August 28, 2005

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  During my childhood we moved around a lot. And after I grew up I moved just as much, totalling 20 apartments or rented homes in 20 years. I was born outside of Boise, Idaho, in a small town called Nampa, but we moved from there to Los Angeles before I turned five. Since then, the names of the burgs might be different, Silver Lake till age 6, Highland Park till age 7, El Monte till age 18, Glendora till my parents died when I turned 21. All these suburbs are part of the “greater Los Angeles area” a sprawling metropolis crisscrossed by probably the most convoluted freeway system in the world. I’ve been all around the area known as “Southern California” and would have to label “Los Angeles” as “my hometown”, although I actually spent most of my youth in the “barrio” town of El Monte, about 30 miles east of Downtown L.A. In the early 70s I moved to the Torrance/Lomita area, and besides a sideturn into Long Beach/Bellflower in the early 90s , I have been established here in Lomita since. We have a saying in the L.A. area. Everywhere is just 20 minutes away. Now most “freeways” are packed with cars during the all important and ever increasing “drive times” and they have been somewhat chancey lately, with a rash of “freeway shootings” to add to the normal “neighborhood driveby” but on the whole, if asked, I would have to say, “My hometown, then and now, is L.A., “La Ciudad de Los Angeles”, the City of the Angels, on the southern coast of California, the Last Frontier of mainland America. This is a view of the York Avenue bridge in Highland Park, which crosses over the Pasadena Freeway, built in the late 40s as the “Arroyo Seco Parkway”, the very first freeway in L.A. I lived at the right hand edge of this bridge in a cul de sac that doesn’t exist anymore, and was replaced by a huge apartment block back in the late 60s. I lived in the Highland Park area of L.A. till the year 1960, when we moved to El Monte The image above was recently used for my “Childhood in Los Angeles” autobiographical entry and shows my sister and I in the yard of the rented home in Highland park, one of the “tunnels” leading under Elysian Park, and one of the “red car” electric trains that were popular in L.A. up until the mid 50s. The house to which we moved in 1960 is in El Monte, which is not now considered one of the more “upscale” suburbs of L.A., and this is a current view of the house in which I grew up from 1960 to 1971, when, upon my graduation from high school, my mother had an incessant need to “escape the Mexicans” and we packed our bags and moved the family to Glendora, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Our house in the 60s didn’t have this type of fence. My mother created a “rock garden” around the front lawn, and the “fence” which has since been torn down, was a “rock fence” constructed with heavy boulders we would get from the desert, cemented into place. The walls of the house are still covered in “asbestos siding” which is cancerous. The “part of town” in which my childhood home still sits is not that “nice” and I took this photo while in the car driving by. I graduated from Rosemead High School in 1971, and this is photo from one of my yearbooks showing the front of the school, which still stands, albeit a different color, and it now has razor wire and tall fences around the perimeter. L.A. has changed somewhat over the years, and with each succeeding decade, the populace is said to become more insular, and less friendly. I don’t find this particularly true, and I still enjoy taking walks “around town” in a lot of familiar areas. There are dangers lurking in certain sections of “town” however, and most “locals” know which parts to speed through on the freeway when on the way to someplace else. This is a current view (from 2004) of the house to which our family moved in 1971, although it doesn’t bear that much of a resemblance to the house when we lived there. As you can see, the foothills are very close in the distance. Our home was merely three blocks from the base of the mountains, and Mount Baldy was a short but twisting distance away up into the mountains. The neatest thing about living in the L.A. area is it’s diversity of place. Less than an hour drive down Highway 39. which is the main street in Azusa, next to Glendora, and you hit Huntington Beach, where I spent many a hot summer afternoon in the early 70s.   This is the “concrete pier” at Huntington. The photo was taken in early 2004, on what would be a “winter” day in most parts of the country, but was a hot early spring “beach day” in L.A. Huntington Beach is actually in Orange County, and I’ve spent time at many beaches along the coast. “Everybody has an ocean”, to quote the Beach Boys, and I don’t think I could live anywhere in the center of the country, where I couldn’t get to the ocean in less than 10 minutes. Of course one cannot talk about L.A. without mentioning Hollywood. I spent a lot of my Friday nights on Sunset Blvd. and Hollywood Blvd. during the 70s and early 80s hanging out at clubs like the Roxy, the Starwood, and the Whiskey a Go Go. L.A. and Hollywood are forever linked in the eye of the public, and even though most movies, even in the days of the great studios like MGM and Paramount, were filmed in Culver City and parts of the valley and not acutally in the city of Hollywood itself, Hollywood has always had a certain sort of charm for Angelenos. This part of “town” fell into disrepair during most of the 70s after the movie business changed to independent