HIGHWAY 39, NORTH FORK

This may not make sense to too many folks.  If you're viewing this on your smartphone it will make even less sense.  If you're viewing this on your laptop, then click on the picture itself to enlarge it and see a fuller scale of the scene.  There is nothing hiding in the scene, no hidden squirrels or bears or deer camouflaged anywhere.  It's just that I liked the contrast of light.  

1930s ANTIQUE SCHOOL DESK

I originally posted this back on August 27, 2014 at my original site of mycelestine.blogspot.com.  

I remember how delighted Dad was when he brought home an antique, 1930's school desk chair that he used as a kid when in school.  He loved things that reminded him of his childhood.  Maybe because he moved so much as a kid that his memory for things was so strong.

But as much as he loved this treasure, my mom was beside herself.  Why would he want old things?  What's he going to do with them?  Where are we going to store it?  It didn't last long.  These desks, originals like the one in the picture, go for $325 today.  

ACRES of BOOKS

One Saturday morning I went with Dad and Marilyn down to Long Beach's Acres of Books, 1960-2008.  It was a huge used book store with shelves to the ceiling, or so it seemed, and books stacked everywhere.  It was glorious.  Anyway, as the three or four of us were getting lost in the store, I remember ferreting through a stack at a table of books just down the aisle from my dad.  And I heard him utter as loud as he could in a quiet place, "Oh, my God I found it."  "It" was a reference to his grade school primer in which he had scrolled his name "Billy Walgenbach" in elementary school.  It was a book that had gotten away from him.  And here he was years later in a completely different town plucking a piece of his property back from oblivion.  I remember being amazed at the serendipitous nature of it all.  How random and what luck he had. 

In 2007 I made several trips to that store to buy books for the kids at Garfield.  We were building a classroom library, but I wanted to provide them with books that I thought would be interesting.  I remember I gave a copy of Michael Jordan's autobiography to one kid and he was ecstatic, asking me "Sir, do I get to keep this?"  I said "It is yours."  And I found several copies of Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape.  I also found a few copies of his Baby Watching that I bought and handed out to a couple of the girls in class.  I don't know, I guess in retrospect, the gesture could have been viewed by them as inappropriate.  But at the time I loved his works.  And his insights on children made me happy.  The history of the book store, at least the history found at Wikipedia, is interesting.  

Acres of Books was a large independent bookstore in downtown Long Beach, California.

The business was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1927 by Bertrand Smith. In 1934 Smith moved to California and established the store in Long Beach; he moved to the current address in 1960. Acres of Books was the largest and oldest family-owned second-hand bookstore in California, claiming to have in stock over one million books.

In 1959 Smith gave to the people of Long Beach a collection of rare books, some dating back to the 15th century. Included in the collection is a two volume facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible, all of which is housed as part of the Loraine and Earl Burns Miller Special Collections Room at the main branch of the Long Beach public library.

In 1990 Acres of Books was designated a cultural heritage landmark by the City of Long Beach.

In its long history Acres of Books has served clientele such as Jack Vance, Upton Sinclair, Stan Freberg, Gary Owens, James Hilton, Greg Bear, Tim Powers, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Paul Schrader, Fran Lebowitz, Robert Easton, Eli Wallach, Diane Keaton, Larry McMurtry, and, most notably, Ray Bradbury, who immortalized the bookstore in an essay entitled "I Sing the Bookstore Eclectic".

Acres of Books closed on October 18, 2008.^[1] The owners have sold the 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m²) lot the store is located on to the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency for $2.8 million.^[2] Subsequently, the Redevelopment Agency was dissolved by order of Governor Jerry Brown.

The site was proposed to be developed as an art exchange, but the project seems to be moribund.

The bookstore appeared in the film The Jane Austen Book Club. 

Here are some decent pics of the book store.  And here is a decent personal essay by a local Long Beachean.  Is that a word?  And here's some news on the store before it sold.  It does, as is in  most cases when the local government gets involved, sound like there is some intrigue surrounding the business and the site of the store.  Somebody, somewhere wanted that piece of real estate pretty bad and it sounds like the city forced the "cultural heritage landmark" designation on it and still the owners sold it.  Don't get it.  Here is something from LA Times writer, Tony Barboza.  Is he a friend of Nick's?

