Class of 1942. He later coached baseball at Savanna and Katella high schools. “Finally, our parents went down and got the rules changed.”

But most of the memories were pleasant, even if the city and the country were then in the midst of the Great Depression.

Many at the gathering talked of Ray Ortez Class of 1937, who became known at the school as the best fast-pitch softball pitcher around. It seems softball was king in the city then because the old German immigrants were intimidated by the word “hardball.” They thought their boys would get hurt.

Ortez said that his pitching skill helped his family eat, as teams would pay him $2 or $3 a night to pitch for their side.

“We did what we had to do,” Ortez said, “because times were tough.”

Gerald Brackman, Class of 1938, remembered how he and his parents would go downtown with the eggs their chickens had laid and trade them for groceries. He also recalled a talk he and his father had in the 1930s about expanding their farm.

“There were some orange groves west of us that were being sold for $1,000 an acre,” Brackman said. “I wanted my dad to buy. But he said ‘Son, forget it. They have to run smudge pots at night over there (to keep the trees from freezing). We’re warm enough over here that we don’t have to do that.’ ”

“That grove was right where Disneyland is now,” said Brackman. “What would it go for now?”