ALL SHOOK UP chapter 169

While we still had the girls living with us, Canadians began to show up because they wanted to “visit us.” I don’t want to question their motives, but if they wanted to see us why did they spend their days at Disneyland?

We were never deceived. We lived very close to the hottest tourist attraction in southern California – Mickey’s House. While few Canadians had ever heard of Knott’s Berry Farm, most ended up taking that in along with Universal Studios. It was a good thing they took off for most of the day, I have very little time for visiting and with the number of people coming, we could not afford to feed them three meals a day. As it was, we usually only had them for breakfast and usually only saw them about 10-11 o’clock at night.

A couple of our earliest guests arrived unannounced. It was the middle of the night, Maybe 3:00 a.m. when we heard the kind of knock on our door that makes you jump and feel like something terrible had happened. Della was startled and I flew out of bed and ran into the living room. I could see flashing lights through the curtains. I decided I really needed to put pants on before opening the door. The knocking continued. With some fear I returned to the front door, opened it and was confronted with two policemen who had flashlights pointing in my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.

“Are you Clyde Walker?” It couldn’t have been me they really wanted I had done nothing that would draw the police. “Yes, is something wrong?” “Do you know these people?” One of the officers stepped aside and turned his flashlight on two very nervous looking guys. Ron Hoskyn and Dale Klassen were standing down the steps like two kids caught with the hands in the cookie jar.

When I saw the guys the temptation to say “No,” was overwhelming. How did they get there? More importantly, why were the police standing with flashlight directed at the guys? What had they done? “Yes, I know them.”

“We needed to check on their story. A neighbor saw them getting into your car and called us because they believed they were trying to steal the car.” The boys said they had just crawled into it to get some sleep. I smiled and then broke into a small laugh. “Officer, I’ll take them in the house. Thank my neighbor for me.”

The guys were left in my charge. Since I had no cell to put them in, we sat in the living room. By that time, Della was up smiling and laughing. “What are you guys doing here?” “We just came to see the area and…” “Wait a minute, back up. How did you get here?” They had hitchhiked and did some walking. When they finally found the house it was late. Ron was depending on his memory for driving us to Buena Park. They considered sleeping in the backyard, but it was colder than they expected. When they found my car unlocked and decided to sleep inside – it would be warmed.

They were right about that. Even though we were pretty far from the ocean, the nights were cool. We were up for a while longer. Della wanted to make sure they had eaten. They were hungry. Naturally, they were teens. She fed them and we heard the whole story. We had no room for them, but grabbed some pillows and blankets and invited them to enjoy the floor.

Rodney found them sleeping the next morning and came in our room to tell us that Ron and some other man was in our living room. He wanted to watch cartoons and they were in the way. We convinced him to crawl into bed with us and in time we all fell back asleep, well Ron didn’t but he was pretty quiet.

The next morning Rhonda was contentedly playing in her room and didn’t know there were people in the living room. I can’t remember the time of year they came but we had time for the guys. These were two guests we were happy to have. It made for great stories.

I can’t remember what we did or even how long they stayed. But it was a very pleasant surprise. We probably took in the area and maybe even went to Disneyland. I know we went to Universal as Dale reminded me that I had a role in one of their quick little movies to demonstrate how films were made. I played a rescue worker and some guy was lying on the ground. Their plan was to cast as many tourists as possible into the scene and then try to sell them the film. I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t that good.

Yes, we were surprised, but pleased to have them. We have always loved having kids from our youth groups return for any reason. I told them the next time they come, knock on and we would let them in.