Tars
Roger Carlson
We have Sea Kings, as in Corona del Mar; Eagles, as in Estancia;
Mustangs, as in Costa Mesa, and Pirates, or Bucs (Buccaneers), for Orange
Coast College.
But for Newport Harbor High’s Sailors ... well, the Long Gray Line is
also filled with Tars, and for some reason, not just a few, but many,
even who hail from Newport Harbor in these days approaching the third
millennium, just don’t get it.
“What’s a Tar?” once again graced my answering system today.
What can I say? Across the school’s gymnasium wall is a Sailor, and the
message reads, “Newport Harbor, Home of the Tars.”
If you watch Newport Harbor’s baseball team, guess what’s across their
chests?
If you pick up a dictionary and peruse, you’ll find “Tar,” is a Sailor.
The name stuck to sailors during World War II when sailors, also known as
“Gobs,” dreaded only one task more than mess duty.
It was scraping the sides of the ship, where oil formed into tar, and
there were gobs of the sticky, black goo for the poor enlisted men to
deal with (sometimes on a daily basis) as scrapings piled up. For the
sake of the ship, it was an absolute necessity.
In these days and times, oil in the water is really considered pretty
tacky. But during World War II, with hundreds of major vessels and
thousands of airplanes going down, the seas across the world were not
blue, but tragically black with oil, which stuck to the sides of ships,
and anything else it touched.
It was everywhere, including the sands of Southern California.
Gobs? Yes, that’s in the dictionary, too. It’s slang for ... Sailors,
whose hands were filled with gobs of tar. Even the beaches would have
these gobs of tar strewn about.
Sailors were also known as “Bluejackets” ... but we’ve pretty well given
up on referring to the Sailors as Bluejackets, since there are so many
who haven’t yet figured out the “Tars.”
But, in the dictionary, you’ll find bluejackets, too, a definition of
“Sailors.”
Bluejackets were the coats enlisted men wore. They were thick, heavy
duty, almost black it was such a dark blue, warm, with a collar that
would come up over the ears and just under their white caps, and they
served a great purpose.
You might want one after Thanksgiving, when the Tars, Gobs, Bluejackets
and Sailors make their way through the CIF football playoffs and the
weather begins to bite.
Taking the issue a little further, from a Marine’s point of view, Sailors
were also referred to as the “Transportation Dept.” and “Taxi Service.”
But that’s another story.
While this seems reasonably easy to explain, here’s another for the
reader to think about.
Why is Compton High’s nickname the “Tarbabes?”
I would venture there are very few students, or teachers, at Compton High
who know.
In 1928, Compton High’s campus was split, with Compton College coming
aboard the campus to handle the first two years of college (ala Orange
Coast), leaving the balance of the campus for the 11th and 12th grades of
high school.
I don’t know what they did with the ninth and 10th-graders, maybe they
were bounced back to the junior high campuses.
The college’s nickname was the Tartars - as in some madmen running amok
on the other side of the world in the dark ages (as opposed to stained
teeth, or sauce for your fish). So the high school adopted the name
Tarbabes, as in “baby Tartars.”
Compton College eventually found its own campus in the mid-’50s or so,
but four-year Compton High proudly remains the Tarbabes at the same site.
Pasadena Junior College, which also had a split campus with Pasadena High
in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, was the Bulldogs, and the high school was the
Bullpups.
Now Pasadena City College is the Lancers and the high school, now at
another location, graduated into Bulldogs.
Well, no one to my knowledge, has ever questioned the reasoning for
Tarbabes, , a great deal. But when it comes to Tars, it just seems each
generation is a little more confused than the last one, and the darn
question just keeps coming up. Maybe I’ll just refer them to the History
Channel, or something.
One thing is for sure. Harbor will always be the Tars. And Sailors, too.
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