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Neighbors, Darrell (audio interview #1 of 3)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This interview was conducted at Neighbors' Long Beach home. He suffered from heart disease but he remained articulate and his memory seemed sound. 2/6/1982
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- 2021-01-04
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- SUBJECT BIO - Darrell Neighbors was among the leaders in the fight to end subsidence in Long Beach. As oil was produced from deposits under Long Beach harbor, the land under the city began to sink. Those who were benefiting from the oil revenue, including the local harbor department, opposed some efforts to stop the sinking. At the same time, those who were suffering damage from the sinking or were afraid if it continued the ocean might inundate the whole city, struggled to stop it. In these three interviews, Neighbors talks about the struggle against subsidence and about his work for the Bixby companies. He describes some of the companies' histories and their impact on Long Beach's growth. In addition, he discusses his other local experiences including working for Security First National Bank during the Depression. These interviews were part of a project to study the impact of the discovery of oil on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - Neighbor's family background; Neighbor's education; the Depression; development of Los Angeles; and development of Belmont Shore;development of Belmont Shore; Security First National Bank; the Depression; 1933 Long Beach earthquake; and Long Beach Junior Chamber of Commerce;Long Beach Junior Chamber of Commerce; the Depression; Security First National Bank; Bixby companies; World War II; and Long Beach Community Chest;Bixby companies; Signal Hill; Security First National Bank; Norm Windes; Bixby Knolls Shopping Center; and Long Beach Junior Chamber of Commerce;
- *** File: subdneighbors1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:22)... Introduction Neighbors was born in a small town, Mountain Grove, Missouri, in 1905. His mother was born in the same town and they both had the same first grade teacher. His mother had 7 sisters and 1 brother. He started school there and when he was in the seventh grade his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. He remembers seeing his first Black person there. The schools were segregated and there were Jim Crow laws. Many Black women worked for white families, doing housework and caring for children. (2:22-4:49)... His father was born on a farm outside of Mountain Grove, Missouri. His grandparents and many other people in Mountain Grove had migrated from Virginia after the Civil War. They were Dunkards. His grandmother always wore a black cape and a cap. They didn't wear colored clothing and all the men had beards. It was a close-knit community. His dad sold plows, wagons and other farming equipment in Mountain Grove. When one of the Dunkards wanted to buy something, he never questioned his credit worthiness because if the farmer could not pay for the equipment, the church would always help. His paternal grandmother was a strong woman and was married three times. Neighbor's grandfather passed away when his father was very young. (4:49-5:52)... Neighbors' dad grew up in a one-room log cabin with a large fireplace, where his mother cooked in iron pots. There was a loft where everyone slept. His grandmother later built a two-story house next to the cabin. She wove cloth or mended shoes by the fire, which was the only source of light, and worked in the garden after the kids went to school. (5:52-8:03)... The town of Mountain Grove was moved when a railroad was built. His grandfather had the first store in town and he bought fur from local Indians and sold them merchandise from Memphis. Neighbors started high school in Memphis, in 1917, and during his 4 years in high school, ROTC was mandatory. (8:03-10:13)... He went on to study at the University of Tennessee for 2 years, where he was pre-law. The Scopes trial started the year he entered college. Clarence Darrow defended Scopes, who was fired for teaching about evolution. As a result of this case many of the law professors left his university and he was advised to transfer to another school or change his course of study. He ended up choosing economics. (10:13-12:08)... From there Neighbors moved to Florida for a year, during the "Florida Boom". There was a big land boom at this time and people from the east and other areas were buying up the land. Neighbors, his father, and others formed a caravan and drove to Florida in 1925. The the boom collapsed soon after their arrival. He got a job with the trust department of a bank but it went bankrupt. As he left Florida in 1926, he saw houses that were abandoned, although they were almost finished, because no one wanted to buy them. (12:08-14:25)... Neighbors moved to Anaheim, California with his parents in 1926. Orange County was mostly orange and walnut groves. His father became sales manager for a car dealer, and got Neighbors a job as well. He dropped out of school at the end of his sophomore year. His job was to drive to people's homes and try to sell them cars. When a Los Angeles architect offered him a job as a messenger boy, he took it so he could go back to school at UCLA. He went to classes in the morning and worked in the afternoon. The architect soon went broke and Neighbors found a job as a chauffeur. (14:25-18:22)... He drove for a Mrs. Pellisier whose husband much earlier had purchased 600 acres in Los Angeles near Western and Wilshire. Later the area