Familiar Scenes from Duarte, CA

Love this 2003 picture of Mom, John, and Charlen.  Classic scene from a weekend in that gorgeous house in Duarte.  Everything in this scene is signature Mom.  Clean bar top, except for the hamburger buns.  No dishes in the sink, and a little coffee still on the pot behind her.  I miss that copper-colored tea kettle clock that used to hang where that brown plate is next to the window, like this one. 

On Friday, September 13, 2019, I wrote to Charlen

I will never forget how you & John bought mom a musical [chime] for her home on Elda.  John installed it.  It was a big to-do.  It changed the character of that house.  It may have been shortly after you guys moved to Van Nuys, like early, early 70s.  The advertising image of Van Nuys back in the 60s anf 70s was so modern, elegant, and upscale.  Anyway, one of the tunes played on the doorbell repertoire was Greensleeves. 

Here is "Greensleeves." 

I was so moved by it because it reminded me of the first movie I'd ever seen in the theaters, How the West Was Won, 1962, but I couldn't find "Greensleeves" on its soundtrack so I'll have to keep looking. But what an indelible memory of linking John and his efforts to making things beautiful for Mom and her remaining family in Duarte. 

Turns out I was right.  One of the songs that Debbie Reynolds sings in How the West Was Won was put to the tune of "Greensleeves."  Wikipedia confirms this:

Debbie Reynolds sings three songs in the film: "Raise a Ruckus Tonight" starting a party around the camp fire, "What Was Your Name in the States?", and "A Home in the Meadow"^[27] to the tune of "Greensleeves", with lyrics by Sammy Cahn.^[28] Her rendition is heard by Cleve (Gregory Peck), who is so moved he proposes marriage. This scene ends The Plains segment. 

Here she is singing "A Home in the Meadow" to the tune of "Greensleeves."  Marvelous! 

Does the narrator's voice at the 00:15 to 00:25 mark sound familiar?  I had to look him up for I hadn't heard his voice or given much thought to him in recent years.  But his voice sounded familiar enough for me to take notice.  He wasn't a favorite actor of mine but he had a presence for sure.  It's Spencer Tracy.  

The film begins with narration by Spencer Tracy as the aerial-borne camera sweeps over the Rocky Mountains. "This land has a name today," says Tracy in the opening lines of the film, "and is marked on maps."

I should add that it was Sally who sat next to me in the theater and comforted her younger brother.   

CHUCK WALGENBACH, MAY 1972

Chuck Walgenbach, May, 1972

Kevin and Kim's Wedding, 1997

The Lowndes Grove Plantation right on the Ashley River near Charleston, South Carolina.  Could there be a more elegant setting for a wedding?  That is Kevin Larkin for you--nothing but the best.  I had a terrific time.  It was thanks to Mike Larkin that I even went to Kevin's wedding.  I think he paid my way.  Yikes!  I owe the guy.  This was 1997.  If you zoom in on the picture you should be able to see Mike Larkin walking behind his Aunt Judy, who is a remarkable woman.  She was a teacher, is adventurous, swam with manatees, and loved country singer Nanci Griffith.  Judy, in fact, sent me a cassette with Griffith's songs along with a small collection of Neil Diamond's.  It was such a beautiful gift.  What a sweet soul, Judy.  Below is a picture of the cassette case Judy sent me.  It reads, "Enjoyed meeting you.  And it was a fun trip to Ft. Sumter.  Sincerely, Judy" and then her old address. 

 

    Love this picture of Charlen, Mike, and Judy on the Ashely River.  Judy is incredibly sweet!  I don't know that I have witnessed anybody who loves her family more than Judy does.  Wow!

   The star.

   Da man.

                        Gorgeous.

Norma Socorro Parker

Autumn, 2010.

This is the back door to the Parker home at 3234 Conata Street in Duarte.

