The Dedalus Log

Scotch and soda, mud in your eye,
Baby, do I feel high,
Oh me, oh my,
Do I feel high.

Dry martini,
Jigger of gin,
Oh, what a spell you’ve got me in,
Oh my, do I feel high.

People won’t believe me,
They’ll think that I’m just braggin’
But I could feel the way I do,
And still be on the wagon.

All I need is one of your smiles,
Sunshine of your eye, oh me, oh my,
Do I feel higher than a kite can fly.
Give me lovin’ baby, I feel high.
(Scotch and Soda: Dave Guard/The Kingston Trio – 1958)

In case you don’t already know, my cocktail of choice is scotch and soda. Sure, I can dabble with vodka martinis, Bloody Marys, and Margaritas, but scotch whiskey and club soda is my go-to drink. How I came to this preference is a curious story that begins with a song and continues with other unique occasions and memorable moments.

I was first introduced to scotch and soda by the song of the same name on the 1958 debut album of The Kingston Trio. Although their song Tom Dooley was the big hit of the album, I was more captivated by the B-side song, Scotch and Soda. The smooth guitar rhythms accompanying Dave Guard’s mellow voiced rendition seduced me. The lyrics sounded cool and sophisticated, and even though I was only 11 or 12 at the time, I easily imagined myself in a nightclub, or walking into a smokey old time bar and ordering a scotch and soda from a bartender. What was most odd about my fascination to this drink was the fact that neither of my parents drank alcohol, and my aunts and uncles tended towards beer and highballs consisting of bourbon and Coca Cola. Yet my father, as manager of a commercial photography studio in Culver City, would receive bottles of whiskey (bourbon and scotch) every Christmas from his high-end customers and clients. These gifts were quietly closeted in a cupboard or drawer and forgotten.




It was in college that I began imbibing alcohol – and usually in the company of my long-time friends Jim Riley, Wayne Wilson, and Greg Ryan. This consisted of beer – beginning with Colt 45 as sophomores and working our way up to the Banquet of Beers, Coors, as seniors. Mixed alcoholic drinks didn’t come to my mind until I received a Christmas gift from my Uncle Charlie when I turned 21. This was a set of 10 scotch whiskey tumblers – each with the unique brand label of various brands of scotch: from Ballantine to Vat 69, from Haig Club to White Horse. This gift, combined with my knowledge of Dad’s many unopened whiskey bottles, gave me the idea to begin experimenting with mixed alcoholic beverages. Each weekend, after working at ADT Burglar Alarm Company from 8 am to 4 o’clock on Saturday and Sundays, I would come home and fix myself a cocktail – first experimenting with bourbon and coke, and then scotch and soda. Dad’s bottles provided the whiskey, and I provided the tumblers and mixers. It was the perfect way to get a buzz on before Mom called me to dinner. From these early trials I discovered that I indeed preferred the dry taste of scotch and soda. These experiments halted when I entered the Air Force in 1971 and stopped completely when my dad died in November of that year. I didn’t resume drinking scotch and soda until the 1972-73 school year when I was teaching at St. Bernard High School and was regularly invited to TGIF parties hosted by the sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. At these faculty parties, scotch was the liquor of choice. The nuns provided Scoresby, the principal, Fr. Dunphy would bring a bottle of J&B, and I would bring a bottle of Cutty Sark. It was at one of the dinners hosted by these nuns that I met Kathleen for the first time.



By far the most momentous occasion involving scotch and soda was when I met Kathleen’s parents (the Doctor and Mary Greaney) for the first time in 1973. A blog I wrote in 2008 recounts that tale:

“Nice to meet you, Tony, can I fix you a drink?”
With those words I met Kathleen’s father, the surgeon, as he swept into the family room, dressed in a golf shirt and sweater, and wearing trim khaki slacks. He situated himself on the edge of the sofa chair, which Kathy and her mother said was reserved for him and awaited my answer. The question surprised. I had never been offered a drink when meeting the parents of a date for the first time.
“Why sure”, I replied. “I’ll take a scotch and soda”.
The words were out of my mouth without thinking. Should I simply have asked for a beer? Was it the right drink to mention in the home of the parents I wanted to impress?
“Great”, announced the doctor, as he bounded off the sofa and moved quickly to the bar that was cornered at the other end of the family room, “that’s my drink. I’d be happy to fix you one too”.
“Edwaaarrddd”, scolded Mary, his wife, from her position across from Kathy and me. “Kathy and Tony have a dinner reservation. They were just leaving when you arrived, don’t fix a drink now”.
“Nonsense Mary”, he growled back, “I’m sure they have time for ONE drink. I’d like to talk to the boy. What do you say, Tony, can you have a drink with me?”
“A drink would be great. We have plenty of time”, I confessed, knowing that I had given myself more than adequate time to meet Kathy’s parents and make our reservation at the restaurant. But Kathy shot me a wide-eyed look of panic that worried me. It seemed to query, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

“So Tony, what do you do?” the doctor asked, bending under the counter with two large tumblers in his hands.
“I’m a history teacher at St. Bernard High School,” I replied, curious of the noises emanating from behind the bar, “but I’m starting graduate school next year.” I heard clinking, clanking, banging, and sliding, followed by the sounds of gushing water echoing off metal.
“Really?”, he announced, straightening up and placing the two large tumblers, heaping with ice cubes, on the counter. “What are you studying?”
“I graduated from UCLA in ’70 with a BA in History, and I’ve been accepted in their Latin American Studies program”. My eyebrows raised in surprise as he filled a fist-sized, copper shot glass from a bottle labeled Johnnie Walker Red. He splashed it, first, into one glass, then refilled it, and splashed it into the second.
“And you’ve been teaching at St. Bernard since then?” he asked, unscrewing a small bottle of soda and sprinkling it in the direction of the two tumblers.
“No, actually, I was in the Air Force for a while”, I said. “I’ll use the GI Bill for grad school.”
“Oh, you were in the service?” he said, coming out from behind the bar, holding an ice-topped drink in each of his glistening hands.
“Yes, for a year” I replied, looking at his moist hands and water speckled slacks, and wondering how he had gotten so wet. “I was discharged when my father died. My brother and I were both serving when it happened, and they allowed one of us to leave”.
The doctor handed me a glass, raised his slightly and toasted “Up the rebels!”
“Salud”, I replied, lifting my glass in salute.
He took a long drink and resumed his seat across from me, while I took a measured taste. The scotch exploded in my mouth.
“Holy Shit” I thought, “what is in this drink!” It was the strongest mixed drink I’d ever had. Was there ANY soda in this drink?
Glass in hand, the doctor reclined in his chair and said, “I was a lieutenant j.g. in the war. I served with the 3rd Marine Division as a naval surgeon.”
“Oh, really”, I added, taking another drink, “my father was a Marine in the war”.
“I was at Iwo Jima, where did he serve?”
“He didn’t see that action” I replied. “He fought in the Philippines and was in the Battle of Leyte.” With another swallow, the fumes and liquor began seeping into my body, relaxing my worries about meeting Kathy’s parents for the first time. This scotch was pretty good! I’d never considered the beneficial effects that an extra shot of scotch had on a drink before.

“Ahhh, the Battle of Leyte”, reminisced the doctor, “it was the first battle in the reconquest of the Philippines. The attack was the largest amphibious operation at the time, and Douglas MacArthur was the supreme commander. The Marines didn’t have much use for him, though, they called him Dugout Doug. It was a derisive name”.
“Hmmm”, I responded. I was about to add my own opinion of MacArthur, when a sharp glance from Kathy stopped me from fueling the conversation. I’d heard these facts before, when my father and his brothers spoke of the war and discussed the merits of MacArthur as a general and leader. Contrary to most Marines, my father respected MacArthur, and his ability to keep American casualties low by “attacking where they ain’t”. Most Marines, however, could never forgive Dugout Doug for abandoning his command at Corregidor.
“Iwo Jima was the largest action I saw”, he continued. “After 35 days of fighting, we suffered 28, 000 causalities, with about 7,000 killed in action. That’s where I learned to be a surgeon. ‘Meatball surgery’ they call it on the TV show MASH. That’s where I learned my trade, on the beaches of Iwo Jima”.

I nodded my head at the doctor and noticed that Kathy and her mom were trading apprehensive looks at this extended monologue.
“Lieutenant General Holland Smith was the commanding general”, the doctor continued as he rattled the ice in his glass before finishing the drink. “Howlin Mad Smith’, he was called, and he deserved the name. He was 6 foot, 2 inches, 280 pounds, and the meanest sonofabitch on the island”.
Kathy again caught my eye. This time she began staring, alternately, at my glass and then moving her glance toward the doorway. I finally got the silent message and concentrated my efforts on finishing my drink, and not encouraging the doctor to elaborate further on the story.
“On the second day of the battle” he added, “I was ordered to tell ‘Howlin Mad’ that he was running a fever and should be in bed. I was the most junior medical officer on Iwo Jima, and everyone was afraid to face him. I walked up to him, saluted, and said, ‘My compliments, sir; it is my duty as medical officer to inform you that you are running a temperature of over 103 degrees and need to be placed under a doctor’s care in sickbay, immediately’. Well, he walked right up to my face and screamed, ‘I am not taking orders from a goddamn j.g... No shave tail medical officer is going to tell me that I have a goddamn fever and take away my command. This battle is my moment in history, and you will not take it away from me’. Needless to say, he didn’t go to sickbay.”

He rose from the couch and pointed his empty glass at me, “Would you like another drink?”
“Edward! Dad!” chimed in Mary and Kathy, simultaneously.
“No thank you, doctor”, I said quickly, putting my glass on the coffee table, “we really should leave. That’s quite a story”.
“Well, it’s too bad that you have to leave so soon” he grumbled. “We were just starting to get to know each other”.
“I’m sure you’ll have many more opportunities, Edward”, Mary said, as she took my elbow and led me away from the doctor. Kathy joined us, and we walked together to the front door.
“Well, let me walk you out, then” the doctor said as he hurried to catch up as we passed through the door and onto the asphalt driveway. “You’ll have to tell me more about your father’s Marine experiences the next time we talk.”
“Sure”, I replied, cognizant that Kathy was walking faster, trying to get us to the car as quickly as possible. I was puzzled by all the haste; what was the hurry? Despite her cautionary warnings to me about her father’s legendary impatience and intolerance as a surgeon, he seemed a very pleasant man, and I thought I had done a good job of being respectful, solicitous, and interesting. I was convinced that I had succeeded in making a very favorable impression.
“So Tony, I didn’t have a chance to ask you before, but what do you think of doctors?”

