The 5 Lew Kids
In the Suburbs 

When we moved into the Tallac Street house on October 7, 1963, it had only two bedrooms and one bathroom for five kids and two adults. One room had two bunk bed to sleep four of us kids. Our former house at 1325 1/2 Q street was the same, but the rooms were a little larger in the new house. I do not know how we managed in those days. 

Our dad immediately went to work to expand it by adding two more bedrooms, two new bathrooms (one ensuite with the master bedroom), and a large family room. The original bathroom was turned into a small office. He received a building permit to start that in February 1964, and he did not finish it until 1970. The family room was the last part to be built. It had a cement floor and while putting up the wall frames our dad fell from a ladder and hurt his back.

The Vietnam War

One reason it took so long to complete the house expansion was the Vietnam War. To earn extra money, our dad volunteered to go to Vietnam and Thailand for the US Air Force to repair planes. He was a member of the RAM (Rapid Area Maintenance) Team. He said that meant he had to carry a special passport and his shots record (immunizations) at all times. He also had to have his suitcase packed at all times so he could be deployed within 24 hours in an emergency. 

The US entered the war in Fall 1964. Our dad went over for 5 months from Nov. 1965 to May 2, 1966. He was mostly in Thailand, but spent time in most of the US air bases in Vietnam, as well. He again went from Dec. 1966 to June 1967 (mostly to Thailand), from Aug. to Dec. 1967 (mostly to Vietnam), from Aug. 1968 to Feb. 1969 (mostly to Thailand), and finally from Aug. 1972 to Feb. 24, 1973 (split between both countries).  He chose to go in the Winter because there was more need at that time (others wanted to stay in the US for Christmas). He said he saw Bob Hope's show 5 years in a row.

They paid him well to be on the RAM Team. A contract for his last trip (1972-3) showed he earned $24,336, including travel costs. According to online inflation counters, that would equal to about $170,000 in 2022! 

Our dad was overseas for a total of over two years, leaving our mom at home to take care of us 5 kids. She was always worried that he might get hurt, especially when he went to Vietnam. Our dad said he could have died three times when his bed was bombed. He was away all three times. And once the airplane he was working on was blown up (along with much of the base). His boss had given the workers, including our dad, the day off and our dad was in town visiting Chinese friends. In Pleiku, Vietnam, he said he heard bombs going off all night long. There and in Danang he had to wear flight jacket and helmet. 

Our dad said he found that the rice mills and machine shops in Thailand are mostly owned and operated by Toisan people, even though most of the Chinese in Thailand are from Chau Zhou (or Chiu Zhao), which is in the north of Guangdong Province.

Our mom once jokingly said that the reason us kids all turned out OK was because she raised us all while our dad was away those years. She also said that she had no problems at all raising us with him away since she had not yet started working. She also said she relied on Alan a lot when our dad was away because he was the oldest. When we went out, Alan would hold hands with two of the kids, while she took the other two, for example. 

Neighborhood Kids

Our next-door neighbors on Tallac Street were the Lanes. Our mom said that every Easter us kids would get brand new clothes to wear and she and the girls would get brand new hats. Our dad would wear a suit and the boys would wear ties and we would all go to mass at St. Philomene. Afterward we would go to the Capitol Park in downtown Sacramento (at least when we were small).

Kelly was the same age as Alan, and Kyle was the same age as Jürgen. (They also had older and younger siblings.) Alan wondered if someone higher than us was running an experiment to see how we would be similar and different. But then, there were also two boys downtown who were the same ages as us (Johnny and Billy Hurtz), and I the two Mexican boys (Paul and Diego) across the street were one year older than the two of us. 

We played with Kelly and Kyle a lot when we were young. We would use tennis rackets as guitars and pretend we were the Beatles while playing their music. “War” was another game that we liked to play in the Lane's backyard, maybe with tennis rackets as machine guns.