The history of Acres of Books goes back some eight decades to when bookseller Bertrand Smith moved from Ohio to Long Beach and opened the shop in 1934. In 1960, he moved to the site on Long Beach Boulevard, which previously housed a country-western dance hall and, before that, a car showroom.

I liked so many things about this store.  Its size, for one.  I liked the checkout counter with the display glass that featured certain books, novels and classics and such.  I liked the fact that it had two entrances, one on the north from the parking lot there and one at the west end of the store.  I loved its openness that was limited to the room where the checkout stand was.  The rest of the store was made up of narrow and carpeted trails between book cases and some dark alcoves where a wall or vent was exposed and only a bookcase or two, evidently a section that went mysteriously unfinished.  No one ever sought to retrofit the bookcases.  The owners bound the cases with a single two-by-four that arched across the aisle.  It looked as bad as it sounds.  The 2 x 4 ran at a 30-degree angle, which only put a question mark to the design of the place.  Engineers they were not.  Book emporium, few could aspire to such a title.  But in many ways it was the lack of design that made people feel comfortable here.  It was part garage, part basement occupied with all the intelligence and disinterest of an adolescent young man.  The front light was quite nice at almost all times during the day.  The store also sold some school supplies; apparently, used books didn't always cover the bills.  But its history called forth more than that.  As we've read, this place was partly hallowed by legends like Ray Bradbury, Eli Wallach, Diane Keaton, and, among others, myself, my father, and Marilyn D.

OROWHEAT BREAD: DAD'S FAVORITE

One of the things that my dad really loved was Orowheat's Wheat Berry Bread.  He'd use it for all of his sandwiches.  He would include two slices of it toasted for his dinner, butter it, then slice the toast into finger-width slivers, making it the perfect finger-food.  By itself it was terrific.  That is what Dad could do is turn ordinary foods into cuisine and turn ordinary occurrences into events.  Will never forget his famous 3-day old meatloaf sandwiches, where he'd place a couple of slices of meatloaf, mayonnaise, horseradish, and Grey Poupon dijon mustard on the sandwich.  And before he'd wrap it up in tin foil, he'd place nearly a half of an onion and yellow peppers as condiments.  Will never for the time when he, Chuck Pullman, and I drove down to San Diego one Saturday morning as Roger Miller's "King of the Road" played on the radio in Chuck's Buick. 

I was in the back seat popping the diamond-shaped bubbles of his seat covers.  

As to the old car seat covers, this is evocative of those covers and those days.    

living in SoCal your legs stuck to 'em and felt like you ripped skin off getting out. 

The comments are funny.

How about the summer times?!  I remember people using them on their couches too.

And this reply:

I never sat on them, so I can’t relate to the skin peeling off in the summer heat, nor the cracking in the cold.  

I was mainly thinking of protecting the original upholstery more than anything else.

The old auto parts store, Western Auto, is mentioned in that article.  I do recall the franchise.  Their sign was blue and gold unless I am thinking of AAMCO. It was not much, pretty plain which I liked. Didn't realize that Western Auto was founded by the same guy who founded Pepperdine University out in Malibu.  Now THAT IS interesting.

Western Auto Supply Company—known more widely as Western Auto—was a specialty retail chain of stores that supplied automobile parts and accessories. It operated approximately 1200 stores across the United States and in Puerto Rico.^[1] It was started in 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri, by George Pepperdine, who later founded Pepperdine University.^[2]

Western Auto was bought by Beneficial Corporation in 1961; Western Auto's management led a leveraged buyout in 1985, leading three years later to a sale to Sears. Sears sold most of the company to Advance Auto Parts in 1998, and by 2003, the resulting merger had led to the end of the Western Auto brand and its product distribution network.

Though I remember Western Auto, I think it belonged to the Sears brand.  So if you bought a Sears battery you were getting a Western Auto battery.  But Sears acquired Western Auto in 1988, the year that Dad left us.  Today, Western Auto is Advanced Auto.  I don't see too many of them here in Southern California, but they're all over Denver and the Front Range.  

Back to my story, as we wove south on Interstate 5 down through San Clemente I saw through the starlit, predawn hour the blue and white sign of International House of Pancakes illuminated off the highway. 