I don’t know what came over me. Perhaps it was carelessness, the double scotch, or my overconfidence at believing I had already won his approval as a suitor. Whatever the reason, I responded quickly and unthinkingly.
“Well doctor, I believe they killed my father”.
Kathy stopped short, turned and stared at me with a horrified expression.
“What”, choked the doctor in surprise, “do you mean?”
“He died from a myocardial infarction, one year ago, on November 1”, I recited automatically, with a note of irritation for having to explain. “My mother and sister took him to the doctor that morning, complaining of chest pains. His doctor examined him, told him to take his medication, and released him. He had another heart attack later that afternoon and died. As far as I’m concerned, the doctor did such a poor job that he might as well have killed him”. There was a lonnnggg silence, as we all stood together in the driveway. It slowly dawned on me that I had over-stepped with this unanticipated, emotional outburst.
“I’m sorry about the loss of your father, Tony” the doctor said quietly. “I’m not familiar with his case, but I can tell you that doctors aren’t perfect, and they sometimes misjudge the seriousness of symptoms.” His voice had changed from the lofty, professorial tones in the family room, to a softer, bedside manner.
“Doctor, I’m not blaming you”, I explained, trying not to look at Kathy or her mom. “I really should not have brought it up”. How was I going to get out of this? I had a sudden vision of all the goodwill I had secured in the family room slowly sinking into a sea of unconscious issues and hard feelings. My slip of the tongue gave him more than enough reason to dislike me, if he chose to take offense.
“No, no, it’s alright. I know you’re not blaming me”, he said, as we resumed our walk toward the car. “The death of a father is tough, and doctors are supposed to keep them alive”. He paused again, and added “You know Tony, doctors can’t beat death; they can just try to prolong life. They diagnose the illness, treat the symptoms, and operate when they can; but death is outside their control. My parents died in a flash flood, a random and accidental death, with no apparent rhyme or reason. All dying seems that way”.
Kathy and her mother said nothing throughout this exchange. They simply stood there, looking at each other, waiting for something to happen. I took advantage of the next pause to extricate myself from this situation as best I could.
“Well, thank you for understanding, doctor”, I said as I approached my parked car. “I guess I’m still not over my father’s death. I hope I didn’t offend you”.
“Not at all Tony, I admire your honesty. I know how it feels to lose a father”. He extended his hand and said, “If you ever feel the need to talk about it, I’d be honored if you called me”.
I shook his hand, and then opened the passenger side door, waiting for Kathy to enter. She quickly kissed her mother and father on the cheek and stepped in.
“Goodbye, now”, I said waving, as Kathy’s parents stood side by side, waving back. I turned on the ignition, put the clutch in gear, and drove off.

“What was that about?” exploded Kathy, with a mixture of concern and wonderment. “Why did you say that?”
“Kathy, I honestly don’t know where that came from”, I confessed, shaking my head. “I am really sorry. Do you think he was mad? Did I really insult him?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t seem angry”, she admitted, sitting back into her seat and staring straight ahead. “I’ll have to check with my mom when I get home”. After a long silence, she added, “I can’t believe he told you about his parents. He even offered to discuss your father’s death with you! What got into him?”

Doctor Greaney and I shared many scotches and sodas after that first meeting, especially when Kathy and I visited him and Mary at their beach house in San Juan Capistrano. There he would wait until sunset to begin the “cocktail hour” as the sun disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. It was also there that he explained that the term “Happy Hour” was Navy slang for the off-duty time when sailors and officers could relax and enjoy themselves in their respective “clubs”.

Kathy and I have continued this tradition at home, reserving 5 o’clock for cocktails, when we can recap our day and discuss news events. When we were both working in education, this was the time when we could “debrief” and recount the day’s activities at our schools or offices. Nowadays, however, we use this time to telephone friends and family members, talk about our granddaughters, and remember times past.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle.
I want to ride me bicycle,
I want to ride my bike.
I want to ride my bicycle,
I want to ride it where I like.
(Bicycle Race: Freddie Mercury – 1978)

Kathy and I were watching Episode 6, Season 3 of Ted Lasso last week, when we noted a scene that made us both laugh. It was when the team had a match in Amsterdam and Coach Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) embarrassedly admitted to player Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) that he never learned to ride a bicycle. What made it especially funny for me was the fact that I too learned somewhat late in life and in another country. Everyone has a bicycle story to tell of how and when they learned to ride a bike. After I shared mine with Kathy, she suggested that I write about it.

I didn’t learn how to ride a bicycle until after the 5^th grade, when I was 11 years old. Why the delay? Well, the answer is quite simple really: location, location, location. For the first 12 years of my life, my three siblings and I lived on hills – some of them very steep. Our first home was on Amethyst Street in the Rose Hill section of Los Angeles, near Lincoln Heights. The following year we moved to a house on Duane Street in the Silver Lake area – also on a hill. Three years later we moved to Cove Avenue, also in the Silver Lake area. A topographical map of the city of Los Angeles shows that these three locations are covered with hills. Silver Lake has the distinction of having the steepest one in the city, Fargo Street (which was near Cove and Duane Street). When my siblings and I pleaded for bikes, our father simply explained that bicycles were not practical vehicles for us because we had nowhere to ride them. Bike racks or carriers were not readily available in the 1950’s, so unless you owned a truck, you were out of luck. So, we walked. We walked to school. We walked to the store. We even walked the 2 miles from Cove Avenue to Echo Park.






During those hilly years, my siblings and I compensated for this deprivation with roller skates. We received them one Christmas and learned to skate on Saturdays by going to the park or visiting our Grandparents, who lived on a flat and level street in Lincoln Heights. Although bicycles were never allowed on our Christmas lists, my parents did not turn down a hand-me-down bike from my cousin Paul. It was a kiddie bike which we stored away for some future date. All that miraculously changed in 1958, when my mom took my siblings and I to Mexico City for our summer vacation.






 Summer vacations in Mexico were always a treat. We stayed in my grandmother’s large apartment house where she lived with her three adult single children – my aunt Totis, and my uncles Pepe and Lalo. These three young adults kept us entertained and occupied during our month-long visit. It was when planning a Saturday excursion to Chapultepec Park that Totis learned that none of us could ride a bike. “Cómo es posible!” “How is it possible”, she exclaimed in an indignant tone. She could not believe that at our ages we had not been taught, and she scolded our mother for negligence. Her remedy was to take us to Chapultepec Park, rent bicycles (and a tricycle for Gracie), and with our mother’s assistance, teach us to rides two-wheel bikes. We had been to Chapultepec on numerous occasions. It is the scenic Central Park of Mexico City, and a wondrous place to visit. We had been there many times: going to the zoo, exploring Maximilian’s Castle, and rowing rented boats on the lake. However, in all the times before, we never considered bicycles.


So, on a weekday that she took off from work, Totis guided us all to Chapultepec where we rented three bicycles and got down to work. With my mom and Totis taking one of us on our bikes, they began running along with us as we balanced and pedaled the bikes. Over and over, they did this, until one by one, they would release their hold on our bicycle seats and let us pedal and balance on our own. By the end of our rented hour, we were riding bicycles on our own, and my mom and aunt were exhausted. It was an amazing afternoon in the park. I will always be thankful for my aunt Totis and her dogged efforts and persistence in teaching us a skill we would use and depend on all our young lives.


That summer was also one in which my dad started a new job in a photography studio in Culver City, and we moved into our fourth and final home in Venice, California. When we drove to see the new house on Yale Avenue, the first thing my siblings and I noticed was that the street, and all the surrounding area, was flat! The only hill was a sloping upgrade on Lincoln Boulevard heading towards Westchester that was 2 miles away. Thus began our incessant requests for bicycles, which grew in volume as Christmas approached. Although my mom and dad remained noncommittal on the subject, they did take us window shopping to see the types of bicycles we might like. When we lived in Los Angeles we would window shop during Christmas at the old multi-floor Sears Department Store in Boyle Heights, now that we were living in Venice, we went to the modernistic Sears on Third Street in Santa Monica. It was there that we saw the bikes that we wished for. All we could do then was pray.





Kathy calls it “Bicycle Christmas”. That special Christmas when children awaken on Christmas morning to discover their first bicycle under the Christmas tree. Well, we four children had our Bicycle Christmas in December of 1959. There they were, four brand new J.C. Higgins bicycles (red and white for the boys, and blue and white for the girls) with headlights and rear luggage carriers. Those vehicles symbolized a rite of passage for us that year.  We were now liberated. Where once we were limited always to walking, we could now explore our new neighborhood in Venice on bikes, and we could go farther and longer on these excursions. I could ride my bike to school, to the library, and to Little League and Pop Warner football practice and games. Looking back on it now, it was worth the wait.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever Young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
(Forever Young: Bob Dylan – 1973)

 Last month, I attended the 60^th Wedding Anniversary of my Uncle Kādo (Ricardo) and his lovely bride Joie. It was a joyous and festive family affair that allowed the large Delgado clan to come together to celebrate the partnership and marriage of the eldest of 3 surviving siblings of Jesus and Maria Delgado’s 14 children. What made it uniquely notable was not only the longevity of their loving union, but the opportunity to see, greet, hug, laugh, and chat with so many cousins who we rarely see. It was such a relief not coming together to mourn the passing of one more of our aunts or uncles – rather it was an occasion for me to recall some memories of one of our most exceptional uncles (even though I might get some facts and dates wrong).


My Uncle Kādo was the 10^th of the fourteen children of Jesus and Maria Delgado. As I remember him from the glossy filter of my childhood, he seemed to occupy a variety of personae, or roles in his life: bad boy and seminarian; playboy and sportsman; sailor and pilot; photographer and businessman; and finally, husband, father, and grandfather. I couldn’t imagine a life filled with more twists and turns, laughs and sighs, struggles and victories, tears and surprises, and finally Love. First, you have to laugh at his nicknames: it was originally Kādo (pet name for Ricardo); and then it became King Kādo – like King Richard the Lionheart. Few people would have the arrogance to adopt a royal name, but Kādo did, and he got away with it. My grandmother and my own mother, on the other hand, called him by his full name Ricardo, and then mostly when they were scolding him (which was often in his youth).




I’m sure that my first impressions of Kādo were influenced by my Uncle Charlie, who was the youngest of eight brothers. Charlie thought Kādo was “cool” – just the right mixture of bad boy rebel, smooth playboy, light-hearted scamp, and charismatic leader of a gang of high school buddies and friends. I remember him wearing a faded leather jacket over a white tee shirt and believed the rumor that he once worked as a truck driver like Elvis Presley. It was only many years later that I learned that this supposedly “bad boy” had actually attended a Catholic junior seminary, intending to become a priest, and then transferred to the all-boys Cathedral High School in Los Angeles, where he graduated. Yet, even though he seemed to live in a world of high school buddies, dating, and dances, he always made time for Charlie and me. I remember spending afternoons in the upstairs bedroom he shared with Charlie, reading his comics, and listening to stories of his friends and adventures.




Kādo was a natural and gifted sportsman. Even though I don’t think he played varsity sports in high school, he was an avid player of all the traditional playground and CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) sports, like football, basketball, and softball, and he also dabbled in eccentric ones (kite flying and horseshoes). At one point he and his older brother Henry (Enrique) organized a CYO athletic club called The Die Hards. It was a motley team composed of high school friends, family members, and an occasional “ringer”, who got together as often as they could to compete in a variety of intramural, park league sports. Charlie was my main source of information about this team with the unusual name, and which seemed to lose more games than they won. I remember watching them play touch-football and softball at various times during my childhood days, and longing to be old enough to join them. My Uncle Henry was the president of the club, and although he and Kādo were co-captains, Kādo was the best athlete. I think Kādo told me that… along with his explanation of how they came up with such a crazy team name:



“Listen, J.R.,” he said, calling me by the initials for ‘junior’. “A team name is important because it describes to our opponents, and the rest of the league, how we compete. We’re a collection of brothers, in-laws, cousins, and friends who play with passion and heart because we love the game. We may not be the best athletes or the strongest players, but we are going to give all we have and never give up. We’re like the ancient Aztecs of Mexico, or the revolutionary soldiers of Emiliano Zapata, who didn’t fear death when they fought against superior odds. They were never defeated, even when they lost, because they never gave up and they died hard. You can’t lose when you don’t surrender – even if the other team has more points at the end of the game. That is what our name says about us – we may not always win, but we never lose. Only quitters lose, and we’re the Die Hards – we never give up.”


