Chula Vista Star-News from Chula Vista, California • Page 30

C-2 THE STAR-NEWS Thursday, September 1973 a Callouses for conservation Hi" South Bay Scene VERONICA DROSSEL Girrc take on hardhat surrimer vv- I jrPt I fi I I rr n-i; I haveruined a reputation built up over approximately nineteen years of stoic refusal to join the masses in their exodus to Disneyland. Would you believe I lived five years in Santa Ana (five miles from there) and never wavered? This season wasn't going io be any different. I brushed off all hints that maybe I should see Disneyland at least once before well you know, you won't live forever. And imagine, going to the grea beyond not knowing, not even caring TO THE YOUNGSTERS (and all visiting relatives) I was Mrs. Scrooge, too mean and penurious to drive a mere 86 miles north and enter the world of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland and Frontierland.

Then came the revolution! One didn't think she'd last but did A Taurus (with nostrils that snort arrived.lcomplete with determined gleam in her green had not been her sister for a few years (would you believe quite a few?) without knowing she and I never came out even. CV teenagers move boulders. 1 JiiJ I. pKoto haul trees, cut brush during summer's work for Youth Conservation Corps. CV GIRLS CAN TOTE A LOG AFTER SUMMER AT 'HARD LARBOR' L.

to r. Lynn Veling, Diann Piller and Mary Souza, employes of Youth Conservation Corps. By MARY SUE WEBB Family Section Editor The For five days a week, the girls rose at 5:45. a.m.' and had breakfast at the Mt. Laguna Air Force Base adjacent to their dorms at the Ole Fire Station off Sunset Then they packed sandwiches for lunch and set off in work crews in vans.

Once they stepped off the vans, they hiked to their projects. Some days they had easy work projects, other days hard ones. Lynn was the only one to get injured. One arm has an inch-long scar from where she fell-into barbed wire. WHY WERE girls; doing this hard work, anyway? It all began as a national pilot project a few years back.

And the girls did so well that more all-girl projects were begun, the Chula Vista girls said. Mary Souza, 18, of Chula Vista worked so. hard this summer that she wore holes in her leather gloves. She also collected a lot- of dents in her hardhat. Mdry and two other Chula Vista teenage girls lived and worked in an all-girl Youth Conservation Corps project at 'Mt: Laguna for eight weeks.

"We built erosion projects and that was'hard. We'd stand in a gully once with mud up to our knees piling up. rocks behind wire (to make a dam of sorts)." Once the 52 girl project went out to mop up after a forest fire. They hiked through the hills, looking for tree roots that still could be burning. If they found one, they buried it in dirt or doused it with water.

"IT SEEMED kind of important to be out there after the fire," said Lynn. "The fire trucks were still there and the men who had fought the fire were all sleeping from exhaustion." Family They rolled boujders with crowbars, they dragged fallen trees by hand, they dug ditches. 'I used to get so hungry that I ate everything they gave us. I gained 10 pounds --CHUIA VISTA 427-3000 MARY SUE WEBB IMPERIAl BEACH 427-3000' mary sue Webb national city 477-41 14 barbara jones "THE WEATHER was drastic," said Diann. "Usually we'd freeze in the mornings then it got hot.

One day we worked in the NEWS DEADLINES Sunday Edition Thuitday Noon ThondoyEdihoir-MondayNopfl girls put on makeup that night," Diann said. "I used to set my hair for that," THE WOMAN COUNSELORS, many of them teachers, had been through a conservation course and shared their knowledge with the Youth Corps girls about things from root rot to wildlife: "My counselor," said Lynn, "was concerned that the trees on Mt, Laguna were becoming diseased because there was not enough water." The girls saw deer, squirrels, heard coyotes howling in the night, had a herd of cows pass their dorms and saw lots of lizards. SOME OF THE GIRLS even caught rattlesnakes and killed them, then, skinned them for -souvenirs. The Chula Vista girls would have shied away from that. One day when Mary Souza was sitting on the ground eating her sack lunch, she heard an ominous rattle.

She sat still. and considered throwing a rock in the snake's direction. But she figured that if she let it alone it wouldn't bother her. It didn't. "Everywhere you went," added Dianne, "you knew there were snakes arpund.

When you had to go to the bathroom somewhere in the woods that is what really scared you." Mary added that she used to chant "Snakies, snakies, go away as she walked through the woods. THE SUNRISES and sunsets, said Diann, were beautiful and there was a meadow you could -walk into and listen to the birds. The girls agreed they were sorry to be back in the city. Mary Souza of 678 Dennis Ave. was graduated from Hilltop High School in June and is looking for a job.

She's also thinking of enrolling in college studies of forestry and forest management. THE GIRLS GOT callouses, sore muscles, scares from rattlesnakes and a challenge they never faced before find-. ing the limits of their physical endurance. They also earned $10.50 a day, less $2 a day for meals. The three girls interviewed by The Star-News agreed on one thing it was hot, dirty work.

Sometimes they had to wait a week to have enough water to wash their hair. DIANN PILLER, 17, one of the Chula Vista girls, said she wouldn't want to go through it again. 1 "We cleared burnt logs with our hands, using nothing but our muscles," Diann said. "I used to think I did hard work at home. "Every week up'there I felt like I couldn't make another but I took it on and decided to That fire, was a small one said Lynn and started whert.a -landowner tried to burn scrub growth.

His fire got out of control. "It. bugs me now," she added, "when I see someone throw a cigarette out of a car window even in the city. Up there if they did it they could start a fire." 'The girls "also laid pipe at campgrounds, digging trenches in the hard ground and moving boulders in the process. HOW DID they do it? "Several of us," said Diann, "would pry the boulders with crowbars push it and pray." "A lot of added Mary, "we couldn't move a boulder and had to dig around it." r.

