The Dedalus Log

How does it feel?

How does it feel?

To be on your own,

With no direction home,

Like a complete unknown.

Like a rolling stone?

(Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan: 1965)

When I saw the familiar exit sign on Interstate 405, I knew a decision had to be made. “Which way do I turn at the end of the off ramp?” I thought. I was driving to the December meeting of the Middle School Principal’s Organization (MSPO) of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The meeting was to be held at Mark Twain Middle School. This was the public school which was attended by most of the kids I played baseball and football with as a child. I’ve traveled this road hundreds of times in my life: practicing freeway driving with my dad in 1964; driving home from classes at UCLA in 1967; and driving home from work on the swing shift at ADT Alarm Company, in 1971. After all those years, one would think that this was an easy question to answer, no? No; in fact it is a conundrum of Dylanesque proportions (Bob, not Thomas). This crossroad of Sawtelle Boulevard and the 405 exit always challenged me to find the best direction home. Turning left, puts me on Washington Place, which (when followed westward) takes me directly to my mother’s home. Turning right places me on a street, which (while a little out of the way) is a more historic route. While I usually took the quicker and more familiar course home, on this occasion I turned right. I decided to treat myself to a nostalgic journey down the boulevard named after the beach community where I lived from childhood through adulthood - Venice, California.
 

Today, Venice Boulevard is an expansive, four-lane, double highway that runs from Figueroa Street in Los Angeles to Pacific Avenue in Venice. I first traveled this road in 1959 when my father drove the entire family to see his new work place, and the house we hoped to buy in Culver City. At that time, the boulevard was a narrow, two-lane street, separated by a wide expanse of abandoned railroad track running in between. My father reanimated those tracks with stories about how he and his two younger brothers rode the trolleys of the Pacific Electric Railway to the beach. He called it the Red Car, and it was part of the legendary electric train system that operated in Southern California during the first half of the 20^th Century. The line started in South Los Angeles and ended in the city of Venice (which was later incorporated into Los Angeles), with its famous promenade, beach, pier, and huge, indoor, saltwater swimming pool. In between these terminal points, the route traveled through the communities of Culver City, Palms, and Mar Vista. Culver City was the most prominent stop.
 

Home of three major studios, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Hal Roach, and Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO); Culver City was the mecca of the Hollywood film, movie, and television industry from the early 1900’s to the 70’s. While MGM, with its impressive, overhead billboard of a roaring lion, was certainly the largest studio, RKO was the most storied. The studio produced such movie classics as King Kong and Citizen Kane, and it had a series of notorious and memorable owners. Joseph Kennedy, Howard Hughes, and David O. Selznick, owned and operated this studio. In 1957, RKO was purchased by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez (stars of I Love Lucy), and renamed Desilu Studios. It was finally sold to Paramount Television Studios in 1967. Until our move to the Westside, I assumed that movies and television shows were produced only in Hollywood. I couldn’t believe that I would soon be living so close to this magical industry and the stars that worked there. As time went on, despite my pretended indifference to the celebrity star system, I never lost the habit of rubber-necking whenever I drove by the studios in Culver City. I was convinced that all the stars who worked there, also walked to work, strolled along the streets, and frequented the shops, restaurants, and churches of that city. Unfortunately, despite all my years of looking, I think I only saw the back of David McCallum’s head (He was the co-star of the popular 60’s television series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.).
 

My knowledge of this street really started at my father’s workplace. He was a photographer at Mauri-Bardovi Photography, a commercial studio on Venice Blvd, just south of Cattaraugus Ave (I remember the street because I mispronounced it “cataracts”, ignoring the sound of the fourth vowel in favor of an ocular disease that rolled off my tongue). He worked there for nine years, eventually becoming the manager after the death of the owner and founder. His first duties were general photography and detailing (or “opaquing”) negatives. This intricate, doctoring of negatives, allowed only the non-opaque parts of a negative to develop and print. I still remember walking through that building on my first visit. The brand new, state-of-the-art studio seemed to be an unwinding honeycomb of workstations, darkrooms, printing labs, drying rooms, and large, open spaces. These open areas were cluttered with lights, stands, partitions, cables, tripods, and cameras. To an eleven year old novice, the studio was a disorienting maze of darkness and light as I walked from room to room, and lab to lab. It was scary and wondrous at the same time.

