I Remember

This is the start of what will probably be a long story. In order to keep it in installment size pieces as each episode is finished it will be posted here and what is on this page will be put into a PDF. Each installment will be as is with out a lot of proof reading that will be done before it goes into a PDF format.


I am a native of Sacramento, Ca, having been born there on December 18, 1946. At the time my parents Larry and Pearl Heringer were still living in Carmichael, Ca, where they had moved right after the start of World War II.

I remember little of those early days from 1946 until we moved closer to Sacramento, but have been told by my parents, brother and two sisters that I was a real handful. Apparently I had a knack for getting in trouble with everything from chickens to pigs. Dad and mom after the war found themselves with two adult children and one teenager, decided to have one more child, at least dad did.

The first episode includes the move from Carmichael to the early days at the N Street house; it will not be an exhaustive story, but only the high points. These high points are going to be about events, school, friends, places and family. Well lets get started, but every good story needs some background information. In these cases it is who were my parents and what can I say in just a few words?

Larry Heringer my father was born inside the gates of San Quentin prison; I can hear you saying “Oh! Sure he did”, but it is true my grandfather was the prisons Chief Commissary Officer and as such he lived inside the gates of the prison. In fact they actually built a house for him there and as a side story the house had no electricity. It really does make people sit up and take notice when you say a parent was born in prison, although strictly speaking Grandpa was not in prison, merely working for the prison.

After working for the prison, he leased a hotel along the Sacramento River and then purchased one in Rio Vista, California. He operated a hotel there for a number of years, before moving to Sacramento where he operated two tug boats up until he retired. My father then a teenager went to Sacramento High School and graduated sometime right before World War I.

He then enlisted in the Army, but the war ended before he was able to be sent overseas. He then went to the University of California Berkeley campus and graduated before he met and married my mother. After graduating from college he went to work for Standard Oil of California, but due to eyesight issues left working for them and moved to Sacramento. It was while living in Sacramento that my two sisters and I were born. Larry, however, was born while mom and dad were still living in Oakland, California.

My mother Pearl Heringer was born in Gem, Idaho, where her father was a mining engineer. They moved from Gem to Elk Horn and ended up in Butte, Montana. She remained in Butte where her father died in 1910. Her older brother and mother read about egg farms in the Petaluma, California area and made the move there to start a chicken farm.

Her mother by the way was the first white child born in Inyo, Mono County, California her mother took her to visit family in England and while she was gone her husband died. She then met Thomas E. Tyack who was a graduate of one of the mining schools and was about to go to Idaho to work on the mines there. Well that just about sums up how my parents ended up in California, but where and how did they get together?

Would you believe that it was a blind date? To top it off apparently they got married on their first date. The story did not end there they were also married for over 50 years. The rest of the story up until I was born is a story about my brother and sisters. I promised a story about myself and that is what this is all about.

At the time of my birth my mother was 45 and a week later she turned 46. This decision nearly cost my mother here life, but the Lord and the doctors were able to pull us through. That decision brought yours truly to life. You could ask the question as to the advisability of having a child at 46?

If she had chosen not to have a child, then I would not be here. We spent the first hours in an oxygen tent, but we pulled through. It was probably my father’s idea to have another baby, but mom and I had a special kind of bond. However, I loved both of these unique people very much, because without them I would not be here now.

Here are a couple stories of how 'farm life' worked for a toddler. There was the time that I waddled up to the back porch with my arms full of eggs that I had collected from the hen house and managed to not drop one egg. Then there was the time that my brother Larry rescued me from the pig pen.

Larry and our cousin (well more like a brother) Bill Ross were mowing the lawn when the mower just up and stopped, yep here comes Tom to the rescue with the gas can in hand. You guessed it the lawn mower was not broken, just out of gas. Sorry fellows I guess I was to blame for you having to finish mowing the lawn. You will find some of the homes we lived in under homes; hopefully this will be expanded to include more then just our homes.

We moved from Carmichael when it started taking Dad over 30 minutes to get to his office at the Forum Building in downtown Sacramento. They moved to a house in the River Park area of east Sacramento when I was either three or four. I was a very typical child in that I could hear the ice cream man from the confines of the bathtub. It also seems funny in all these years that the tune of that ice cream truck has changed little if any. It is surprising what memories that the tune “Pop Goes the Weasel” brings. Out side of these things I remember very little of the house in River Park house. More changes were on their way when we moved even closer to downtown Sacramento.

Dad and mom moved to 21st and N Street that had the extra advantage of also providing space for his insurance business downstairs. Some pictures that were taken in the front of this house are going to be on the photo gallery and the printed version of these memoirs. The funny thing about N street is not so funny, but it is where Squeaky Frome was staying when she tried to kill President Ford.

My first real memories were about the house on N Street, including the time that I tried balancing an empty box on the back stairs and tumbled to the bottom. There were a few bumps and bruises from that experience, but none of them compared with the damage that was done to the porcelain grandfather clock that was on table in the house.

Jan had heard the noise of me tumbling to the bottom of those stairs. In her hurry to get to the stairs and see what had happened she tripped over the cord. The clock came off the table and crashed to the floor. The net result was the clock had broken into a hundred assorted pieces. Daddy loved to fix things and took a good long time putting the clock back together. I was fortunate in that I only had some bumps and bruises out of this experience; however the clock still looks like it had been glued together.

I first discovered that there were other children in the neighborhood. A set on either side of our house and the child on one side were dangerous. I had a rock and a knife thrown at me by this little terror. The children on the other side were only there on alternate weekends, since their father and mother were separated. However, they were still much more well behaved then the delinquent who used me for a target. I was soon to start kindergarten at Freemont Elementary School at the midterm. I discovered other children to be my playmates going to school. You can see some of those who I went to school with in a picture on the gallery page.

While we lived at the N. st. house mom’s sister came to live with us and did so up to the time that she died. However, it was not long until she became so sick that mom was unable to take care of her and they had to put her in the old Sacramento County Hospital (now University of California at Davis Medical Center). I never got to see her again after that and remain hurt as a result of it. This made me into an advocate of not forcing your children to either go and see or forbidding them to go and see a loved one that is dying in a hospital, children are amazingly resilient. They instinctively know when something is wrong and really can understand. It should not be in the hands of the loved one who is dying to make this decision, because they are not the ones who will be living with these memories.

Mom and dad purchased some land in 1953 out in Southland Park Hills and built a house there at 6040 Holstein Way. However, before they made the move to new house, they first moved out of the house on N street. For a while we lived on Freemont way, not far from Masonic Lawn where they are now buried.

(Next installment is a short history of the Freemont way house)

After mom and dad sold the N street house we moved to a leased home over on Freemont Way and McClatchy Way, just off of Riverside, Blvd. The front of the house was facing on Fremont Way and the garage was facing on to McClatchy Way. While living here several things happened.

I had the German measles and about drove mom crazy. I started second grade at Riverside Elementary School in the spring. They used to have split school years and since I was born in December I did not start school until January. This meant that come that fall I would have been in the high third grade. Freeport Elementary did not have split grades and so I had to start back and repeat (at least for me) the first half of the third grade.

While we were living in the house on Fremont way, mom and dad were having a house built for them out in the South William Land Park area. The house was finished sometime in 1953 and so we moved into it during the summer of 1953.
My memoirs continued on audio.

Copyright © 2006- by Thomas Heringer
Comments, questions, or problems? Contact the