An Unsafe Safe

In 1950, I was 12 years old when we moved to Bassett, Calif., a small community between Rowland and El Monte, about 16 miles from Los Angeles. Among its multitude of schoolboy attractions were a grammar school, a dairy and a little river that ran through the dairy, ensuring that when we swam in it, we got a fungus that caused some of our hair to fall out.

There were railroad tracks for flattening pennies and a railroad trestle to lie on top of when the trains went by, and right alongside the little river stood a pomegranate tree for staining our clothes. Basset also had several steep hills to dry-sled down, great little areas for camping, and enough