Junior high or middle school as they call it now was just a fog for me. I seemed to sleep through the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. I’d rather had swept the city streets with a Wisk broom back then. However, the redeeming thing about junior high was the various shop classes. Wood shop, metalContinue reading “Is it Junior High or Middle School?”
Category Archives: autobiographical
A real snow job.
Oh yes, then there was this in the first ten years. East Los Angeles 1949. It was a chilling cold and near freezing January morning. In retrospect, a bit cold for southern California. I was in kindergarten at Montebello Park Elementary school and this was the only time I was at the same school myContinue reading “A real snow job.”
Our vacation summer 1952.
What to do with an eight-year-old boy? We were on, what they call vacation. Our family and my Aunt Elsie drove from California all the way to Oklahoma. My dad, mom, older brother, youngest sister, and myself rumbled through the heat and dust storms in order to visit kinfolk in Oklahoma. Never mind they inContinue reading “Our vacation summer 1952.”
Some say I look like Alfred E Newman.
Who did I look like? My senior year 1962 and only eighteen years old. Standing in a bank teller line behind a petite woman with a pixie hair cut wearing black leotards and body tights she kept turning around and looking up at me with her round child-like face. Was I standing too close toContinue reading “Some say I look like Alfred E Newman.”
Listening to midnight radio.
All from my little AM radio. Back in 1951 and before our first TV and I Love Lucy, I was a frequent radio listener. We were living in Los Angeles and we had a Sears AM radio/record player console in our tiny Livingroom. A big wooden mahogany box that stood up and about the sameContinue reading “Listening to midnight radio.”
How do we get things done when the door bell keeps ringing.
September 1965 2611 D Street, in the rear. The tiny house in the rear. It was either a guest house or a servants quarters. A standalone bungalow set behind a larger old Victorian house with three rented flats and a broad porch as wide as the big house. Or the house in the front asContinue reading “How do we get things done when the door bell keeps ringing.”
If Judy Bloom wrote for pre-teen boys.
A close shave. I grew up in Southern California with clueless Okie parents. It was the dust bowl survivors meet Ozzie and Harriette. Misfits all of us. We had no social skills much less me remembering to not burp when in the cafeteria at lunch. I would have to admit myself an early teen boyContinue reading “If Judy Bloom wrote for pre-teen boys.”
It was the organ that made me skate.
The marvelous Wurlitzer organ. Some of the older and larger downtown movie theaters had a mighty Wurlitzer organ. Put into service back when movies were silent and needed some underlying musical theme to carry the action. The bigger and older ones were huge as they are today. About the size of a Volkswagen beetle. AContinue reading “It was the organ that made me skate.”
We drove to Sears once a year.
Before we could do Easter… The Saturday before Easter we all drove to Sears in East L A. The place was the main Sears catalogue store at Soto and Olympic. A tall ten-story building just east of the concrete L A River. After arriving and parking My two sisters would go with our mom andContinue reading “We drove to Sears once a year.”
Anybody want an eighty-pound bale of hay?
Bucking hay. Stepping off the back porch and just a few steps from the breakfast table I would be struck by a marvelous sight. At first glance you would think a giant yellowish and white fireball was coming up out of a volcano. No, a brilliant sunrise rose up into the clear blue skies overContinue reading “Anybody want an eighty-pound bale of hay?”
Chuck the Blogger Guy 