GO CART

In 1949, my parents and I moved into a house they bought in Eagle Rock.  It had 2 stories, a red-tile roof, a big fire place in the living room and at that time was described as "Spanish style."  At 5 years of age, what captivated me the most were the second story balconies on both the front and back of the house.  The house was above the level of the street with a climb of 35 steps from the sidewalk to reach the front door.  This put the street-side balcony completely above the field of vision of drivers passing by.  They never could figure out the source of the water-filed Xmas ornaments that hit their car.  

The ornaments I refer to are the delicate glass ball-shaped ones coated with shiny metallic  colors on the outside and a silver coating inside.  They can be hung from the branches of a Xmas tree if you have the patience and dexterity to deal with the little wire thingamajig that fits into the stem at the top of the ornament.  More entertaining than hanging them on a tree is filling them with water and throwing them at a moving car from 50 feet above.   The water is primarily a means of adding weight which enables you to throw it as far as you can throw a baseball.  Unlike a mere water balloon, on impact the ornaments produce a loud pop akin to what you can do with a paper bag with the proper training.  When the ornament landed on the car's hood, in addition to being startled by the pop, the driver was semi-blinded by an exploding cloud of several million minute particles of sun-lit silver-coated glass.

The balcony on the back of the house was ideal for shooting at targets that the former owner had installed on the hill that served as our backyard.  The hill was a good place to detonate the explosives we made with the black powder we painstakingly removed from rolls of caps.  

In the back of the house at the base of the hill was a patio over which extended the back balcony.  The patio was where we tape recorded a watermelon-eating  contest to determine who could produce the most vicious and disturbing sounds.     

On the south end, a chimney rose above the full height of the house and one January morning spewed a six-foot high flame out its top after my dad lit the Xmas tree he had stuffed up the flue in the living room fireplace.  To round things off, on the outside of  the north end of the house were wooden stairs leading up to a small porch topped with a red-tiled cupola.  It was off of this second story porch that my dad once used block and tackle a la Laurel and Hardy, to lower an upright piano to the ground below.  Adjacent to where the piano landed were the enclosed concrete stairs leading down to the basement which proved to be a good place for my dad's various diversions including making refracting telescopes and gold mining machines. . 

There was a stand-alone garage at street level, also with a red-tile roof and as I recall, the  only 2-car garage on our street.  It had two heavy wooden doors that didn't lift up but instead slid sideways, one in front of the other.  I think largely because of the two doors, or double doors, it was referred to as a "double" garage rather than a 2-car garage as the concept of having more than one car hadn't yet taken hold.  Nor had the EPA, rather than a garbage disposal every household burned their garbage outside in an incinerator.  The incinerator was at the far end of a side yard on the north end of the property and which served as the ideal place to boil the cow skulls I used for my senior-year art project.

When I was 9 years old, my dad led me down the stairs and into the garage where he had me sit on the floor.  I sat upright with my legs extended out in front of me flat on the floor.  He took a piece of white chalk and started drawing lines on the concrete floor around me.  I had told him that it would be neat to have a go cart (back then, it was cart, not kart).  He told me as he was drawing with the chalk that he was marking out the footprint for the chassis.  Over the next few months, I watched those chalk lines transform into a go cart.  Along with a welding outfit, he brought home materials a little bit at a time - angle iron for the chassis, sheet metal for the body, etc.  Eventually, he mounted a lawnmower engine onto the frame over the back axle and we were soon zipping around the Rose Bowl parking lot.  The go cart ran great for decades but it was the bit with the chalk lines that I still think about.