The Day the Lights Went Out When I Flushed the Toilet

Written By:  Andrew Eide

When my father and brother built the second floor on our home they put a small bathroom off the Master Bedroom. This small bathroom only had a sink and a toilet and it was located above the stairway you used to walk to the 2^nd floor of the house.

I would often play upstairs as my bed was located in the hallway upstairs behind a curtain. This day I had to pee so I went into the bedroom in my parent’s master bedroom rather than run all the way downstairs to the main bathroom.

As I finished I hit the lever on the toilet to flush the toilet. The instant I pressed the flush level the lights in the bathroom went out. Since that bathroom had no window it was so dark in there I couldn’t see anything. It took me a long time to find the latch to open the door of the bathroom to get out.

I was so frightened that I ran downstairs and outside where the light was.

When my father got home I told him that flushing the toilet caused the lights to short out and go dark. He laughed and I told him I didn’t think it was something to joke about. He took me outside and showed me that there was a construction crew working on the street. He said they told him that they accidentally broke the electrical cable that provides electricity to our home.

So my father told me that it was an extreme coincidence that they broke the electrical cable and the exact same time I flushed the toilet in that bathroom.

Well I will tell you this. From that day until we move to Saint Andrews Road every time I used that bathroom in the master bedroom I would leave the door open. Also I would have one food outside of the bathroom door and then reach over and flush the toilet. The instant the toilet started to flush I would run as fast as I could out of there, down the stairs, and outside to the backyard.

The initial experience was so traumatizing that I was never able to flush that toilet with the door closed again.

Banged Head at Fullington Street

Written By:  Andrew Eide

This incident while I was living at 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland, California, happened when I was maybe 2 to 3 years of age.

Our hallway leading from the living room to the bedroom was hardwood floors. My father and brother would put on socks and take a run down the carpeted hallway and when they hit the waxed hardwood floor they would slide down the hallway and into the bedroom at the end of the hall.

That looked like so much fun for little me did the same thing. I stayed upright and slid all the way down the hallway and into the bedroom only to hit the sharp corner of a large wooden table in the bedroom. That opened a gash in my forehead that required being taken to the Emergency Room and getting stitched up.

To this day 60 years later I can still see that table corner flying toward my forehead.

After I got stitched up I was fine. We were playing in the living room, which was carpeted, and this was about a week after I hit my head initially, so I wasn’t totally healed up yet. I tripped and of course slammed my head into the coffee table right on the very same spot where I busted open my head previously and had stitches.

Mom rushed me back to the Emergency Room and I had to get stitched up again. Twice in two weeks. Man that sucks.

I’ve never had any incidents like that again so I am fortunate. I also learned not to take stupid risks like I did back then when I was a little kid.

Drugs Flushed Down the Toilet

Written By:  Andrew Eide

The first apartment I rented after joining the Navy was in Chula Vista and it was a 1 bedroom apartment located on Madison Avenue just off of D Street in Chula Vista.

The big comedy thing during that time, which was 1973 to 1974, was Cheech & Chong. One of their famous skits was when they were sitting around their home when they hear a knock on the door and the persons banging on the door claimed they were the police. So the other members in the house flush all their drugs down the toilet. Then when they open the door it turns out to be their friend asking HEY MAN DO YOU HAVE ANY DOPE? By the time they go into the bathroom all their drugs are gone. It was a cruel joke but a funny comedy skit.

On this evening four of us were in my apartment when we heard pounding on the door of the apartment. We heard OPEN UP! THIS IS THE POLICE! We freaked out so my friend gathered all the drugs and he ran into the bathroom. We told him if it really is the police we will give him a signal and he is to flush the dope down the toilet.

The rest of us sprayed air freshener around the apartment and then calmly went to the door as if the police wouldn’t know we were doing drugs.

When we opened the door it was my ship-mate from the Navy, Regan Raleay and he said, in his best Tommy Chong doper voice:  HEY MAN DOYOU HAVE ANY DOPE?

We were so relieved it wasn’t the police so we invited him in. He asked us again if we had any dope and we all realized our friend probably flushed it down the toilet. We ran into the bathroom but fortunately he didn’t flush anything so we spent the rest of the evening inhaling the dope we had.

