Ragamuffin

I was never a real ragamuffin but I was very close to being one in my pre-teen and early teen tears. (late 1930s) All of my siblings had flown the nest and there was now just my Dad and I. My Dad was a good man but he was worn out from bringing nine children to maturity. He relaxed and let me do pretty much what I wanted to do.

Here is a story from my ragamuffin years. I was crazy about movies. It took ten cents to get in the theater. That was big money in those days and I usually did not have it. I can remember calling my sister Jean who was the office manager at the Pomona Tile Plant and asking for a dime. It was a long Saturday morning walk out to the plant.

Here was another way that I used to raise ten cents. I would walk the alleys in the better part of Pomona and look in the garbage cans for bottles that were worth a deposit. They were usually wine bottles.

I hated the bottles that said they were not to be reused. They were usually whiskey bottles. If I was lucky I would find several returnable bottles. I remember the liquor store in downtown Pomona that would give me cash for them. The cash was two cents per bottle. And off to the movie I would go!