I was born in Los Angeles on 12 Feb. 1919. Until adulthood, my family celebrated my birthday on the 12th, but when I obtained an “official” birth certificate in 1944, it stated the 13th. Although I believe that I was born on Lincoln’s birthday and that the attending MD erred by one day in his filing, I have used 13 Feb. for many years for legal matters only.

My father was Menifee (“Fee”) Jackson Logan: my mother, Margaret (“Peggy”) Francis Gard, and I’ll refer to my parents, below, by their nicknames.

Although born in LA and having spent my infancy in Southern California, I elected to become an alteño in 1931 and then surrendered my SoCal passport: I can no longer travel south of Goleta Pass without a visa, and I have no plans at all for applying for one. I proudly state that I am a confirmed, dedicated Northerner who does not wish at all to travel farther south than Santa Maria, let alone to Goleta, and above all to my birthplace, LA.

Ojai, to 1926 (?)

According to my parents, we first lived in Santa Paula and Oxnard, but I have no memories of those days.

My earliest memories are of living in Ojai where Fee had a grocery store in the center of town next to the “Isis” movie theater. We lived in 3 or 4 different residences there and I attended school from kindergarten to the 3rd grade.

My memories of Ojai:

…There was a gym in downtown Ojai. Fee took me there once to see all-time boxing hall-of-famer Fidel LaBarba work out. I remember him clearly.

…We often went up the coast to the “Rincon”, an area between Ventura and Santa Barbara for picnicking and plunging in the surf.

…Fee had been a great baseball player when younger and was a friend of Charlie Hall who ran a restaurant in Ventura. Hall was a local hero, having pitched for the N.Y. Giants (52 w; 46 l), with 2 games in the World Series of 1912, including a few innings against giant Christie Mathewson. Hall was pleased to see Fee when he took me to Charlie’s restaurant, and Hall told me with a wink something like “Your Dad was a great fielder, but he couldn’t hit worth a damn”. Similar phrases [“Good field, no hit”] have been attributed to many others over the years but I heard that from Charlie Hall in about 1925!

…We drove to Santa Barbara to observe the total eclipse of the sun in 1925, and to Ventura in perhaps the same year to watch the sailing-by of the Navy’s ill-fated dirigible “Los Angeles”, one of the first.

…Young film-star Jackie Coogan had hit the big time in Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” in 1921. His own feature film “Little Robinson Crusoe” was premiered in Ojai’s Isis Theater in 1924. I attended that premiere with my parents and when the film was over, Coogan went to the nearby drug store for ice cream. I sat next to him at the counter but the 10-year-old had not a word to say to me, age 5.

Fee’s sister Nellie lived in Ventura and we visited her frequently. We also went often to Saticoy to visit his parents Thomas Jackson and Margaret Logan, their daughter Ida, and Jackson Emmett (son of Fee’s deceased sister Pearl, living with his grandparents).

Visits to my mother’s family were also frequent. My great-grandfather John Rice Archer (for whom I am named) had sold a carriage business in his home in Marshall, Ill., moved to LA to retire in about 1900, and bought a house at 1476 W. 29th St., not far from the USC campus. Living with him was his widowed daughter Lorraine Archer Morrel (her first husband had been killed by an arrow in an insurrection in the Philippines; she later married twice again) and her son Robert Morrel: my mother had grown up with these people; her own mother having died in childbirth.

Fee’s business eventually failed and we had to leave Ojai. He later told me that he had extended too much credit to deadbeats.

Los Angeles, 1926 (?) – 1927

We moved to an apartment house on W. Adams Blvd. near Vermont Ave., only a few blocks from the Archer residence. There was a school on Vermont close by and I entered its 3rd grade.

We did not remain long in LA – certainly much less than a year – and I remember little of note. One exception: there was a large church on West Adams close to our apartment. One day in 1927, it hosted a 4-star spectacle: flowers by the ton, dozens of fancy vehicles, scores of couples dressed in formals, with much of the LA Police Dept. controlling things as Hollywood turned out for the wedding of film stars Rod La Roque and Vilma Banky (look them up!). I watched from across the street.

We travel, 1927 – 1929

My father got a job with a Mr. West to sell turn-indicating lights for cars (this, before the manufacturers made them standard equipment).

We took off from LA in Dad’s Oakland sedan with West as a passenger for Phoenix, Abilene and Fort Worth in that order, as the men tried to sell turn signals at each city. We only stayed for a short time in each place, and I bounced into and out of schools.