Hit By a Car While Crossing Fullington Street

Written By:  Andrew Eide

I believe I was 5 or 6 years of age at the time of this incident. At the time, being such a young age, I always thought Fullington Street was a very wide street. Today I look at Fullington Street and if a car is parked at the curb at both sides of the street there is barely enough room in the middle of the street to drive your car between the two parked cars.

On this day I was visiting my friend Grady who lived in the duplex across the street from our home.

We were always taught to stop at the curb, look both ways numerous times, and never step out into the street until you are sure no cars are coming. Since Fullington Street is only one block long, and nobody would drive down Fullington Street unless they knew where they were going, we rarely had cars to watch out for.

But on this day I did the required stop and look both ways several times. After seeing no cars were coming I ran across Fullington Street to get back to my home. As soon as I reached the middle of the street the Pickup Truck driven by our neighbor Dutch, slammed into me.

Although I tumbled down the street I didn’t have any injuries except for a bruised hip.

Starting a Fire on Porter Street

Written By:  Andrew Eide

You may remember the blog I wrote about Porter Street and Redding Street being taken out from behind our house on 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland to make way for I-580 Freeway.

After the homes on Porter Street were bought up and vacant, waiting to be torn down, me and my friends would walk over to Porter Street and rummage around the closed homes. This was when I was 7 or 8 years of age.

 

On this day we went into a home on Porter Street that was basically behind our back fence on Fullington Street. We walked around inside the house and we found a can of cleaning fluid. We figured it might be flammable so we poured some of it on a rag we found inside the house and lit the rag on fire.

Being the dumb kids we were we failed to realize that leaving the can of cleaning fluid open means the fumes were all over the place. The instant the rag caught fire so did the fumes from the can of cleaning fluid and next thing we knew the can blew up and started the house on fire.

We ran out of the house and to my home and my friend called the fire department and they put the fire out. They never knew it was us so we never got caught but I learned a valuable lesson that day.

Riding a Little Red Wagon Down a Steep Hill

Written By:  Andrew Eide

When I first moved to 4263 Saint Andrews Road in Oakland, California, we had an empty lot area between the entrance of Saint Andrews Road where it started off Sequoia Road and Lonnie’s house.

From Saint Andrews Road next to Lonnie’s house the dirt hill went down maybe about 200 feet to a level area off Barcelona Street.

I cannot remember which friend it was but he had a little red wagon similar to the one in the photo in this blog.

We would sit at the top of this dirt hill sitting inside his little red wagon. We would push off and go flying down the dirt hill. About half way down we were going really fast and we realized that we had no way of steering the wagon and the wagon had no brakes to stop it. We would then tip over or hit a rock and tumble end over end until we crashed to a stop at the bottom of the hill.

We would get up, bruised, battered, and scratched up, and we would look at each other and explain how we damn near killed ourselves. Then we would look at each other and exclaim THAT WAS FUN! LET’S DO IT AGAIN!

Riding a Little Red Wagon Down a Steep Hill

Written By:  Andrew Eide

When I first moved to 4263 Saint Andrews Road in Oakland, California, we had an empty lot area between the entrance of Saint Andrews Road where it started off Sequoia Road and Lonnie’s house.

From Saint Andrews Road next to Lonnie’s house the dirt hill went down maybe about 200 feet to a level area off Barcelona Street.

I cannot remember which friend it was but he had a little red wagon similar to the one in the photo in this blog.

We would sit at the top of this dirt hill sitting inside his little red wagon. We would push off and go flying down the dirt hill. About half way down we were going really fast and we realized that we had no way of steering the wagon and the wagon had no brakes to stop it. We would then tip over or hit a rock and tumble end over end until we crashed to a stop at the bottom of the hill.

We would get up, bruised, battered, and scratched up, and we would look at each other and explain how we damn near killed ourselves. Then we would look at each other and exclaim THAT WAS FUN! LET’S DO IT AGAIN!

Motorcycle Crash With Lonnie

Written By:  Andrew Eide

I traded my Honda 50 Motor Scooter for a Honda 90 Trail Bike very similar to the one in the photo above.

One of the people I loved riding with was my neighbor Lonnie.

Lonnie liked to take the muffler off his 50 cc motorcycle so that it sounded loud and impressive. I thought removing the muffler to go straight pipe was a stupid concept as the muffler is there for a reason.

On this day Lonnie and I were riding near my home at 4263 Saint Andrews Road. If you look on a map of 4263 Saint Andrews Road and then to the northeast you will see the intersection where Sequoia Road, Oak Hill Road, and Sage Drive meet. Today I will talk about a scary incident that took place between me and Lonnie on Sage Drive.

