House Adventure Part II

Freebies

(Photo of free door,

after much stripping, sanding and painting)

I learned about the joy of getting stuff for free at an early age. When my Dad lived in a tiny studio apartment on Paloma Court in Venice in the mid-70's our family frequently checked out the neighborhood Free Box (similar in concept, not scale, to this) a few blocks away and came away with cool toys, useful household items and clothing. People in the neighborhood would leave items they no longer needed but which were still usable in the box for others to take and use. Someone in the neighborhood had put a wooden box, the size of a small trunk on the sidewalk in front of their home, with a note that read something like "Take what you need, leave what you don't" Even as a 6 year old, I was well aware that this was definitely NOT how things usually worked in our society. I remember the thrill I would get as we walked down the street toward the weathered box, wondering what treasures we would find when my Dad lifted the lid.



I still love gettting stuff for free and giving stuff away. I am a member of Freecycle and am so happy when I can pass along useful items to other folks. I am looking forward with much aniticipation to an upcoming event that a friend is organizing, a women's clothing swap party where a bunch of us are bringing clothes that no longer fit us to exchange with one another. I often leave items out on the curb for the scrap metal collectors who cruise our neighborhood on trash day. And I can now justify my freebie-mania, knowing that I am practicing the three R's: reducing (my consumption of the earth's resources, the amount of stuff going into landfills, the amount of my income that goes to multi-national corporations, etc.) recycling, and re-using.



Of course, my Dad was the most influential conservationist in my life, he taught me how to mend socks, make flying toys out of popsicle sticks and re-purpose old furniture. His conservation ethic and skills at reusing found materials probably came both from his experience growing up in a poor family, especially his grandparents immigrants from rural Mexico and also from the vocational training in the building trades that he got from his instructor, an older man from New York whose family had emigrated to the US from Eastern Europe and lived through the Depression.



So, no one was more thrilled than my Dad when my husband and I started picking up old house parts from the streets and sidewalks of LA to use in our remodelling project. He literally shouted with joy when we brought home an amazing, turn of the century solid sugar pine door with original bevelled glass and a matching screen door ("before" photo at right). He grinned from ear-to-ear when we brought home the 800 lb "built-in" china cabinet (photo below), salvaged from a house being demolished near Chinatown. And he was truly impressed to hear how my husband and a friend had taken two pry bars, a few screwdrivers and a small pick-up truck to the doomed house and returned to deposit this treasure on our front lawn, where it rested until we could get enough strong hands to move it to the back patio. (And he didn't laugh, when we later learned that to install the "free" front door and move the china cabinet into the house, we'd have to spend big money to tear down the front wall and reframe the whole thing to current-day standards!) He happily lent his pick-up truck, shovel and muscle power as we made multiple trips to various construction sites around town to pick-up loads of arroyo river rocks that would become garden edging, and the dry river bed arrangement that would solve one of our drainage issues.


I am proud that my spendthrift ways make me the latest in a long line of conservationists, though my impoverished ancestors would probably just call my habits being smart or making do. We have gotten a lot of joy from the freebies we have used to rehab our house. Every so often, I look at the front door and recall the unmistakable sweet and fagrant scent that the nearly 100 year old sugar pine gave off when we sanded it down. Not only do we have high quality, historically appropriate pieces for the house, some made from material no longer available, we have the satisfaction of finding, hauling and, in some cases installing these things in our home ourselves. And each of these house parts provides us a cool story to share with guests and connects our house to a place or event in recent LA history. On top of all this, we have the memories of working together in this project with my Dad and the image of his broad, infectious grin and expressions of disbelief (Man, how do you find these things?!) over each one of our finds--things that you just can't buy at Home Depot or Lowe's!!

Across Two Generations: A Love Affair with Los Angeles

I originally wrote this piece in Spring 2004 to memorialize my father, Tony Moreno. At the time, I shared it with family and friends who said it brought back memories of his smile and his stories. I'm posting this here with the hopes of keeping his stories alive and sharing his unique perspective on LA.

It is a clear spring day, the sunshine and a spectacular view of the San Gabriels behind the downtown skyline dazzle me as I drive north on Main Street, on my way home from work. My thoughts wander as I pass grim-faced garment factories, sidewalk paleta vendors and the crowds that line the sidewalks of Skid Row (or Gallery Row, as it has been christened by the neighborhood council).

Taking in these scenes of L.A. urban life, I feel joy and gratitude that I live in such an exciting, beautiful, and even contradictory place where the breathtaking natural features are within view and driving distance of all the colors and classes of people who make this place their home. In my mind’s eye, I see my Dad’s wide grin and sparkling brown eyes, and hear the words he would often say on days like this: “I LOVE Los Angeles.”

