Memories -The Alley: The alley behind our house was my world growing up. Why, you say? Well, starting at Venice Blvd and going toward Washington Blvd, we have:
- A little printshop where I would always stop after school and see what the printer had thrown out that day. I was always set with colored paper, card stock, and sometimes some real treasures,
- The Flying-A glass station also provided me and the neighborhood kids treasures in the form of old tires and inner tubes, which we would use for all kinds of kid things,
- The cold storage facility was used by people to store/freeze food, and on many occasions, they would clean out the freezers and pile dry ice behind the store. That’s where I learned NOT to touch dry ice. We would haul it home and squirt the hose on it, making piles of “steam rise into the sky.”
- We actually had a large vacant lot on La Cienega Blvd where forts of various configurations would be constructed, large holes dug, and ramps for our bicycles to jump,
- The manufacturing facility was directly behind our house. It was small, and they made ball-point pens, something new in the 1950s. They would toss hundreds of the pens, and we would go through them and attempt to make them work; sometimes, a little heat would do the trick! I never had to buy pens all through elementary and high school.
- The next stop after school was always the liquor store, where we would bring every Coke bottle we could find and trade them in for candy. The lady who ran the store was named Maybelle. Sometimes, my mom would send me to the store to get a carton of cigarettes, which cost $2.00 in those days.
- The next place was a furniture warehouse, and they provided us with the most enormous cardboard boxes you could imagine. Sometimes, wooden crates would be set outside for the trash people, but we always got there first!
- The carpentry shop was next in line, and we had a never-ending wood supply from 4x4s to maple planks! They even tossed out screws and nails.
- The plumbing shop was next, and it threw our pipes, vents, old heaters and air conditioners, and large cardboard boxes!
Today, all those places are gone. Print shops have disappeared, Flying-A is no more, little woodshops are few and far between, and everything else we get is made in China!
I was lucky to live in the 1950s!
Mary and I woke up early in the morning. She had a gym appointment, and I had to see a cardiologist because I accidentally dislodged my heart monitor when I got out of the car and tripped over a broom in the garage, landing face-first against the tool cabinet. I will be heading to St. Joseph’s area to have a new monitor installed and make sure that I don’t trip over anything this time.
No use walking in the garden as it is 95% gone right now, and we are just waiting to return from our next cruise to plant the winter garden! Mary asked me this morning the following question, and I did not have an answer!
Mary always has good ideas!
Departing home, I went to the doctor’s office, and Mary went to the gym. I was done in 90 minutes and back home at 10:30 a.m. with a brand-new device. I told her that Mary beat me and it was elder abuse, but she laughed and said she knew better. She did, however, ask me what I did wrong. What’s with that?
When Mary returned home, she spent two hours calling various doctors and other organizations while I worked in the garage. We got a package from Santa, the repair kit for our Roomba robotic floor cleaner. I replaced the filters, rollers, and scrub brush, and now it operates just like new:
I have parts to keep it running for another two years!
We also got a cobweb duster; oh, the joy of being old and getting excited about cobweb dusters! We use this on the front of the house as we tend to get cobwebs and clean them off every two months.
What do you call spiders that just got married? Newly webs!
At 2:00 p.m., we headed out with our first stop, David and Dianne’s, where we dropped some beef stew and other goodies. We visited with them for a while before departing for Newport Beach and a visit with Dr. Bill, our podiatrist.
We arrived early, so we stopped at Gracias Madre restaurant for a quick glass of wine. We had to go back for dinner as the menu was quite interesting.
We got to Dr. Bill’s at 4:30 p.m. sharp, and within 15 minutes, my pain was gone! I had an ingrown toenail that had been bothering me for a month, but Dr. Bill made short work of that persisting pain. He showed me the culprit, and it looked long and sharp!
Dr. Bill has been a friend for fifteen years or more and has gone to Starlighter’s with Dr. Mary on several occasions. We took him to dinner at his favorite local eatery, Green Leaf, where we exchanged war stories for an hour or so.
Mary did her salad, and we men dug into a good old-fashioned burger with fries!
We were home at around 7:00 p.m., and it was dark, so we went to the living room and watched TV. Using our Apple TV, we watched “Election.” The plot revolves around a student body election and satirizes politics and high school life.
The film stars Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister, a popular high school social studies teacher, and a very young Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, an overachieving student he dislikes. When Tracy runs for student government president, Jim sabotages her candidacy by backing a rival candidate and tampering with the ballot count. Does this sound familiar?
Robin called on the bat phone, and we began planning out December, a busy time of the year.
We crashed at 9:00 p.m.; it was a good day! We spent another day just falling in love with Dr. Mary some more!
