My dad was a mechanic for Selby and would walk to work along the tracks. I often remember him coming home, lunch pail in hand and chewing on a long mustard plant. I remember playing the along the railroad tracks and watching the railroad cars dump load after load of molten slag in the bay in a seething plume of steam. The school was on the opposite end of A St next to San Pablo ave and was a 2 room school affair shared by grades 1-3 and 4-6. Somehow I always got stuck with the football during recess. My dad left Selby to take a job with the State as a mechanic for Caltrans and we relocated to eventually to San Leandro. When I got my first car sometime after 1970, my first long drive was to Selby and it must have been shortly after they raised all the houses becuase I only remember seeing the cement foundations.
I remember a small grocery store at the end of A street where a resident family ran the place and with a boy my age who was my friend. We would buy penny ballons and snap them at ants filing along the sidewalk.
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