Greg Calac

When I was a kid growing up in Escondido, California, Dwight Eisenhower was president of the U.S. having been inaugurated on January 20, 1953.  Escondido was a sleepy little Southern California town that had converted the original agricultural crop from grapes to Citrus and Avocados.  We had our own fruit packing plants in the west part of town near the train spur that came from the main line at Oceanside.  Both my paternal grandparents worked in those plants.  My Grandmother was employed at the Sunkist orange packing plant and my Grandpa at the lemon plant on Tulip Street and Del Dios Highway.  Just to the west of both those locations, on Metcalf Street, was the ice house where slabs of ice were manufactured expressly to cool the specially designed train cars that transported the fresh fruit to markets.  According to the U.S. Census of 1950, the population of Escondido was 6,608, up from 4,560 in 1940.  By 1960 the population increased by ten thousand to 16,500.  Today Escondido boasts a population of 151,000 souls.  To those of us born in the late 40's and early 50's, growing up in the 50's, 60's and 70's in Escondido, what we experienced could be considered a perfect place to live.  

Life was simple in those days.  Up until the mid 1960's we had one high school, one junior high school and a handful of public elementary schools, but we also had several private parochial schools to add to the educational opportunities.  From my earliest recollection there were new elementary schools being built in an attempt to keep up with the booming population.  

My grandparents, Saturnino and Edna Calac, were California Native Americans.  My grandmother was a Pit River Indian, born in Modoc County, and my grandfather a native Luiseno from the Rincon Indian Reservation in nearby Valley Center.  They consciously decided to raise their family in town rather than live on the Reservation where my grandfather's family had land but few economic opportunities.  They first lived in Temecula where they helped my great-grandparents dry farming there in South Riverside County.  Eventually in the early 1920's they moved to Escondido.  In those days Indians weren't exactly welcomed in town, but they perservered and established themselves by virtue of their hard work and genial personalities.  My father and his siblings had many, many friends and were fabulous athletes following the lead of their father.  Despite living in town, they knew all the folks, old and young, living at Rincon as well as those at LaJolla, San Pasqual, Pauma and Pala Indian Reservations.  Both of my uncles as well as my father were Chairman of the Rincon Tribe at different times in the 50's and 60's.  This was a time when there was no money for infrastructure, maintenance or even some basic upgrades that were desperately needed.   As a tribe we were so poor that at one point my uncles and my father put together a hundred dollars of their own cash in order to open a checking account for the Tribe.  

My Uncle Leo Calac was a trained accountant and he worked for several accountancy firms in Escondido before taking on the job of Business Manager of the Escondido Union High School District.  In addition to his other duties he was tasked with raising the funds required to build and furnish new high schools in San Marcos, Poway and a second site in Escondido.  The new high school in Escondido was to be called "Vallecitos High School" and it was situated on North Broadway where that street intersects Sheridan Avenue.   This new school was intended to be the second high school in town, but fate would thrust it into a different role.  The existing Escondido Union High School on Hickory Street was unexpectedly condemned by the State due to the belief that an earthquake would destroy it.  There had been a major quake in Long Beach that raised the initial concern and the State decided this old relic needed replacing.  So, in 1954 the new Vallecitos High School, suddenly pressed into service as the only high school in town, became simply Escondido High School.  Ironically, when they did actually demolish the old school it took a tremendous effort, far more than even a large earthquake would provide.  

One day, not that long ago, I realized I am an "old-timer"!  What!?!?   How does one cross seventy plus years without realizing that time was leaking out of the vessel known as "ME"?  Me ran around in a warm backyard at three and never had a care.  Kindergarten introduced me to structure away from my own immediate family.  First grade taught me the first rules of reading and second grade reinforced that as I discovered three, four and five letter words.  Junior high gave me a basic look at U. S. History and the Constitution.   High School went away in a blur with P.E. every year and driving becoming the norm.  I watched my friends and classmates driving into the school parking lot and thinking how we used to run in the kindergarten yard and peer through the fence at the "big kids" slapping the teather ball with vicious determination.  "Some day that will be us", we thought.  And now today we are driving to school with a personal self-satisfaction that is impossible to ignore.   I was one of a handful of my contemporaries who married at 19.  Not many of us took that step at that age for the obvious reasons, but I was ready to move-on past dating and all that nonsense.   So, marriage naturally moved on to parenthood and the staggering responsibility of raising productive humans who are capable of sustaining their own lives and that of their spouse and children, if and when they chose to go that route.   I started a business at age 26 and the fun of sustaining several families other than my own began.  Fools believe that owning a business automatically makes you wealthy.  What owning a business makes you is responsible for others to earn enough to keep them coming back and fighting another day alongside you.  Ownership makes you responsible for payroll taxes and Worker's Compensation Insurance and State Disability Insurance and one day you free yourself of those liabilities and you realize you have completed the goal of educating your children and your house is finally paid off and you're still married to your original wife and seventy plus years have passed beneath your feet.   Those are the same feet that propelled you around the kindergarten yard a bunch of years ago.