You Always Make Me Smile
These guys never fail to make me smile.
Thanks Secretly to Dream!
Daily Booth
Hollywood Hills, CA
Neck pain has become shoulder pain and is working into a headache. Good times.
Miss Elizabeth Smith, Town
addressed to
Miss Elizabeth Smith,
Town
reads
Helen Berryhill
request the
pleasure of your company
Saturday afternoon
June 11th 1911
From two PM to 5 PM
R.S.V.P
postage
one cent
envelope measures
3.5” x 2.25”
Excitement on Argyle Ave
I live in Hollywood. Sirens are nothing new. Castle Argyle stands on the corner as a functioning senior living community. Get that many old guys in one place and you hear a fair number of ambulance sirens. Sorry old dudes, you know it's true.
Right after I got home this afternoon I went to water Igor's plants and heard siren after siren after siren. So I went to check it out and found Engine 274 parked right in front of my building, lights flashing, not a firefighter to be seen.
Once I made it to the sidewalk I could see four more fire engines and at least one ambulance up the hill a bit.
Let me go on record as saying that I hate looky-loos. Someone else is having a really horrible day and they don't need you gawking at them. Then I decided that this is my neighborhood and, as long as I don't get in the way and hinder the efforts of the firefighters, it was okay for me to take a look. I know, I'm a walking conundrum.
Once I got across the street and up the block a ways I could smell the smoke. It was an honest to goodness fire! One firefighter was climbing the giant ladder to the roof of the building. There looked to be three others firefighters already up there. One had a chainsaw while the others carried long sticks with what looked like a giant hook at one end. Real heroes doing real work.
I don't want to diminish in any way whatever bad thing happened up the street. It didn't happen to me so it's easy to say it was no big deal. The fire crew had it under control and made it look easy. It's what they do. I hope everyone was safe and the damage was minimal. However, if the fire department is crawling around on your roof it's probably not good.
This all happened between 4:30 and 5:30ish so folks were making their way home only to find the street completely blocked off with, you know, fire engines. The Hollywood Hills can be a bitch to navigate but there is a way to get in and out without using Argyle by going across Holly Mount and down Vista Del Mar. Why does no one else seem to know this?
Cars kept coming around a corner and then stopping dumbfounded at the immovable obstacle in their way. Most of them didn't get past the first truck in front of my building. They took in the situation by staring for a minute or so then made a u-turn and went away
But there was one girl in a jeepy suv thing who was completely indignant about the whole thing. She drove right up to the blockade as if she expected them to get out of her way. Then she sat there and stared at them, the firefighters. And they proceeded to ignore her. Now she was a pretty girl and I don't think she's used to being ignored. Not by men. Certainly not by rugged men in uniform. Not by anyone. She sat there for six minutes from when I looked at the clock. Then she finally conceded that they weren't going to remove themselves to accommodate her and turned around by making maybe the worst three point turn on a street wide enough for a UPS truck to make a simple u-turn that I've ever seen. Me and the two little old Armenian ladies I was standing with laughed out loud at her folly. I can't say we were talking, me and these ladies, because their English is broken and my Armenian is non-existent. But they were on their afternoon walk, I've seen them before coming and going from Castle Argyle, and they seemed very worried about all the commotion. I managed to convenience them it was a small fire and no one seemed hurt. Then we laughed together at the silly girl.
Thank you Station 82 and anyone else that came to help. Thank you Battalion 5. Thank you LAFD and firefighters everywhere.
I have no idea...
... what's going on in this photo. Or why. This was taken in the house we rented in Long Beach while we were transitioning from Denver to San Diego in 1978. I'd spent most of the summer living in San Diego with Beth while Mom and Dad dealt with the details of moving. Maybe Mom dealt with the move while Dad was working.
Anyway, all I can tell you is that I'm wearing my swim goggles with sticks stuck in the sides like antenna. In the photo they're competing with the rabbit ears from the TV so it looks like there're four of them. I assure you only two of them are mine. That's my purple hippo sleeping bag wrapped around my shoulders.
At least I'm all blond and tan from so many hours at the public pool. It cost $0.25 to get in. Mom would save quarters in a blue mug I'd made in a ceramics class with her in Denver. She kept the mug in the buffet. I would take a quarter, my towel, and those lovely goggles and walk to the pool where I would alternately pretend to be either a dolphin or a sea otter. The dolphin was kind of exhausting. No kicking allowed. Sea otter was much more relaxing with lots of floating on my back.
There was a woman who was always there. She wore a black bikini with string ties at her hips. Her skin that was tanned to a deep dark brown and her blond hair was slicked back into a tight ponytail. Most of her face was covered by a pair of Jackie Onassis worthy sunglasses. She would recline on a towel ignoring the chatter and splashing. Every so often she would remove the sunglasses and climb the ladder to the high dive where she would stride to the end and in one final springing step hurtle into the sky and fall with Olympic grace into the water before repositioning herself on the towel. I thought she was beautiful.
Then one day I saw her in the locker room. I was standing under one of the showers, leaning on the wall button to keep the water flowing and rinse away the chlorine. Out of the bright sunlight, in the slanted shade of the angled wooden roof, I got my first really good look at her. Up close her skin didn't look smooth like everyone else's. It looked stiff and leathery, like my Buster Browns after I'd been jumping in puddles. This wasn't the alluring woman I'd been admiring for weeks. She looked crunchy. And very very old.
This wasn't when I gave up tanning. That happened about eight years later when skin cancer started popping up in the family. It certainly doesn't explain this photo. The only excuse I've got that is being eight.
Bud and Jeanie Forever
Today is my parent’s sixty-third wedding anniversary.
They were married in Denver and honeymooned in San Diego.
Mom was twenty-years-old. Dad was twenty-four.
They are so adorable!
Mom's a true California girl.
Bodysurfing! Dad taught me how, probably on this very same beach.
I love Mom's white sandals.
They stayed with friends on Edgeware Road in Kensington.
Even on her honeymoon she was doing the laundry.
This is what love looks like.
Sing Together
This is so sweet and completely awesome!
Mister Rogers Remixed (B-Side)
Sing Together
PBS Digital Studios
The Pleasure of Your Company
addressed to
Elizabeth Smith
reads
Doris Stapleton requests the
pleasure of your company
tomorrow afternoon from two
to four PM
July 2, 1908
envelope measures
4 x 2.75
