We came home from Norfolk in 1955, leaving the "Mighty P" (ARS-8, the Preserver) to join the crew aboard the Diving Barge, a repair barge that serviced repairs to ships tied up in San Diego that needed hull or drive repairs underwater.  From that point until we went to Japan in 1958 we lived in a number of different houses in the San Diego and Long Beach area.  We started out in the old house on Kalmia (Calmea?  Kalmea?) Street right in San Diego.  From there we moved to Emerald St in El Cajon.  We also spent some time on Diamond Lane in El Cajon, then we moved to Long Beach.  Each move happened during the school year so I spent most of the time being the new guy.
It was 1957 when my neighbor and I tried to set fire to El Cajon.  We lived in the opposite sides of a duplex.  Emerald was a pretty quiet street.  At one end it emptied onto Lexington one block shy of El Cajon Blvd (US80 Business) where we often took our nickels to the Fosters Freeze to buy a cone.  The other end petered out down south toward the hills.  Across the street was a house with a huge front yard that was a popular gathering point for kids on the street.  Those people didn't seem to mind too much, but they did have a huge Great Dane that did.  When he was out, we took off.  There was a vacant lot a couple houses down from the Dane's house.  There was a pile of dirt on it about twelve feet high that we played on...we called it the "Hill".  Behind the Hill was a drainage ditch full of weeds and cattails, humming with dragonflies, and with a constant trickle of water at the bottom.  We called it the "Ditch" and played there a lot, too.  Right next door was another duplex, the front unit had a family of teenagers in it.  They were always playing loud Rock and Roll, smoking and saying obscene things, the oldest had a '47 Mercury that was customized and had eight tailpipes coming out the back.  It was "raked" (the back was lowered) so radically that it would scrape the tailpipes on the driveway.  
Could it be PTSD?  I can't remember her name.  She was a year or so younger than me.  We had a fascination with matches...well...I had a fascination with matches...she had a fascination with anything I was doing.  So we saved up all the matchbooks we could find and steal.  We had them in a box under the house.  One afternoon we took several books with us to the Ditch.  I don't remember whose idea it was to try to set a grasshopper on fire, probably me, but they don't hold still for it too well and in the struggle to control the bug, we lost control of the fire.  In seconds the Ditch, full of cattails and weeds, was blazing like nothing I had ever seen before.  I would like to take credit for saving the little girl, but truth is that she was up and out of the Ditch and skinnin' out before I even realized she was gone.  I caught her at the street and tried to get our stories lined up.  It was hard to do because she was crying her eyes out and trying to run home.  The story was to be that some big kids had been smoking in the Ditch and we saw them flick a cigarette butt into the weeds.  I always thought simple lies were the best, easiest to remember and easiest to be believed.  She finally agreed to stick to the story.  
I decided to stay in my room the rest of the day.  Betty Lou, my mom, came to my door later and told me someone wanted to see me.  I got to the living room and my dad, the Chief, was standing there with a fella from the El Cajon Fire Department.  The Chief asked me what happened.  I started in on the story but hadn't gotten too far when the fireman showed me the box of matchbooks that had been stashed under the house.  He said, "Before you get too far down fantasy lane, the girl next door told us everything and showed us where you kept your matches."  I got off with a severe butt-chewing from the fireman, he pointed out that there were houses on the far side of the ditch that would have probably burned if the wind had been going that way.  I learned a lot later that the fire departments in Southern California do controlled burns on areas like the Ditch to keep grass fires from becoming major threats.  I have often wondered if they got the idea from that day....hmmm.  Anyway, my real problem started when the fireguys left.  See, in the Chief's book, any thing can be managed if you are honest and upfront.  But I started out trying to lie my way out of it.  There was a look on his face that made it clear that there was more to come.  And there was.
The lesson got learned.  All my life I have been cursed with a vivid imagination.  I truly understood the gravity of the whole thing.  In my tiny brain, I saw that little girl and those houses and eucalyptus trees and all that grass all blazing because I was stupid.  As it was, we just knocked down the reeds for the fireguys, but it could have been a very different outcome.  
It was 1957; the debate raged over who was the "real" king of rock and roll:  Elvis or Pat Boone?  Chuck Berry was Hailing Rock and Roll;  Jerry Lee was "shinin' like gold when I play my pianer";  some folks thought the new guy, Buddy Holly, was gonna be bigger than Elvis or Pat;  Chevy's had fins;  the Del Vikings rolled a bowling ball down the keyboard of an electric piano;  the Russians beat us into space;  a local cop shot a Hell's Angel dead in the middle of the street, cancelling the planned rally and creating a national holiday (for bikers);  I could take a quarter to the El Cajon theater, see a double feature, buy popcorn and a coke, and have a nickel left to hit the Frosty on the way home.  It was a quiet time, it was 1957 and I was ten years old.