When I accompanied him as a helper, my father would disappear into a dark room with rolls of encased camera film and, guided by eerie red illumination, reappear in minutes with dripping spirals of unwound negatives. The unspooled rolls were then hung up like long, narrow socks on clothes lines in a walk-in cabinet. Once dry, the next step of the process was the most elaborate and creative. My father took the dry negatives into a wet lab to “print” and develop the photos. In those black and white days, images were projected and “imprinted” through light onto chemically treated photographic paper. By hand, these prints were then passed along and submerged in a series of flat chemical tubs until the pictorial images materialized and were locked in place. Until my initiation into this process, I thought photography consisted of posing or staging the subjects you wished to record, and snapping the shutter. I believed that the creative use of light and shadow was at the beginning of the photographic sequence, never imagining that the true masters of this artistic medium also manipulated them at the end. My father’s real skill as a photographer was demonstrated after the rolls of negative film were dry. He would use them to produce quick “contact proofs”. He studied these temporary prints to find the best negatives and determine the timing and lighting needed to produce the right picture. It was my job (as his eldest born helper) to dry the prints. So I would carefully lay the chemically treated photos onto a wide canvas conveyor belt that moved around a huge warming drum. They emerged, crisp and glossy at the other end of the conveyor, ready to be stacked and boxed. When I wasn’t bored or sleepy, I marveled at the simplicity of a black and white palette and the fine photos my father could produce by his attention to detail.
 

Just down the street from my father’s studio, heading west on Venice, near National Blvd, was another famous locale. My siblings and I recognized it immediately when we first drove past. We had already been branded by its distinctive Olympic trademark label and trucks. The Helms Bakery, and its fleet of open-cabbed bakery trucks, with their distinctive nautical whistles, was the pastry pied-piper of our time. To children in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the cookies, cakes, and doughnuts of the Helmsman made him the equal to the Good Humor Ice Cream Man. Mothers also appreciated this service because the Helmsman provided convenient staples that every kitchen needed. It was a rare confluence of interest which did not survive the increasing number of family automobiles and the swelling expansion of large, neighborhood supermarkets. Helms was already reducing its fleet and collapsing routes when we moved into Venice. Soon after, the trucks stopped rolling and the bakery closed. For years the last remaining symbols of the company were the bronze statue of The Helmsman at the Wheel, which was across the street from the Helms Olympic Foundation, and the original trademark Helms Olympic chevron sign atop the old bakery on Venice Blvd. The sign and foundation are still there, but the sculpture was moved to Chace Park in the Marina del Rey. The original bakery was converted into a huge furniture warehouse and showroom, and another section was turned into a jazz club called The Jazz Bakery which still operates.
 

Down from Helms Bakery is the intersection of Venice and Sepulveda Blvd. Sepulveda is the longest street in the city and county of Los Angeles. It runs an impressive 42.8 miles from Rinaldi Ave in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley to the city limits of Hermosa Beach. For the purposes of this story, it marked the boundary between Culver City and Palms, and led to the house we never bought. I don’t remember much of the house, other than it being yellow and immediately opposite the freeway. I do recall that it was located near Tito’s Tacos, a small, walk-up Mexican restaurant, on the corner of Washington Place and Sepulveda. Whenever I passed this taco stand, I saw long, serpentine lines of men and women waiting to purchase their simple fare of tacos, tostadas, burritos, tortilla chips and salsa. The only comparable sight was Tommy’s Original World Famous Hamburger stand, on Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles. The long lines at Tito’s Tacos continue to this day, and despite this visual testimony to its popularity, I never ate there. I probably would have, if we had moved nearby. However, when the bank determined that our house’s location was too close to an expanding freeway, the sale fell through. Soon after, my parents found a new house in Venice, and we bought it.

I always considered the 405 Interstate the border line of “The Westside”. Every thing west of the San Diego Freeway was the official “Westside”, and all the communities to the East were not (despite their proximity to the freeway). I’m sure citizen of Culver City, Palms, Cheviot Hills, Westwood, Fox Hills, and Inglewood would challenge this assertion, but they’d be wrong. The east-west divide occurs at the 405. Everything changes when you cross the freeway, traveling toward the beach – the weather, the residences, the people, and the traffic. Just as you can feel and see the thermometer change when you drive through the Sepulveda Pass from the San Fernando Valley into West Los Angeles at Mulholland Drive; you experience the same sensation when crossing the 405. The cold, wet, marine layer overcast, which is a common feature of beach life, rarely extends past the San Diego Freeway, and people dress, act, and look different on the eastside. I’ve also noticed that first-time visitors to these beaches exclaimed that they could smell the ocean after they crossed the 405.

