When I was in my early teens and living in Los Angeles we kids drove up with our parents along with a wooden toboggan to a ten-thousand foot high mountain. A snow covered peak often called “Mount Baldy which was located in the San Gabriel Mountain range. Mountains of the Los Angeles basin. .” Few people knew the mountains real name of Mount San Antonio. When winter came and it snowed we could see from our backyard, which faced out to the east, a snow covered peak called Mount Baldy. Looking like a pointy head bald man. None the less, we often found a reasonable sled run to run our toboggan down and down and down again. Just having a crazy fun time.
It’s hard to believe that it could snow in balmy Southern California. But at Ten-grand feet, it certainly did. Rarely did it ever get cold enough in our almost sea level East L A neighborhood to ever snow. The upper forties is as cold as it had ever got. But taken from the annals of ‘Believe it or not’ back in January of 1949 when I was in kindergarten, it actually snowed on the near sea level grounds of our elementary school. It was such a rare occurrence the school principal let us outside for the morning before the snow melted. I can vividly remember my oldest sister tossing snow balls at her friends out on the front lawn of our school. Somewhere tucked away is a black and white photo of she and friends snow balling and splattering each other with real balls of snow. Just a Winter Wonderland that year. However all evidence of the snow disappeared by noon. So back to the typical dry sidewalks along the palm tree lined avenues of sunny southern California.