"I think it is because guys tend to fight back against authority," said Lynn. "And I think" added Mary, "that girls want their work to be more exact. All I know is that my group had to take apart a picnic table that the boys had put together last summer because it wasn'tdone right." "I DON'T THINK any of our girls dropped out because it was too hard. Some did drop out for other reasons being away from their boyfriends, for instance. "We girls were trying to prove to the opposite sex that we can work as hard as they can." "This shows that women can do physical labor like be telephone linemen or plumbers.

It will make men work harder." LNN SAID that she saw some evidence of women being emotional on the job. Women seem to be more sensitive. When they make a mistake, they may she said. "Or if they just can't manage to do something. Diann Piller, a Chula Vista High graduate, is attending Southwestern College.

Diann of 100 Woodlawn Ave. is majoring in business. "I want to be feminine," she said. "I didn't want to get musclebound. I wouldn't do it again.

It's not my type of work. I plan to go to work as a secretary." Lynn Veling of 53 Whitney, a senior at Hilltop High School, said now her career choices are between working for the forest service and getting into fashion merchandising. "I can be interested in both fields," said Lynn. "These are two sides of me." Connie Anastasi of Castle Park High School also worked in the-Youth- Conservation-Corps along with representatives from other South Bay high schools. For their work, most girls "I used to get so hungry," put in Mary, ''that I ate everything they gave us.

I gained 10 The workday would end in time for' dinner at 4:15 p.m. After that some girls played volleyball with the firemen from the fire station, while others went jogging or for' star walks. 1 V' The girls were not allowed to phone home or get phone calls, except in emergencies. Some of the girls broke up with their boyfriends because of the separation. THE PROXIMITY of the Airmen promoted a few.

romances. Some of the girls made dates. But since they couldn't date during the week, the dates had to be on the weekends. And that's when rriost girls got a bus home. On Wednesday nights, the girls had a movie followed by a dance with the Airmen.

"You should have seen the I won a few, but mostly I lost in the battle of wills. Mark another one up for sister Barbara from Seattle. I broke under midnight sessions of detailed cross examination of why I won't and -weeping in exhaustion, I screamed, "Yes, yes, I'll go!" WOULD YOU BELIEVE I went and I liked it? Well, I won't go gooey and say I liked everything about it," without fail. My favorite was a tossup between "The Haunted Mansion" and "Pirates of The Caribbean." Both are so eerie that I felt lifted into another century. Down, down through history to a time when Pirates roamed the seas, itching to get their evil hands on the treasures that came from Europe to The New World, we went Into a boat with thirty others.

Darkness. Water lapping against the sides of the boat, and, high above us the stars that must have shone over New Orleans of the early nineteenth century. An actual battle with muskets raised in mortal combat. WOMEN IN SLAVERY; being auctioned to drunken, men women on one side of the waterway, men with waving bottles and red eyes on the other side. Between them we silently passed it was all there, plus a'couple'of dips that lifted thejlat bottomed And careening breathlessly almost into space.

Down. Down. And then, just as abruptly, into calm waters. In just a few moments, I peeked into history, and felt that perhaps I had once lived at that time, in New Orleans. A' hairy leg, hanging from an overhead beam, was almost too lifelike and in the silence of the dark trip, others shivered along with me was exquisite, imagination.

THE FIRSOIME, I moved in transcendental hypnosis, hearing the screams, seeing the blood, reaching out. and drifting aimlessly in the tide of memory. The second time I took the voyage, I didn't regain my sanity any faster. It was all there. A tiny shiver crossed my shoulders.

On to "The Haunted Do you believe in ghosts? Sitting with you? Leering at you? Dancing in silver shadows to the heavenly music that surrounds them? Believe. Reality is something for those who never really live! I felt compatible with the ghosts, the beautiful souls who wander sans bodies maybe in our own dwellings. Comforting, thought to know. A THREE-BEDROOM house (modern) can accommodate relatively few ghosts. Now, where would a good, intelligent ghost meander? To a mansion, rest assured.

None of this middle class jazz for a hep ghost. Maybe that's why "The Haunted Mansion" has such a group. Cultured, beautiful spirits. Live (or die) in class. Right? Oh, there's more at Disneyland.

New things. I particularly liked Tomorrowland 's Circle-Vision -360, the movie screen that s'eems to lift you Like a magnificent jet, and zooms you from New York to California down atop bujldings. You never move a muscle you only feel that you have wings agile enough to fly. All around you the world. Like I said in paragraph one, I ruined my 'reputation, but believe me, it was for a good cause.

finish." j. LYNN VELING, 17, of Chula Vista, said she just tried to keep going" until each day was over. "It was dirty, it was hot," said Lynn. "I used to be a groom (for' horses) and that was not half as The hardhats they wore mashed their hair but the girls said they'd rather have mashed hair than mashed ROCKS DENTED their hats and once a wrench put a large nick in Mary Souza's hat. managed to save around (300 for their eight weeks.

"If someone asks what did I do this summer," said Lynn, "atleast I can't say I spent my summer at the beach." wi II ttuii q(I V' Charmaine Scotford, Dr. Albert Leckman, chairman of the board of Chula Vista Community JeannetteSupri do some redecorating in the hospital lobby. The hospital auxiliary provided the new furniture which will be moved to the hospital which is under construction on Telegraph Canyon Road. Two sofas, nine chairs, two tables, a bench and some plants will odcupy the waiting room of the intensive care and coronary care units in the new. hospital.

Sue Campbell, hospital auxiliary member, selected a turquoise and lime green color scheme for the new furnishings. Of 1 -1 Star-News photo.