Though the intention of this site was to capture exclusively Walgenbach moments, I could not help but include a few important friends of mine who were friendly with my family.  Norma Parker had become an endearing neighborhood friend to my mom and dad.  She would often stop over with food or gifts while my parents were alive.  She enjoyed my dad's wit and verbal intelligence.  She would pull her blue Chevy van up into our white concrete driveway, and my dad, during his retirement years, would come out to greet her wearing a white cowboy hat.  She was a friend to so many people in and around Duarte.  She became a great and adventurous friend to me.  I'd gone to Las Vegas with her at least twice.  Once with Norma, Antoinette and Chris, and one other time with Eric Bergquist, who won $1500 before breakfast, in a caravan with Norma, Antoinette, and Chris.  She loved claiming to younger kids in the neighborhood, "I am your second mother," and indeed through her cooking, through her visiting with you, buying you gifts, and inviting you to meet her family, she did love you, could love you like a second mother.  What a force for good in the world.  

April, 2012

My dad died on April 12, 1988.  Our family held a wake at Douglas & Zook in Monrovia.  The reception afterward was held at our home on Elda Street.  People showed up, a lot of people.  Food was purchased in advance for the reception, but it hadn't been plated and put out on the table for everyone to serve themselves and enjoy.  Food holds people over as they reminisced about our great dad.  Norma was there, she showed up.  As I mention below, she loved calling my dad "Cowboy." But what I will never forget about her is that she saw what was wrong, that the family was in a deep state of grief and and she went right to making things right for our guests on behalf of the Walgenbachs.  She saw all of the food packaged on the kitchen countertop and stepped right in and began plating the meats, cheeses, cutting up tomatoes, onions, and lettuce, setting out salads, chips, dip, pizza, and beverages.  Her energies were nothing short of heroic.  She performed on behalf of the family.  Her influence was nothing short of a legend and I will never forget the energy and good graces of this woman.  

Summer, 1997.

 

A personal hero.  Here is Norma at her home in Duarte, preparing a meal for her guest(s), me.

Norma gave me this coffee mug in the days when my dad was alive.  I at first thought that it was a cute novelty that would not last very long in our house.  This was back in the mid '80s.  Here we are on the last day of August 2013 and I still have it.  I took this picture because I want the memory of it, the record of it to show how much fun Mrs. Parker was and is.  The cup is pure Mrs. Parker, classy, festive stars, and the appreciation for the colorful life she had and how the time with her is like spending in vivid technicolor.  I miss you, Norma.  I should clear a few things up.  One, the Cowboy on the cup refers to my dad.  People will give cups that read "Greatest Teacher" or "Greatest Dad" that sort of thing.  Well, this cup reads "Cowboy."  When Norma would stop by our home in Duarte, my dad would often stride shirtless out to the driveway donning a white cowboy hat to greet Norma and Norma would laugh.  And there the two would tease each others.  So she started calling him Cowboy.  She loved dropping off gifts to friends. So she came over one day with this cup for me which was a reference to my dad.  When we were kids, my dad called us cowboys. Norma heard him use it a few times, so she called me "Cowboy" on a few occasions.  Hence, the cup.  

Norma was a great cook.  And she cooked for everyone.  Her enchiladas were terrific and praised by most who ate at her home, but I will never forget her amazing nacatamales.  I'd never heard of them before.  They were massive.  I thought that she was giving away the store given all of the ingredients in them.  Mexican tamales are quite small by comparison.  Nacatamales were a meal wrapped in banana leaves.  Norma is the only person who ever showed me what they were or even that they existed.  

Nacatamale.  One alone is a meal.

All the ingredients inside the tamale were so moist.  I couldn't believe it.  I have eaten dry tamales before.  Not fun.  All of that dry massa is not fun.  To this day, I don't know what made her nacatamales so moist.  Was it the oils or the combination of ingredients?  I don't know.  

Those tamales were a cornucopia of goodness.  Their contents were abundant, nothing like the Mexican tamales you get with a sliver of cheese and maybe a half jalapeno.  These tamales were made with love as she would love to say.  

