August 30, 2005

• Featured Grownups: “My Hometown Part 2″

  

  “Moving Day”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  1971 (18 years old)
   
  Here’s a box, a cardboard box
  Filled with shirts, and pants and socks
  Here’s the house, locked up with locks
  Bitter time, it’s history mocks
  The grass is brown, no children play
  The trucks are here; it’s moving day

  Pile the boxes in the trucks
  Ones with toys and old stuffed ducks
  Neighbors wishing stale good lucks
  Glimpse the house, as go the trucks]
  We all go now, we cannot stay
  The trucks are gone, it’s moving day

  All of us will hit the road
  Say goodbye to the old abode
  Soon we’ll stop, unpack our load
  A long way off’s a new abode
  Through paradoxical elation, you’ll find dismay
  Look to Mother’s face on moving day

  

  15 Times in 40 Years
  The “hometown” remains “Los Angeles” but there are many places I have called home within my hometown.
  1. Nampa, ID 1953-54
  Birthplace. In the beginning. We moved to California before my brother was born, though, and I can just barely remember Idaho.
  2. Silver Lake, CA 1955-57
  I remember that one wall of the house broke away at one point, and exposed dirt. The house was on a hill, and my little brother who was a toddler, nearly fell down the hill and I saved him.
  3. Highland Park, CA 1957-60
  My whole street, a cul-de-sac overlooking the Pasadena Freeway, was demolished in the late 60s and an apartment building is there now.
  4. El Monte, CA 1960-71
  I’ve actually lived in my present rented house longer than I lived in the house in which I grew up. The image is a photo I took of the still standing although gutted El Monte theater on the “mall” in downtown El Monte in 2004. This is the theater, along with the now demolished El Monte Drive-In, which will be the subject of a future entry this week, in which I fell in love with the movies.

  

  5. Glendora, CA. 1971-74
  We moved out of our first “owned” house to the one in Glendora after I graduated from high school because my mother wanted to ‘escape the Mexicans” in El Monte. Here is a link to a poem I wrote earlier this year about my mother’s last years.
  6. Rosemead, CA 1974-75
  My first apartment was on Rosemead Blvd, two blocks from Rosemead High School, which I had attended till 71. The Glen Haven apartments are typical “SoCal stucco block apartment buildings”, constructed in the late 60s. One of those complexes where it is incredibly easy to “lose the apartment” after coming home drunk from a party.

  

  Speaking of drinking, I set up a fully stocked bar in my apartment soon after moving in. Here I am “entertaining”. My dad’s death triggered the sale of the family home, so my mother could receive medicare payments to pay for the nursing home where she was hooked up to a dialysis machine after suffering her bilateral stroke. I had lots of friends come over to the apartment, as all my friends still lived with their parents, on the whole. My place got to be too popular, and I “shut down” the free bar because I got more requests for drinks than “tips” in the “kitty” on the corner of the bar.

  

  7. Torrance, CA 1975-81
  When my place of employment, the Oles’ Home Centers chain, opened up stores in the South Bay, I moved with the company to the new Torrance store as Garden Department manager. I lived in a small 16 unit apartment about 1 or 2 miles from where I currently live. I “moved” from a bachelor’s to a one bedroom unit. Here is Diane’s daughter  striking a pose on the front steps of the building. (Diane was one of my many short term  girlfriends, about whom I will soon be writing in the “My Sexual History” series of essays. At one time I had three girlfriends living in the building. I never had to leave the place. Honest.

  

  This is my 1961 bullet nosed Tbird. It had lots of problems, and I sold it soon after I bought it, but I really liked driving this car.

  

  This is my desk, which is wrapped around my queen bed in the bachelor’s apartment, so that the bed was not seen by anyone in the front room. Through the “curtain” on the left is access to the bed. (Those are “8-Track stereo cartridges” on the shelf above the stereo.)

  

  8. Lomita, CA 1981-84
  I was “kicked out” of my apartment in Torrance, possibly because I started renting when the building was a “party” building, and everyone in the place partied with their neighbors. I had two turntables at the time and acted as the “apartment house DJ on weekends. The owners who bought the building decided to “remodel” and had to expel all the tenants. I wasn’t invited back, and actually lived surreptitiously for the three months before the marshall was to arrive to physically terminate my tenancy. I moved down the street to another apartment house in Lomita.
  9. Redondo Beach, CA 1984-86
  From Lomita, I moved into an apartment three blocks from the beach in Redondo, sharing the place with Cecil, the “black homosexual postman”, who died of AIDS roughly half a decade later, after leaving me holding four months back rent because of his drug addiction. This was the only place I ever lived where I felt the need to put a lock on the door of my bedroom. After Cecil left, I roomed with two other friends. Here I am with my videocamera, an RCA “camera” that was rather heavy, and wasn’t a camcorder. To become “mobile” I had to carry the videocassete recorder on my back, and the battery itself weighed about 20 pounds. My history as “Mike Video” can be read from the MikeVideo section of my website.

  

  10. Lomita, CA 1986-1987
  11. Lomita, CA 1987-1992
  12. Long Beach, CA 1992-1993
  13. Long Beach, CA 1993-1994
  14 Bellflower, CA 1994-1995
  15. Lomita, CA 1995-present Here I am with my friend Pete in my current house, Those are some of my videotapes and my laserdisc and record album collection behind us. I will detail some of the other “years” in another post. It’s late and I do have to go into work tomorrow. I might take Jeri’s advice (actually she told me to go in today) and go into Urgent Care tomorrow. I don’t know what this cough is but it sure is getting me down.

  Go to the Featured Content For Grownups site to read about some more “hometowns.”

  UPDATE/EDIT: 5:15 p.m. I went into urgent care this morning, and took another day off blogsurfing the hometowns. I’ve been fearing I’m gonna see Biloxi. I was so glad when I found out the Big Easy was going to be spared the brunt of the force, but Mississippi got hit hardest. The news photos are so sad to see. Millions of people homeless, and a lot of the Gulf Coast is still underwater. I am just so heartbroken. I’ve had a poem brewing in my head all day, but it’s too difficult to write about it or even want to think about it, so I’m still visiting the “hometowns” around the Xanga blogosphere. Patty (Vaporous Venom) posts a pertinent updated state by state account on her entry today. Also I found Leigh Ann’s (youhave to sinto be saved) post today very touching. I’ve changed the Jukebox to a more “Hometown appropriate” music, that of the Beach Boys, and I’m playing on of my old vinyl records. Hope to have a VinylVox post up soon, too, for those of you who subscribe. It’s been way too long between posts. The doc said I had bronchitis, and it hasn’t developed into pneumonia, so I am on steroids, antibiotics, and an inhaler for the next few days. Thanks to all the folks who wished me well. The cough has abated somewhat. It was keeping me up at night. MFN 8/30

  • 5:47 pm
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