Growing Up in Burbank by Wesley H. Clark

Author:Wesley H. Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

Kiko’s Mexican Restaurant, 1970. Mike McDaniel.

8

Leisure Time

Burbank has always had a great parks system, and Burbankers loved to take advantage of the various tree-filled facilities. Many a boy or girl remembers blissfully unoccupied summer days in his or her neighborhood. Those living near Vickroy Park had access to a staff of teenagers who taught crafts programs. Basket weaving was one option; the kits were inexpensive. Another option was painting ceramic items, like an anthropomorphic ceramic grouping of fruit: grapes, an apple and an orange, all leering at one another. When Wes Clark offered one such finished product to his mother to be displayed in the kitchen, she graciously found a rather hidden place for it.

A favorite parks occupation was creating items from gimp. Gimp creations nowadays are more popularly called boondoggles. It’s those woven bits of vinyl lace, tied in consecutive knots so as to form a long chain. Kids could buy two lengths off a roll and begin knotting. These could be square or circular, depending upon the stitch chosen. The ends were always taken to one of the park counselors, who would melt the lace with a match so the thing wouldn’t unravel. The business end featured a hook so as to hold keys or simply be attached to whatever and dangle. One fascination of these was in coming up with color combinations: blue and green, silver and gold, pink and light blue, light green and dark green and so on. By the end of the summer of 1965, Wes had a drawer full of gimp.

Burbanker Corey Fredrickson also has fond memories of the parks and rec programs:

During the summers, all of the Burbank parks had programs every day of the week to keep us kids busy: contests, art classes like colored rock pictures on fiberboard, key chain weaving using colored lacing, making balsawood gliders with dope-laden wings, scavenger hunts around the neighborhood, caroms, chess, checkers, costume contests, basketball, Frisbee.…Every day was themed and had a daily schedule.…C’mon everyone, those were great times!

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