Lakeside California

There is a group on facebook remembering our town of Lakeside. I have been in contact with three classmates through this group. That is saying a lot since we are now all over 70. It is fun to look back. Someone asked on the group to say in three words what we liked best about Lakeside. That is hard to do but I replied my Uncle Burt and my family. Before WW1 my Great Uncle Burt Clark bought a large piece of property along Los Coches Creek. Actually he was involved in moving the creek from the center of the small valley to a channel against the hill. His property covered many acres along the road and up the hill to the top and a flat area there. He built an adobe home for his father. My grandpa Clark. My mother came down from Washington state with her family. Her mother had been raised by a couple named Adams. She was raised as Winifred Adams. She wasn't told that until after her first marriage. She found out that her birth name was Grace Clark and that the people she thought of as her parents had never legally adopted her. My grandmother wanted to meet her father. My grandmother had remarried after a divorce and her husband, Sam Dotolo, didn't like it here. He wanted to go back to Auburn Washington. They left but my mother stayed. She kept house for her grandfather, Dexter Clark, and her uncle Burt Clark, and could go to school. Sam Dotolo was old country Italian a didn't think girls needed school. Eventually my mother married the boy who lived across the road.

 

My father's mother, Margaret Toston, bought property on the other side of Los Coches Rd in a tax sale. A few other people lived on the road but there was no phone line. My grandmother paid for the line to be run to her house. Then other people signed up for the telephone. The land was also many acres and included the hill and a flat area above. My father was Alfred Toston and my mother was Lillian Ulery. We lived in my father's house across the road from Uncle Burt and Grandpa Clark. My parents divorced when I was four.

 

My mother married five times. The last time I was twenty. The one constant in our lives was our Uncle Burt. I wrote on his memorial at Find A Grave this:

 

Burt Clark liked school and math was his best subject. He also took Spanish in school. He graduated from high school. As a teen he ran a trap line but had a hard time with killing the animals that were caught. He was a dead on shot with a rifle. He and his brother and cousin and their dog often stayed out in the woods all night.

He liked to watch his father play cards at the logging camps. He worked in the camp kitchens and later as a logger himself. Burt Clark became a gambler for much of his younger years. He could count cards and deal off the bottom of the deck. He taught himself to use a cuff button as a shiner so he could tell the cards he dealt. He won the money to buy land in Lakeside California. He built an adobe house that still stands today. His father Dexter Clark lived there for the rest of his own life.

Burt didn't stay home he liked Salt Lake City and when the first world war began, Burt joined the army in Utah. Because he was a good shot they wanted him to be a sniper but he knew he couldn't just shoot a person and refused.

He fell in love in Europe and volunteered to stay there after the war. He planned to meet the young woman when he was suddenly sent back to the states. He had no time to contact her and no address for her.

When he returned the country had already welcomed the returning war heroes and people were fed up with the many problems they had caused. One of the first things that happened to Burt was being falsely accused of a murder and arrested. He was only freed when the right person was arrested. This made Burt very bitter for a long time.

He went to northern California and fell in love with an older woman. She wanted to buy him a ranch but he wanted to open a casino. They broke up. Burt worked as a plumber and worked installing pipe at the San Diego Zoo and the State College. Burt had also developed a drinking problem. He didn't drink all the time but would make himself sick before he would stop for awhile. Burt had nightmares as a result of the war.

He started his own hauling business, Lakeside Rock Sand and Gravel. He still had what was left of the business when I was a child. We had a phone when most people didn't. My mother answered the phone, "Lakeside Sand and Gravel" and when we got older we did that too. Uncle Burt sold off most of his land piece by piece including his house. He gave my mother a piece of his land and later when I married he gave me the last of it.

Burt liked to use his Spanish whenever he could and enjoyed talking to workers from Mexico and learning the differences in their language and the Spanish he learned as a young man.

When we were little he baby sat us. He taught us to play cards, 21, and poker. He really could deal off the bottom of the deck and he could stack a deck while he picked up the cards and talked. Over the years, Uncle Burt told us stories about his childhood and some about the war.

 

My sister and I would sneak into the bed of his dump truck something he told us many times not to do. We passed him tools when he worked on the truck. My mother didn't drive so we often rode in that old truck. There were times that he needed a load of fill sand and instead of buying the sand he would drive his truck to the dry San Diego river bed and load the truck himself with a shovel while my sister and I played nearby. Later he baby sat my children. I will never stop missing him even after all these years. He was truly a good person.

 

There were people in the town of Lakeside that looked down on us. My father was a heavy equipment operator and later a successful contractor. My mother didn't really know anyone of the old timers of Lakeside and mostly lived a quiet life. They could judge us because of my Uncle Burt but he was a good man and many people in this world have drinking problems.

 

This is Uncle Burt with my children. They missed him when he passed.