Author captures the era of cars and chicks and social injustice in post-WWII Salinas.

Until recently, the world of Ken Machado’s youth – Salinas during the 1940s and ’50s – had never been recorded in print. It’s a time Monterey County Historical Society Curator James Perry calls “a void in the history of Salinas.” But a new book by Machado, Once From Salinas, Always From Salinas, changes that, and brings to life an era when Salinas was booming with big band music and beset by teenagers bent on drag racing. And when some, including one of his friends, were ferreted away to Japanese internment camps.

Machado, who is now 87 and lives in Woodside, California, was one of those teenagers, and his book is filled with archival photos and colorful stories of an era he remembers fondly – and didn’t want to be forgotten.

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Weekly: Tell me about the area in the Alisal area of Salinas known as “Little Oklahoma.”

Machado: Little Oklahoma was the area Steinbeck wrote about in Grapes of Wrath. That was where he did all his interviewing. That was many years before, but it kept the tag of Little Oklahoma. But nobody particularly wanted to be known as somebody from there.

In what ways did you see the Okies integrate into Salinas during your youth?

The ones that did integrate, they brought the country-western style of music. It used to be all jazz and big band in Salinas, but those folks were country folks, and they liked country music.

Tell me about the car culture at the time.

There were hot rods and street rods. What we called a street rod was a modified car that looked good, that was attractive and you could pick up chicks with. And then there were cars that were for drag racing. In those days that was a quarter-mile race. And we had car races, which was illegal as hell, probably 30 or 40 times that I could remember. We’d do it at night, on the road between Salinas and Monterey, which was a two-lane road then. The police and highway patrol were always out looking for us, and one day they walked into our hot rod club meeting and suggested moving our racing to the municipal airport, on a taxi strip. So we started that, and within about three years we were off the streets and doing our drag racing as an event, and we grew like Topsy. Everybody loved the cars, and loved the excitement.

What were your thoughts about the internment of Japanese Americans?

One of my best friends was on the track team with me. One day he was at school, one day he as gone. I never even talked to him, he was just gone. It made me wonder about the morality of our government. In retrospect I can understand it, but at the time it baffled me, because the Japanese were all uncomplicated, even quiet by nature. They didn’t say much, and I’d say, “How could they be bad guys?” And if you see some of the pictures, when they pulled those people together, they did everything they were told.

One of my favorite stories from your book is when you flew over Laureles Grade. How did that come about?

It was a World War II Stearman open cockpit plane, which [my friend Roy] bought when he got out of the service. They’d put them on surplus sale, and he bought it for $1,300. We were flying to Carmel Valley because we were going to meet my friend and his girlfriend. As we started going up Laureles Grade, we were at the same level as the cars were. So I’m looking over at cars, and people are looking out from the cars at me, and we’re pointing back and forth, and one lady was even ducking down in her car. And I said, “Roy, you have to fly higher!” and he said, “I can’t fly higher!”

I bet we didn’t clear that grade by more than 10 or 15 feet. We went to land in Carmel Valley, and that was really hard because Roy was still training. I shouldn’t even have been in the airplane with him. So he had to make three passes to land, and by the time I got out of there, he and I weren’t even talking I was so goddam mad at him.

KEN MACHADO will be signing books at Train Station Plaza (11 Station Place) from 11am-1pm, and at Star Market from 1:30-4pm on March 7 as part of the Salinas Founders’ Day celebration.