Dad here has a gold plated medallion of the Virgin Mary around his neck, a gift from Marilyn who picked it up in Egypt on her travels there.  He loved that medallion. The photo has to be 1985 or 1986.  On the stove behind them is Dad's pot of chili.  On the bar is the most recent LA Times with the sections stacked.  On Mom's pink tiled counter-top is Dad's signature 7-Up.  Dad was so proud of his Virgin Mary medallion. Chuck was so happy and proud to be in my dad's orbit.  In the cabinet behind them at the left always hung a catholic calendar.  

And, boy, could I smells those pancakes.  But it wasn't just the pancakes that I loved about IHOP.  It was the restaurant itself.  In my mind, it was an old-world, German bakery/restaurant, and I wanted all the comfort and exclusivity of such a place. 
I asked dad if we could stop to eat.  He replied, "Soon."  In lieu of the aromatic pancakes, hot syrup, and bacon at IHOP, he extracted from a brown paper bag on the floor between his feet a cube of tinfoil folded and wrinkled and offered it to me.  I took it.  In the early morning shadows, I peeled back the tinfoil to find a sandwich made of Orowheat Wheat Berry bread piled high with 3-day old meatloaf, cold mashed potatoes, mayonnaise, and Dijon mustard with horseradish.  

Would I?  Would I really bite into this concoction that was made by the loving hands of my father?  I would.  I tell that story just to illustrate how he viewed certain food items as healthy food.  And compared to white bread, wheatberry was healthier.  That is until the bread companies began using enriched wheat where the germ was removed.   

Then Orowheat added honey to make Orowheat Honey Wheat Berry Bread.  And though he loved this bread, too, it was not as healthy.  It was tastier, it was sweeter, but not healthier.  

Dad was health-conscious in his retirement years.  At least in retirement, his favorite cereal was Kellogg's Cracklin' Oats.

Though I don't remember what year it was, I do remember that he quit smoking cold turkey.  He smoked Tareytons almost exclusively.  

And he really enjoyed dining out at the Seafood Broiler in Glendale.  It had to be in Glendale.  Glendale is where my dad's friends lived.  Nora almost lived in Glendale in Burbank.  Marilyn and Frank moved to Glendale from Sherman Oaks.  They lived at 13633 Morrison Street, one block north of Notre Dame High School where I, Tom, and Joe would go and play tennis or basketball.  Her home was elegant.  The front room had a recessed section closer to the back sliding glass door.  And Marilyn and Frank kept a little library of sorts.  I remember reading their copy of Guinness' Book of World Record, learning about a bearded lady and thought how awful that must have been.  You can see an external picture of their home here and a map of its location is below.  I remember watching an episode of the Saturday Evening Movie on CBS with Ralph Story introducing the movie.  He had a terrific voice, one that resonated both with the WWII folks and Baby Boomers.  I remember that Dad bought a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken while we were at their house.  And I remember that Frank smoked cigars.  Those were great days.  Me, Tom, Joe, and Dad stayed with Frank and Marilyn one summer down in the scalding environs of Palm Springs back in 1972 or thereabouts.  We played doubles tennis in the morning, ate, then for a short swim before we made back inside.  But I do remember walking a few blocks to a store and back and how it felt like I was walking in a . . . well . . . a desert.  I recall the vapors rising off the asphalt road.  It is a good memory.  

 

SAN GABRIEL, CA

Citrus College, 1975-1977

I mean if I had to find a photo of one of the spots of my old stomping grounds it would be this one. Citrus College parking lot. I loved my time here right out of the gate from Duarte High School. I showed up here and the first class that I really enjoyed was Business Law. I loved the textbook. I loved how it was written and how it read.  It was, in fact, one of the first things that I had read that I loved.  I mean I loved Jerry West's biography Zeek From Cabin Creek.  I loved the Hardy Boys series.  And though I didn't love The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe read in Mr. Carr's class, it did get me to think, and I liked that.  Next, it was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.  And though I thought that his writing was beautiful, which it was, the story didn't really blow my hair back if you know what I mean.  But this shot of Citrus warms me to no end.  First, I will never forget the guys I met at Citrus.  There was a guy by the name of Dennis.  No, not Dennis the Menace.  This guy was a decent guy, a professional guy who helped me make my way through the scheduling and application process.  With a little help from my friends is such a great line and a true line.  This is how life works.  And in this sense, life can and does take care of itself.  Sort of . . . .  Sadly, I don't recall my teachers' names.  My Business Law professor, I liked a lot.  My American History class and teacher I liked a lot.  About that class, I will never forget an older couple, meaning older than 18, maybe in their early 30s, who came to class unshowered and smelly.  Their clothes were tattered.  But they showed up to history quite regularly.  And held meaningful classroom discussion with other students and the professor.  Looking back on it, those days were really interesting.  I'd had at least two English classes that I'd remember. 

