In a Class of Their Own

For any kid who has wondered what it was like to be a teenager in Ventura County about 50 or 60 years ago, visit the Union Oil Museum in Santa Paula and take a look at the closest thing to a time travel chamber anyone is likely to see. It’s in the form of a fully furnished 1937-era living room that’s part of a special exhibit entitled “Remembering When.”

Young visitors should be prepared for a few surprises.

For instance, they’ll learn that back then it was a point of pride for local ninth-grade boys to acquire a pair of corduroy pants in the fall and wear them--without washing them--throughout the school term.

“At the end of the school year, you would stand the pants in the corner and see if they would stay standing. That was the ideal,” said Santa Paula resident Les Maland in an oral-history recording that is part of the exhibit.

The organizers, members of the Santa Paula Historical Society, have not included an example of this “ideal” among the artifacts in the parlor, but there are plenty of other items on display that evoke the period.

The focus of attention is an object that few children today will recognize. It looks like a very old TV set, but it doesn’t have a screen and it’s set up in the living room with all the furniture arranged so people can look at it.

A remote control has been added so visitors can turn it on and hear the sound of Maland and six of his classmates talking about life in the eighth grade at Isbel Grammar School in 1937.

It is, of course, a radio. “The whole family gathered around the radio--it was an important part of our lives then,” said Doris Murphy, one of the historical society members who put the exhibit together. “There was no TV.”

Yes, kids, there was no TV back then. But the radio in the exhibit has been rigged to demonstrate how engaging that aural medium could be, while at the same time allowing visitors to eavesdrop on a set of recorded conversations.

A score of longtime Santa Paula residents got together recently to make a CD of recollections of their teenage experiences in 1937. (That year was chosen because the museum is also running a show of paintings in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Santa Paula Art Exhibit.)

Heard on the recording will be the voices of Julia and Bea Huerta of Santa Paula recalling their eighth-grade year. It seems that ninth-graders wore uniforms then and it became a point of pride to graduate from grammar school “and be seen in [the uniform] because it showed that you were going to high school.”

High school, by the way, was the first place Latino children experienced regular social contact with kids of other races. The grammar schools at the time were segregated--not officially--but in fact.

The economic depression gripping the country then had the effect of muting some aspects of this situation. “Times were tough, no matter who you were,” said Mary Alice Henderson, president of the local historical society, “All kids worked after school and summers--either in the packinghouses or the dairy or picking fruit.”

Jess Victoria recalled that the poor economy served as a deterrent to anything like gang activity. “We didn’t have time to get into trouble. We had to work to help the family.” Also, when there was time for socializing, Mary Martinez explained on the CD, kids were always accompanied by chaperons.

The consensus voiced by the participants--across the social spectrum and several decades--was that if they had it to do all over again, they would not change their lives or live anywhere else.

Hmmm. What will today’s kids say in 2057?

BE THERE

“Remembering When,” interactive exhibit about teenage life in Santa Paula in 1937, Santa Paula Union Oil Museum, Thursdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free, (805) 933-0076.