was developed and she still owned the land where Bank of American had its headquarters at Seventh and Grand. Once a month, Neighbors drove her there to collect the rent in person. She also owned stock in several banks and that was the first he ever heard of some of the banks he eventually worked with. (18:22-22:41)... Once Neighbors finished at UCLA, he moved to Long Beach in 1929. His father was selling real estate in Belmont Shore for the H. P. Selover Company. In 1920 Sam Selover, and some others, bought the wet lands around Alamitos Bay, where they dredged and filled to create Belmont Shore. By 1929 they had sold most of the lots in their initial development. Selover and his partner, McGrath, separated and divided the land they had left to develop. McGrath took the land north of 2nd street and Selover took the land that became Belmont Park. (22:41-25:26)... There was a subdivision on Firestone in South Gate and potential buyers could take a bus ride out to the area. There they got a free lunch and a sales pitch. There were similar subdivision sales in Long Beach. (25:26-28:21)... With the stock market crashed in October of 1929, lot sales came to a halt. Neighbors' dad ended up with title to 6 lots in Belmont Shore. Most of the buyers couldn't keep up their payments, so they defaulted and Neighbors dad lost title to them because he could not pay the taxes and assessments. By 1931 Sam Selover was broke, too. (28:21-30:33)... Neighbors tried to sell real estate for Selover but it was almost impossible to find buyers. He considered joining the air corps. But he had a friend that worked at the Security Trust and Savings Bank which held some of Selover's property at 2nd and Bayshore. It was leased to a man who planned to build a roller skating rink. The man had finished putting down the floor when he went broke. The person who took over the lot wanted to build a nightclub there. End of tape *** File: subdneighbors2.mp3 (0:00-3:07)... Neighbors found a job running a restaurant for near the beach. It did great business during the summer, but it slowed down after Labor Day and he had to close it down. Security First National Bank was creating a real estate department to look after all the foreclosed property it owned. Neighbors was hired in January 1933 at $100 a month. to work in that department On the day he started working, all the bank's employees took a 5% pay cut. He looked after 40-50 properties, which included houses and storefronts. (3:07-8:29)... There was an earthquake in Long Beach in March of 1933. Neighbors was living with his parents in a duplex and going to law school at Southwestern University. He worked at the bank during the day and went to class in the evenings. He was at home when the quake hit and ran outside with his parents. There was no visible damage outside and nobody was hurt around their home. He drove around in his car to check out the city and see what damage had been done. When he saw the damage, he knew the quake had been pretty bad. People were yelling and warning of a tidal wave. Some of the streets were flooded because of broken water mains. All night long fire trucks and ambulances drove in and out of town and there were many casualties. (8:29-10:42)... Neighbors couldn't get into the Security Bank building where he worked until the following morning. The outside of the building was all right, but the inside was heavily damaged. There were aftershocks for a week that made the building sway. It was built with steel beams and withstood the quakes. There was a lot of plaster damage and many of the bricks on the outside of the building came loose. (10:42-14:35)... President Franklin Roosevelt had declared a bank holiday when he was inaugurated right before the quake. The government worked out a pooling arrangement that allowed some of the banks to reopen. The Depression was horrible and tragic. Sometimes he had to take possession of the homes of people he knew. Several successful men in town were forced to dig ditches for the WPA. Unemployment was 25%. All of the Building and Loan companies in Long Beach closed. The Salvation Army was feeding many people. Some restaurants offered to serve all you could eat for $.35. Food, gasoline, clothing and such were really cheap. (14:35-19:44)... Neighbors was impressed with the merchants in downtown Long Beach. The day after the quake, in the middle of the Depression, they were out cleaning up and getting back to business. There was a great sense of community. Some businessmen organized the Beckoneers to try to attract tourists to Long Beach. Neighbors was drafted to represent Long Beach in a 1932 for speaking contest at a state real estate meeting. He had to memorize a five minute speech and won contest in Monterey. He went on to the national competition, which was held at the World's Fair. The Real Estate Board took up a collection to raise money to send him to the national contest. There were about 2000 people in the audience and he was scared but he won second place; the papers were still full of news of the earthquake, so he believes he got second place out of sympathy for Long Beach. This was the start of his civic activities. (19:44-24:12)... Neighbors joined the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1938 which was the 50th anniversary of Long Beach. City officials asked the Junior Chamber to sponsor a celebration. The city had strong state societies that sponsored state picnics. They decided to make the celebration a salute to the states and asked state societies to organize contests to choose a queen and then choose a Miss United States from among them. They wanted to hold the celebration in