In one, we were assigned Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.  No book ever or since has gripped me.  It scared me, to say the least. 

And when I saw the movie, In Cold Blood, with Robert Blake, the truth of the story only made me sick.  Perhaps the worst of it was due to the fact that I liked his character in Baretta.  Wikipedia remembers the details: 

Detective Anthony Vincenzo "Tony" Baretta is an unorthodox plainclothes cop (badge #609) with the 53rd precinct, who lives with Fred, his Triton sulphur-crested cockatoo, in apartment 2C at the run-down King Edward Hotel in an unnamed, fictional city. A master of disguise, Baretta wore many while performing his duties. When not working he usually wore a short-sleeve sweatshirt, casual slacks, a brown suede jacket, and a newsboy cap.

1960 Citrus College parking lot.

In one English class, the professor called the class illiterates.  Yeah, probably.  I remember telling Ann Douzadjian, co-owner with her husband Jack of Steamboat Fried Chicken in Duarte, that and she was appalled that a teacher would say such a thing.  Strange the details that we recall, eh?  There was a classmate who was complaining to me about his mother-in-law.  He was complaining because he was struggling with the decision to put her in a home, a convalescent home, an old-folks' home.  It shocked me.  I could never imagine anyone doing any such things to one's mother or mother-in-law.  

But just as interesting, if not more so, was the Citrus College cafeteria.  It was the first and only place I'd ever witness a young man have an epileptic seizure.  Not his most dignified moment, that's for sure.  But as school grew to become aimless, like every other school program, I began to spend more time in the Cafeteria in the morning hours where many of us would play pinball.  Yep, pinball.  Pinball and cards.  Hearts.  I'll never forget that it was the first time that I'd heard Neil Young's Heart of Gold play on the jukebox there.  

Paul Parker was there.  He was a fixture in my life since the 10th grade, since meeting him in the handball courts behind the boys' gym at Duarte High School.  

Though this is not by far the best picture of Paul, it is the only one I have.  Paul was and is one of the more talented men I knew.  In my mind, his dad was a sportsman's fisherman, who knew the spots, knew the bait, the set-up, simply knew the territory of any fishing spot on the planet.  That was one of my great pleasures fishing with Paul was to hear the stories he'd tell of him fishing with his dad as the two of us would be tunneling our way through thick brush then down the cliff of a mountain just to secure a lone spot on the shore of the San Gabriel Dam.  Paul was a dashing young man who won the eyes and the hearts of the ladies, but he was also a talented businessman, artist, and friend.  Will never forget his love for John Denver and how he used to play Mountain High in Colorado.  I'd listen to this with him in his room growing up as I'd eye his famous hat rack with headgear for every sport from red and black hunting caps to camouflage military styled hunting hats.  He was a man's man.  Was a privilege to have had those hours with him.  We went on a few great fishing trips as well--to the Sierras once with just me and him.  We went to Pleasant Valley Reservoir and fished the Owens feeding the reservoir from Bishop Power Plant in Birchim Canyon where Lower Rock Creek and the Owens River from the west side of the reservoir.  I took this shot while he and I were fishing on the San Gabriel River right where Highway 39 bends in the road there to head up into the canyon.  

So Paul wasn't just any friend.  He was a great friend.  I got to know his family.  Went on my very first double date with Paul with a couple of sisters, whom I thought were from Colombia but maybe from Brazil.  The gal I went out with was Rosemary.  Her perfume sent me.  Wow!  There was no other guy in Duarte whom I trusted more.  I do remember how he admired Gary Fenimore or Feniman, who lived down on Fish Canyon and had a pointing English Springer Spaniel.  Loved those days of Duarte, the days when you'd see two friends walking down toward the San Gabriel Valley Gun Club, where my two brothers Joe and Chuck worked for a spell.  Those were the days when kids would walk down the street with shotguns draped on their shoulders and no one hardly noticed other than to declare their intention for going shooting at the gun club.  Beautiful days those.  There was a section out at the Riverbed called the Bowl.  It was a loop carved out in the bambooed section of the Riverbed just north of Fish Canyon Drive.  Will never forget Dana Butters who owned a falcon or a hawk and celebrated and represented falconry quite well.  This was interesting.  Go about a third of the way down and you'll find this entry:

Dana Butters of Duarte received the Monrovia Rock Hounds Geology Scholarship.  