producers, and in the 21st century, the city is being shined and polished once more in an effort to attract tourism. Back to the streets of downtown Los Angeles. We have always had a lot of “space” but the high rises and skyscrapers which now account for most of the real estate in the Bunker Hill district and the northwest part of town still pale, in my eye, to our “original skyscraper” the City Hall building, here photographed last weekend during my “subway trip photo expedition” of which I shall post some more photos later in the week. City Hall was my “focal point” and gave me my bearings while my dad drove us around during my youth. It was the tallest building around for miles. Now my hometown is almost “unrecognizable” from memory’s viewpoint, but since I’ve lived here all my life, the growth spurts are somewhat gradual, and the “old” mixes well with the “new” and I always feel like I’m “home” no matter where in the vast metropolis I am at any given time. I have many “folders” in my Webshots Gallery dedicated to different areas of ”the city”.   Here again is my poem, “You Can Never Go Home Again” written for the entry with that title. “You Can Never Go Home Again” Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri July 11, 2005 4:00 p.m. pdt Memories, sadly, are all that remain As an exhuberant life swirls down the drain Singing party songs and dirges, verse and refrain “You can never go home again.” Home was a house where a childhood was spent Upon a hill overlooking the roadway out of town The street now is gone, and the memories get sent Into oblivion when thrown on the ground. Bulldozers have no heartbeat As they destroy the realities of youth And after years pass, muddied the street And lies surely replace what was truth Memories, sadly, melt in the sand And the spectre of now lies in a cold hand Open to possibilities unbound But the drear echo of memory makes not a sound Memories, sadly, are all that remain When the streetlamps of solace still stain And you stop singing the songs, and forget the refrain “You can never go home again All of the photos posted in this entry are my own photographs with the exception of the yearbook photo which was scanned and enhanced in the Picture Publisher program. This entry was inspired by an entry on the Featured Content for Grownups Blogring site. I just joined this blog ring yesterday, so this post was created rather quickly. Some of the other members of the blogring have had a little more time to construct their entries, so apologies if this seems rather “rushed” or “cobbled together”. The owner of the blogring, Denise ( p8indme) posted about members writing a blog entry with the theme “My Hometown”. The originator of the idea is John Jr. (DoWhaChaDo89) In his Aug. 24th entry, John Jr. writes: “The point is no matter where you grew up we want to hear about about it. Take us your xanga friends on a journey to that place you will always call home. That’s right… post about your hometown. Tell us the places in your hometown that were special and why they meant something to you” I frequently write about growing up in L.A. and thought this was a neat “challenge”. I must admit I have only just joined this ring, but I admire Denise’s ideas and so I jumped in feet first. This is a great blogring for most of my regular readers, and I came upon it through Paulette’s (paulygrl) site. I don’t know if she’s participating, but Denise writes in her Featured Content for Grownups Aug.  28th entry: “When you have posted your blog, leave a comment(on the Featured Content entry), and I will link to your site so that everyone can see your “masterpiece”.WE WANT TO MAKE FEATURED CONTENT WITH THIS!!I’d like to see EVERYONE  that posts make Featured.  HERE are your instructions!1.) Check back here regulalry for updates!  2.) Go to the sites posted!3.) LEAVE PROPS FOR THEM!!!We can only be Grownups with Content WORTH being FEATURED if everyone works together here.  There are 253 people to date in the blogring.  All that’s needed to make FC is about 40 Props usually, which means 20 comments…QUICKLY!  We can do this, and take over Featured. ” KUDOS to both Denise and to John Jr, whom I haven’t “met” yet. Here is my entry, and as I look at the clock on the computer, I don’t want to think about how long I’ve been “assembling” this little “cobbled together” entry, and it’s too long, but what isn’t? I’m home “sick” this weekend and haven’t left my rooms. I don’t have the stamina to get out have a terrible cough, which has stuck to me for two weeks now, and my cataract surgery is coming up in a week and a half. I plan to go to San Francisco for a mammoth “photo expedition” over the Labor Day holiday, but don’t feel like doing ANYTHING today, except participate in the Xangasphere, of course. It keeps my mind “off my cough.”     One Last Photo, and it has been featured on a PhotoPost before, but I like it, and it shows palm trees and a beautiful cloudscape. This is from Ocean Blvd. in Long Beach, the city where I’ve worked for the last 16 years, so certainly has to be included in any article about “My Hometown.” EDIT: 2:34 p.m. pdt: Katrina is a Category 5 hurricane, and is headed toward New Orleans. My prayers are with the residents of that historic “hometown” including people I know. Evcuations are occuring, and I’m listening to updates right now on the computer. “Andrew” in Miami in 1992 and “Camille” in Louisiana from  1969 which killed hundreds of people were the last two Category 5 hurricanes to strike the United States.

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