One of Norma's favorite places to ear was the East Green Street Cafe when it was located on East Green Street.  For a few bucks, you got an enormous salad with almond slivers and Sesame seed dressing.  It was so good snd refreshing and came with zucchini bread that we both loved.  They called it the Diane Salad. Antoinette loved it too.  So did Roy.  So did my family.  

Another place she loved for celebrations was Shogun in Pasadena.  She loved the place.  She loved their steak and shrimp.  She loved their green tea iced cream.  I can't recall what she ordered to drink.  

She went to Hometown Buffet because it was cheap and an opportunity to be out with a friend.

Cornfield Railyard & Foot Bridge, Los Angeles

Let's start with an overview.  [BTW, this is a decent archive of the railyard.]

If you want help orienting yourself with the old downtown LA, the picture below is not terrible.  This shot, I believe, is 1938, so it's pre-Dodgers Stadium.  That broad road left of center is Hill Street.  The street to its right is Broadway, where Little Joe's was located and Dad's favorite Chinese restaurant, Grand Star [looks like it's a jazz club today], where he'd have lunch and a cocktail with friends from work during lunch.  I'd gone with him a few times and loved it.  They seemed to put out on the table slightly fresher Fortune Cookies.  It was my introduction to film noir.  The street at the far right that farther up curves to the right is Spring Street.  It forms the southern border of the Cornfield Trainyard.    I didn't have much experience there, except for when we touched down on the southern end of that pedestrian bridge from Broadway.  I remember that Dad used to tell me that he'd cross that bridge, then cut down another street to get to Maimi's.  Loved that story.   

If you look close enough, you can see the footbridge at about the middle of the photo and to the far right.  You can see it, too, in this pic that is looking northeast.  Will never forget how Dad enjoyed the San Antonio Winery [few more pics] over there in Lincoln Park.  I had gone there a few times, at least twice with Dad.  Once Dad and I sat in their dining room and had Italian dinners on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth while they played Dean Martin's "That's Amore."   

This is the footbridge that Dad used to take me, Tom, and Joe across whenever we were in the area, either after a Dodger game or after an afternoon at the Police Academy or after a half-day spent with Dad in his courtroom getting caught up on his paperwork on a Saturday.  Or it could have been after a morning of strolling down Olvera Street, getting a colorful snow cone, or standing around a burro and a cart for a picture in the plaza there.  On the north end of the footbridge is Broadway and on the south end is Spring Street.  

 

Here is the southern end of the footbridge.  Grateful to LA Creek Freak for the picture.  That is Spring Street there.  

Below is a distant shot of the footbridge that you can see beyond the parked cars.  I love it.  

But the bridge didn't just make for a route for my Dad from school to Maimi's, it was also his playground, like so much of LA was.  From that bridge he would jump down onto moving train cars in the yard.  See for yourself what that could have been like. 

This is a screenshot from the 1942 movie, This Gun For Hire, starring Ladd and Lake.  That's Alan Ladd jumping from the pedestrian bridge down onto movie train cars.  This is what Dad used to do. 

A close-up of Ladd preparing to jump. 

Screenshot from the 1942 film noir, This Gun For Hire, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  Interesting to learn that the movie was based on a novel by Graham Greene who I like a lot.  Ladd plays the character Philip Raven, who'd been double-crossed (aren't they all?) and his honeypot in the movie is none other than Veronica Lake.  

The scene above comes from the 1942 film noir, This Gun for Hire, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  It's a classic film noir, and if you like Alan Ladd at all, in movies like, Shane (1953), then you'll love This Gun For Hire.  It rents for $4.  