Of course, he did.  Mr. Butters was a true outdoorsman.  Then there was this 

Area students receive awards Dana Butters of Duarte and Christopher G. Johnson.  Laurie Valadez and Theodore Takao Inouye of Monrovia have received scholarships while attending Citrus College.  Miss Butters [clearly, that writer does not know Mr. Butters] received the Monrovia Rock Hounds Geology scholarship; Johnsons earned a grant to USC; Miss Valadez was awarded a scholarship to Cal State Northride and Inouye received a grant to 

Another guy who hung out with us, playing cards, was a guy by the name of Martinez.  I remember him because he didn't like me too much; in fact, he punched me in the chest one time, not hard, more to get me out of his way, before he stormed off.  He was losing in pinball and he was a terrible loser.  Besides being angry all the time, I do not know what he was good at.  

There was a gal who visited occasionally that I liked.  Her name was Dana.  One of the guys asked me which of the girls in the cafeteria I liked, and I pointed to Dana.  So sure enough one of the guys called her over from her table and the guys proceeded to tell her that this guy, meaning me, has a crush on her.  And it is true I did.  So some idiot asks her which of the guys here did she like, and she announced that it was Martinez, the sore loser.  It crushed me.  But only for a day.  There were other women who hung around us there.  

I didn't meet Scott Nelson from Ontario, Canada until much later.  But once I did, he and I used to hang around.  He with Jacques from The Netherlands.  Scott, in fact, played ping pong at our house in Duarte back in the late '70s.  There was an unforgettable moment when a bunch of us were out in my '70's, green VW Bug.  We had probably been drinking a few imported beer at Scott and Jacques' apartment in Azusa before we all piled into my Volkswagen and drove over to the bowling alley that used to be behind the Foothill Drive-In.  Will never forget that.  We may have been listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon 8-track, for I remember that Jacques loved that.  Here is the soundtrack list, tunes that today only bring me great regret.  The songs on the track that I liked were Time, Money,  

Pink Floyd tended to depress me.  But my Jethro Tull Aqualung 8-track was my one and true treasure for those days. 

These are the lyrics that served as an anthem to my youth. 

Sitting on a park bench
Eying little girls with bad intent
Snots running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes, hey, Aqualung

Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run, hey, Aqualung
Feeling like a dead duck
Spitting out pieces of his broken luck, oh, Aqualung

Sun streaking cold, an old man wandering lonely
Taking time, the only way he knows
Leg hurting bad as he bends to pick a dog end
He goes down to a bog and warms his feet

Feeling alone, the army's up the road
Salvation a la mode and a cup of tea
Aqualung, my friend, don't you start away uneasy
You poor old sod, you see it's only me

Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
When the ice that clings on to your beard
It was screaming agony

Hey and you snatch your rattling last breaths
With deep-sea diver sounds
And the flowers bloom like
Madness in the spring

Sun streaking cold, an old man wandering lonely
Taking time, the only way he knows
Leg hurting bad as he bends to pick a dog end
He goes down to a bog and warms his feet

Feeling alone, the army's up the road
Salvation a la mode and a cup of tea
Aqualung my friend don't you start away uneasy
You poor old sod, you see it's only me

Aqualung my friend don't you start away uneasy
You poor old sod, you see it's only me

Sitting on a park bench
Eying up little girls with bad intent
Snots running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes, hey Aqualung

Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run, hey Aqualung
Feeling like a dead duck
Spitting out pieces of his broken luck, hey Aqualung

Oh Aqualung

I also liked Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day.

And, of course, Fat Man was terrific.  Like I said, this 8-track greatly consoled me and my loneliness in those years wandering aimlessly from Citrus.     
And so it goes. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the sports that I played here.  Not for Citrus but with Duarte fellows.  We played Sunday football games in the stadium with Paul Parker.  

I used to run bleachers here with Al Madrigal.  We got in great shape for the local pick-up games in Irwindale, El Monte, and elsewhere.  

ROUNDHOUSE, TAYLOR YARD, LOS ANGELES

Love this image of the roundhouse in Taylor Yard between Brooklyn Blvd and Figueroa.

There are other images.  Here is a 1945 scene from Glendora.