What I loved most about Kādo was that he was always ready to join Charlie and me in neighborhood pickup games on nearby parking lots, or in the front and backyards of their home on Workman Avenue. He and Charlie introduced me to the games of horseshoes and kite flying. Kado was a master at horseshoes, and he showed me how to pitch them and keep score; but he was an artist at kite flying. I never saw Kādo buy a commercial kite kit. He would build his own, and he made them bigger and better than store-bought ones. His kites were made of light bamboo sticks tied into a cross as tall as I was, covered with coarse tissue paper, and anchored with a streaming tail of cloth strips. It was so big I couldn’t believe it would fly – but it did! Up, up, and up it floated on the updrafts that Kādo found, until the kite hovered overhead, sustaining itself in the sky. Once aloft, he would fasten written messages on flimsy paper that he attached to the string and launched them upward to the receiving kite. These childhood activities came to a temporary halt when Kādo joined the Navy and left home for a few years.


The military is a rite of passage that matures everyone who joins or is drafted. You enter as a youth, and you exit as an adult. Kādo was a different person when he returned home from the Navy. He was still joyous and spirited in his approach to life and sports, but there was a new aura of maturity about him that impressed my father (his oldest brother) and my mother. Kādo had served as a Navy photographer while in the service and was now interested in pursuing it as a profession. At the time my father was managing a commercial photography studio in Culver City, near our new home in Venice. He had faith that this newly matured Kādo could learn and master all the skills and techniques of commercial photography, and he convinced the owner to hire him on trial. I recall many evenings when Kādo would join our family for dinner after work, and then he and my father would return to  the studio to practice the advanced professional skills and techniques that Kādo needed to master. From that time forward, my dad and Kādo remained close as brothers and professionals; and there would come a day, before my dad died, that he admitted to me, with no lack of pride, that Kādo had developed into a much better photographer than he.




Another thing that changed after the Navy, and his job as a professional photographer, was his interest in one particular girl. I always viewed Kādo as a “ladies man” and confirmed bachelor who flirted outrageously and dated many girls – but Joie was the first girl I saw that he brought home to meet his parents, siblings, nephews, and nieces. I thought Joie was stunningly beautiful and charmingly sweet. There was still enough of the “bad boy” in Kādo for me to wonder how he managed to convince this wholesome young woman to marry him – but he did. In 1962, with my brother Arthur and I as altar boys, Kādo and Joie were wed at Sacred Heart Church in Lincoln Heights. It was a fine ceremony (even though Kādo did get a case of the shakes when it came time for him to profess his vows to Joie), followed by a fabulous reception with pollo con mole as the signature serving.  However, marriage did not tame Kādo – in many ways it set him free to pursue further avenues of growth and self-expression. He used his G.I. Bill grant to take flying lessons and received his license to fly single-wing aircraft, and he went into business for himself. I can’t imagine two more terrifying activities. Of all his brothers and sisters, Kādo was the first and only one to begin his own commercial enterprise by establishing an independent color photography studio.





All these memories and images came flooding back to me last month as I watched Kādo and Joie renewing their marriage vows in front of a large gathering of their children, grandchildren, relatives, and friends. So many years had passed since their first meeting, but as they sat there on the stage, holding hands, and repeating their vows, they seemed to glow with happiness, and they looked as young and innocent as they did in that summer of 1962. The young bride had faith in her choice of a husband, and the “playboy” scamp had proven everybody wrong. He had evolved to become a model of what men, husbands, and fathers can become when they take St. Paul’s words in Corinthians 13:4 to heart: Love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves… love never fails”. For me, Kādo and Joie will always seem the way they did on their wedding day and they will remain forever young.

Sisters, sisters,
There were never such devoted sisters.
Never had to have a chaperone, no sir.
I’m here to keep my eye on her.

Caring, sharing
Every little thing that we are wearing…
All kinds of weather, we stick together,
The same in the rain and sun.
Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and act as one.

Those who’ve seen us
Know that not a thing can come between us.
Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can.
Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister.
(Sisters: Irving Berlin – 1954)



Recently Kathy and I hosted our two granddaughters, Sarah and Gracie, for an overnight sleepover – giving their parents, Prisa and Joe, some quality private time and a sleep-in morning. These sleepovers are always interesting for us because they give us the opportunity to observe these two youngsters at their current levels of maturity. They also give us the chance to interact with them: learning and playing their new board games, listening to their stories of school, and taking long walks with them to the neighborhood 7-11 Store for slurpees. What especially delights me is watching their joyful interactions and realizing that they are sisters – the most intimate of companions for years to come until they are bonded in a lifelong union of love and common history. And yet they remain very distinct girls, at very different levels of physical development and emotional maturity. This fact was clearly demonstrated when we saw them playing basketball in February and March…


I had just re-situated myself into a new seat along the sideline of the basketball court when I noticed that Sarah, the tall, blonde-haired point guard of her third-grade team was slowly and casually dribbling the ball up-court with her left hand. As an opposing defender approached her from that side, she quickly shifted the ball to the other hand and began driving to the right corner. I barely had time to react and position my camera to shoot as she sped along my side of the court. “Click-click-click-click” went the shutter as she blurred past me, putting out her left arm to fend off the opposing player. She reached the corner of the court and head-faked a halt to freeze the defender before suddenly stopping and hefting a shot at the basket. It struck the opposite side of the hoop and the slowly rimmed out. More than feeling the disappointment of her miss, I prayed that I had managed to capture her impressive drive and shot on camera. I couldn’t stop feeling amazed at the progress of her basketball skills since the last time we’d seen her play.





Sarah’s game was the second in a double-header we watched that weekend. Kathy and I had seen her 5-year old sister, Gracie, play in her Torrance playground league the day before. We did this over two months – each time spending the night between games at a nearby hotel to avoid the long car rides back and forth from the west San Fernando Valley to catch two games on consecutive mornings. This last double-header was in February, so a month had passed since we’d seen the girls play – and their progress was stunning.

Sarah is 9-years old and Gracie is 5, and they play the game at very differing levels of ability. Sarah has played organized basketball for three years now and Gracie is just beginning, so there is a wide disparity in their games. As point guard of her 3^rd Grade team, Sarah is a fierce competitor, looking up as she pushes the ball downcourt, switching hands on the dribble, and slashing past defenders. Gracie is just learning the game – dribbling with both hands and occasionally losing control of the ball, and barely reaching the hoop when she shots. It is great fun watching and photographing these two young cagers, although I have to admit Gracie’s games are much more humorous because all her other teammates play in the same awkward manner. No points are tallied on the scoreboard, which only shows the time remaining in the game, and all the family spectators cheer when either team manages to score. What these girls do best is run up and downcourt, and eagerly look forward to being substituted out so they can sit in the bleachers and rest with their parents. We can always tell when Gracie’s interest in the game begins waning because, when she doesn’t have the ball, she begins skipping downcourt instead of running, and starts doing cartwheels on the court whenever there is a pause in the action. Sarah, on the other hand, is a consistent study of intensity on defense and offense.






There is a truism in sibling relationships that younger siblings always desire to imitate the actions and sporting activities of their older brothers or sisters. That was certainly the case with my own brother, Arturo, who was one year younger than I. Art always wanted to play the games and sports I played, and to tag along with me and my friends. I witnessed it again while watching my own children grow up. My son Toñito was two years older than Prisa, so I had him learning to play soccer, baseball, and basketball first – put Prisa was always in the background watching and wanting to play as well. She very quickly joined in, shagging balls that Toñito hit, playing catch with us, kicking soccer balls, and rebounding and shooting baskets. Eventually Prisa sustained her love of organized sports through high school and college, while Toñito’s sporting interest waned, choosing to emphasize theater instead. As I watched my granddaughters grow up, I suspected at first that Gracie would deviate from this sibling tendency, because she showed such different developmental patterns than her older sister, with very disparate likes and dislikes. As an infant, Gracie preferred riding over walking, solitary play over interactive ones, and rarely agreeing with my suggestions for lunch meals, outings, and outdoor activities – as her sister had. However, since attending the same school as Sarah over the last two years and watching how she wants to imitate and compete in all of Sarah’s sporting and extracurricular activities, I’m not so sure anymore.







Gracie’s games continue to be more entertaining because of the limited skills of all the novice players, but their improvements have been huge. Since watching her play a month ago, Gracie has scored baskets and was now playing and dribbling with more confidence and always looking to shoot. One sequence I caught on camera was very similar to the one I described above of Sarah. Gracie was dribbling the ball up-court (with one or two hands), and when halted by a defender she stopped, then pushed past her (holding the ball), until she positioned herself on the left side of the basket and heaved up a shot that ALMOST went in. Scoring baskets is always nice, but the joy and buoyancy these 5-year-old girls exhibit in running, guarding, and trying to dribble and shoot make the games delightful to watch. Sarah still shows some of this child-like exuberance when she plays (and especially when the games are over), and I hope both girls continue feeling it as they get older and more skillful. However, there is another aspect of sibling relationships that I have noticed more and more, and it may have something to do with Gracie’s desire to imitate Sarah’s sporting interests – sibling rivalry.




Being 3 years older than Gracie, Sarah was always very solicitous and caring of her sister as an infant baby, and little girl, but by the time Gracie was walking, talking, and expressing her desires at two years old, their interactions began to exhibit some levels of conflict. Gracie started calling Sarah “bossy” and “selfish” and wanted to be treated in the same manner as her older sister or given the same gifts and benefits offered to an older child. As I watched them during our recent sleepover, these interactions can become very acrimonious at times, and Kathy and I are challenged to referee and resolve them peacefully. These sibling “fights” reminded me of the ones I had with my own brother Arthur, who was only 1 year younger. As the older brother I always felt put upon and victimized because it seemed to me that I always had to be the understanding one and back off or give in to Arthur’s complaints about me. I had to take him along when my friends and I went to the playground or park to play sports and had to include him in our games. Thankfully our conflicts decreased as we got older. Strangely I never noticed my sisters having these manifestations of sibling rivalry, nor my two younger brothers, although I think they are a normal product of sibling development. At least I hope so, because over the years I’ve observed that there seems to exist a special “sisterhood” of sorts among girls and women, especially between sisters and cousins. Girls and women seem to interact and form a unique bond of friendship, love, and unity, that provides an endless source of solace and support in times of trial and difficulty. I’ve been fortunate to see this bonding modeled by Kathy and her sisters, and by Prisa and her cousins. This is the bond I hope to see grow and develop in Sarah and Grace as they minimize their arguments, mature as siblings, and are taught to sing the Irving Berlin song Sisters, by their grandmother, great-aunts, and female cousins.

The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gray
The glory that was Rome is of another day
I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan
I’m going home to my city by the Bay

Left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
The morning fog may chill the air, but I don’t care.
(I Left My Heart in San Francisco: Cross & Cory – 1953)

It’s hard to admit that my notions of how people will respond to places and experiences I loved is predicated more about me than the people having the experience. This tendency really borders on hubris – the excessive pride and arrogance that everyone else will share the things and places I value and cherish equally. This fact was again brought home to me a few weeks ago when Kathy and I took our granddaughter Sarah on her first airplane trip to visit San Francisco. By the time it was over, I felt like an ancient Greek traveler surveying the smoldering relics of old illusions and false expectations that had crumbled before the innocent behaviors of an eight year-old child.


The idea of taking Sarah on an airplane trip began with a conversation I had with Kathy about five or six years ago. She was telling me how the parent-in-laws of her boss, Kevin Baxter, the Superintendent of Catholic Schools in Los Angeles, took each of their grandchildren on a trip at age 10 to a city or place of their choice. It sounded like a wonderful idea to imitate, and we talked about it over the years, trying to decide on the proper age of the child, and the location to choose. As time passed, and we got older, Sarah’s age, and the distance and scope of the trip became less and less. Airplane trips to New York or Washington D.C. seemed a little too long, so we kept reducing the length of the trip and the stay to minimize our physical exertions and activities. At the same time, we were anxious to do it as soon as possible, while we were still able and fit. It seemed too long a wait until Sarah’s 10^th birthday, so I suggested that we tie the trip to a fast approaching milestone in her life – her First Communion. Kathy thought it an inspired idea and suggested locations that offered short flying times and a variety of activities. We eventually settled on San Francisco, a city that we both loved to visit. I thought the plan was brilliant because it combined so many momentous components: First Communion, first time on an airplane, and first time visiting a beautiful and historic city. “How could Sarah not love everything about this trip?” I asked myself at the time, not realizing it was the wrong query to make. The question Kathy used instead to plan the trip was, “Will Sarah enjoy the trip and will it be memorable for her?” and, as it turned out, she did and it was. My error was in expecting Sarah to appreciate it the way I nostalgically remembered flying and traveling.