the park near the municipal auditorium. The park commission never gave them a permit, but they used it anyway. (24:12-30:45)... The celebration had a cast of about 600 people, many of them recruited from local high schools. The pageant also had a horse-drawn street car. They rescued an old horse from a dog food plant to pull the cart. The horse was decorated with flowers and a photographer took pictures of it and the cast during their dress rehearsal. They kept the horse in the parking lot with a barrel of water and some hay. Then one day a police officer called to say that the horse got out, died and was causing a commotion. The next day the story was in newspapers all over the world. The pageant sold out and was a success. They even had money left over and sent some back to contributors. The next year, he became president of the Junior Chamber. It was an intense job and he worked with some people that became his best friends. End of tape *** File: subdneighbors3.mp3 (0:00-2:22)... Neighbors was president of the Junior Chamber for 1 year, in 1938-1939. At the same time, he served on the board of the Chamber of Commerce. By 1940 the bank where he worked started selling its foreclosed property. They rented houses for whatever they could get. They offered houses for sale at 10% down, 1% a month, plus 6% interest. (2:22-6:50)... The Junior Chamber staged a debate about whether or not the United States should become involved in WWII. They had a packed house at the at the Pacific Coast Club. After Pearl Harbor, Neighbors decided he wanted to serve in the military. He tried to volunteer, but was rejected because of his age. A friend suggested he join the Aviation Volunteer Specialists, which was looking for men like him. They put him in a uniform as an officer and he took care of paper work for pilots. (6:50-8:49)... He joined with a friend and the reported for duty together in 1942. He was soon sent to San Diego for training in air operations and from there he was sent to Alaska for a year. After that, Neighbors asked to be sent to the naval air station in San Diego. He spent the remainder of the war there as assistant to an executive officer. He wanted to stay in the Navy but believed he could not do it at his age. (8:49-11:31)... In 1946, he went back to work at the bank. He became a building manager but soon transferred to the Buildings and Loan department. The bank manager told him that the real estate department wanted him back and he was assigned to the main office in Los Angeles. He had to ride the streetcar to work and did not like working there. One night he was invited to dinner by the head of Buffum's department store and invited to become executive director of the Community Chest. He had been chairmen of their budget committee several times while serving on the Chamber of Commerce board. (11:31-14:50)... In 1946 the Community Chest had only raised half of what it had in the previous year. Neighbors decided to leave the bank and take the job. After the war, many of the shipyards closed and the Douglas aircraft plant downsized. The Bixby companies wanted to hire him but he initially turned them down because of his involvement with the Community Chest. He finally went to work for the Bixby companies in 1948. (14:50-18:00)... A Bixby company built and developed the Bixby Knoll Shopping Center. The company had owned thousands of acres of real estate, which shrunk as they spent and lost money. By this time they only owned one building in downtown Long Beach. Bixby Knolls had been subdivided before the war and the lots did not sell. After the war they held on to 35 acres between San Antonio Drive and Atlantic Avenue and they decided to build a shopping center there. It had been laid out by the time Neighbors came to work for them and one lease had been signed with Thrifty Drug company. They had also sold land parcels in the shopping center to a bank and to Buffum's department store. (18:00-19:09)... The company renovated various buildings around town. Neighbors worked on a downtown tree planting program for two years. Planting trees along the sidewalk was not simple because they had to deal with the electric and gas utilities, and the street and park departments. Pine Avenue and Broadway were completed planted but the trees were later torn out. (19:09-23:56)... Llewellyn Bixby and his cousin Thomas Flint came to California during the gold rush. Instead of mining, they opened a shop and stored gold for miners. After they had accumulated some money, they went back home and bought sheep to drive to California and start a herd. They settled north of Monterey and later bought Rancho Los Cerritos. The Rancho was 27,000 acres and they paid $.75 an acre in gold. They raised sheep and cattle there and Llewellyn Bixby's brother Jotham came to California to manage the Rancho. (23:56-27:36)... Llewellyn Bixby's cousin John Bixby was a school teacher in Maine. When the Bixbys found out that Rancho Los Alamitos was in trouble and they could buy it at a bargain price, they formed a partnership with I. W.. Hellman to buy it. Hellman invested money, and the Bixbys ran the ranch. They employed their cousin John as the manager and when he died, they formed the Alamitos Land Company to hold part of the land and they divided the rest. Jotham Bixby got the land that is now Lakewood; Llewellyn took east Long Beach; John's family took the land around State College and Rancho Los Alamitos and Hellman took the land north of Seal Beach up to 7th Street. (27:36-30:39)... The Bixby Land Company was established in 1896 because Llewellyn Bixby wanted to leave stock, not land, to his heirs. The Jotham Bixby Company