We had just come down Oak Hill Road and we turned onto Sage Drive. As you can see on a map Sage Drive is a Cul-de-Sac, meaning a dead-end street. About half way down Sage Drive there were many empty lots with nothing but dirt and weeds.

Lonnie was to my left and I was on the right of Lonnie. We were both traveling around 40 miles per hour when without warning Lonnie leaned to the right, went directly in front of me toward the empty lots to the right, and before I knew what happened I slammed into Lonnie and his motorcycle and I broadsided him.

I remember watching Lonnie and his motorcycle cart wheeling in the empty lot and flopping to a stop. I remember that I stopped when I broadsided Lonnie and I flew over my handlebars. I remember landing hard on the street and it hurt. But I had learned years before that even on the hottest day I would wear boots, jeans, a heavy jacket, thick gloves, and a helmet, to avoid serious injury.

My bike was messed up but it wasn’t that bad. I was bruised but all my protective clothing saved me from serious injury.

When we got together I demanded to know why Lonnie cut in front of me. He said he saw the empty lot and he thought it would be fun to turn and ride into the lot. I then asked Lonnie didn’t he remember I was riding to his right and he said with his muffler taken off his bike and it was straight pipe he couldn’t hear my bike over his exhaust noise.

I stopped being Lonnie’s friend after this incident.

Riding My Honda 50 Motor Scooter Down a Steep Hill

Written By:  Andrew Eide

My first motorized vehicle after owning many pedal bikes was a Honda 50 Motor Scooter very similar to the one in the photo above. It was very basic, had a 5 horsepower engine, and the top speed was around 50 miles per hour I did get it up to 70 miles per hour several times coasting down Sequoia Road in Oakland near where I lived at 4263 Saint Andrews Road.

My best friend Steve lived in Oakland in the Montclair District near the city of Piedmont. Some of our friends lived in the steep hills toward the upper end of Broadway Terrace which was a street that ran from the College District of Oakland up into the Oakland Hills just shy of Highway 13.

One our friends lived nearly at the top of Broadway Terrace. At that point the road was very steep. When I say steep it was like the section of Sequoia Road near where I lived on Saint Andrews Road. That section of Sequoia Road was so steep that when I owned a 1950 VW Beetle I often had to stop and shift into 1^st gear to make it up the steep hill. When I rode the city bus to get to Skyline High School the bus couldn’t make it up the steep part of Sequoia Road so we had to get out and push the bus up the hill. That’s how steep this section of Broadway Terrace is.

On this day on our way down Broadway Terrace from our friend’s house I was on my Honda 50 Motor Scooter and Steve was on his 50 cc motorcycle. As we are going downhill on the steep incline we rounded a corner and I wasn’t able to remain on the road due to the downhill speed and the tightness of the curve. I hit a patch of gravel and immediately felt my Motor Scooter sliding and tipping over.

I maintained as best I could and when the bike landed on its side I remember I was standing on top of it like a Surfer does standing on a surfboard riding a wave. After about 30 to 40 feet my bike slid to a stop. I was okay but the bike had some damage but nothing that kept it from working properly.

To this day if I am driving a motorcycle I take extreme caution to avoid another situation like this.

Hanging Over the Caldecott Tunnel

Written By:  Andrew Eide

The Caldecott Tunnel connects Oakland to the Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, Walnut Creek areas. We usually got to the Caldecott Tunnel by driving up Highway 13 and when we arrived at Highway 24 we took it East toward Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, and Walnut Creek areas.

Back when I was a little boy there was only one tunnel. By the time I was a teen there were two tunnels. Today there are three. The incident I’m going to tell you about today happened when I was maybe 16 or 17 years of age and it concerns the original tunnel on the Orinda side of the Caldecott Tunnel.

As you exit the original Caldecott Tunnel on the Orinda side there is a covering over the exit. It is not a solid structure it is a system of open steel beams. If you climb out onto those steel beams you can look down and about 30 feet below you is the traffic exiting the Caldecott Tunnel on Highway 24.

On this evening my friend Steve drove us through the Caldecott Tunnel and he took the first exit. He parked and asked me to take a walk with him. The next thing I know we are walking on the steel beams above the traffic on Highway 24. We sat on the beams for a few minutes before I realized if I were to fall I would fall onto Highway 24 and probably get killed by the cars hitting me.