Kelly and Kyle attended the local public school, but we attended St. Philomene Catholic School. Our mom said the public schools were very bad. She was not religious (as mentioned previously). Our dad was a practicing Catholic, and we would attend church every Sunday with him. He was required to make a cash donation using envelopes so they could keep track of his "gifts". 

Jürgen and Alan played Little League baseball for two years on a team with Kelly, Kyle and a couple of other kids from our neighborhood. One of those years we beat every other team twice, and they each beat us once.  As we got older, Jürgen and Alan grew more distant from Kelly and Kyle and were no longer close with them by high school. Kyle drowned in the American River 1970 or 71. Floating down the American River was a popular way to cool down when the temperatures got too hot in the summer in Sacramento. But it was also dangerous due to unpredictable undercurrent. (Calvin's daughter, Stormie, is close friends with one of Kelly Lane's daughters.)

On the other side (to the left when facing the house) was the home of Mrs. Mauldin. Her grandchildren, especially David Mauldin, were around Monika and Calvin's age and visited often and played with them.

Jürgen and Alan were lucky to have cars in high school. Our dad bought Alan his first car, which was a white 1963 Mercury Comet convertible with red interior (bought for $300). That was probably in Fall 1971. He had to drive it home from the person’s house where we bought it. It had a manual transmission, and he had never having used a stick shift before. He got stuck in the middle of a busy intersection doing that. Our dad bought Jürgen a blue-green 1962 Ford Falcon sedan (also $300). The Comet and Falcon had the same, simple engine design and our dad wanted us to learn how to work on cars. But other than changing oil and tires, Alan was not very good at that. 

Our Mom Wrote: (from our baby book)

[1963] Ronny comes back to stay with us and go to school here. She adjust easily and is very quiet and shy.  She is well liked by other children.

Monica is very lively. She always finds things to make. She likes to help in the kitchen and is a good talker.

[1964-66] 

Alan talks very fast and well. He is interested in baking and cooking, also sampling. He does will in school and makes good progress in piano. He feels depressed in the evening and worries about school and friends. He like to play games but hates to lose to Jürgen. 

Jürgen speaks well and no long stutters. He likes plants and making things grow. He likes to play chess and other games. He is good in school and likes to play piano, which he started in Sept. 1965. He is dependable when on a subject of job that pays. He still likes soldiers (TV, coloring books, toys) and trucks or models to set up. He is also very mechanical taking everything we have apart. He is very stubborn.

Ronny stutters when making long sentences. She is very good in school, but is still scatterbrained and forgets easy. She is nervous and doesn't talk much to me. She doesn't comprehend when I talk to her! She gets along well with Monika, but likes older children better to play with. In 1965 she doesn't stutter any more but speaks slowly or not at all. She is quiet and minds well. She likes the outdoors and she is marvelous with animals. She can handle dogs, rabbits, and doesn't mind touching any kind of insect -- she has a compassion for animals.

[Summer 1964] Alan and Jürgen joined a bowling league.

[1965] Jürgen starts piano lessons for 1 year only. Alan plays flag-football in school.

[1966-69] Alan and Jürgen were in the Boy Scouts for 2 years, 1966-1968.  Jürgen became a First Class Scout; Alan was a Troop Leader. Jürgen was a Sacramento Bee carrier [newspaper delivery boy] from Sept. 6, 1968, for one year.

[1970] Ronny helps out with dishes and vacuum cleaning. She is good to average in school and plays on the basketball team. She has lots of girlfriends, and maybe one boyfriend who she went to Holloween with.  

Monika Remembers neighbors would hold block parties and our parents would occasionally hold parties inviting their friends and relatives. People at those parties would be speaking a lot of Chinese (Toisan dialect) and German. Their American spouses would speak English to us kids.  