My experiences with airplane flying began as early as 1948, when I was a year old. My mother and father were returning to Mexico City from Los Angeles in the hope of establishing permanent residency while my Dad attended college under the G.I. Bill. My brother and sister (Arthur and Stela) were born there, but we had to return to Los Angeles when residency was denied. On the average, my Mom traveled back to Mexico to visit her family every 3 to 4 years, always taking the children along, and Dad when possible. Except for one trip by car, we always flew by airplane. I loved everything about air travel. Still considered a luxurious means of travel in the 1950’s, we dressed up for the journey, and departures and arrivals were always accompanied by loads of friends and family to see us off and welcome our return. Goodbyes included apprehensive excitement, tears, hugs, and blessings, which were transformed on arrival by cheerful hugs and shouts of welcome. I loved the sensations of lift off and touch downs, when the swift moving airplane miraculously elevated into the air, and then thudded onto the cement runway on landing. I also loved those occasions when the airplane experienced turbulent weather and buffeted up and down while flying. Those were the only times I actually felt I was in the air flying – otherwise the cabin was relatively motionless during most of the flights. Also, as the oldest child in the family, I usually contrived to occupy the window seat on the flights, gluing my nose to the porthole window so I could watch as we glided through billowy cumulus clouds, and look down upon the rough desert terrain we flew over, and the tiny structures and cars I spotted on ribbons of roads and highways. So I couldn’t wait to witness how Sarah would react to the same experiences, at roughly the same age. I was also excited about showing her the city of San Francisco, with all its historic sights, buildings, and bridges. Needless to say I had built up a massive tower of expectations that Sarah would have the same reactions I did. The reality came as quite an awakening.


As I’ve mentioned before in the blog, Kathy is the master travel agent and social activities director in the family, I just go along for the ride and the enjoyment – being supportive along the way. Her two-day itinerary and agenda of activities were perfectly designed for our eight year-old granddaughter. Sarah is a child in constant motion whose emotions and actions tend to flow in undulating waves – rising in verbal anticipation, peaking in kinetic energy and active enjoyment, and cresting in a momentary lull as she pauses to search for new activities to perform. This was visible from the moment she arrived at our home on the night before the flight. Walking into the house, rolling her carry-on suitcase behind her, she excitedly unpacked to show Kathy what she had brought to wear for the trip. Then, eyes bright with excitement, she listened as Kathy described the itinerary: overnight sleepover; early breakfast, then calling a Lyft for a ride to Hollywood Burbank Airport; an hour-long flight to San Francisco, then checking into our room at the Hilton Union Square Hotel; a restaurant lunch, followed by shopping at Macy’s on Union Square, and then swimming in the hotel pool; finally, a cable car ride to Fisherman’s Wharf, and then dinner. The following day I would take her to Union Square and Chinatown, and then we would meet our niece, Brigid Williams, for a Saturday at the Exploratorium at the Embarcadero. After listening and commenting on this very full and active agenda (Sarah is always eager to expand on topics and subjects she has heard about, or seen on television), she asked permission to go outside and shoot baskets before dinner.


Looking back on this trip with Sarah, I’ve come to some new insights about the things children enjoy about flying that are no longer based on my “remembered” experiences. Some of the things that excited Sarah were predictable, but many were not. She loved rolling our large suitcases for us whenever she had the chance, and the TSA checkpoint was a special highlight for her. All the TSA workers were incredibly solicitous and kind, giving her big, warm smiles, and patiently explaining the ticket and scanning procedure. She passed through the sensors quickly, and then turned around to give me advice when I set it off the alarms twice because of my belt and cell phone: “Take off your belt, Poppy!” she admonished me. The Hollywood/Burbank airport was also a big hit because of its wide corridors and huge picture windows showing the parked jet airplanes on the tarmac as they fueled and loaded the luggage onboard. Another benefit of the airport is its small size, which allows passengers to walk on board from the tarmac ramp or stairway, and Sarah’s excitement was visible as she bounded up the ramp leading to the entry hatch of the airplane. She had a little trouble buckling her seat belt, explaining that it was different from the car belts she was used to, but she was incredibly attentive as the stewardess explained the emergency procedures from the front of the plane. Later, Sarah had me point out exactly where the lifejackets were located under the seats and from where the oxygen masks would drop if they were needed. The takeoff, as expected, was the most invigorating part of the ride. With her nose pressed to the window, Sarah seemed to hold her breath as the plane sped faster and faster down the runway and then suddenly felt weightless as it lifted off the ground. The upward climb was steep, doubling the sensation of flight, and then banking slowly to the right, Sarah could see the quickly shrinking buildings, homes, streets, and cars below us. “Wow!” she said, “they’re so small”. Once in the air, surrounded by wide, puffy cumulus clouds, she said they reminded her of cotton candy, and then turned away to set up the iPad Kathy had provided so she could watch episodes of the children cooking show “Nailed It!” on the small screen. The only disappointment she evidenced was when the captain explained on the PA that because of possible turbulence, there would be no cabin service (Sarah had been looking forward to the stewardess providing soft drinks and peanuts). Landing at the San Francisco International airport provided a momentary distraction to her video watching, and she became alert to her surrounding again when we deplaned. Confidently leading the way down the wide corridor and reading the directional signs as she walked, she directed us to the baggage claim area, where she studiously kept her eyes peeled on the luggage carousel to spot our suitcases. She saw them first, and only asked for our help when they proved to heavy to lift.




After leaving our luggage at the hotel, I learned quickly that, unlike adult travelers, San Francisco dining was not a big deal for children. Sarah would have been happier selecting her meals from a children’s menu at Red Robin rather than a pub called Johnny Foley’s Irish House on O’Farrell Street. While eager to choose a meal from a menu, Sarah simply picked at her food during the meal, leaving it spread out on the plate, mostly uneaten. The trip became exciting again when Kathy took her shopping at Macy’s Department Store on Union Square. There she could use the Macy’s gift card and cash she had received as gifts for her First Communion, and purchase the shoes and shirts she was eager to inspect and try on. Another big hit for Sarah was the pool and our room at the Hilton Hotel near Union Square. The room was a spacious corner room with a separate rollout couch, two TV’s, and two large picture windows overlooking downtown San Francisco. Once we had unpacked and stored our clothes, Kathy volunteered to take Sarah down to the pool to let her swim, play, and burn off more energy. This is a tag-team strategy we often employ when babysitting our granddaughters, one of us would take them swimming, walking, or to a park to play, while the other person took a break. A pool is always the best for us because the girls are competent swimmers, and all we have to do is watch them while lounging on a deck chair.





When we were ready for dinner, Kathy and I tried describing the cable car ride we would take to Fisherman’s Wharf, and the many stores, restaurants, and sights along San Francisco Bay. These had always been my favorite part of San Francisco, and I suppose I expected Sarah to feel the same way. I wasn’t disappointed, even when discovering that the cable car terminal at Powell and Market Street was closed for repair, and a bus would transport us to the pickup point, about halfway along the cable car route. I would have preferred a longer cable car ride, but Sarah loves public transportation of any kind – bus, metro, or train – and the cable car was a brand new experience. Sitting on the outside bench of the car, she was able to see the people and city of San Francisco as we rolled along toward the Bay, slowly climbing, and then descending down the steep hills on Hyde Street. Reaching Fisherman’s Wharf, she feigned interest as we pointed out the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Prison, but I think we were past the highpoint of the evening for her. We walked along Jefferson Street, looking at the stores and searching for a bayside restaurant for dinner, and all the while, Sarah, who was radically underdressed for the San Francisco cold, kept repeating, “I’m turning into an icicle!  I’m turning into an icicle!” The evening was salvaged after dinner, when we allowed Sarah to wander through a vast It’s Sugar! candy store nearby, where she could pick as much and as many candies as she could bag.






Sarah awoke bright and early the next morning, long before we did, and while we continued sleeping, managed to view a variety of Disney Channel programs on what she called “my TV”. After a buffet breakfast in the hotel restaurant, it was now my turn to entertain Sarah by taking her on long walk through Union Square, and then up the hill to Chinatown. She proved a patient traveling companion, allowing me to pose her for pictures, and listening to my stories of the city and its sights. Of far greater interest to Sarah, however, were the storefront displays of Asian toys, fans, parasols, and knickknacks that cluttered the sidewalks of Chinatown. I kept shooing her along until she again paused in front of a clothing store to inspect a rack of traditional Chinese formfitting dresses called “quipaos”. There I finally relented and asked the rhetorical question, “Would you like to buy one?” By the time we returned to the hotel from our 90-minute walk through San Francisco, Sarah was eager to get on to our next adventure while I was exhausted. Thankfully Kathy had arranged to meet our niece Brigid at the San Francisco Exploratorium at the Embarcadero that morning. What I had originally considered a thoughtful idea to visit a relative living in Oakland proved a Godsend. Bridgy took Sarah completely off our hands, and the two of them spent the sunny morning and afternoon exploring, playing, and manipulating the hundreds of interactive displays and exhibits that populated this massive museum. Kathy and I just tagged along, watching them learn, laugh, and play, until it was time to find a place to eat at the Embarcadero. When we finally got back to the hotel, there was still sufficient light for me to take Sarah back to the pool area where she spent an hour or so swimming, playing with some children who joined her, and lounging in the sauna. Foregoing a restaurant that evening, we picked up dinner at the hotel delicatessen that evening and ate in our room. Sarah went quickly to bed after finishing.









I didn’t realize how exhausted she truly was until the next morning, when for the first time ever, Kathy and I awoke before she did. The 6am alarm we had set did not stir her, and I had to gently shake her awake before she moaned, rolled over, and reluctantly opened her eyes. The return airplane trip home was a repeat of her first flight, only this time she easily manipulated her seatbelt and ignored the preflight safety announcement. After takeoff she quickly gave full attention to the iPad on the flight tray and continued watching the cooking show she had begun on the previous trip. The only novelty for her on this flight was being served when the attendant asked what refreshment she would like to accompany the complimentary bag of pretzels. I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by her reactions, thinking that Sarah had not fully appreciated the extent of all the novel circumstances we had experienced. When, during the flight, I casually mentioned this to Kathy, she simply gave me a puzzled look and said, “What did you expect from an 8 year-old girl?” That accusatory question sat with me for the remainder of the flight, prompting me to recall my own first trip to San Francisco when I was 5 or 6 years old. My grandmother, aunt, and two uncles were visiting us from Mexico, and my parents had decided to take them on a road trip to Yosemite and San Francisco. There are actual photographs of this trip, but I only recall vague memories of waking up one morning to the sounds of a waterfall near a lodge we occupied in Yosemite, and a stop we made on our way home in Bakersfield. It was in Bakersfield that our car broke down, and we had to stay overnight before it was repaired. This breakdown was the highlight of the trip for me, because it provided drama, excitement, and an overnight stay at a roadside motel with a pool. When we weren’t exploring the grounds of the motel near the service station, my three siblings and I spent the entire afternoon and evening playing in that pool with other children. Those flashing scenes are the full extent of the memories of my first trip to San Francisco. By the time we landed at the Hollywood Burbank Airport, I had left my disillusions behind, and just felt happy at having completed the long planned dream of being able to watch Sarah react to many first time experiences. I don’t know how many of them she will actually recall in the years to come, but I took plenty of photographs to help her remember.

