Tour de Hawthorne

Sunday, January 28, 2018   Hawthorne, CA

12123 Oxford Street! Not TOO many differences from how it looked when she grew up there. Janet writes: At one time there was a beautiful Bird of Paradise plant in front of the middle window. And, our old brown gate had been replaced. Beautiful maple trees no longer lined the parkway, and the grass did not resemble the once-lush lawn that was there. No doubt the drought put an end to that. The rest of the homes on the street remained as remembered, but the little Mom and Pop store, that we visited so often, had been converted into a home.

 Alleys are not commonly used any more, but our little ally way was nicely paved and the garage door and gate had been replaced. We had a fun day driving all over the place visiting familiar sites, and concluded with our Pizza Show reunion.

We began the day with the El Torito Sunday Brunch. We were the first ones in the door, and had quite a champagne feast. It used to be Boys Mkt on the left and Clark Drugs on the right.

 Our selfie from inside El Torito.

 After breakfast, we began our explore of our home town. Eucalyptus School was still there pretty much unchanged except for the colorful signage and its tall fences and closed gates.

York School had the same tall fences. No more playing in the school yard after school or on weekends. We weren't sure if the fences were there to keep students in or uninvited guests out.

That's the closest we could get to Intermediate, where we met 55 years ago! I took the photo through the fence that blocked access to the front of the school.

While we were eating at El Torito, Janet posted our photo on Facebook and Marianne Woods immediately realized we were in Hawthorne and hopped in her car to come for a visit. We met at the Hawthorne Swimming Pool lot and walked to the front of the school for this photo. No access to this school either.

We then went to 123rd Place. Our old house has not changed at all in the past 10 years. We visited with Tom Hoffarth and he said George is still the owner. He waved to us from behind his truck.

My "relative" George Harrison's mother-in-law's home. LOL Yes, Olivia Arias grew up here. Louise Arias is still living there, and they moved in back in about 1948. We wandered around a bit, as I pointed out Leda Griffin's, Betty Kean Rodriquez's, Kathy Poe's, and Cathe Zeitler's homes.

We were the only tourists visiting the famous Beach Boys monument on this Sunday morning.

I'm pointing to the Mercurio names, and next to it are Beth and Genny Whitlock. My dad paid to have all our names and the years we graduated from HHS added to the monument wall.

We drove past SpaceX, which has put Hawthorne on the national "map". We drove past the Hawthorne Memorial Park, and down the boulevard to Inglewood. Our destination was Inglewood Cemetery, to see the niche and Janet's relatives' grave sites.

 I'm in front of my parents' niche. Janet M. did such a marvelous job of putting numerous photos and mementos into this small cube.

We finally located the Loring graves. Janet had never seen where her grandparents had been laid to rest. It took a while to find them. Next to "Loring" grandparents were her great grandparents (James W. Loring) and one other relative; Cecil, who married to a man nicknamed Clarence Smith "Smithy". She remembered there was a "family" section, and finally now got to see it many decades after her Grandmother Doris died.

We then drove down to the ocean and south along the highway until we reached Rosecrans Blvd. We headed on back to the motel to rest up before our Pizza Show reunion.

This group was already waiting for us when we arrived. The restaurant appeared not to have changed at all in the 60 years we'd known this joint. In this photo with Janet are, l to r, Dan Smith, his wife, Alan Lee, Gary Nieman, and Gene Lombardy.

 And others kept arriving until we had 14 of us crammed in. Here are Cynthia Cherbak, her daughter Chelsea, and Beverly Smith.

 Chuck and Anita Collins, and Doug Smith, who now lives in Simi Valley.

Liz Estrada and I were looking at my book.

 Alan Lee and Gary Nieman, close friends of the Amuchastegui family.

Liz Estrada and Frank Braun. She told us later that she did not like Frank's take on the MeToo movement's reaches.

 All 14 of us! As you might expect, we had the waitresses jumping to keep the pizzas and pitchers of beer coming. Actually, not that many of us drank beer, as most chose to drink pop.

And then, surprise surprise! At the table behind us, I saw Barry and Jill Smith, who just happened to be eating there that night. We got to have a good visit, since we hadn't seen each other since the annual Rich Hess parties ended in 2010 with Rich's sad death in January, 2011. (I was on my boat trip when the final party happened in 2010, so my last visit with the Hawthorne gang at Rich's was 2009.)

Saying good-bye to Beverly Smith and getting to see the familiar Pizza Show front. A sad story of coincidence: Beverly had been working with my sister Janet to get her an autographed photo of Bobby Burgess, the Mouseketeer, so that Janet could present it to our cousin, Cecilia, whose favorite Mouseketeer was Bobby. (Cecilia still dwells on the Mouseketeers to this day.) Beverly and I agreed that she should just deliver the present herself to Cecilia, who lives with my cousin Bill in Norwalk, instead of sending it to Janet who would then need to send it to Cecilia. I learned a day later that on that very evening, Bill committed suicide. Tragic. Cecilia had to immediately move to brother Jim's house in Laguna Niguel, so Beverly ended up sending the Bobby picture to Janet M. after all. When Janet attended Bill's funeral, she was able to give the gift to Cecilia in person.

So long to Liz, who peeled away in her Miata sports car. She and her huge motorhome were staying in Palos Verdes so that she could help heal a friend who had cancer. She borrowed the Miata from them.

As great and fun day seeing our old stomping grounds and friends in Hawthorne!