Month: October 2015

Santa Monica Canyon Living – Summer 1975

During the summer of young niece Gabrielle’s visit, much of the evening  entertainment consisted of live group readings (everyone would take a turn)  and listening to music.  Guests seemed to drop by regularly.  And sometimes we went to the San Fernando Valley to watch velodrome racing, to supplement the late afternoon impromptu pickup racing brother Dennis engaged in, riding up Pacific Coast Highway with his exotic featherweight bicycle.  This followed his work by day of building and repairing bicycles (and working construction) when he was not writing.

rDay Two-Hundred-Twelve

Spent most of the day working out in my head the solutions to four new development projects that emerged this week.  The rest of my body accompanied Kim to the medical clinic, where I read issues of Time magazine, stared out the windows and saw one of the most decrepit but running (and starting and apparently running well) Ford pickups I have seen for awhile.  And walked down to the former workplace to give off a little consulting.

Summer 1975: Bicycles and Gabrielle

Memorable from that period were some of bicycle treks — shown here are two photos of an early morning departure for a run from Venice to Laguna Beach (60 miles each way) with Dennis and Mike (aka Rojo) and a couple of scenes from the sojourn from Venice to Solvang (about 125 miles each way), where I experienced the most excruciating relentless uphill stretches ever in the mountains out of Santa Barbara.  (Even bicycle racer/mechanic “iron man” Dennis suffered a blister or two.)  And the best memory highlighting that summer was a visit of a few weeks by niece Gabrielle, all the way from New York City.  (The white-haired gentleman, whose name I forget, was her maternal grandfather.)

rDay Two-Hundred-Nine: John and Mary and Teddy

As I was returning home from a stroll across campus, I strike up a new acquaintance with John and Mary and Teddy.  John tells me that he was in the Class of ’45 with Sybil, and guess who his dentist was!  He is/was a photographer who tells of being called upon to take “funeral pictures”, where the deceased was propped up to be part of a group family photograph.  And he apparently documented activities at EOU and in local manufacturing businesses.  He told me of his Pentax and Nikon cameras (digital and film) and his medium-format Crown Graphic.  Kim and I have seen this couple frequently on our dog walks, and now we have some backstory.