Memories light the corners of my mind.
Misty water-colored memories, of the way we were.
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind,
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.

Memories may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget.
So it’s the laughter we will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
The way we were
(The Way We Were: Bergman, Bergman, & Hamlisch – 1973)

I haven’t started a long-term project in a long time. I think the last one was in 2013, when I digitized 426 vinyl record albums belonging to my brother-in-law, Greg Greaney. My approach to the three-year project was casual, often interrupted by trips, other commitments, lethargy, and fatigue. Many of the records weren’t necessarily “classics”, and my digitizing equipment required that I sit and listen to each album I was recording. This was sometimes tedious – but on the whole, I enjoyed what I was listening to, and once it was done, I was euphoric over having finished a difficult task. Since then I haven’t taken on anything new, until I received an email from my youngest brother, Alex, reminding me of a promise I made to my mother and siblings before she died in November of 2017.


My mother was always very proud of the 8-volume photo album collection she had assembled over the years. The albums began with family photos of my mom and dad in 1943, ending with pictures of Mom’s trips to Scotland and Europe with Stela and Gracie, in 1998. Decade by decade the number of albums would multiply, with each photograph carefully placed, and (almost) in chronological order. As children, my siblings and I loved looking at them with our mother – asking her the names of the relatives and people in the pictures, and questioning her about their backgrounds and current situations. It was a visual way of learning and remembering stories of our families, and long ago events associated with them. As adults we would, on occasion, borrow these albums to show our friends and future wives and husbands, and give them a glimpse into our past. However, she soon became very fastidious about lending them out after Arthur dared to alter a few of the photos, by cutting himself out of the picture. After that, my mother laid out a strict prohibition before letting them out of her house:
“!No toquen los fotos!” (Don’t touch the photos!).
For years no one dared take the albums from her house, until a few years before her death. In 2014 I asked to borrow the first 3 volumes so I could photocopy family pictures spanning from 1924 to 1980. She hesitantly agreed, but only after making me swear not to alter them in any way. Unfortunately, I took my time copying them, and one year later I received a frantic phone call from my mom, declaring that her photo albums and been stolen! She said she had a dream of our long deceased father and wanted to see his photographs in her albums, only to discover that the first three volumes were missing. She panicked at the thought that they had been stolen, and called me for help. I calmly reassured her that the albums were neither missing nor stolen, but in my care, and promised to return them the next morning. She sheepishly accepted them back the following day, apologizing for panicking, but relieved to have the photo albums back. It was only later that I realized this irrational phone call was an early sign of incipient dementia. From that day forward, I vowed never to remove the albums from her immediate reach, agreeing only to their custodianship after her death. In the months preceding her final illness, as she reviewed her will and funeral arrangements with us, she reminded me of this promise, trusting that I would care for the albums and make their photos accessible to my brothers and sisters.





At first, I took this promise very seriously when I brought six of the albums home in December of 2017, immediately adding the task of having them photocopied to my “To Do List”. But month after month, throughout the New Year, it kept slipping downward on the scale, until it lay at the lowest rung of the list. Alex’s email last month finally got me off the dime to begin investigating the feasibility of having the photo albums professionally digitized. I soon learned, however, that the cost of photocopying 6 volumes, each containing approximately 300 chronologically ordered photographs, was financially prohibitive. I procrastinated further, complaining not only of the expense, but the time-consuming hardship of taking on the task myself, using our traditional flatbed printer/copier at home. Kathy listened to these complaints patiently for a few days, and then said, “You know, there are scanning apps for Ipads and Iphones to do this quickly and easily”. I dismissed the suggestion offhandedly at first (as I usually do when Kathy volunteers technical advice), until she demonstrated how easily it actually worked on her cell phone. Using an app called Photomyne, she quickly scanned a group of photos that were then automatically divided into single prints and enhanced on her phone. They were identical reproductions of the original. Kathy had matured into a veritable technical wizard with this miraculous solution to my problem!



Since starting this new project 3 weeks ago, I’ve reproduced the contents of 2 albums, and started a third. The photos are in the same sequence and order my mother had placed them in these albums. Album #2 covered the years 1958 to 1968, and Album #3 went from 1968 to 1980. I started with these two albums because they covered the magic years of our childhoods and youth – plus, Alex had specifically requested photos of his infancy. I have to admit that as I pursued this project, I was surprised at the feelings the albums evoked in me of my parents and siblings. Foremost was a deep admiration for my mom’s devotion to Family, in the time, effort, and persistence she showed in chronicling the visual history of our family, beginning with our grandparents and ending with her great-grandchildren. Of course all parents take pictures of their children as they grow up, but I doubt those photographs are maintained in sequenced albums once those children enter college or leave home. Kathy and I stopped the practice when our two kids were in grade school. Although we continued taking tons of photos, they tended to remain in their envelopes after being developed and shared, or, in later years, stored in commercial photo-sharing clouds like Shutterfly or Amazon Photos. The critical legacy that my mother always wanted to pass on to her children and grandchildren was our family history – its antecedents in Mexico, and the life she and Dad created for us in Los Angeles and Venice. The photo albums were part of our inheritance, and they represent an awesome achievement that I’m only now beginning to appreciate.










The last emotional by-product of this project was its reawakening of my affection for my brothers and sisters. Going page by page, photograph by photograph, through these albums, old memories, associations, and feelings were evoked: the births of Eddie and Alex, birthday parties in the park with cousins and friends, moving into our first home in Venice, weekend trips to the parks and beach, First Communions, Easter Sunday portraits, and graduations. We spent a lot of time together, my siblings and I, and they were my first best friends. We played make-believe games, sports in the street, and walked to and from school together every day. Our daily interactions consisted of arguments, laughter, fights, and triumphs we have long forgotten – but the photos still retained a residue of those old feelings. Since our mother’s death, we’ve tried to carve out some time when we can meet together – just the six of us – to share and clarify old memories, or just talk about how we are, and what we’re doing. I had forgotten, but siblings have their own way of communicating and relating to each other, when not influenced by the presence of strangers, friends, or even spouses. It’s our own private language. We’ve modeled our approach on the practice used by my wife’s siblings of meeting for lunch to celebrate an individual or group birthdays. I suppose it’s a way of ritualizing my Mom’s wish that we would always remain a family, united and interdependent. The photo albums are a means of reaffirming those connections, and a testament to our mother’s love for us.

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember getting older,
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly flow the days.
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blooming even as we gaze.
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly fly the years.
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears.
(Sunrise Sunset: Bock & Harnick – 1964)

When do a father and mother realize that they have reached the tipping point of parenthood – that pivotal moment when their children are actually more knowledgeable and capable than they? Is there a certain age one reaches, or is it about diminishing mental capacities? Brain farts must certainly be one indicator, or perhaps the number of times you walk into a room and forget what brought you there. Maybe it is about getting older. I suppose I’ve always KNOWN that my two children, Tony and Teresa, had grown up and caught up to us. I’d watched them leave home for college, graduate, begin careers, marry, begin families, and buy their own homes. But it wasn’t until Kathy and I traveled with “Prisa” to New York City that it really hit me. It was there that I felt our roles had switched – the child was guiding the parent! You see, in the space of five months I have experienced that moment with both of our children in very different locales, Dublin and New York. Strange that it would take two cities, so far away from our homes in Los Angeles, to illicit a sense of a paradigm shift in our relations with our children.


The idea of traveling to New York with our daughter grew from a phone call she made to us on the night of last year's Golden Globe Awards. At the conclusion of the show on television, Prisa called us with news that the actor Jeff Daniels was starring in the new Aaron Sorkin Broadway production of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. After the phone call, Kathy tossed up the idea of taking Prisa to New York as a Christmas present. The more we talked and laughed about the idea, the more we realized that traveling to New York with our baby girl to see a new Broadway play was absurdly brilliant. That same evening we called her back with our proposition.


You need to understand that there is a special relationship between To Kill a Mockingbird and our daughter. It was the first novel I was ever able to convince Prisa to read. I did it by telling her that the central female character of the story, Scout, reminded me of her. I coaxed her into first seeing the movie version with Gregory Peck, and then tempted her into read the novel by saying that the book offered further tales and more information about the precocious tomboy, Scout. To date, I believe To Kill a Mockingbird is the only novel that Prisa read at my recommendation – and she loved it. I’m secretly convinced that she felt that Harper Lee was describing her and her relationship with her brother Tony in the story, and the book planted the seed of Prisa’s budding love of literature and the skill of writing. So the prospect of taking her to see a new production of the novel was an opportunity Kathy and I did not want to miss.





There was an assumption being made in that last sentence – that Kathy and I were taking our daughter to New York. It implies that we were in control and Prisa was coming as our guest. Now Kathy and I had been in New York City nine years earlier celebrating her 60^th birthday. We had explored the city together, walking Uptown and Downtown, strolling through Central Park, and masterfully utilizing the subway to travel to the Bronx, the Battery, Wall Street, Columbia University, and Grand Central Station. We were confident in our sense of direction and remembered the street names and numbers we traveled. All of those abilities deserted us on the first day, the minute we stepped outside the Hilton Midtown Hotel on 6^th Avenue. Even following the directions to Rockefeller Center, given by the hotel clerk, proved difficult. It wasn’t until Prisa stepped in, reading the Google map directions on her cell phone, which we found confusing, that we reached our destination. Over the two days Prisa stayed with us, I can only imagine her shaking her head in amusement over our directionless antics, and our wishy-washy decision-making. The second day in Manhattan, after visiting the 9-11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center and walking over to the Brookfield Place shopping mall on West Street to look for a place to eat lunch, I was overwhelmed by the size and seeming confusion of the food court. Once again Prisa took over, guiding us to an empty table overlooking the Hudson River and the New Jersey shore, and telling us to sit there until she had scouted the various offerings and came back with recommendations. Later, after taking a carriage ride through Central Park together, I imagined that she felt a great sense of relief at safely depositing her two parents back at the hotel, and went off to explore Manhattan on her own.





Traveling to New York to see a new Broadway play was a dream come true for me, and having Prisa there to share the experience made the whole evening magical. Yet, even while walking to Broadway, through Times Square, on our last evening together, we were totally dependant on Prisa’s guidance and directions to find The Blue Fin Restaurant for dinner and the Shubert Theatre for the play. Despite the fine meal, the great play, and the fabulous conversation before and after the play, I could not dispel a nagging sense of uselessness, and the feeling that an oceanic tidal shift in our relationship with our children had occurred.




I had felt a hint of this shifting landscape in Ireland, four months earlier, when Kathy and I met up with Toñito and his wife Nikki in Dublin for dinner. Kathy had been planning our return trip to Ireland for a year, and we were surprised to learn that Tony and Nikki had decided to visit Scotland and Ireland at about the same time in September. I believe it was Kathy who first floated the prospect of trying to meet up in Dublin, if our timelines and itineraries matched up. At first, I dismissed the idea as a fanciful wish and assumed Tony and Nikki would concentrate on their plans and around their own schedule and interests. So I was surprised when Toñito called Kathy sometime in August asking for the specific dates we would be in Ireland to see if he could coordinate a reunion. After much discussion with his mother, it was decided that he would try to meet us for dinner on our last night in Dublin, October 1. Even through Kathy never got a clear picture of Tony and Nikki’s specific travel plans in Scotland, she fixed on the idea of our reunion and believed it would take place. I, on the other hand, must confess of being a pessimist about nebulous plans actually working out, and throughout our travels in Ireland, whenever I asked Kathy for specific information about Tony’s itinerary and received a shrug with an “I’m not sure” response, my dubiousness multiplied. I tried dismissing the nagging suspicion that this reunion would never actually take place, and concentrated on enjoying my trip through Ireland with Kathleen.


