Formerly Peralta Junior High School (Orange, California)

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Today a golf driving center, in years past the site of the Peralta Patriots, grades 7 - 9. The school closed in the late 1980s I think. This school served many students for many years. This was a feeder school for Villa Park High School.

To the north end of campus was the large cafeteria building which also served for meetings and stage performances. In the NE corner was the office, home to the infamous Mr. Bob Degree who after the schools closing ran the locomotive at Disneyland. On the SW corner, just south of the extensive blacktop area, were several concrete tennis courts which received a lot of use through the years.

The PE building was just north of the tennis courts, along the eastern edge of campus. This building was very large and was divided into a southern boys half and a northern girls half. The common wall between the sides ran from east to west, and the showers were up against the wall. Lockers and a towel cage were adjacent to the showers. On the extreme north and south end of the building were the coaches offices. The towels always smelled of grahm crackers, and had the texture of 50 grit sandpaper.

The field area was extremely large and housed a running track of 1/4 mile length. To the east of the track was a large baseball field, and further east of that was several smaller baseball fields. The dreaded "barnyard" was the punishment for giggly athletes - it was the running of the complete circumference of that massive field. The blacktop contained many basketball courts, and in the far NW corner of the blacktop was an old quanset hut that housed the althetic equipment. In the summer it reached temperatures hot enough to start the fusion process.

The lunch area was to the north end of the PE building. A student with a robust throwing arm could hurl an orange from the handball courts at the southern end of the PE building into the lunch area with relative ease.

The school had a robust industrial arts program complete with drafting room, woodshop, and metal shop. Mr. Weber, the metals teacher, worked hard and trained many students there. He had a love of melting aluminum coke cans in the forge and making castings from them.

Anyway, this now extinct school lives only in memories. Today a single building remains and has been converted into a day-care center I believe. In that building Mr. Lantz taught typing for many years. He was a WWII veteran that tried hard to get his wings and never did.

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