I, too, LOVE Los Angeles. I feel a sense of belonging and rootedness that is not often shared by newcomers or even long-time transplants, portrayed in movies or examined by the many academics and others who attempt to describe and dissect this place. My Dad, Tony Moreno, has passed on to me his deep love for this place. This inheritance is priceless and has allowed me to build a rich and meaningful life in a place that is derided for its rootlessness and shallowness.

Though he loved this city, my Dad understood its faults and the injustices endured by many here, including our own family. He introduced me to those too, by deciding that I was old enough at 14, to read and understand the Raymond Chandler novels that he passed along to me, by sharing his stories about growing up in East LA and the Van Nuys barrio, and the milestones of LA history, as he understood and experienced them. Born in 1949 at LA County hospital, my Dad spent his early childhood in Van Nuys with his paternal grandparents, Antonio and Balbina, who had emigrated from Mexico in the early decades of the twentieth century. During his 54 years here, he witnessed many key events in LA history: the development of the San Fernando Valley, the construction of most of the LA Freeway network, the Chicano Movement, the Sylmar earthquake, the 1984 Olympics, to name just a few.

Filtered through my Dad's intellect and love of storytelling, these LA milestones became part of his story. Joyous and generous by nature, he marvelled at the beauty of LA, despite his childhood experiences with segregation and unjust conditions in East LA. As an adult, he would praise the beautiful aspects of life here and proudly and happily share his stories and views with friends and family. He especially loved showing out-of-town visitors the things he felt make Los Angeles great: Venice Beach, the Griffith Observatory, Mulholland Drive on a clear night, the Great Wall mural in the LA River, Chinatown, the hills of City Terrace .

As a teenager, I cringed every time my father would tell us (for the umpteenth time) his stories: the chickens that his grandparents raised; his shock when he saw his grandmother kill one of the chickens for dinner; the time he painted the dog green to match the newly painted house; the way the relatives all lived in houses next to one another on Delano Street in Van Nuys or back to back, without fences so that the extended family was able to freely walk from one house to the next. He also spoke fondly about the farm fields and open spaces that still existed in the San Fernando Valley in the early 50s; running away from home as a child to the Sepulveda Dam, and running back home at dusk, driven by the fear of the hobos who--he had been warned-- would catch and roast small children to eat, walking miles (or so it seemed) in the mid-summer Valley heat with his uncles to have “tomato wars” in the newly picked tomato fields.

He had a story for just about every part of town we visited together: Boyle Heights and East LA, where he lived as a teenager, the garment district where he got his first job after high school, City Terrace, Dodger Stadium, Griffith Park, the site of the love-ins and be-ins he would attend with my mother. When I lived in Silver Lake in the early 90’s, he told me about going to parties in Silver Lake in the 60s and encountering openly gay Latinos for the first time.

After my parents split up, my Dad moved to Venice Beach, away from relatives and the places and memories that all his stories recounted. Here, he made new memories with his children, exploring a new part of town and discovering the things that made this place beautiful and distinct: the “free box” where Venice neighbors would put unwanted household items, clothes, books and toys to exchange with one another; the bike paths, the marina, the boarded up carousel on Santa Monica pier, Muscle Beach, the hand ball courts where men of every size, stature, and color gathered for pick-up handball games.

Only later, as an adult and urban planning student would I realize that these experiences with my father and his stories connected me to this place in a way that would bring meaning and structure to my life. As I go through my life without him in it, I often stop to remind myself that he is the source of much of the hope and energy that drives me in my efforts to make LA a more just place. Each time I share one of his stories or my own, or talk about LA history, I am sharing the legacy of joy, beauty and hope that he left me.

Seeing through my Father's Eyes: Musings about my Dad, and his view of our Hometown...Los Angeles

I began writing about my relationship with Los Angeles after my dad's sudden death in 2003. Grieving the loss of this important person in my life, I began writing as a way to name and hold on to the things that made my Dad unique and the ways in which he contributed to my world view, and especially the ways that he passed on his love for Los Angeles to me. I hope that writing these things down will keep them in front of me, the way that my talks with my Dad did when he was alive.

Sorting through my Dad's possessions after his death, I came across photos of our family in the early and mid-70's and found that most of the photos my Dad had taken of my brothers and me were posed in front of murals and other public art, the pavilions on the Venice Board walk and the Santa Monica pier, giving a distinct sense of place to those memories. My Dad's passionate interest in the features that make each L.A. neighborhood unique, and his documenting these things in family photos, were my first lesson in urban planning. Looking at those photos, it seems inevitable that I would grow up to study urban planning and L.A. History.

What I hope to convey through this blog is the many different ways that I've come to understand Los Angeles. This is my effort at presenting a holistic picture of Los Angeles, one equally influenced by my father and his viewpoint and stories as by the work of scholars, filmmakers, and historians and filtered through my own experience as an Angeleno, an urban planner, historian, community organizer, Chicana and a person passionately engaged with her hometown, Los Angeles.