I posted this picture because my dad would take Tom and Joe, and me and park at the curb of the eastbound side of Broadway, directly in front of that pedestrian bridge that used to run over the yard to Spring Street on the south side.  We used to run across this bridge, before and after they added the reinforcing chain link fence, sometimes in the late afternoon of a Sunday evening following a Dodgers game.  Or, on more than a few occasions, Dad would take us in the evening and into the night and run across it.  At the 1:28 mark in the clip above, you can see the scene in question; it offers a fuller view of the bridge back in 1942.  By the time we hit the bridge in the early 70s, it was in disrepair.  It was a mixture of excitement and fear, for the bridge had missing planks and I kept imagining my foot getting stuck in the opening or worse, falling through, which was impossible but as was my wont I imagined the worst.  Dad always knew how to make things exciting.  And it was. Dad got to review his youth when on this bridge, for with his friends from Cathedral High School he would jump from this bridge, exactly as Alan Ladd is doing above, and jump on top of the moving boxcars.  

Here is what the Pasadena Freeway looked like back in 1938.  It was called Figueroa Boulevard back then. 

Thanks to the LA Public Library Collection for this shot above, titled "Railroad tracks and trains, 1939." 

The Southern Pacific Railroad's River Depot in the 1920s. The photo is taken from present-day Radio Hill. North Broadway Street can be seen just below the hill. On North Broadway Street, near the right edge of the image is the Basso car dealership. Across the railroad yard is the neighborhood known as Dogtown. , a reference to the Anne Street Animal Shelter, located near 1300 Cardinal Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.  On September 5, 2023, I asked Dan about these neighborhoods, and he replied, 

Great job of researching and posting.  Dogtown was called that because of the "dog pound" or "shelter" where many dogs entered the next life. 

It was an area between N. Main Street and N. Spring Street from College to the L A River.

Radio Hill was part of Elysian Park area - I used to run all around this area on my lunch break from 1990 til 2000.

On September 20, 2023, I asked Dan the following

I think Dad told me once that Maimi lived south of the Cornfield Railyard, south of Main Street, that he would walk south across the footbridge over the railyard to Main but from there I couldn't tell which direction other than farther south.  Do you know if Maimi lived south of Main there?  Do you happen to have that old address of hers?  Thanks, Dan.  

And he replied,

I believe the Scoleri's lived in the general vicinity of S. Avenue 20 [which is also N. San Fernando Road] and Pasadena Avenue east of the LA River and west of the 5 Frwy.  I sort of remember Dad saying  something about the Scoleri's living in that general area.  They later moved to Alhambra, then to Michillinda, and then to Santa Anita . . . .

When driving into downtown Los Angeles on a Saturday morning, Dad would more than occasionally drive south on Mission Road, past Lincoln Park, and turn west onto Main Street into downtown Los Angeles.  So maybe he did that just so that he could pass by the old neighborhood where he grew up around good memories with his cousin, Maimi, and near Cathedral HS.

Hiking with Chuck

Chuck leading the caravan to the Fish Canyon Falls.

Entrance to the San Gabriel River trail.

Chuck is on the move.

Van Tassel Canyon.

The Vulcan conveyer belt on trellis.

Like Daniel Boone, Chuck surveys the San Gabriel Canyon at Van Tassel.

It was a great day for a long walk.

Duarte's 99 Cent Store.  This place was a bad attempt at replacing that wonderful, two-level Coronet store where Mom loved to scour for bargains.  She would recommend it to her babies too.

Big Lots! shopping center.  Beyond the roof to the left is Santa Teresita Hospital.

My Wonderful Sister Charlen, Dec. 2000

My wonderful sister, Charlen, has over the years written and sent some of the most memorable Christmas cards.  Here is one she sent me for Christmas 2000.  It's wonderful and honoring.

Sorry for the flash.

Barragan's, Dodgers Stadium, Olvera Street and The Old Plaza

I created this post to explain the background of the picture button below of my dad, myself, and my brothers.  The picture is a reminder of the Old Plaza Church where the picture was taken.  But as I began to think about the plaza, memories of my dad's days in the Marines coming up on leave from San Diego shrouded the event of the picture.  That picture button, as I explain below, was taken in a caravan-shaped photographer's booth that was used mostly for tourists visiting the Old Plaza Church, Olvera Street across the street, and maybe Philippe's.  My dad used to step off the train there at the depot and walk up to the Old Plaza Church.  

