Her father and mother owned two pet stores, where she got to play with puppies and kittens, but also with lion cubs (leopards? cheetahs?) and monkeys. Is it any wonder she grew up to be a veterinarian. My other grandfather put his back out during the depression and came off nine months of no work to become one of the first four salesman for Rykoff company, a restaurant-supply business that's still around. Salary? None. A shy man, he had to go out and get a customer before he earned anything.
If you knew LA in the seventies and eighties, if you ever drove down the 405 past Westwood and UCLA, you knew the big yellow sign at the top of one of the skyscrapers. MONTY'S. Monty was my great-uncle, and he owned three steakhouses throughout the LA area. He knew Jack Webb, and his son occasionally played an extra, getting "arrested" on shows like ADAM-12 and CHIPS. You can imagine how cool we thought that was.
When I was young, the smell of smog was a good smell, because it meant coming to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We'd swim in the neighbor's pool, or at another great-uncle's. We'd sleep on the living room floor, watching the branches of the tree outside sway shadows agains the big, picture window. And we'd wake up to smell bacon, or to hear Grandpa coming in the front door, saying, "Guess who I met at the grocery store?" Who?! Who?! (Grandma and Grandpa lived in Hollywood, so you never knew.) Even when he held up the pancake mix box and said, "Hungry Jack!" we'd laugh instead of groan, because, you know...it was Grandpa.
After college, I had my first "real" job in LA. I did closed-captioning, and I worked on a studio lot, where we'd come giggling onto our shift talking about which star we'd seen getting out of their car. I could stand in the parking lot, look out the gate, and know that I was working directly under the HOLLYWOOD sign. Yes, that one. When I went down there to "house hunt," a favorite great-aunt who lived in the Los Feliz hills drove and walked me all over until we found the apartment I needed. The day I moved in, her husband (yet another great-uncle!) showed up with his toolbox, to make sure anything that wasn't perfect, became perfect.
This great-aunt and great-uncle, two of my grandparents, and a third cousin who died much too young, are all buried in Mount Sinai Memorial Park. I drove by the exit today, and I waved. At their funerals, I thought they were gone forever. I still miss them all, but I understand a little bit more today about how not-gone they also are.
I don't know if I'll ever write about Los Angeles, but if I do, it will be a story of layers, of generations, of comings and goings.
The freeway signs are the same. The cracks and bumps and curves of the freeway haven't changed. The smog smell was there today, not as strong as it used to be, but it was good again. When I left Los Angeles many years ago, what I mostly felt was relief. Believe me, there is a difference between Northern and Southern California, and there is a difference between the people who are happy in either place. In my small mountains, between San Jose and Santa Cruz, I've found that place for me. But still...
I wasn't sure, when I started out yesterday, about making the drive. It's a long haul, and my car isn't new. Maybe I should have flown.
This afternoon, I'm pretty sure I made the right choice. And I think I've already gotten back the price of gas.
Where are your roots? Whether you grew up there, whether you happily left it for somewhere else, where is the place that still feels like home?
- Mood:
nostalgic
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chasethestars
chasethestars
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Then there's the Ozarks, where I grew up--lovely, lovely place! Such friendly people. I'm looking forward to my kids getting to experience that a little as we move back. And a bit of me inside is Chilean (a year and a half in Chile), and of course I'm a chronic resident of Germany, and I feel like in some ways we've got roots here. Literally, I do; I discovered that I'm related to some close friends who are from this area. Okay, it's about 300 years back, but it's there. That was very cool. When I showed my friend's mom what I'd discovered, she threw her arms around me and said, "Wilkommen!" (Not that she hadn't made us feel wilkommen about eight years ago the first time we lived here.)
The thing is, no matter how many times I move, I keep running into the same people, or people who know "my" people. I hate the cleaning and packing of moving, but I have to admit--I do like planting roots all over the place.
She'll be fine. And when you come out here to visit her, you'll drive four hours up the coast, and I'll drive four hours down, and we'll have lunch!
There is a little poem about me.
I am ... southern born
and southern bred
and when I die,
I will be southern dead.
seriously, I have lived in the south all of my life. things have been depressed(in the sixties) recessed (seventies) and God blessed (eighties) for me. The nineties went by too fast, and I am only now recovering. But living in the south is a good thing. WE talk slow, live low, and don't have snow :)
I apparently lived in C'ville during the coldest year on reacord. Not the snowiest, but the coldest. So cold the buses wouldn't run, and there was me stranded on the street in my too-short coat and two-thin shoes. And the days the snow did come down, the town pretty much closed, because the two snow plows just couldn't get around quickly enough.
The humidity, I didn't like, but...the dogwoods more than made up for it.
I've never felt like I had roots of much, or at least not any worth claiming. No one in my family ever talked about where they came from or where they wanted to go. It made reading yours much richer.
Edited at 2008-05-05 04:23 am (UTC)
California is just an amazing place. I'll drive for six hours tomorrow, at a relatively fast speed, and I'll cover a lot of its space, but by no means am I driving from end-to-end. The central valley is nothing like LA and nothing like SF.
And then there's further north, in the redwoods. I love this state. Yes, we will have tons to talk about!
I didn't see any stars, but I did see the Byrds in concert on the Steel Pier.