You have to realize that Toñito was a sweet boy growing up. He was always thoughtful and considerate to his sister and us throughout his childhood, youth, and young adulthood. He shared his toys and sporting equipment with Teresa, included her in all his games and computer activities, and spent countless hours reading to her, and listening to her early attempts. He remembers birthdays and holidays, and always makes a point of attending family functions, celebrations, and weddings. But as often happens in the lives of maturing men and adults, new relationships, responsibilities, and personal interests and habits begin to dominate and take precedence. Tony follows his own schedule and pursues his own way of doing things. I suspected that Toñito would do what I would have done in his place while traveling with Nikki in Scotland – while always having the intention of making the reunion on October 1^st, the dictates of time, travel, and hardship would determine if he ever actually made it. I had experienced first hand the trials of train and automobile driving in Ireland, so I could imagine that the difficulties of crossing the Irish Sea and traveling into Dublin on a specific afternoon and evening would cause him to give up. It is what I would do.




On our last day in Dublin, Kathy and I did some last minute separate sightseeing, packing, and waited for Toñito and Nikki to notify us of their arrival in Ireland. We waited and waited, with Kathy never doubting, and stoutly putting up with my pessimistic vibes and comments, as I got hungry and then sleepy after two cocktails. At about 8 o’clock Tony finally called to tell Kathleen that they had arrived at a seaside bed and breakfast to the north of Dublin and planned on driving into the city. Kathy advised them to forgo the driving and instead taking the DART electric train to a station close to our hotel. Although it seemed to me that her suggestions were only complicating things further, Tony agreed and said he would meet us there. At about 9 o’clock we walked to Pearse Station, keeping a look out for Tony and Nikki on the multiple elevated tracks. As one, and then two trains arrived, Kathy said in an excited voice, “There he is!” and I too spotted the tall standing figure through the window of the train. Tony and Nikki had made it after all.




There is something special about meeting up and dining with loved ones, and close family members and friends in a distant or foreign city, far from home. The unlikelihood of such a reunion gives it a magical air and a timeless feeling. Watching Toñito descending on the station elevator changed the ambiance and tone of the evening for me. By overcoming time, distance, and hardships, Tony had achieved what I considered impossible for myself. At the nearby Kennedy’s Restaurant and Bar we laughed and talked together all evening. Tony and Nikki recounted their travels in Scotland and sought our suggestions about possible sites in Dublin. I smiled happily throughout the evening, listening to the talk and descriptions, but was a bit surprised at Tony’s response when I voiced my doubts about this reunion actually taking place. He laughed kindly as he put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Of course we were going to make it tonight, Dad! I wouldn’t miss celebrating your birthday in Ireland.”


So on two happy and magical evenings, in two faraway cities, spending private time with our son and daughter made me feel a little nostalgic of times long past. I loved the fact that we were together, talking about our travels through Dublin and New York, and the new theatrical adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. We discussed, agreed and disagreed about things, and spent much of the time laughing and smiling, but there was also a bitter sweet aura of time having passed us by – that Kathy and I were no longer as capable and able as we once were. We weren’t the primary caretakers. Over time, Toñito and Prisa had gently usurped that title. They had families, careers, homes, and futures, and they organized and managed their time based on changing demands and responsibilities. They were now the grownups, and were far more capable of traveling, negotiating new cities, and making quick decisions than Kathy or I. I suppose this sad realization would have come to us eventually, but I’m glad it happened when it did – in the company of our children, in two special places.

Such a cozy room,
The windows are illuminated
By the sunshine through them,
Fiery gems for you,
Only for you.

Our house is a very,
Very, very fine house.
With two cats in the yard,
Life used to be so hard,
Now everything is easy
‘Cause of you.
(Our House: Graham Nash – 1970)

I had just finished the 5^th grade at St. Teresa of Avila School in Silver Lake when we moved from the outskirts of metropolitan Los Angeles to Venice, California. The shock of this move didn’t hit me at first. What I remember most about the months leading up to our relocation on the Westside was a sense of eagerness and excitement about buying a house and living in a free standing, single dwelling home. My 4 siblings and I had spent 3 years living on the bottom floor of a tri-level apartment house, perched near the top of a steep hill on Cove Avenue, near Glendale Blvd. We never considered the cramped space or the inconveniences of living on a hill problematic; they were simply realities we accepted. We were children. Besides, there was the bonus of having many other children our age living on the upper floors and in nearby homes. In fact since our apartment house was next to a huge vacant lot that ran alongside of the apartment, and into the back, our home became the mobilization point for communal sports, games, and imaginative play. It was only when my father was offered a position as a photographer for a new studio that was opening in Culver City that we started looking for homes on the other side of town. A ritual developed on Sunday mornings after mass and breakfast. The five children would be shepherded into the car and we would take a drive looking at homes for sale in Culver City, Mar Vista, and Venice. What I noticed right away on these drives was the flat terrain, the lush lawns on front and backyards, and large homes with free standing car garages and spacious, multiple bedrooms. I was entering a new world that made me think of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz at the moment she realized that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Westside homes were nothing like the cramped housing and populated density of Los Angeles and its nearby hilly communities. This area was flat – and there was so much space there!


Looking back now, I think that the excitement and wonderment caused by these home searches anesthetized us from the dislocation and loss that was going to take place when we finally uprooted from the Silver Lake and Echo Park area. We were not only separating permanently from long time friends and schoolmates, but also distancing ourselves from family members living in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. Until the advent of the Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) in 1966, we were now a good 45-minute drive away from our grandparents in Lincoln Heights, and aunts and uncles living on the Eastside. The long trip would soon put an end to our practice of regular weekend visits, and we would only get together on holidays and special occasions. When we moved into our “new” house in Venice in the summer of 1959, we were, in effect, separating ourselves from the influence of my father’s Eastside Mexican-American family, and entering a brave new world alone.





Our family home was sold last week. The last vestiges of our family’s 59-year sojourn in Venice (the part that became known as Marina del Rey) ended when the For Sale sign on the front lawn was taken down. Mom and our sister Stela were the last members of the family to reside there, but with our mother’s death in November, the process began to transfer the estate to the Delgado Trust and put it on the real estate market. Mom had stipulated this sale in her will, and we had talked about it before and after the funeral. So I was somewhat surprised at my immediate sentimental reaction on learning that it had in fact been sold. I felt a huge sense of loss and disconnection, as if someone had painted over large swatches of my past. We had lost our home with this sale, and suddenly all the feelings and memories that went along with it seemed to be at risk. Home had been our refuge, the one place we could always return to. Home was family. Home was solidarity. Home was love. And now it was gone – along with our last remaining parent – and I wondered if our past was gone as well. The only beneficial byproduct to this sense of loss was an imperative to remember – to recall those first years in Venice when this house became our home.





In 1959, our “new” corner house on Yale and Berkeley Avenue seemed a magical place. Arthur, 2-year old Eddie, and I had our own spacious bedroom (which would include Alex in 1966), and our own television set. Since the new living room included a built-in television console, the old one went to us because our room had the space. The girls, Stela and Gracie, also had their own bedroom with a window, but ours had a wall-sized picture window to the backyard, with a separate exit to the back. The backyard seemed vast, with a garage, shaded patio and built-in barbeque, and a wide expanse of green grass with an apricot and peach tree. The front lawn was divided by a cement entrance walkway, bookended by two young magnolia trees that would eventually provide great shade from the setting western sunsets. Everything around us was new and wonderful, but soon the reality set in. We were alone in a new land, surrounded by strangers, and the vast spaces we marveled at soon became a menacing divide. Each home on our block was fenced and separate, with its own backyard. There was no communal play area like the vacant lot on Cove. The few neighborhood kids I saw on the block were strangers and they made no early attempts to leave their yards and meet, or get to know us. My three older siblings and I were forced to fall back on the only support and companionship we could count on during that first summer – each other.





That summer gave us our first real experience with solitude, and we felt isolated and bored for the first time I could remember. It was a foreign feeling for my siblings and me, because prior to that summer, neighborhood friends our own ages always surrounded us during the vacation months. For the most part, we had our own friends: Arthur had his, Stela and Gracie had theirs, and I had mine. In those days, bad weather was the only reason we felt compelled to stay at home and play together, otherwise there was a natural ebb and flow of segregated or integrated activities and games with other children in the neighborhood. However, in our strange new surroundings, with no local friends, the prospect of a long, boring summer forced us to explore two novel coping strategies. We learned to appreciate solitary activities, and to band together to explore and play in this brave new world.




We each found some private activities to keep ourselves occupied that summer, but the one we all shared was reading. Although the three of us had library cards, until that summer, using the public library to regularly borrow and read books was an irregular occurrence. When we lived in L.A., our Dad would sometimes drive us to the mammoth Downtown Central Library on Flower Street, where we could check out our own books to read. But we were dependent on him to return them. A closer local branch library on Glendale Blvd was located on our way to and from school, but we rarely felt the need to thoroughly explore or exploit it. At first, reading was a skill we had and practiced in school, but it was not a personal passion – until that summer.






Reading experts now expound on what the four of us discovered that summer – reading anything stimulates the desire to read more. My Uncle Charlie first introduced me to the world of comic books a few years earlier. One Saturday I found him reading a pile of them in his bedroom. The pile was a compilation of old and recent Superman, Batman, and Archie comics collected from all the aunts and uncles still living in our grandparents’ home. It was a forbidden treasure for me, because my mother always refused to let us near them. She was a firm believer that comics were low-level, pulp trash filled with violence and crime, and forbad our buying them. However, try as she might, she couldn’t stop us from reading them in Charlie’s room. I remember spending entire Saturday afternoons in his room, reading as many as I could before returning home. Arthur soon discovered this covert activity and joined me. Eventually Stela discovered Archie and the lesser action-filled comics in this collection and she too joined the reading group. But at that time, we could only read them with our aunts and uncles in our grandparents’ home. The turning point came when we moved to Venice. We began complaining to our mother that there was nothing to do that first summer except watch TV. We were still unfamiliar with the area and dependent on Dad to take us to the library, and he was too busy with his job in the new studio. When my mom held fast to her antagonism toward comics, we appealed to our Dad. To this day I am convinced that he was a comic book reader in his youth, because he quickly caved to our appeal and arranged a compromise with our mom. We would limit our daytime television viewing in exchange for “borrowing” comics from my uncle and aunts, and we promised to learn the pedestrian route to our local branch library so we could check out books on our own. In exchange we promised our mom not to buy comic, and only borrow them from family or friends. My mom reluctantly agreed, hoping that we would outgrow the urge.





However, comics were quickly read, and they left a gnawing hunger to read more. Being dependent on a limited number of them, we quickly found ourselves longing for more material, and realized the need to breakaway from the confines of our street and seek out the local Public Library in the Oakwood part of Venice, as well as searching for community playgrounds. Arthur and I were no strangers to walking long distances and exploring new neighborhoods. We had traveled for miles in the Silver Lake and Echo Park sections of our old neighborhood, seeking out recreational playgrounds and parks. However, on those early excursions to new places our neighborhood friends accompanied us and buoyed our courage and resolve. In Venice, Arthur and I were alone – so we recruited our sisters, Stela and Gracie, as traveling companions and began exploring this new world of Venice.