I quickly got off the steel beams and I’ve never attempted a stupid stunt like that again.

I Nearly Drowned In a Swimming Pool

Written By:  Andrew Eide

When I was very young, between the ages of 3 and 6, my father was a member of a family resort located in either Lafayette or Walnut Creek, California. He always said it was in Walnut Creek but since I know it was just as you came out of the Caldecott Tunnel you exited to get to the resort and that would make you in the location of Lafayette and not Walnut Creek.

The story goes that we were at the resort and me, being a little child, just calmly stepped off the side of the pool and into the water. The thing is I wasn’t in the 1 to 2 foot area of the pool I was in the deep end which was around 10 feet deep.

Nobody saw me drop into the pool which seems odd even to this day. When my mother and father didn’t see me walking around any longer they went to the pool. What they saw was surprising and amusing. They said there I was on the bottom of the pool in nearly 10 feet of water calmly walking on the bottom of the pool. They said I wasn’t scared or crying just calmly walking around like I owned the place.

The Life Guard on duty pulled me out and I was fine. To this day I have no clue why I didn’t get water in my lungs and nearly drown. Was it a miracle? Maybe.

Laundry Room Dryer Incident

Written By:  Andrew Eide

In the same laundry room shed where my cat Snowball died we had, of course, our laundry room at 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland, California.

Remember this was in the late-50’s and the washers and dryers back then were manufactured differently than they are today.

On our dryer there was a single red button on the dial that, when you pushed the button, it defaulted to a 60 minute normal drying cycle. I guess back then that was the normal cycle everyone used so they made the machine to default to that drying cycle with one push of one red button.

I walked into the laundry room just as I saw the dryer on its current cycle go off. I wasn’t old enough to know that the clothes inside the dryer were already dry. So I walked in, pushed the red button, and the dryer started up so I ran out of the shed as I was scared why the dryer just started up like that.

About 20 minutes later my mother came out and went into the laundry room. When she saw the dryer going, nearly a half hour longer than she knows she set it for, she asked me and I told her I pushed the red button.

She informed me that when the dryer goes off it means the clothes are dry and you don’t need to run it again. When she opened the door of the dryer the clothes were so hot she couldn’t even tough them without getting burned.

Mother explained to me that running a load of dry clothes in the dryer could cause the clothes to catch fire and burn up the dryer and the house. I didn’t know that clothing that still has water in it from the wash don’t get that hot and won’t catch fire.

I know that now and I will never make that mistake again.

Snowball, My Siamese Cat, is Dead

Written By:  Andrew Eide

Growing up at 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland, California, my sister and I had our own Siamese cat as a pet. Mine was named Snowball and her car was named Cleo.

Our laundry room was located in a shed in the back yard. I remember that shed and when you got inside you saw the washer and dryer, some cabinets, and some shelving.

This day when I was 7 or 8 years old I was calling my cat Snowball. I called and called and he didn’t come to me. I looked throughout the house and then I decided to go in the back yard. After looking around and calling him I thought maybe he went inside the laundry room shed to get warm since it was cool outside.

I entered the laundry room shed and I called and called. Then I remembered when I was several years younger that another cat we had decided to go into some boxed up on shelves hanging on the wall to deliver her kittens. I thought maybe my cat, Snowball, was up on the shelves sitting there getting warm since heat rises.

As I looked up I came face to face with Snowball. He had a strange look on his face. I called him and I didn’t get any response such as twitching ears or his eyes blinking. As I got closer I realized that Snowball was dead and he died with his eyes open. At my age at the time this tally freaked me out and I ran into the house and my father came out and disposed of Snowball.

As I got older I realized that death is part of life and I am able to deal with it now even though it never gets easy to deal with.

Trying to Do Gymnastics on Our Chain Link Fence

Written By:  Andrew Eide

I have an amusing story to tell you from when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old living at 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland, California. It is amusing now but it was scary and shocking for me when it happened.

We had a chain link fence around our front yard. It was maybe 4 feet high and completely enclosed our front hard. On the side of the fence that faced our driveway the last two sections of the fence was missing the fencing itself. The poles to hold the fence was still there though so it served as a horizontal pole for us to hang and swing from.

