Barbara Graham, Part II

The Reformatory

Prior to being sent to the reformatory, Barbara had managed to get through life pretty much on her looks, personality, and cunning. But in Ventura, she also learned to be tough. There, she was thrown in with kids who were really "bad." Kid from Los Angeles and San Francisco streets, from migrant worker camps, from early Pachuco gangs; kids whose fathers were in Folsom, mothers in Tehachapi; kids who knew how to make and use brass knuckles and knives.

With a determination born in her ability to survive whatever environment she was in, Barbara succeeded in this new challenge, as well. She learned to face up to girls who tried to bully her, learned to push back when she got pushed, and learned to fight with fists, feet, and fingernails when she had to. A little bit of her sunshine personality fell by the wayside in the process, but that was to be expected. A girl had to get by however she could.

To say that Barbara disliked Ventura would be gross understatement. She despised and abhorred the place. Twice during her first year there, she ran away. Got to the Coast Highway and hitchhiked the 350 miles back up north to Oakland. Reaching home, she pleaded with Hortense to let her stay, to hide her. Both times, Hortense summoned the police and turned her in.

An ongoing problem to the reformatory administration, they finally decided to strike a bargain with the rebellious teenager. Settle down, study, complete one year of high school, and they would release her. Barbara agreed. Clearly the staff there, recognizing Barbara's intelligence, was counting on her enjoying school enough to want to continue. But Barbara's education had been so sporadic up to then, she simply had no use for the classroom.

She did what she had agreed to do, and asked for her release. She got it. This time, she rode the bus back to Oakland.

The Seagulls

Back in the old Oakland neighborhood, there was no way Barbara was going to live with Hortense again. Sixteen now, with a nicely developed figure, she was determined to make it on her own. But at her age, and with her recent background, there were no jobs to be found. And she was too old to live around from place to place within the extended family which had once taken her in; a homeless little kid was one thing, a nearly grown woman something else. But Barbara soon found a way to get along.

Some of Barbara's friends from the Oakland neighborhood, girls she had grown up with here and there, made spending money for themselves in the evenings and on weekends by going out with sailors from the Oakland navy yard. They hung around outside the main gate until they got picked up by young sailors going on shore leave for the night or the weekend. The sailors called the girls "seagulls," after the hungry birds that flocked to the shores of San Francisco Bay. Soon Barbara had joined the group.

The liaisons weren't always for sex; sometimes just friendly company, a hamburger and Coke somewhere, and youthful conversation with boys not much older than the girls themselves, boys away from home for the first time. This was 1939, remember, and the subject -- and actual activity -- of sex was not as common or fashionable as it would one day become. More likely, the seagulls and their sailor pickups would talk about Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" on the jukeboxes, a wonderful new movie called "The Wizard of Oz," Bing Crosby's latest record, or a rising young Hollywood starlet with chestnut curls named Susan Hayward.

If one of the seagulls got a free meal and could "borrow" a dollar from her young friend after some "necking" in the park, letting the guy "cop a few feels," then it would be a good, easy evening. But a lot of times it went farther than that; a lot of times the girls had to "go all the way" in the back seat of a car, or on a blanket spread on the grass in the dark. But that was all right, too; after the first few times, it got to be easy. 

The main thing for Barbara was that she was making it on her own. Without Hortense.