Monika Remembers that our mom would drive us to school at St. Philomene in the morning and we would walk back after school. (Alternatively, we rode our bikes to and from school). She recalls that one day, the football coach for St. Philomene's team ordered one of the boys to give Alan a piggyback ride home after practice (after school). They probably only went as far as to get out of site of the coach.  Also, Monika had gone to Dyer-Kelly School (public) for kindergarten and the tallest boy in the kindergarten class became her first boyfriend in 1st grade at St. Philomene. She was the shortest in the class, at both schools. Both Monika and Alan had problems with bullies in kindergarten.

Calvin Remembers: The Lanes lived on one side of our house and the Mauldins lived on the other side of our house. There was a lady in the next house past the Mauldin's who would sometimes take care of us (babysit) when we first moved to Tallac Street. Across the street was Mr. and Mrs. Kost.  Their daughter was a college student and one day took me, Monika, and Ronnie to her school. She took us onto a stage where we played with games for the audience for some kind of child psychology demonstration.

Kevin Lane was one of the sons. He went to Vietnam because he was older. And he used to come home on his Harley War. He was a big hairy dude with leather on. I remember that. But I remember they always had a lot of leaves because of those trees that grew along the fence line [poplars between our yard and the Lanes]. He used to rake the leaves up and put them in the gutter on the street. Then he'd walk along with the gas can and poor gas on them. Then he would sit back and take a book of matches and flick it on them and it would just burst into flames -- a fire that would just burn the whole 20 feet.   [People stopped burning their garbage maybe in the late 1950s, but we were still burning our leaves in the mid-1960s when they had certain days designated as "burn days".] 

Jürgen Remembers driving the Falcon for about 1.5 year and then buying a VW Bug with money he had earned working at Weinstocks (a store like Macy's). Calvin then inherited the Falcon, which he eventually sold to Monika for $300 (maybe in 1979). After a few weeks, Monika sold it to a friend of hers for $400! 

Jürgen Remembers how scared we all were, huddled in our sleeping bags, when the first bear came. He had his knees bent up in his bag and he felt the bear brush against his knee as it prowled around our campsite. Jürgen also remembers walking past a hole in the ground that contained a wasp nest as we hiked up to the top of Yosemite Falls. We apparently disturbed the wasps, and they came chasing after us as we ran ahead with our heavy backpacks on. He got at least one bite from those wasps. 

Alan Remembers: One weekend, my high school friend, Fred Borowski, drove Jürgen, Tom Guheen (Jürgen’s good friend), and me to Yosemite Valley to hike up to the top of Yosemite Falls. Fred had a yellow convertible VW Bug and did not want to leave our food in it because bears might tear the roof. So, we left our food on the picnic table while we slept in sleeping bags on the ground in the open air. Bears raided our food 3 times that night. The last time we got out of our sleeping bags and shined our flashlights at the bear, but it just ignored us. The next day we bought more food and hiked up to the top of the falls (switch backs straight up). We spent the night at the top and came down the following day.

Alan Remembers:  Because I was the oldest, our mom said she relied on me a lot to help with the younger kids and around the house (maybe that is why she did not yell at me like she did with the other kids).

Our new home was not far from Cal-Expo, the new California State Fair grounds. When we were young, the state fairgrounds were closer to the downtown area. The thing I remember most about going to the old state fairgrounds was the Orange Julius stands. In those days, they made the drink with fresh squeezed oranges (they squeezed the juice out in front of you). I remember looking forward to that each year at the State Fair time.

One year when I was in high school, Cal-Expo had a special discount for young people. My friends and I went there several times that year, as it was an interesting place to hang out and people watch. They did not do that the following year. Horse racing was a big part of the State Fair, and it was the first (and only) place I ever bet on horses. I had a high school friend who looked older than 18 and he would place bets for us. We only lost a little money that night.

I never identified with the Catholic religion. I was a terrible altar boy because I could not remember what I was supposed to do. I was also not good at baseball or at basketball. But I had a knack for football, which I started playing in the 5th grade (flag football).