As I traveled westward on Venice Boulevard, every street I passed, from Sawtelle Blvd to Walgrove Ave, was a virtual portal to memories of the past. Each road led to stories, people, and experiences that affected me and shaped my life. McLaughlin Ave was the route I took to UCLA when I commuted by motor scooter as an undergrad, and on bicycle as a graduate student. I would drive the family car when it was available, but with 3 and then 4 siblings attending the same college at different hours of the day, and with different courses, it was never convenient. We depended on personal means of transportation. The Santa Monica “Big Blue Bus” was the best option, but it took a long and circuitous course to the university. I preferred a solitary method because I could set my own schedules and explore new neighborhoods and routes whenever the notion struck me. When I took my scooter or bike, I always chose the flattest route to Westwood. I avoided the “Sawtelle Hill” by riding around it on Palms Blvd, then connecting with Sawtelle, and taking that street all the way to Ohio Ave in Brentwood. Ohio Ave was the southern border of the Federal property that contained the Veterans Administration complex, the Medical Center, the Federal Building, and the National Cemetery. Ohio took me to Veterans Ave in Westwood; and that street led me to Westwood Village and UCLA. Most days, I enjoyed the long commute in the fresh clean air, because it cleared my mind and gave me time to think about things. I also became familiar with the local sights, neighborhoods, and communities of the Westside: the Nisei (second generation Japanese-American) community along Sawtelle in Palms, the used book stores on Santa Monica Blvd, and the variety of theatres, shops, and restaurants in the Village. Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista was another such portal.

Whenever I cross Centinela on Venice Blvd, I always look toward the southeast corner of the intersection to see the remnants of Bruno’s Ristorante, the Italian restaurant that stood there from 1969 to 2000. The original building still stands, along with its HUGE billboard sign; but it now houses a Christian enterprise called The Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Bruno’s was the first “real” restaurant we dined at as a family of eight (6 children and 2 adults). Prior to that occasion, we only visited “family diners” such as Norm’s or Denney’s. These were convenient places, but I couldn’t shake the idea that they weren’t very classy, and one shouldn’t take a serious girl friend to dinner there. Bruno’s, on the other hand, presented a readable and moderately priced menu, with the upscale décor of a welcoming Venetian palazzo. I always felt comfortable and secure there, and took girls I liked and wanted to impress on dates. It was one of the first restaurants I took my wife Kathy when we began dating. Centinela also served as our backdoor route to Santa Monica. If we wanted to avoid the traffic and congestion of Lincoln Blvd when driving to that city, Centinela was the better path to take. The most graphic memory I have of that route is when I drove my father to the Santa Monica Airport to recover the studio car. This was the day his boss died in a helicopter accident. He had been scouting aerial sites for a photo shoot when the engine failed. Miraculously, the pilot avoided hitting any pedestrians, cars, or spectators, when the helicopter lost power and crashed. The pilot and my Dad’s friend and boss died on a street in Palms. Once my father answered my questions about the crash, he remained silent for the remainder of the trip to the airport.
 

Mar Vista was an apartment haven for young people and college students in the 1960’s and 70’s. It’s affordable, single and double room residences attracted large numbers of UCLA, Mount Saint Mary’s, and Santa Monica College students, who couldn’t afford the higher rents of Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Westwood. Despite my geographical proximity to Mar Vista, I actually spent more time with friends in the South Bay area, and the cities of Manhattan, Hermosa, and Redondo Beach. The South Bay tended to attract students from Loyola, Marymount University, and El Camino College. My high school friends (see Tres Amigos) lived in Hermosa Beach. A friend’s apartment offered the perfect counter-balance to college, home, and life (especially if one still lived at home with his family, like I did). Once or twice a week, I would drop by Jim, Greg, and Wayne’s, or John’s apartment to talk, play cards, listen to music, and share the problems of school and home. The addition of beer, wine, and food would escalate these innocuous visits to a higher level. Given the right circumstances and motivations, these spontaneous visits could generate viral invitations to more friends and soon an all-night party ensued. Those youthful days seemed endless. As time passed, and prices rose, however, many of these apartments on the Westside and South Bay were eventually converted into condominiums and sold off to older, permanent residents. If I took Wade Street at Venice and traveled south for a mile or so, I would arrive at Mitchell Ave. My brother Eddie had his first apartment on that street, and when he bought a nearby condo, my youngest brother Alex joined him as a roommate for awhile. My sister Gracie even rented an apartment nearby, before she moved to San Francisco. A little further south from Wade on Venice Blvd, I arrived at the jewel of the boulevard, Venice High School.

The permanent image I have of Venice High School is of manor-like grounds, with lush, green grass, beautiful gardens, and towering, gleaming white, Art Deco buildings. The focal point of this picture was a dramatically posed sculpture of a woman, pointing skyward. The scantily clad statue rose above two crouching figures and was positioned in the middle of a rose garden, between a double walkway, that traveled from the sidewalk to the Main Building. It was a captivating sight, which raised my opinion of the design and planning that went into the school construction of that age. I later learned that the sculpture was of Myrna Loy, a famous motion picture star of the 30’s and 40’s, who attended Venice High in the 1920’s. The school was first established in 1911. In those days it was called Venice Union Polytechnic High School. The original buildings were severely damaged in the Long Beach earthquake of 1933. The Art Deco style was used in the reconstructed school that we see today.

