I found this site looking for info on duck clubs in orange county. I was born in orange December 1947. Went to Irvine elementry school.

I grew up on the Sprigg duck club. There were five duck clubs in a five mile area close to John Wayne airport. My uncle Clarence Jessee ran the Aliso duck club and farmed about 150 acres; some of land was where the Fluor corp. is now. Mostly he grew barley. The Irvine company had a ranch with cows and cowboys.

I had another uncle who ran a duck club on what is I think the San Joaquin bird sanctuary. I also had an uncle Paul Plavan farmer inventor who in the 1930s farmed land around the Santa Ana river, which flooded and was covered with silt making the land almost unusable. The land was covered with 2 or 3 feet of silt, and he built a giant plow to turn up the good soil it took three cat 60's to pull the plow. He restored a lot of farm ground back to being productive again.

My dad was a carpenter who worked on many projects including Disneyland. All of the employes and family got into Disneyland before the public. I remember going there in 1955. I also remember my dad saying Disney wanted to pay employees with stock in Disneyland but my dad wasn't about to take stock from a guy with his head in a cloud and trying to borrow money to pay the workers.

I remember the Santa Ana drag strip only a couple of miles from the duck club where I lived. I remember Oscars drive in, Merle's drive in on Jamboree, and the Coast Hiway Halls drive in on south main in Santa Ana, Lions drag strip in Long Beach.

I remember when you got into Knotts ghost town for free.

I remember meeting Andy Devine on my uncles duck club. I also met Andy Carey who played for the New York Yankee's 1957. A member of our duck club was Newt Bass who was famous for his part in Apple Valley.

We moved from Tustin in 1989, too many people, too crowded. My mother moved with us she was born in Santa Ana. Most of the old farmers and their families are gone or have moved. I went back 6 years ago I couldn't envision in my mind what it was like when I was kid in the fifties. The bus ride to school took almost an hour sometimes. We drove three miles between picking up the next kids.

What a great place to grow up we had the mountains, the beach, hunting, fishing, but it is all gone now.

Skip Fleming