Kim Berry - The Laid-back 1970s

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In 1970 I was finishing the sixth grade at Orvis Ring Elementary school near UNR when we moved to a home on Sagittarius Drive in southwest Reno. See Education.

Here's a group photo Halloween 1971: Left to right, sitting: Jay Scott Berry, Bill Henderson; standing: Tim Henderson, Mike Henderson, John Ganser, Joe Ganser, Eric Schuft, Kim (me), Ingrid Berry, and Sue Sokol - and the dog Kawasaki.

Ingrid on bicycle in front of Sagittarius House - 1971 Jay with his dog Barney - 1971

A big part of my life was dirt-bike motorcycles:

Motorcycles

I attended Swope Middle School and Reno High School. At Reno High I was intrigued by the photography class. I spend a lot of money (about $250) for a Canon FTb and set up a black/white darkroom in by bedroom. (That is why some photos are black/white.) Here are some time exposures I took at night in Reno with the Canon:

Time exposures of Reno at night

Around 1970 we hiked up the mountain to the East of Pyramid Lake - I believe with my mother on a Sierra Club hike. Mostly I recall the cold wind. (Ingrid, Jay, Kim)

Here's a photo I had taken with my Kodak Instamatic of the other hikers:

Ed provides additional information about the hiker:

I think I recognize some of the people in the b&w photo. One is Dr. John Hallett of DRI. Others may be from the Sierra Club. So I think this was a Sierra Club sponsored hike, from the Reno chapter of the Sierra Club. I think it was called the Tiobe chapter. Maybe you can find a copy of their old newsletters listing hikes for these years and then pin the hike down to the day. (This was back when the Sierra Club was a simple hike in the mountains club before it was taken over by the Communists.)

Dr. Richard Sill (Sierra Club Archives), a physics professor at UNR, was a key person in the Sierra Club in Reno at that time. Sometime around 1980 he took flying lessons. While he was still on his learning curve he crashed while attempting to land on runway 270 (?) at Stead. There was a strong west wind and there is a large drop off on the east end of this runway. I always landed high on this runway when the wind was strong because I was afraid of the downdraft right off the east end of the runway (something that sinks in when you learn soaring before power flight). Dr. Sill came in as he had been taught to do in light winds: aiming to make a touch down close to the start of the runway. On a light wind day, it would have been a good landing. On this day, the downdraft forced Dr. Sill's plane down and he crashed into the down slope just before the runway began. Since he was a landing speed, he had no chance to pull up, or if he had tried he would have stalled and still hit the slope. He was in a small 2-place plane like a Cessna and he died in the crash.

Dr. Sill was the one who took me for my first hike up Mt. Rose, probably in 1961, when virtually nobody knew about this hike. If his wife, Marjorie, is still alive she may still have copies of the Sierra Club newsletters from 1961 onward. She published the newsletters. Of course, she may have tossed them all away after Richard died.

In 7th and 8th grade I delivered the Reno Evening Gazette after school.

In 9th grade I worked as a dishwasher then assistant cook at family-run Spaughis Italian Inn. When I gave two-weeks notice the owner took it too personally, berated me behind the bar in front of customers, and then told me not to come back. When he didn't pay me my mother sent this letter to him:

In 10th grade Conrad Stitser brought me over as a busboy at Pepe's Steak House at the Eldorado Hotel. His neighbor was the matre-di. On Sundays I worked the Champagne Brunch with Alana and Erin. We sipped on champagne during the shift that we hid in metal teapots.

In summer 1974 I turned 16. I took my drivers test in my friend Bill Henderson's father's circa 1968 White Mercury Cougar, because it had an automatic transmission. It was build on a Mustang chassis - it looked like this:

My first license was paper and is long gone, but this one from a few years later was laminated:

I bought a 1968 Dodge Charger, which was incredibly fast, and I loved it. For "fun" after work I would do things like head out the Pyramid Lake highway and bring it up to 115mph so I could hear the headers rumble. (I didn't have the glass packs mounted well, and one fell off on the way home from this trip. But I then had a muffler shop mount them correctly.)

One time I drove my Charger to the top of the mountain above Verdi - looking over Boomtown towards Reno:

Here's the ad from 1968 Road and Track Magazine. (See the bottom of 2005 Car Show for more Dodge Charger ads from magazines.)

As if motorcycles and fast car weren't enough, I also bought a hang glider. I never went real high, but enjoyed flying down gentle sloping hills - such a here flying east on the hills west of Stead.

In 11th and 12th grade I worked as a cook at Sambos. It was through this job that I met my first real girlfriend, Diane Stockford.

Her father, Charlie Stockford, raced on the dirt track at the Reno Fairgrounds

The boyfriend of Diane's sister Sandy was Mark Forbes. He had a magnetic personality and we hung out a lot. But he was the kind of guy that if you hung around too long, you go to jail. This is Mark and Kim at a large mining structure south of Virginia City - at this Google Earth link.

It was things like this:

In my senior year I took flying lessons, passed my FAA exam, and soloed in a Cessna 172 at Stead Airport at age 17. (Hug High School across town offered flight grown school as an elective, so in the second semester of my senior year I enrolled in that and a government course at Hug in the morning, and then took a few afternoon courses at Reno High.)

After graduation I bought a 1974 Matador because it seemed like a more reliable car:

These photos show how 6040 Verner looked before the trees were planted and the houses were build next door.

In the summer of 1976 I put my favorite songs, mostly from 45's I'd accumulated over the past 6 years, on four cassettes. Interestingly these are still popular songs - many are my karaoke favorites and are now MP3 on my Zune player (Still at this time the most popular format for car stereo was 8-track tape. But cassette was catching on since you could record your own):

  • Archies - Sugar Sugar - the first LP I purchased at about 4th grade
  • Jim Croce - Hard Way Every Time
  • David Bowie - Golden Years
  • Badfinger - Baby Blue
  • Vickie Sue Robinson - Turn the Beat Around
  • Bay City Rollers - Rock and Roll Love Letter
  • Steve Miller - Rock-n-me  

Too much work to type them all in - question? first try Google - then ask me.

Also after graduation I worked as a chef at John Ascuaga's Nugget in Sparks for about six months. Then I moved to Sacramento to live with my father and figure out what I wanted to do.

I found a job at the Formica Factory and enrolled at American River College.

Jay moved to Hollywood in fall 1978 and got a Job at Hollywood Magic.

 Here we are at Griffith Observatory:

In 1978 I purchased a condo, 4533 Greenholme Drive #2 for $23,500, and sold it a year later for $34,000. I didn't get a phone for a few months, so one time to reach me my mother sent me a Mailgram:

In 1979 I moved back to Reno for a year. From July through October I worked at WES Construction. Then I worked as Jensen Precast until I returned to Sacramento in fall 1980 to complete my AA degree at American River College.

On my 21st birthday Randy and I had met some girls at the MGM Hotel arcade the week before and they invited us to visit them in Marin County sometime. There was a Day On the Green with AC/DC. We drove down the night before arriving after dark. We were nervous ringing the parent's doorbell. A guy (the father) answers the door nude, offers us drinks, and suggests we strip and join them in the hot-tub and pool in back. They had covered their backyard so indeed they had an indoor swimming pool. Holy cow! Well still Randy and I slept on the floor in the living room and we all went to Day on the Green the next day.