VERDUGO VIEWS:Glenoaks Canyon in the 1930s and ‘40s

In late 1931, at the height of the Great Depression, Tom Follis’ parents, Donald and Lucile, purchased a lot on Hollister Terrace in east Glenoaks Canyon, about 100 yards from Glenoaks Park.

“My parents cleared weeds and brush in preparation for the construction of a custom house,” recalled Follis, who now lives in Oxnard. “While burning piles of weeds, the smoke drifted over my dad and the next day he was covered with itching poison oak that had been hidden in the weeds.

“A building contractor, Mr. Dutton, was hired and several months later our family moved into the lovely tile-roofed, Spanish-style, stucco house that was our home for many years.”

Follis recalled the cost at about $5,000, a very large sum of money at that time.

“A beautiful grove of lofty sycamore trees graced the area next to our backyard until construction of new homes crowded them out as the effects of the Depression waned,” he said. “There were many vacant lots in the canyon and some still had apricot trees left from an earlier orchard. We pigged out on apricots each summer and my mother canned many quarts of fruit.”

Follis also spoke of a pear orchard across the street from Glenoaks Grammar School, but the orchard was surrounded by a 10-foot chain-link fence that kept them out most of the time, he said.

He and his friends often hiked the hills.

“In the past, there had been a firing range back into the hills,” he said. “This was in a lovely glade of oak trees now buried under landfill and houses. We often found spent lead bullets after a heavy rain washed the topsoil away from the hillside where the targets had been located.”

Each week, tradesmen came up the canyon, including an iceman who drove a truck loaded with large blocks of ice.

“My mother put a card in the window that showed how much ice we needed and the iceman would chip off a block, pick it up with ice tongs and bring it into our icebox,” he said.

“We burned all paper trash in an incinerator and put our garbage pails out on the curb each Tuesday. Once a month, a junk man drove his truck around the canyon, yelling ‘rags, bottles, tires.’ We would sell these things to him and any other junk like newspapers, etc. — early recycling at its best.”

Shortly after they moved in, Follis enrolled at Glenoaks Grammar School.

“I was in either the second or third grade,” he said.

In the 1930s, only students in kindergarten through fourth grades went there and older students went to John Marshall Elementary.

But by the time Follis reached that level, the neighborhood had grown, so he stayed at Glenoaks through sixth grade.

“At that time, the school consisted of one small, one-story building with four or five classrooms,” he said. “My teacher for the entire time was Mrs. Eckerson, a really wonderful and excellent teacher. The principal/teacher was unsmiling Mrs. Barnes.”

Follis said they all brought brown-bag lunches, since there was no cafeteria.

“There were no houses anywhere near the school — only vacant lots. The large dirt playground was divided in half — boys on one side, girls on the other,” he said. “This division was strictly enforced by the supervising teacher, except when the cry, ‘Raid the dames!’ elicited a shouting, swooping dash by us into forbidden territory. Much shouting from the girls brought angry blasts from the supervisor’s whistle, along with wild, violent arms gestures for all boys to retreat.”

READERS WRITE

Jill Benone is looking for information on a long-ago Verdugo Woodlands Breakfast Club. She is assisting the current Fathers’ Follies group at Verdugo Woodlands Elementary in creating an archive of their past programs and scripts.

“We are tracing back to the very beginning of the school,” she said.

“The Breakfast Club was mentioned in the Glendale Evening Herald of the mid- and late-1920s. Any mention in your column could be a great help.”