Unlike the letter postmarked August 1, this letter did not go via airmail. The stamp on this one was 5 cents vs. the 8 cent airmail stamp on the previous letter.
Dear Mother and Mike,
How was your trip to Houston? I hope you all had a good time. Mike, did Mother behave herself?
We had a good weekend. Friday night we just drove down Hollywood Blvd. I didn't see anything very exciting, but I enjoyed getting out. David Wayne took his gun so he could shoot "hippies" and "plain-clothes hippies." The latter name he got from a TV advertisement.
[It looks like my dislike for hippies has progressed from name-calling out the car window to drive-by assassination attempts. I'm not sure what the term "plain-clothes hippies" is referring to. A quick Google search returns a few things referring to plainclothes policemen dressing like hippies in order to infiltrate the groups.]
Saturday we drove to the beach. We found Marineland, but we didn't go in. Dave thinks he can get "free" tickets later. (Ha) It was really a beautiful drive by the ocean. At one point we were only 11 miles from Long Beach. The homes - real homes, no apartments - are just something! They almost all have swimming pools - and they sit on the ocean practically. Even there by the ocean though, the homes were crowded together. I thought maybe they could spread out a little away from the city. The smog nearly killed us that day. We both had burning eyes and I had a terrible headache. The smog isn't too bad where we live and I hadn't even noticed it before Saturday.
[The history of smog in Log Angeles goes back to the 1940s, with a long string of various efforts to improve the air quality. A good article with this history through 1997 is at this link: http://www.aqmd.gov/home/library/public-information/publications/50-years-of-progress. A link with fewer words and several entertaining smog-related photos can be found here: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/las-smoggy-past-in-photos.]
Sunday we had to leave the apartment. They were having a peace march down Wilshire Blvd. That's the street where Dave works and it's only three blocks from us. The whole idea made Dave anything but peaceful - so we left!
Let me tell you about this march. The city of Los Angeles turned down their petition so they ("hippies, beatniks, ?") could have it. Then the Supreme Court jumps in and says, "They are Americans so you _can't_ turn them down." Americans? People like these, America could do without. Right before the "march" it looked like a parade or a fairground around this area. I think everybody in L. A. except us turned out to watch. There were all kinds of people, too -- freaks, men, women, children, families just coming from church, whole apartment house gatherings. I never saw anything like it. I really don't know yet how it turned out. Every time they would start telling about the arrests on the radio, Dave would snap it off muttering under his breath while I would hurriedly direct David Wayne's attention to the fascinating scenery - billboards, factories, highway directional signs.
[Although I read this letter in its entirety before transcribing it, I still cracked up while typing that paragraph.]
[What's all this about a peace march and why would that be something to stay away from? Allow me to set the stage for you. The Vietnam War was escalating at this time, and protests against the war were escalating as well. The protest marches were generally peaceful until June 23, 1967, when an estimated crowd of 10,000 protesters clashed with Los Angeles police officers outside the hotel where President Lyndon Johnson was staying. Here's a really good article about that event: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/05/crowd-battles-lapd-as-war-protest-turns-violent-.html. What's really important about the June 23 event is that it foreshadowed what was about to happen around the country with regard to protests against the war.]
[Now, try to put yourself in my parents' shoes. Leading up to the march, the local news outlets were surely reminding everyone what happened less than two months prior. The city of Los Angeles tried to prevent the march and was overruled in court. The L. A. police force was likely on edge based on what happened in June. My dad, having served a short stint in the Army after being drafted in 1961, didn't have much sympathy for your stereotypical long-haired, draft-dodging, trouble-making hippie. (Refer back to the August 1 letter where Mom thought Dad would enjoy running over a hippie or two.) My mom apparently had similar feelings, perhaps not so strong that she wanted to run anybody over but she would have been ok with denying certain "Americans" their first amendment rights to peaceably assemble. So now 10,000 of these troublemakers are going to march within three blocks of our apartment and the police are going to be ready this time and the marchers are going to be ready for a clash and ohmigod they might burn down this part of the city like they did in Watts and this kind of stuff never happened back home and we have a five-year-old kid and we have to get the hell outta here. So they did.]
