The Lemon Trees Of Oxnard

In the summer of 1963, I got on a bus in Allentown headed for Oxnard, California, where I planned to work in the lemon orchards. I had with me a Give the kid a job letter from the boss of the Trexler Orchard in Orefield. The boss in Oxnard also owned a car wash, and I ended up working there. During WW2, homeowners in Oxnard were encouraged to build cottages for extra GI housing. I rented a small one room cottage at the far end of a back yard. The bathroom was added on to the backporch of the house. Every day I would walk to the square in Oxnard, and catch the bus to the carwash. In early August, I was rescued by Ken Huthmaker, whose family had moved years earlier from Lehigh Parkway to Hawthorne, California.  Ken was five years older,  and his friends were into body building, custom cars and gate crashing. They would attend events all over the Los Angeles area, and their sport was to sneak in, without paying. Ken would end up being a celebrity photographer and journalist in LA, and wrote a book on gate crashing*. I stayed at his house for two weeks. The next summer I would use my learned gate-crashing skills to see the Beatles in Atlantic City.

* The Gate Crashers by Ken Huthmaker, Which reveals the secrets of the society of the uninvited.  Huthmaker would become the photographer for Mickey Hargitay's televised exercise show.   Huthmaker photographed Hargitay and his wife, Jayne Mansfield,  by their pool.