On this day I was sitting on top of the pole. My friend was visiting and one of the things we enjoyed doing was to sit on the pole, hold onto the pole with both our hands, and then lean backward which caused us to spin around on the poll. My friend could get three or four revolutions that way but I was usually barely able to obtain one complete revolution.

All I remember was leaning back and then the next thing I remember was the back of my head hitting hard on the concrete driveway. I had no clue if my head was busted open or not. I remember it hurt immensely and even though I put my hand to the back of my head where the pain was, and looking at my hand not seeing any blood, I was still totally freaked out and I still thought I had busted my head open.

My first reaction after that was to run down the driveway to the back porch. Once I flopped onto the back porch I pounded on the door and screamed for my mother to help me. Mother came out and inspected my head and she told me that although I have a bump on my head I wasn’t bleeding and I will be okay.

Later that day she said she talked to the neighbor who said he was watching me and my friend sitting and playing on the fence. Where I thought I went around once and then lost my grip our neighbor told my mother that I spun around the pole several times, then lost my grip, and then I “dismounted” the fence pole like a Gymnast in a Gymnastics competition but instead of making a nice landing on my feet I landed on the back of my head.

I learned a valuable lesson that day and even as I grew up I was fearful of trying that maneuver on the bars at school even though all my friends were doing it as I didn’t want to get hurt again.

Shocked While Playing With an Electrical Outlet

Writen By:  Andrew Eide

Our father was an electrician working for the City of Oakland. We watched our father do all the electrical stuff around our house including building a 2^nd floor on our home to transform it from a single floor home to a two story home.

One day I was sitting on our back porch looking at the electrical outlet. Sitting on a table next to the electrical outlet was a telephone set but it wasn’t in use it was just sitting there. I looked at the wires coming out of the phone and I noticed that there were metal eyelets crimped onto the wires. The colors of the wires were Black, Red, White, and Green. Even though I was maybe 4 or 5 years old at the time I knew that the Black and White are usually the hot wires while the Red and Green serve other functions with the green often being the ground wire.

I wasn’t overly concerned as I stuck the eyelets into the slots of the electrical outlet since there was insulation on the wires. Of course my level of comprehension at that age didn’t allow me to notice that from where the eyelet was crimped onto the bare wire there was about ¼ inch of bare wire before the insulation started.

Since the Black wire is usually the hot wire I stuck the metal eyelet of that wire into the slot. I then rotated sticking the metal eyelets of the other colored wires into the other slot knowing that would complete a circuit and something would happen even though I had no clue what would happen.

Sometimes nothing would happen. Once time I heard the sound of a busy signal on the receiver. Another time when I stuck the metal eyelet into the slot on the electrical outlet the phone’s bell would ring. I was thrilled that at my young age I was able to do something like this. It was like magic to me.

Then I got overly excited and was quickly transferring the other colored wires to hear the various items sound off on the phone. I didn’t realize that on the Black wire I was touching the bare wire. So when I inserted one of the other colored wires into the other slot, and I was also touching the bare part of the wire, that I was completing an electrical circuit through my body.

When that shot of electricity hit me I went off instead of the phone going off. I don’t remember much about the shocking incident but I do remember regaining consciousness and I was about 5 to 6 feet away from the electrical outlet. That means the electric shot threw me across the back porch. Lucky for me I got thrown as the main cause of death with electricity is that your muscled contract and you cannot let go of the hot wires that are shocking you. Being thrown saved my life as it disconnected me from the electrical outlet.

A shocking experience that I never tried to recreate again during the rest of my life.

October is a Month to Focus on Scary and Shocking Things

Written By:  Andrew Eide

When you think of October the first thing that comes to mind is Halloween when we focus on scary and shocking things.

For our blog for October 2016 I will not be discussing Halloween in any form. I’m going to relate to you some of the scary and shocking things that happened to me while I was growing up in Oakland, California.

Over half the items I will present this month come from the time I lived at 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland. Although I was born in that home and lived there until I was 9 years old still over half the incidents I will present happened from that location and those 9 years. You will find it surprising that so many of those incidents could happen to me from birth to 9 years of age.

The remaining items are things that happened to me while we lived at 4263 Saint Andrews Road in Oakland. Although you would think that when I lived there, from age 9 to 18, that more things would have happened to me but they didn’t.

Either I got smarter as I grew older or the things that happened to me from age 9 to 18 didn’t seem as scary of shocking as they did to me from birth to 9 years of age so they didn’t stay with me like the early incidents have.