 I was the oldest in the family, separated by one year from the twins, Arthur and Stela, and four from Gracie. Divorced from our longtime neighborhood friends, we turned to each other for companionship. Once settled in our new home, we would typically start each summer morning at breakfast with the question: “What do you want to do today?” From there we would go back and forth giving ideas and suggestions, finally deciding on one or two activities to do together. We would play board games, sports, or go exploring. Our explorations became an ever-expanding venture, beginning with our immediate block, spreading to the nearby stores around the eastern intersection of Lincoln and Washington Blvd, and the vast enclosed area to the North that we called “Seven Acres” because a For Sale sign on the premises advertised it as such. Near Seven Acres we discovered a private road leading to some small-scale factories on Lincoln Blvd, and a nearby railroad track, which we eventually followed southward, paralleling Oxford Avenue, over a rickety wooden bridge spanning a swampy creek, until it crossed Washington Blvd. This railroad track, with its bridge and swamp, fascinated us for weeks. We would comb the tracks in search of castoff or forgotten treasures, usually only finding rusty railroad spikes. The creek also provided endless days of make-believe games, where we improvised rafts and pretended to be pirates. All of this area, and its miles of abandoned oil fields to the west would eventually be dredged up and developed to become today’s Marina del Rey Harbor. From these beginnings, we soon extended out, walking the three miles along Washington Blvd to the Venice Pier and beach, and searching out the nearby local elementary school with its summer playground, where we could play kickball, sports, games, caroms, and crafts with other children our age. Walking to the Venice Branch Library on California Avenue proved to be the outer limits of our explorations that summer, but it proved too far to become a regular habit. Until we received bicycles the following Christmas, the quickest way to get books was still with the assistance of our father’s car.





If we did not want to walk far to play sports, the four of us implemented our own version of Title 9 at home. With none of our old male playmates around, Arthur and I drafted Stela and Gracie into playing games of volleyball and badminton in the backyard, and softball or wiffle ball in the street. We would use our garage door as a backstop, chalking out bases on the street, and our neighbor’s front lawn across the street serving as our outfield.





When I wanted to be alone, I loved playing with plastic soldiers. They were my standard gift request at Christmas or for my birthday. Not satisfied with the plastic WW II soldiers that my Uncle Charlie gave me, I received a Fort Apache set of plastic Indians and cavalry soldiers, and a Buccaneer set of pirates and English sailors with a plastic galleon. Although I loved playing with these figurines at our home in Los Angeles, they became something of an obsession during my solitary times in Venice. I would devote entire afternoons and evenings playing with these figures in the backyard. My motley crew of soldiers and sailors from different eras and settings formed the armies and navies of countless battles and struggles that summer, fought in the dirt areas around the trees and flower beds of our yards. I created back-stories for individual figures, gave them names and personalities, and put them into a multitude of conflicts in different locales and scenarios that continued for days. If my brother intruded on these epic battles by asking me what I was doing, or could he join me? I barked the reply “nothing” and “no”. This was my solitary domain. The imaginary world I created, peopled with soldiers and sailors, was one I did not wish to explain or share.





Another, even more solitary, activity I discovered that summer was daydreaming. Not the daydreaming of passing thoughts or ideas floating through your mind like clouds, but the conscious daydreaming of targeted imagination. That first summer in Venice I came already filled with the age-appropriate, fictional adventures of the teenagers and characters showcased in Walt Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club. The Hardy Boys, Spin and Marty, Annette, and the other Mousketeers were pre-teens, just like me, and they had marvelous and exciting adventures and relationships. What I found myself doing that summer, while leaning against a tree or lying on my back on the grass of the backyard, was casting myself as one of these characters in Walt Disney adventures. I imagined myself as one of the Hardy Boys, one of boys of the Triple R Ranch with Spin and Marty, or as Annette’s new love interest in her mini-series. I spent seeming hours in this lost world of my imagination, reworking and expanding scenes from movies and television programs, adding myself into the story or adventure. I became such an expert at this skill, that I could employ it at moments of utter boredom: when I was at mass, pretending to listen to a meaningless sermon by our priest; in a Waiting Room with my mother or father waiting to see a doctor or dentist; or just facing a long summer afternoon with nothing to do.




That first summer in our new house was a magical time, never repeated again. Except perhaps for the weeks prior to our mother’s death, Arthur, Stela, Gracie, and I would never be closer than we were that summer. The following years would see us starting at a new grammar school, making new friends, joining Little League, playing Pop Warner football, and then going on to high school and college. Dad’s work hours became regular and predictable. He spent more time with us – participating in, or watching us perform in sport activities and school events. Despite it small size, and having only one bathroom for a family of eight, this house became our home and our base, and we grew up surrounded by its safety and serenity. It would be the only house that Eddie remembered, and the only one that Alex, who was born in 1966, knew. It was the home that witnessed the active parenting, aging, death, and burial of our father and mother, and now we are orphaned, and it is gone – relegated to memories of our parents and our youth. It was “a very, very, very fine house”.

I hear mariachi static on my radio
And the tubes they glow in the dark
And I’m there with you in Ensenada
And I’m here in Echo Park.

Carmenita, hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down.
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town.
(Carmenita: Warren Zevon – 1976)

There are communities in Los Angeles that spill over with images, scenes, and emotions from my past. They are a litany of evocative names that mean little to the many residents living in the suburbs on the outskirts of town. Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, Rosehill, Alhambra, and Silver Lake – these were the vecindades, or neighborhoods I lived in during my most impressionable years. People of different languages, skin colors, nationalities, and religions populated those districts. Every street had a different mixture. Walking along No. Broadway in Lincoln Heights, I recall passing an Italian grocery store, a Jewish shoe repair shop, a Mexican muebleria (furniture store), and a Japanese watch repair. A streetcar ride to downtown would take us through the wondrous pagodas of Chinatown to the exotic bazaars of Grand Central Market at the foot of Bunker Hill.

During the 1950’s, my family migrated through four rented homes around the city, never settling too far from my grandparents’ homestead in Lincoln Heights, a community Northeast of Chavez Ravine. Now, so many years later, when driving past those sections of the city, I find myself suddenly overcome with nostalgic fragrances of that past. That’s what happened last March, when I took my camera and strolled around Echo Park, while Kathy attended a school meeting in Silver Lake.


I was captivated by Echo Park from the moment I saw it, soon after moving into the Silver Lake area on Duane Street in circa 1953. It was the first “lake” I had ever seen, and at 6 years old, it looked immense. This urban body of water was surrounded by an oval walkway, with sloping green banks, and a tiny island located in the northeast corner that could be reached by a wooden bridge. It was anchored on the eastern shore by a boathouse with a miniature lighthouse tower. My siblings and I would often gaze longingly at that brightly painted boathouse, watching lucky families rent the two-person paddleboats docked there. Unfortunately, my mom and dad considered cruising the lake a frivolous expense, so we spent our time walking, resting, and wishing they would someday relent. They never did.




Even at a young age, I recognized that Echo Park wasn’t much of a “park”. It paled before the immense tracts of rolling lawns and wooded landscapes found in the two rustic retreats of Los Angeles – Griffith Park and Elysian Park. Those were the rustic preserves of the city that housed vast playgrounds and picnic areas, horse stables, Travel Town, the city zoo, the planetarium, and multiple recreational activities and attractions. Echo Park was simply a decorative urban pond, ringed by a sloping, ribbon of grass. It was only accidently that I discovered its playground area, located across the freeway on Glendale Blvd, with tennis courts and ballparks. The park was also rumored to house a swimming pool, which my neighborhood friends and I were never able to find while I lived there. Only as an adult, driving west on the 101 out of L.A., did I spot it from the freeway. It was a tiny “plunge”, not deep enough to include a diving board, hidden across the street from the lake at the intersection of Bellevue Ave and the freeway onramp. It was as much a pool as Echo Park was a lake. Yet despite all these shortcomings, I loved it, and took immense regional pride in utilizing it. This sense of propriety really took hold when I started walking and bussing to the park on Saturday mornings with my brother to fish. Yes, we were among the unlikely Sportsmen of Echo Park in the 50’s.



I wish I could recount a straight narrative of my experiences as an Echo Park fisherman, but my memory of that time doesn’t work that way. I recall a mixture of images and episodes involving fishing with my brother Arthur and our neighborhood friend Joey when I was 9 or 10. I don’t remember all of the particulars, or their exact chronological sequence, but I do know it began with our desire to fish, and it lasted less than a year, over a series of Saturday adventures.



The concept of fishing was first planted in my head when my mother and father bought 2 fishing rods to take as gifts on a driving trip to Mexico. I was greatly intrigued by this rugged sport that our Mexican cousins engaged in, and soon began pestering my dad, month after month, to buy us one. I really started badgering him after observing the large number of men and other boys fishing along the shore of Echo Park Lake. Although he never bought us authentic fishing rods, my dad did compromise on giving us some basic instruction and providing the most rudimentary equipment. He took Arthur and me to a fish and tackle store on Glendale Blvd near the park, where we purchased licenses, fish hooks, weights, floaters (or bobbers), and fishing line on a spindle-like device that I’d seen holding kite string. That was the extent of his investment in our sporting endeavor. I think my dad was testing us to measure our commitment, and see if our early enthusiasm would peeter out with the difficulties and frustrations of the sport.



On a cold, gloomy Saturday morning we began our careers as fishermen. At that time we lived on Cove Ave, a street that slopped downhill to intersect with Glendale, about 4 or 5 miles north of the park. I had recruited our next-door neighbor Joey to join my brother and I on this adventure. Since neither of our fathers was interested in sacrificing their Saturday morning on a seemingly frivolous infantile pursuit, they had provided us with bus fare, and a bag of sandwich bread to mold into balls of dough to bait our hooks. Thinking back on the three of us standing at the bus stop, we must have presented a pretty raggedy picture of fishermen. But at the time we were bursting with excitement and pride at our self-reliance and independence. We felt so confident and mature that we quickly started changing our plans and improvising. Instead of spending our bus fare, we decided to walk to the park, and use the money for lunch. Plus, an extended walk gave us more time to talk, imagine, and visualize ourselves mastering this manly art. Unfortunately, it turned into a disaster! The bread didn’t stay on the hooks. Our fishing lines, without the benefit of a pole, went straight down from the shore, where no fish would ever venture. We looked pathetic, surrounded by older, more capable men and boys, with gleaming fishing rods in their hands, fish knives on their belts, and bait boxes at their feet, casting their fishing lines far out into the lake where the big trout swam. Yet, we didn’t give up.





I don’t recall if it was Joey or Arthur, or both, but someone spoke up, magically dispelling the pall of gloom and frustration that had descended over us. This wasn’t defeat, they insisted, this was merely the first act in a play that had yet to unfold. We needed to recover, review, and reconsider what we were doing and what needed changing. They suggested that we stop trying to fish, get something to eat, sit back and begin studying the fishermen around us. So, with hot dogs in our hands, we took our time strolling around the lake, observing the fishermen on the shore, studying their equipment and movements, and asking questions. The men were more responsive than the boys our age, who probably felt more competitive and didn’t want us benefitting from their own learning curve. On that first trip to the lake we learned a lot. Fishing required an optimistic outlook because it took time and patience, but, at the same time, the sport reciprocated with opportunities for beneficial solitude and comradeship. The fishermen we encountered were thoughtful and helpful, gladly sharing information and advice. Most importantly, we learned that we needed real bait, preferably the worms sold at the boathouse, and actual fishing poles. Our optimistic and positive outlook about fishing soon began paying dividends, with the first of many providential signs and occurrences that marked our journey in fishing.


While walking around our neighborhood on the following trash pickup day, we came across two old bamboo fishing poles standing upright in a trashcan. Although no accompanying gear was provided, Arthur and I clearly felt it was a divine gift encouraging us to continue, and foretelling our success. Upon our arrival home, we combined the poles to our fish line, hooks, weights, and floaters, and felt ready to go. The next Saturday we truly believed we looked like fishermen, trudging along Glendale with the poles on our shoulders and a bucket in our hand. This time we combined our fares to buy a can of worms at the boathouse and set out baiting our hooks and casting our lines as best we could.