[So what happened during the August 6, 1967 march? Based on the Los Angeles Times article from the following day . . .
. . . there were about 7500 peace demonstrators in the march. Two brawls broke out, and neither one was with the police but rather organized groups attacking the marchers. One group that clashed with marchers was a group of about 80 Cuban refugees and the other was a group of 15 members of the American Nazi Party, wearing swastika armbands. (They may have been Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis.) The main speaker at the end of the march was none other than Dr. Linus Pauling, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. So rather than go to the nearby city park to see the only person to be awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, my parents thought five-year-old me would rather go to an amusement park. It's hard to believe I studied engineering with that kind of support, right? Ok, back to the letter.]
Our day turned out very good though. We drove to Knott's Berry Farm. This is a great place - it's free except for rides and eats. Parking is free and there is no admission to any of the buildings. It isn't as big as Six Flags nor as clean, but it is interesting. David Wayne and I rode the train. It is a real one with a real, old-timey passenger car. They staged a train hold-up with bandits. David Wayne made me put my purse between us after that. They also have a stagecoach ride, coal-miner train that goes into a coal mine, and cable cars that take people to their cars. They may have more, but that is all I saw. Dave got David Wayne a souvenir gold coin and he was thrilled with it. One building there has old player pianos that you can listen to. We showed David Wayne an old fire engine that was pulled by horses, old hearses; we went through an old school house, and boat hill. There was much more to see but we plan to go back. Right across the street was an alligator farm. That's probably our next adventure. A Movieland wax museum is right down the street, also. Disneyland is very close - at least it's in that area.
[I know we'll be back to visit those other places, as well as visiting Knott's Berry Farm again. Since I have so many photos and other things from Knott's Berry Farm I'll present something each time Knott's comes up in a diary entry or letter. Since Mom mentioned the cable cars in this letter, here are the front and back of two of the three cable car tickets I have.
A few points to note:
- These tickets are 3.5" x 8". - 20 cents then bought about as much as $1.46 now. - Note the rhyming nature of the descriptions of the various areas on the front side of the ticket. - The five cable cars at Knott's Berry Farm were purchased from the city of San Francisco.]
We're mainly just trying to locate everything so we can find them easily when you get here. Do you have any idea yet when that might be? Dave found out that Friday night is a bad time at the airport - so plan on coming in at another time. I'm even planning on driving while you are here if I don't forget how. Of course, Dave will still have to get the car in and out of the garage. I'll never get brazen enough for that.
[I remember Mom talking about the garage at our apartment. As I recall (and confirmed with Google Street View), the driveway into the garage dipped down from street level. It probably required a hard right turn to park the car into a spot under the building, which would not have been easy in my dad's Pontiac Bonneville. Hopefully we'll hear more about that in a future letter or diary entry.]
I can't tell you how old David Wayne will be when you arrive. He was 7 the last letter, but we made a cake last week - just a plain one layer white cake - and he's 8 now. Maybe he'll slow down at 10. By then he will be the same age as Jeffrey, the boy upstairs and his only playmate. We're going to take Jeffrey to Knott's Berry Farm with us next time.
[I think the desire to be one year older tends to fade away for everybody at some point.]
I will close this chapter of "The Jennings in Los Angeles" and will write another soon. I still patrol the mailbox every day. The mail carriers all know me while the garbage collectors and David Wayne are developing a warm friendship. Poor Dave, he just knows plain working people.
[Since mail carriers and garbage collectors are most definitely working people, I think what Mom meant here was plain "office" people.]
In the next letter I will send you some money for dog food. I forgot to get any from Dave this morning. How is Taffy? If you have time, Mike, go out and play with her a little. David Wayne and I really miss her.
[Don't send cash in the mail!]
Love,
Linda
P. S. Mother, do you know of a good book I could get in paperback? Since we've been here I've read "Ben-Hur," "Exodus," and "Valley of the Dolls." I've looked at every store and I can't find any except murder and sex books.
[And then at the bottom of this letter, printed instead of in cursive handwriting like the rest of the letter, was the following line, which gave me a chuckle when I saw it:]
Send Me Your Zip Code!
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