Fee broke up with West in Fort Worth, sold his car, and we moved to Tulsa. He quickly got a job with the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain. My best memory of Tulsa was the night of the second Dempsy-Tunney heavyweight boxing match (1927) when an entire downtown block was roped off so that standees could hear the radio report over loudspeakers: there were hundreds of listeners, including boxing fan Fee and me.

We moved on to Kansas City, MO, and spent much of 1928 there. I saw the legendary film star Tom Mix put on a show and even at my early age was able to recognize that his marksmanship with a pistol was a total phony. Sound was just beginning to come into films, usually in short subjects between silent features. In one such short, I saw and heard Benito Mussolini himself announce “salut’a zee American peop’” as the audience roared at his accent.

Chicago, 1929 – 1931

I don’t remember what my father did in Kansas City, but we bused to Chicago in the spring of 1929 and moved into a cruddy apartment building on the north side near Lincoln Park. I checked into Arnold Grammer School (now demolished) on Center St., 7-8 blocks away from our apartment.

As the new kid on the block, I was quickly taken by friends to the SMC Cartage Co.’s garage at 2122 N. Clark St., the site of the infamous “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” (14 Feb. ’29), where one of Chicago’s gangs (Capone’s) had wiped out much of a rival gang with machine guns, a month or so before our arrival. The garage was empty at the time of my guided tour but the bullet shatterings on the walls were plain to see.

There was another gang event on Chicago’s north side, but it happened after I left. The Biograph movie theater was on Lincoln Ave. perhaps 5-6 blocks north of where we lived: I went to it a number of times. That was the place where the FBI shot and killed bank-robber John Dillinger (in about 1934?) when I was in Carmel.

There was nothing notable about Arnold Grammar School. We kids lined up outside, class by class, and marched up to our rooms; marched out for lunch break and for return; and out again for day’s end. Chicago was broke and our teachers received no pay. They stayed on because they had nothing else to do but hope that sometime they would be paid.

Arnold did have a famed alumna, movie superstar Gloria Swanson. Near the end of her career (1930?), she came to address us in our regular assembly with a contingent of photographers and publicity agents. She gushed a few minutes, posed for the camera, and left within a minute or so.

Nearby Lincoln Park was a kids’ paradise. Beaches; swimming in the lake; roller skating on the walkways and sledding in the winter; sneaking off with row boats at night but seldom returning them to their docks when we were through. I loved Lincoln Park!

At school, our big activity was playing with baseball cards at recess and lunch time. We did not collect them as kids do today: Instead, we gambled with them! A good activity for 11–12-year-olds, and I was among the better gamblers!

One of my best activities in Chicago concerned baseball. Both major leagues were there: Wrigley Field was nearby and south side’s Comiskey Park was only 20 minutes away by elevated train. I had several two-bit jobs helping elderly neighboring ladies and always had enough money to get to the ballpark and to buy entrance. More importantly, I had a baseball-mad father who wanted his son to see the real McCoy and who would write school excuses any time requested [“Please excuse John for yesterday’s absence. He had to go to the dentist”].

The Big Depression hit Chicago hard in 1931. Unemployed veterans of World War I were selling apples on the street, Fee was laid off from a good job in a DuPont paint factory, but my mother was able to support us as a waitress. About the time that I graduated from grammar school (1931) my father received a Veteran’s Bonus, and he and I took off for California, leaving Peggy behind until Fee could find a new way of life.

Back to California

Six people in a small sedan on a “share the ride” trip to LA, stopping at auto courts (as they were then called before the word “motel” was coined). Dad and I spent several days with Aunt Lorraine (John Archer having died in 1928) while he cased the job market in LA. We then went to Ventura, and I stayed several weeks with my grandparents on a ranch near Foster Park (uncle Floyd and cousin Jack Emmett were also living there), then with aunt Nellie in Ventura, and lastly with Fee’s brother Earl and family on his farm near Saticoy.

Fee was off in San Francisco, job hunting. Through an employment agency, he was hired by Florence Leidig to work in her grocery store in Carmel. Her building was 2-storied with a few apartments over the store at the northeastern corner of Ocean and Dolores, and we stayed there for a short time. The building was demolished years ago.

As soon as Fee was settled into his new job, he sent for me and I joined him in mid-summer of 1931 and began an association with Carmel that has now lasted for more than 70 years.