Thus began a series of mornings, when we passed up Saturday cartoons and the Little Rascals on television, to walk four miles to the park to fish. We continued week after week, with the occasional interruption for family events and trips, believing that one-day a fish would be caught. Our pattern was to buy worms (or bring our own), fish until they were gone, and then walk around the lake, observing, comparing, and soaking up more fishing lore. We learned how hooks were properly baited, rods were cast, and how fish were reeled in and gutted. Despite our impatience at never catching anything we never stopped believing in our inevitable success. In fact, our joking, laughter, and conversations about school, our parents, sports, movies, and television assuaged those feelings and gave us hope. Those lazy and languid mornings and afternoons, sitting on the banks of the lake or lying on the slopping grass, were the precursors of the talks and bull sessions we would have with high school and college friends many years later. When it grew late, or we became restless, we walked home – and talked along the way. Despite our failures, we actually got better, and were occasionally rewarded with tugs on the line and sinking floats or bobbers, indicating a nibbling fish. Those signs were just enough to keep us coming back week after week. Then finally, one Saturday, everything came together.



That morning, as we approached the lake we discovered a covered drainage bunker along the shore that contained soft, silt-like soil teeming with big, fat worms – eliminating the need to buy bait. We tried a new fishing spot, believing that shade and water temperature would make a difference, and we experienced some remarkably good casting, getting our floaters out to where the bigger fish swan. Then it happened. I felt a tug on the line and saw the floater sink into the water, and then the line went rigid.
“I got one!” I shouted for the first time. Immediately Art and Joey were beside me, whispering advice and encouragement:
“Bring him in steady”.
“Don’t yank!”
“You got him!”
Since we had no reels, I assume we pulled the trout in by hand, rolling the line around and around the rod. There he was on the line – a trout, about 4 or 5 inches long. It was the sort of fish most veteran fishermen would have thrown back, but this was my reward for weeks and weeks of early rising, and long walks to and from the lake. Ultimately that trout was our only trophy, and I wasn’t going to toss it back. Filling the bucket we had carried all of those weeks with water, we placed the fish inside and started home. Feeling happy and triumphant, we rode back home on the bus, dying to tell our families of our achievement and describing the event. The trout found a temporary home in our bathtub, where we showed it off all weekend, until it perished from lack of oxygen and neglect. It also signaled the demise of our fishing careers.


After walking around the perimeter of the lake, taking photos from as many perspectives as I could think of, I rested at one of the few benches dotting the shore. Gazing up at the new skyline that framed it’s southern horizon, I was reminded of a emotional passage from Nora Ephron’s movie, You’ve Got Mail, when Kathleen Kelly mused in an email about the passing of  time and her bookstore, Little Shop Around the Corner:


“People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all…has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store. Did I tell you that? It’s a lovely store, and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it’ll be a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it’s a tribute to the city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that’s the sort of thing I’m always saying. But the truth is… I’m heartbroken. I feel as if part of me has died, and no one can ever make it right”.




I felt a little like Kathleen Kelly at that moment. Our family had moved away, our childhood friends and neighbors were gone, and all I had left of those times were my fractured memories of days long ago. I was also struck by the paradoxical idea of how much and, yet, how little had really changed as I looked about the lake and the surrounding homes, condos, and apartments. Much was the same. Angelus Temple, the church built by the evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson, was still standing there, across the street, as glaringly white and structurally impressive as ever. The twin spouting water fountains still sprayed water skywards in geyser-like fashion, the boathouse still rented paddleboats, and the gardens of lotus flowers still floated on the surface of the lake. What had changed was the city around it, and the economic and ethnic makeup of the people who lived in this now trendy section of town. When we moved away in 1960, as part of the middle class migration to the Westside and the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, Echo Park was the poor man’s Silver Lake, with a predominately Mexican and Mexican-American population. Over the succeeding decades it became more and more economically depressed and gang ridden. The grass and lotus flowers died, the trout disappeared, and the water became scummier and scummier. Yet, with the turn of the century, the city changed and the park was renewed. You can’t be disappointed in a city that keeps re-inventing itself, because that’s what world-class cities do. Cities just don’t stay the same. Neighborhoods change, children grow up and move away, and grow old. Yes, the city was different, but Echo Park and its lake had managed to survive and stay very much as it had always been. It was reassuring. Oh, and I learned that the city still stocks the lake with trout, and allows fishing during the summer months, from June to September. Some things should never change.

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school,
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none,
I can read the writing on the wall.

Kodachrome –
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summer
Makes you think the world’s a sunny day.
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away.
(Kodachrome: Paul Simon – 1973)

I started hating cameras after my father joined Camhi/Bardovi Photography as their “opaque specialist”. This was a new commercial photography studio established in Culver City in 1956 or 57. He was offered this entry-level position by one of the partners, a friend from their Fred Archer Photography School days after the war. At first the job consisted of part-time work after his day job at Foix Bakery, and I imagined him as a budding disciple of Ansel Adams, and a real-life version of Man With a Camera, a 1950’s television series starring Charles Bronson. I suffered my first disillusionment with the profession when I learned what his job really consisted of. Opaque photography was the “old fashioned” method of “photo-shopping” one item of a photograph out of and on to a different background. It was done by hand, and required his sitting at a specially lit desk, and painting out, or masking, one figure or object from one photographic negative (or transparency) so it could be mounted on another photo. This painstaking work required a steady hand and a calm and patient demeanor (two characteristic which my dad demonstrated to us throughout his life), and it gave me my first insight into what photography was really all about.





Photography became incredibly popular in the 1940’s and 50’s after Eastman Kodak simplified the once cumbersome process into the slogan, “you press the button, we do the rest”. With the Kodak Brownie, the company made photography available to the masses, convincing them that it was a “snap and shoot” process. Unfortunately, by having a professional in the family, I learned otherwise. Photography was actually a time-consuming practice that required hard work and concentration in the darkroom before a final “positive” print, or photograph was produced. Most people never saw this part of the work. They simply pointed cameras, pushed buttons, deposited the completed rolls of film at a drug store, and picked up their prints the following week. This was the glamorous, consumer side of photography that I imagined when I received my first Brownie. It was magic, and I didn’t mind too much the delay of seeing the prints of photos I’d forgot I’d taken. However, when dad joined the Camhi/Bardovi Studio, I was finally exposed to the business side of the profession, and quickly lost my appreciation of its art and creativity.





You see, even though my father was a “professional”, working as a salaried photographer for a very reputable studio, it was more than a 9 to 5 job. In order to buy homes and raise families, photographers had to work well beyond those hours and function as laborers, craftsmen, artists, salesmen, and businessmen in order to live. This was hard, time-consuming work. My dad did favors and picked up extra money by photographing children, family and community events, weddings, and sports. He joined clubs, community organizations, and professional associations, and attended all their meetings and events. I became aware of this side of the business because, as the oldest child in my family, I was given the honor of being his assistant at many of these functions. I will admit that the responsibility was exciting at first, but after the second or third time, it became WORK. At family events and weddings, I wanted to join my brothers and sisters playing with cousins and uncles, not following my father around, carrying his extra cameras and flash bulbs. I wanted to watch the baseball and football games we attended in the stands, not moving from sideline to sideline, lugging equipment. The worst was joining him on Friday nights when he developed the film he shot, and printing the negatives to produce photos. This was a long, long process, which usually found me fast asleep, sitting in his desk chair, waiting for prints to dry. By the time I graduated high school, I had two ironclad opinions about photography: I would never become a professional, or adopt it as a hobby. This last opinion really confused Kathy after we married. She was completely befuddled by my total aversion to cameras. She had to assume that responsibility, and happily, she loved it and did a great job. Our photo albums are filled with her pictures of both our families and our children. If it hadn’t been for Kathy there would be no photographic evidence of our marriage, life, or children. I bring up these obscure pieces of family history because I’ve lately gotten involved in a new project that has resurrected some of these old feelings about a time-consuming aspect of digital photography.




Despite my long-held prejudices about photography, I have to confess that I have spent the last 16 years taking tons of pictures on ever-improving digital cameras. I started taking pictures while a principal at Van Nuys Middle School and discovered the ease and simplicity of the process on small, pocket-sized cameras. Gone was the intrusive camera with bulky equipment case and accessories, or the need for flash bulbs or batteries. Gone was the need to develop film in a darkroom, or even dropping it off at a store for processing. All I needed was my Canon Sureshot, a computer, and a printer, and I had instant photos. It was a miracle! Not only was it a functional and practical piece of equipment at school, where I could use it to record incidents, events, and people, but it was a way of interacting with people and recording family events. Of course, eventually the iPhone and other modern cell phones would match and overtake these early pocket-sized cameras, but they were my first, practical enticement back into my dad’s world of photography. I became so confident and visible in using my ubiquitous pocket camera at school, that when I retired from Sun Valley Middle School in 2009, I was given a high-quality Canon camera as my departing gift. Suddenly, and for the first time, I truly appreciated that part of my dad’s art that I never allowed in. I discovered that I loved taking pictures!





However, this last year, I’ve gotten into a panic about preserving my photos. At about the time I left Van Nuys Middle School in 2005, I purchased an external hard drive to save my expanding digital photo library and reduce the storage space on my computer. Up until then I’d been saving and backing up my photos on separate disks and flash drives. By the time I retired in 2009, I had managed to transfer all the photos on these disks and drives onto the external, hoping to consolidate. So from 2009, year-by-year, I was blissfully moving iPhoto albums from computer to the external hard drive, believing they were safe and secure. Well last year when Kathy went to retrieve an early photo from the external drive, she was shocked to discover that some files were unreadable and some were empty of photos. We could only conclude that the external had corrupted with time and many of my photos were lost. So began my search for a new method of storing and preserving all my photos. It was while researching the various “digital cloud” methods of storing photos, videos, and files, that I discovered that by virtue of our Amazon Prime membership we already had unlimited storage capability on the Amazon Cloud.


I’ve gotten myself stuck in long-term projects before, and I’ve learned that my initial enthusiasm doesn’t always survive long hours of monotonous, boring work involved. My one exception was the Vinyl Music Project that I started in August of 2010 (see The Vinyl Music Project) and finished on December 29, 2012 (see A Good Day For Me). It was not an easy 2-year process, and there were countless delays, frustrations, and interruptions, but I got it done. What drove me, I suppose, was my love of music. Music has a mystical ability to transport me through time, emotions, memories, and dreams. It is lovely to hear and experience on many levels. Well, I’m finally beginning to think of photography and photographs in the same way. Of course, most people immediately recognize the historical significance of photographs and their ability to document events, but since 2009, I think I’ve begun to see the art of photography in the way my father did, so many years ago. I think photography was music for my dad, and he knew how to play, compose, and arrange it in many, many ways. The hard work was simply part of the creative effort, and he didn’t dwell on that aspect. He kept his eyes on the final product.




My dad was not the only Delgado who became a hardworking artist and craftsman in the creative field of photography. He helped hire his younger brother, Ricardo (Kado) Delgado, who joined him at Camhi/Bardovi Photography for a few years before starting his own studio. And although my dad died much to soon to see his children marry, his grandson, Carlos Delgado, joined the profession in 2006 as a photo/journalist. My dad helped me appreciate the hardships of his chosen career, and I have unbounded admiration for the work of Kado, who ventured into color photography, and Carlos, who graduated into the digital age. I am a dilettante in comparison to these professionals, so the least I can do is put forward the effort to insure that the photos I’ve taken, and the old photos I’ve copied, are preserved in a place that is safe and accessible. So I’ll let you know how this new project proceeds.