I just printed out a map showing
how, today, someone could walk to UCLA from 9134 Hargis Street, where Mom lived
with her parents, my Grandparents Robison, until she married Daddy, and I
looked it up because of something Daddy said at a reunion in 1987. I have it on a cassette I made while I was
there but hadn’t listened to for decades because the ribbon broke. My great
tech help Efren brought it to me restored yesterday, and together we made a CD
of it from my Crosley, imported it into iTunes, and got it on my iPod.
It’s an interesting listen just a
few weeks before Dana arrives for a short visit and after some summer reports
on how bullying by someone in the family can be just as detrimental to the victim
as peer bullying can be. I had thought
Dana stopped bullying me after she was an adult, but she gets on this cassette
and makes very mean, mocking comments.
She tries to get Jonathan to participate in her deriding of me, but he
won’t. He was good at picking up on
things. At the beginning of the tape,
when I try to reassure him about the plane trip, which he says makes him just a
little bit nervous, I say, “These pilots know what they’re doing, I think.” He says, “You think! That means you don't know!”
I think he picks up on Dana’s
mocking me too as she uses baby-talk to describe what I’m wearing for pajamas (just
too precious and tacky) and talks about the “Tina show” when what Suzy and
I most remember about the reunion is that Dana sat us down on the stairway and went
through a monologue (I don’t have on tape, unfortunately) for almost an
hour.
But this is a blog about Mom and
sometimes Daddy, and this time both appear even though Mom wasn’t at the reunion,
and Daddy’s hardly ever heard. He does
bring up the subject of lights left on in 25 rooms. (Dana was living in the huge house where she
still lives and has a electric bill of several hundreds every month.) Last
night as I was watching The Bicycle Thief, which takes place in Italy right after
WWII, when Italians were facing a Depression, I thought about how Daddy and Mom
both talked about those years. Mom in
particular remembered how her father struggled to make a living. (Her story “Tomorrow’s Christmas” relates to
that.)
Anyway, Daddy says that Mom had to go almost
five miles to UCLA, and to save 5 cents, she walked instead of taking the streetcar. (Jonathan remembers Mom’s telling
him that she had a choice sometimes.
With five cents she could take the streetcar or she could have a Coke
and then walk home.) Daddy goes on to
say that she could read half a book in the time it took her to get from home to UCLA.
So
I looked it up, and it appears that it’s 4.4 miles and takes about 1 hour and
32 minutes to walk.
I’m impressed that Daddy brought
that up. This was long after their
divorce, which he didn’t want but really (sorry, Dad) made necessary. I’m impressed that he spoke so admiring of
Mom. I'm also impressed that Mom walked those 4.4 miles to campus and that Daddy turned off lights when they were not in use.
Anyone for a pilgrimage from 9134 Hargis Street to 405 Hilgard Avenue (UCLA)?
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