Today we had lunch with my childhood friend Jill and her husband Bobby. Jill is the daughter of my mother's best friend Helen. Helen passed away a few years ago at the age of 106. We would try to visit Helen each year on her birthday. Even at her last birthday visit when she was bed ridden she spoke cheerfully and made us laugh with her jokes. So today's visit with her daughter was filled with memories of Helen and her husband Tad and my parents. All the good memories of a life long friendship between our families. We spoke especially of the early days in our youth with joint family vacations. In the early years of the 1950's Helen and Tad did not have a car and so our two families would travel to Yosemite, Lake Arrowhead to camp and fish and many other joint vacations. We would pile 4 adults and Jill and her brother and my brother and myself in a small car with suitcases, fishing poles and tents.Later my sister would be added to the mix. We would drive to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco cramped happily together. These were years with no seatbelt laws so the kids might be stashed on the floor, sitting on adult laps or laying across the ledge of the back window. You can't imagine for long hours on a road trip to San Francisco. We were small bodies at that time. On sundays we'd go to church together in Little Tokyo at our church L.A. Union Presbysterian. We would often spend Friday and Saturday nights at Helen and Tad's home in East Los Angeles. The adults would play cards and the kids would play games together or watch tv. On many saturdays when we were very young our dads would take us fishing at the local Hollenbeck park. When we were about 10, we along with Jill's brother Kent and my brother Randy would walk from our homes to Brooklyn Avenue where there was a neighborhood theater. I remember we would pay .25 cents to see an afternoon matinee. We saw a scary picture called "The Attack of the Crab Monsters". Probably inappropriate for a young kid and believe me it scared me! Those days we were very young and summers felt so long and hot. We had a lot of freedom and we walked everywhere unafraid and unconcerned. I had a pair of shoes that I loved and wore them out. There were literally holes in the soles the size of a quarter. Yesterday we reminisced about how we walked to the movies and my feet would start to burn because of the hot cement that burned my soles through the holes. I would say "Jill we have to find some pieces of paper or cardboard to stuff my shoes to cover the holes." We would do that until the paper itself wore out. Then again I'd say "Jill, time to find more paper for my shoes."
Yesterday was filled with nostalgic memories like that. We ate lunch and talked and worked on a jigsaw puzzle. If you remember Helen loved to do them!
The Lido Theatre was a neighborhood movie house in Los Angeles designed by architect L.A. Smith and opened in 1925. It was later renamed Brooklyn Theatre for the street it was located on (Brooklyn Avenue, now called East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue). By 1957 it was operated by Aladdin Enterprises. It was closed in 1989 and has since been demolished.
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