The Golden Years of Infirmities to be Determined Later.

I'm not complaining, after all, I am still vertical. But...I was a child of the forties and fifties and so these current years are becoming strange/odd to me. I was born before World War ll and the age of the atom and its awesome power. There was no television set in our houses and the telephone we had was large and black (only) plus it was connected, in a semi permanent way, to our neighbors. We had what was called a ''Party Line" where we shared that connection with people we usually didn't know. When my mother went shopping, she walked to and from the store as she never had a drivers license and we couldn't have afforded a second car. My parents always had to rent a house and the first house I can remember was on Dover Place, in an area of Los Angeles that was bordered on the west by the LA River and Griffith Park, and Glendale on the east. I went to kindergarten in the school next door to that house.

It was 1945 when my Great Uncle Len decided to buy my parents a house; a beach cottage in Manhattan Beach. It had one bedroom and one bath  plus a 'sleeping porch' ($1, 500) and that is where my baby sister and I slept. There were 2 houses between us and Center Street (The primary street between 101 and the beach) There was a nursery school on the other side of our house and beyond that it was sand and more sand, with an occasional house scattered here and there. There was the only school in town directly across the street; Center Street Elementary School. Our next door neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser. Mr. Kaiser raised rabbits, Pea Hens and Guinea hens while Mrs. Kaiser baked cookies and listened to every 'soap opera' available. The rabbits were destined to become food and fur while the hens were for food only. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I could eat cookies with Mrs.Kaiser or watch Mr. Kaiser kill and skin rabbits. The rabbit skins were put onto wire stretchers to dry and hung from a beam that held up the roof of the rabbit pen shelter. 

My sister and I would walk all over our part of town while I dragged the red wagon behind us. We would even walk down to the railroad tracks and to the Metlox pottery plant. We would look for 'good' pieces of pottery in the scrap heap of pottery and molds that were close to the sidewalk. On our travels, we would look for empty beer bottles to collect and redeem for two cents each. 

Unfortunately, I was born with Asthma and that kept me at home frequently, where I stayed in bed and played with modeling clay, building whatever came to mind, then flattening it all and starting over. I also had Tinkertoys to play with and they would allow me to build fascinating structures...to me they were fascinating. Apparently I was easily amused and never bored. A good thing, as I had no friends in our small neighborhood. Manhattan Beach was a rural place attempting to become a suburb. It had been a low cost area for all of the workers in the aircraft plants during the war so there were very few wealthy people 

I will have to add to this story during the weeks ahead. I'm afraid the memories will not be in strict chronological order as I write what I remember at the time I am writing. One memory begets another.