I never attended Venice High School, but I became intimately familiar with its grounds, athletic fields, and football stadium. For three seasons, from 1960 to 1962, I played Pop Warner Football at Venice High School. We practiced three to five days a week on the small eastside playing field, and we played on Saturdays in the football stadium. It was the site of my training and initiation into a ritual sport that I grew to love, play, and leave behind. When I went out for football, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I was aware that my father played football in junior college, because I’d found an old photograph of him in pads and uniform. We also watched some of the early NFL games on television; but that was all. I’d learned the rudiments of baseball by playing on the streets and playgrounds of Los Angeles. By the time I joined a Little League baseball team in Venice, I was 12 years old, with unrefined skills, and many bad fielding habits. However, when I signed up for Pop Warner football, I committed to learning a sport from the ground up, under the tutelage of knowledgeable and dedicated teachers and coaches. The Venice Athletic Association, the sponsoring organization, was a mature version of Little League. Players were made responsible for equipment, playbooks, and practices, and they addressed all adults as “Sir” and coaches as “Mr.” or “Coach” (we had been on a first name basis in Little League). My football coaches were the first teachers to illustrate the principle that football skills such as blocking, tackling, catching, passing, and scrimmaging had to be learned correctly. Skills could only be mastered by meticulous discipline, attention to detail, and practice; practice, practice, practice. Games were the easy part; they were the reward after 5 grueling days of exercise, drills, and scrimmages. I discovered that playing the game well was not about individual talent; it was about practice and working as a team. The benefit of playing on the same team, with the same players, and consistent coaching for 3 years was physical, intellectual, and technical improvement that I could witness and experience. The first time I was sent into a game for a series of plays was a blur of lights, bodies, huddles, and collisions. Players spoke in garbled words that I could not comprehend, and everything moved too fast, except me. I was stuck in quicksand with a filmy bag over my head. After my first series of downs I returned to the safety and calmness of the bench, and stayed there when the offensive unit returned to the field. I did not realize that I was supposed to stay in the game until THE COACH took me out. Three years later, as co-captain of the defensive unit, each down was a slow, elongated interval between actions which allowed me time to analyze and reflect. Each play flowed as if it was in slow motion, giving me time to think, react, and recover.

The corner of Venice Blvd and Walgrove Avenue was my final milestone. It marked the northwest boundary of Venice High School, and signaled a change of direction from my westerly migration. I turned right and headed north on Walgrove. This would be my first visit to Mark Twain Junior High in over 45 years. I’d passed it countless times in my youth. This was a familiar path because I had taken it many times when a football practice or scrimmage was held at Penmar Playground, in North Venice. On those occasions, the players who weren’t driven by their parents, would meet at the high school and then ride their bikes up Walgrove Ave to Lake St. Along the way, we’d pass Mark Twain, with its distinctive mural entrance. It was the school all my Pop Warner teammates attended before they matriculated to their respective high schools as 10^th graders. Playing football for three years with public school students had been an educational experience for me. These boys took courses and talked about subjects that didn’t exist in my school. They dressed for P.E., showered in locker rooms, and took shop classes. They also used more colorful and expressive words when cursing and swearing. I don’t recall any racial or pejorative name calling and put-downs, but I do remember anger, with some pushing and shoving. We were experiencing many new feelings and emotions in those days. Playing on the same team for three years had taught us to deal with anger, successes, and failure. The contact nature of football, with its strict rules, transcending folklore, and rigid penalties, allowed a fair and physical means of resolving disputes, and expressing joy and despair. We would practice during the week, play a game on Saturday, and then, win or lose, get on with the rest of our lives at school, home, or play. Football was a sport that was sensible, balanced, and enjoyable, and the coaches and boosters of the Pop Warner program emphasized and practiced those values.

I drove past the front of Mark Twain Middle School on Walgrove and turned right on Victoria Ave. The street took me to the P.E. field on the north side of campus, and the parking that had been reserved for member of the visiting organization. I was curious to see what the school actually looked like from the inside. As I walked through the hallways and along the outdoor arcades, I though of my old teammates and the game we played. I was struck by a thought about endings. My playing days ended with Pop Warner football on the fields of Venice High, while most of my teammates continued playing at their respective schools. Our lives divided, like intersecting highways, and I never saw them again.