There he would say a prayer of thanksgiving that he had made it home to all that was important to him--his sweet wife, Sally, his baby daughter, Charlen, and his mother and father who were living in San Gabriel.  I would like to share a personal story that my dad told me, but it is of such a personal nature that I feel embarrassed to make it public.  Suffice it to say that he loved his parents and his wife and his baby girl.  My dad's stories about stopping at the Plaza Church gave me a picture into what his life as a young man was like before producing a full house of eight children.  His independent life to me sounded wonderful, whether it was his mornings selling newspapers on the corner or attending 5am mass somewhere or listening to a Knute Rockne Notre Dame game on his handheld transistor.  His excitement over Notre Dame was beyond my reach.  He tread the same earth as the Notre Dame legends.  He was their contemporary.  Their names seared in his ear through the transistor and through his Catholic imagination they were saints in the making with golden domes.    Growing up I loved Notre Dame because he did.  But he didn't love them, he worshiped Notre Dame.  Being neither priest nor college graduate, Notre Dame was his fraternity.  And with a transistor radio held to his ear, he was their most prayer-filled patron.  If they lost, when they lost, our weekend turned to hours of quiet mourning and somber reflection.  Soul-searching Sunday was only a few rituals short of a requiem.  My dad's heart would either thaw or jump at the anxiety when he'd check next week's schedule and see Notre Dame matched against Purdue or Michigan State.  If it were an underdog, like Navy, my dad's heart would be revived conditionally, for he knew that any victory would be an inconsolable one.

I so much enjoyed his stories of what life was like for him as a kid.  I saw what life was like for him as an adult, as a parent, as a father of eight.  I wanted to know what life was like for him as a teen or a young man.  Most of his life as a young man was spent caring for his parents or working his art, his cartoons.  Here is Echo Park Lake.

During the 70s when my dad was still working as a clerk on the 2nd floor of the Superior Court at First and Hill, he would go out to lunch with his friend Marilyn and one or two other clerks.  He would often have lunch at one of his favorite places to eat, Barragan's Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.  On several occasions, I would drive down to meet him for lunch and would drive him and Marilyn to the restaurant.  One of his favorite dishes was a cheese enchilada, rice, and beans, and a beer, likely as not it was a Coors.

One other place that Dad loved to take me, Tom, and Joe was to Olvera Street.  Sometimes we'd end up there on Sundays, picking up some burritos, corn tortillas, the best rainbow-colored snow cones found anywhere, and Dad's favorite--the dulce de leche caramel.  Dad was in heaven. 

 

Dad used to get Dodgers tickets from attorneys at work.  We went to Dodgers Stadium a lot.  Monday through Saturday the games were at night.  So for a weekday game that meant that dad would work a full day, drive home in traffic, gather us in the car, then drive back downtown to Dodgers Stadium.  The game wouldn't start until 7 and we might be in downtown by 5pm.  On one occasion he got us down to the Old Plaza across the street from Olvera Street early.  We might even grab a bite to eat at Olvera before going back to the Old Plaza for a picture.  One time we stopped and had our picture taken in a kind of wooden wagon, similar to the one used by Professor Marvel in the Wizard of Oz.  In it we took a group photo (see it below) of me, Tom, Joe, and Dad.  That was our dad--always doing something different, creating fun moments all the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vardo_(Romani_wagon)

Professor Marvel in The Wizard of Oz was played by Frank Morgan, who was also the Wizard of Oz and the doorman to the great house of Oz.

I am guessing that this is 1971.  That's me, Dad, Joe, and Tom.  It was summer time.  Look at our t-shirts.  Tom was the only one who thought it was important enough to wear a print shirt with a collar to the Dodger game.