Mt. Washington II
My dad's parents came from Italy in 1910 and before long settled down to raise a family at the foot of Mt. Washington in Southern California. Their first house still sits on the corner of Maceo and Aragon in an area known as Cypress Park. The house is a cheap version of the craftsman style but looks to be in decent shape given its age.
Cypress Park is in the Elysian Valley and on the north bank of the Los Angeles River at the base of Mt. Washington. It was first settled by a Shoshone tribe. In 1769, Gaspar de Portola led the first European exploration of the area and described the area as a "very lush green valley". The land was later subdivided and established as a community in 1882. Jim Jeffries who became the World Heavyweight Champion in 1899, grew up in a house in Cypress Park where Florence Nightingale Middle School is now located.
East of Cypress Park is Boyle Heights where Alfonzo Cordoba, my mother's Basque father, published a socialist paper in the early 1900s and paraded up and down north Main Street in protest rallies with other anarchists. Some 100 years later, his great grandson Michael, married Maria in a church a block west of Main.
North of Boyle Heights is Lincoln Heights where my parents attended Lincoln High School. During the 1940s, my Uncle Mike lived on a hill above the school and cooked at a diner on Broadway. My dad took me to the diner for lunch when I was very young. I was the only one there that didn't speak Italian. The back door of the diner led out to a fenced area in the rear where some of the locals were busy at several bocce ball courts.
Uncle Mike was very animated and loud as usual. He was from my dad's side of the family who were from a sparsely populated area at the foot of the Alps in Northern Italy. They were all reserved and soft spoken except for Uncle Mike. He was more like the other end of the boot, as boisterous and volatile as the stereotypical Sicilian. He had a voice that overwhelmed your senses. I've never heard another quite like it. It was sort of like Popeye's but completely smooth, not at all raspy or forced, and with a great deal more bass. Even when he whispered, the guttural reverberations were spaced far enough apart that you could count them. When he was loud, and most of the time he was, the glassware on the shelf above the lunch counter rattled.
Lunch service had to be quick as the bulk of the customers had only a short time before they had to return to work. After the lunch crowd cleared out, Uncle Mike showed me some of his short cuts. Certain items were partially pre-cooked prior to lunch time and set aside in water at room temperature. Pots of water were kept at a constant boil on the stove where only a minute was required to finish off and plate the pasta and vegetables. Hash browns and bacon were also done in advance and sat on the edge of the grill until it was time to move them to the center and crisp them up. Ham slices, sausages, burger patties, chops and eggs were grilled when ordered.
My first hair cuts at a barber shop were given by a stern bastard who would not tolerate even the slightest movement once I sat in the chair. I would try to go into a trance by focusing on the floor which was covered in white, 1-inch wide, hexagonal tiles that were outlined in black. You rarely find these anymore even in the oldest of buildings. Before long I would inevitably move in some way and the old geezer would stab me in the top of my head with his needle-nosed scissors.
My dad sat off to the side and found the whole thing amusing. I never complained since that just wasn't done in my family. To gripe was more than acceptable and served as an ongoing source of humor and entertainment that approached an art form. To complain however, was clearly a different matter altogether and never even considered.
In 1948, my parents rented a small place on Cypress Avenue where we lived with my mother's mother (Alphonso had passed on). It was one unit of a wooden frame duplex. The place looked and smelled very old and needed painting. I remember most the scratchy, olive drab, wool Army blankets on the beds and a front door screen with mesh so clogged with solidified dust and grime that it could not be removed. Once I was put to bed, I could hear the symphony that came from the trains. The Taylor railroad and switching yard filled the Elysian Valley at the time. Every night I listened to the steel wheels, rails and couplings provide chorus, strings and percussion until I fell asleep.
In 1960, I was house sitting for friends on Mt. Washington less than a half mile from my grandparent's first house. In Cypress park, Division Street runs due north up the middle of a valley that reaches all the way to the top of Mt. Washington. One assumes the street was so named as it divides the valley into 2 halves. I lived on Future Street on the east side of the valley, on a hillside well above Division. Carey lived in an apartment on Cazador Street on the west side of the valley, also on a hillside and a little over 600 meters from my place according to Google Maps.
A few years earlier, the first pocketbook edition of The Guinness Book of World Records arrived in the U.S. I had been captivated by an entry about distance records for yelling. It claimed that this was one of the oldest methods of communicating and was a skill required for town criers. It also indicated that the human voice was audible and more importantly intelligible up to a limit of about 100 meters. One night I phoned Carey and told him to put down the receiver and go out on to his balcony which faced east. I put down my phone as well, and went out onto the deck of the house that faced west. In the best imitation of Uncle Mike that I could muster, I shouted, "Can you hear me?" as loud as I could. I went back inside and Carey was on the other end of the line chuckling.
I said, "Well?"
I said, "Well?"
Carey said, "Clear as a bell."