"This was American Graffiti": At a Special Las Lomas Reunion Graduates Remember Walnut Creek in the 1950s

When Bernice Dodson was coming of age in Walnut Creek in the 1950s, she rode her horse on the dirt road that was then Locust Street and delighted in all you could buy at Woolworth's in the new Broadway Plaza. As a student at Las Lomas High, graduating in 1958, she was one of the town's pioneers, if you will.  She and her classmates helped start the practice of "cruising the creek," a Friday and Saturday night ritual of driving up and down Main Street that helped put Walnut Creek on the pop culture map.

"We started it," said Dodson about cruising in Walnut Creek, which is just as it is  depicted in the 1973 film American Graffiti—teens driving slowly, windows rolled down, car radios blaring, calling out to friends cars in a lane over. 

Dodson was reminiscing about that more innocent, Eisenhower-era of cruising at a special reunion picnic Saturday at Heather Farm Park. 

The reunion was organized for members of Las Lomas High's class of '58, but it was not limited just to the class. Las Lomas graduates from other years also showed up—as did graduates of local high schools, such as Acalanes, which is where students from Walnut Creek went to high school before Las Lomas opened its doors in 1952.

Also attending were some former teachers, including Allan Bartlett,  a nearly 40-year veteran of the Walnut Creek School District who had many of these graduates in his classes at Walnut Creek Grammar School (where the Cheesecake Factory and Plaza Escuela now stand). Bartlett ended up at Murwood Elementary, from which he retired in 1990. 

The picnic took place next to Walnut Creek's skate park, where the youth of 2010 executed some of their moves. Those who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s talked about Mel's Drive-In on North Main Street, riding horses on the former Dollar Ranch (now the site of Rossmoor), going to movies at the El Rey Theatre and drag racing on Bancroft Road, when that now busy thoroughfare was just a rural road surrounded by fruit and walnut orchards.

They also remembered the notorious incident junior year when the class of '58 executed their own version of the "senior sneak," a tradition of an entire class—usually seniors—playing hooky for a day. The class of '58 went to the beach. 

"This is the history of this town right here," said Barton Ray, a member of the class of '58 who now lives in Carson City. "This was American Graffiti."

Ray said he and his former classmates were very close, "like family" growing up. They organized this reunion because "all of a sudden we saw our mortality."

"Everyone is turning 70," he continued" "We said 'Let's a birthday party for everybody.' We're getting to that time in our lives when I thought it would be good to come together."

"I told everyone to bring a chair," he adds. "Wheelchairs optional!"