remembering's

 I always wanted to share my memories with our family, but we never seem to take the time to do it. Who wants to listen to some frail old man? Very few do...

So I am going to write some down here and if they want to, they can read them or not. Here is one from the 1940's and 1950's. Surfing was just starting to become a mainline sport in the late 1940's and we had a few surfboard shops starting up in Manhattan Beach. In these years, Manhattan Beach was very much a laid back lazy town with most citizens having jobs in the aircraft industry, centered around the small airport (LAX) about 10 miles to the north. No celebrities lived here...yet, and housing was affordable. At the time, Manhattan had no palm trees but they did have a volunteer fire department, 2 police cars and one motorcycle cop. The city also had sand. It was everywhere. From the beach to Pacific Ave, it was all sand, north and south. So much sand that the city sold barge loads of the sand to Honolulu to add to the sand of Waikiki Beach. 

Back to the surfing scene...when we walked down Center Street (later Manhattan Beach Blvd.) on our way to the pier, there were 2 surfboard shops and the manufacturing took place in an empty spot of sand between the other buildings nearby. At the time most boards were made from Balsa wood and some lengths of a hard wood included to give the board some strength. The shaping was all done by hand, rasping and sanding the soft Balsa. When you walked by, you could see Balsa Wood dust in the street, on the sidewalk and on parked cars. After shaping, the board was covered with Fiberglas. A few years later it was polystyrene beads replacing the balsa wood dust as the sanded and rasped the Styrofoam that replaced the Balsa Wood. Soon after that, those little buildings were not big enough for the volume of boards they were making and they moved them inland to bigger quarters.  

Surfing grew in popularity and in the 1950's, a subculture was formed at our high school; Surfers! You had to wear levi's and a white t-shirt with a Pendleton shirt left open. White tennis shoes or go-heads completed the look. Luckily, my grandmother (Nana) worked in LA at the J.W Robinson store where she got a discount and I soon had 3 or 4 of the expensive shirts to wear. 

Long time

 It has been a while since I last wrote something for the blog. It's time for a recap...I am still unable to walk independently, I have to use the walker. I am still not motivated to create art. I think about it but I don't do it. I am still using a Foley catheter and will still be using it when I die. Which means that I will have UTI's on a regular basis. I now have 2 hernias, one inguinal hernia and one umbilical hernia. It is just added discomfort.

It seems that April 22nd was the beginning of this year's blog postings. I was beginning to exercise irregularly in order to gain some strength back. I am still exercising but now regularly. In the beginning it was obvious that the exercise was helping. Now, not so much. 

Speaking of art, I have ordered some new color pens, hoping to revive my artistic self. I tried some of the older ones and after an hour of coloring at a table, my back was killing me! I may have to rethink this plan. I had been watching one of my favorite abstract artists on You Tube. She is German and I can't follow all of the dialog, but I do enjoy the background music. It is mostly Techno/dubstep with a hard driving beat that I would love to paint with it while wearing headphones so I could play it as loud as I wanted it to be. On her website she does have some videos in English. Her name is Isabele Zacher-Finete and she is very talented. But, my physical condition is not good enough to paint as she does. Sadly, her latest video is two years old. With over 150 videos on You Tube, you won't run out of ideas. Some I play over and over. That is my autism at work.

Try this link. 

https://youtu.be/9kwDxE34vOw?list=RDCMUCXJ7c2abkQT-tFa-5M3t7BA

   

An experience from the past

How far back should I go and which experience? 

I think it will be 1965 and it's a story of Basque food. In that year I was still an apprentice, though I was being paid as a journeyman. It was later in the year and I had just finished a day of work on the new Broadway store on Ming Road in Bakersfield. My foreman, Alex, had been given an invitation for dinner at a Basque restaurant downtown. The whole crew was invited, all 3 of us. We were given directions to the Wool Growers restaurant, a popular restaurant, or so we were told. We walked in and saw that it was a Farmhouse style restaurant and the Broadway representatives had secured us a table and ordered a bottle of wine. The wine was home made & came in a bottle with no cork and no label. We learned from the server that it came from a cellar shared by the restaurant across the street. Noriega's, and there was an underground tunnel that crossed the street. The restaurant was named for a local judge.    

      

The menu was simple; you wanted steak or you didn't. The sides were simple but filling. We had a large bowl of vegetables and it was passed around the table. There were a few other items that were shared as well. Then the server brought in a platter filled with freshly grilled steaks. More enough for the six of us. Then more wine of course.

The conversation around the table flowed just like the wine and soon we were 'hammered'. 

We made our way back to our motel and collapsed onto our beds. The alarm clock was unforgiving and we soon had to get up and get ready for work. We had a crew that would arrive at seven and we had to be there for them.

While suffering from a wine 'hangover' it was a struggle to remember what we needed to accomplish that day. After a few hours of work we were feeling much better. Then, after lunch, the missing Broadway rep's came walking in slowly and wearing sunglasses. They said that they were surprised to see us so we spent some time kidding them about their inability to drink a little wine without having a hangover.

 

 

  

 

          

 

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