was formed for the same reason in 1902 . Amelia Bixby, the wife of Jotham's son George, established the Amelia Bixby Company. End of tape *** File: subdneighbors4.mp3 (0:00-3:40)... Jotham Bixby and Llewellyn Bixby owned all of Signal Hill at one time, before oil was discovered. While Neighbors was working with the Bixby companies they drew up leases reserving the oil rights to their land. When the Jotham Bixby Company was dissolved in 1977, they got rid of everything. The Amelia Bixby company was dissolved the same year. (3:40-6:27)... Neighbors worked for Jotham, Amelia, Alamitos and Bixby Land Companies in varying capacities. He was secretary-treasurer, the only working officer of the companies. Norm Windes of the accounting firm Windes McClaughry, did their accounting. During the Depression and even at the end of WWII, the companies were in financial trouble. Loans from Security Bank were secured by their stock and securities, and they couldn't repay the loans. The records of many companies were mixed up. The bank took an accountant out of their trust department, Norm Windes to straighten things out. There had always been dissension among some of the Bixby families. The Jotham Bixby Company eventually made Windes their general manager and he really ran the company. When Neighbors was hired, he was to be Windes' assistant, working with their real estate holdings. (6:27-9:33)... In 1950 Bixby Land Company started to build its shopping center near Los Coyotes Diagonal. Windes died in 1955 and Neighbors became general manager of the Jotham Bixby Company. The company had changed the bylaws so that the general manager was in essence the president of the company. He worked for all four companies until 1977. He also worked for Bixby Knolls Parking Association, which owned the parking lots at Bixby Knolls Shopping Center; it was liquidated in 1977 along with the Jotham Company. After that, he worked as the corporate secretary for the Bixby and Alamitos Land companies. (9:33-15:21)... About 90% of the stock in the companies he worked for was owned, at the time of the interview, by Bixby descendants. Those companies are separate from Bixby Ranch Company, which was originally incorporated as the Fred H. Bixby Land Company, and is owned by Fred Bixby's descendants. The Bixbys have always been affiliated with The Bank of Long Beach; Jotham Bixby was the bank's first president and he brought P. E. Hatch to Long Beach to run the bank. Hatch was still working at the bank when Neighbors started working there. By that time, Security First National Bank had taken over the bank and made it a branch in its system. Security Bank opened a branch in the Bixby Knoll Shopping Center when it was built. (15:21-18:30)... The Alamitos Land Company owned the tidelands north of Sunset Beach. The Navy took the land to build the ammunition depot that was there are the time of the interview and the company used the the money to buy 600 acres at Palo Verde and Spring. Then they traded all but 8 acres of this land for a ranch in the Imperial Valley. They later developed their 8 acres at the northeast corner of Spring and Palo Verde; they built a bowling alley, Bank of America branch, and National Lumber. Neighbors, at the time of the interview, still had the corporate minute books from the Jotham and Amelia Bixby companies. (18:30-22:43)... After Jotham W. Bixby died, there was trouble at the Jotham Bixby Company; the stockholders could not decide which Bixby would be president of the company. They looked outside of the family and chose Neighbors to be president. Later Richard Bixby became president for several years but was eventually pushed out of the position by some family members. The "other" side of the family was actually only one woman who had inherited a large block of stock from her father. (22:43-25:40)... Neighbors became friends with Hap Appleton, who told him this story. In 1921 Appleton started out with one truck and eventually bought more and developed Advance Trucking Company in Wilmington. He became very wealthy and built a large home near Alamitos Bay for himself and his wife. He was one of the most generous men that Neighbors ever knew. (25:40-28:23)... Appleton was a member of the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors at the same time as Neighbors in the 1950s and also active in other civic groups. This was the time that they heard about the land-sinking problem on Terminal Island and put together a committee to address the problem. By 1956 the sinking had become so bad that the Chamber formed an even larger committee to address the issue of subsidence. Neighbors was one of the members of the committee. There was a lot of pressure on the city to do something about the sinking. In 1957 the committee was convinced that the only way to stop the sinking was to repressurize. This could not be done unless laws were changed so that all of the operators in an oil producing area could be forced to cooperate. (28:23-30:41)... There were many companies producing oil in the harbor area and they had to all agree to allow their oil to be pooled. They were not willing to volunteer to do this so the Navy, whose land under their base and shipyard was sinking while they were getting no oil revenue, filed a lawsuit. It named over 400 oil companies, operators, the city and the state. They were suing for damages and threatened to shut down the oil operators if they did not unitize and start repressuring. When the governor and a senator came to Long Beach to look into the situation, Neighbors was made the spokesperson for the city. End of tape
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