Just the facts, ma'am

This post will take us down memory lane to go over some basic facts about what we crammed into our eight-month stay in Los Angeles, which turned out to be quite a bit. Not counting the days before we moved into our apartment and the day Mom and I left, we were living in Los Angeles for a total of 243 days. Although there were some slow days, we definitely took advantage of our short-term residency on the west coast and visited quite a few places. I was keeping a running total for a couple of months, but then I got behind and stopped. But fortunately for you loyal readers I went back and completed the task of documenting all the touristy places we visited. These totals may not be 100% accurate, but they're pretty close. We (meaning at least me and Mom, usually all three of us) made a total of 65 visits to 30 different places of interest, such as amusement parks, zoos, well-known shopping venues, etc., on 48 different days. (I did not count the unexpected tour of Watts in these totals.) That's an average of one place every 3.7 days, which I think is pretty impressive especially over a span of eight months. To refresh your memory, here they are in order of most-visited to least-visited: (8) Knott's Berry Farm (You knew that had to be at or near the top, didn't you?) (8) Olvera Street (Sometimes that was just to eat, but most of those were shopping visits) (6) Griffith Park (Just the park, not the observatory and planetarium) (4) Busch Gardens (Got beer?) (4) Santa Monica Beach (3) Chinatown - Los Angeles (3) La Brea Tar Pits (2) Alligator Farm (Feeding time!) (2) Disneyland (2) Griffith Park Observatory and Planetarium (2) Jungleland (Llamas not only spit, they bite.) (2) Los Angeles Zoo (The elephant's going to the bathroom!) (2) Universal City Studios (Put me down!) (1) Art Museum (Got nudes?) (1) Calico Ghost Town (1) Chinatown - San Francisco (1) Farmer's Market (I'm sure there was more than one visit there.) (1) Fisherman's Wharf - Los Angeles (1) Fisherman's Wharf - San Francisco (1) Japanese Deer Park (1) Little Tokyo (1) Lombard Street in San Francisco (1) Marineland (1) Movieland Wax Museum (1) Muir Woods (1) Natural History Museum (1) Palace of Living Art (1) Ports O' Call Village (1) San Antonio Winery (1) Santa's Village September and August of 1967 were the busiest months, with 20 and 13 touristy visits, respectively. My grandmother visited us for a week in September, so that helped. During our entire stay we twice hit three spots in the same day and on 13 occasions we hit two spots in the same day. In addition to visiting places we also visited or were visited by a number of people during our stay in Los Angeles. Here are some stats in that area: At least 22 different people and one dog visited our apartment during our stay. Including the eight days my grandmother stayed with us in September and the four days Cliff and his family stayed with us after Christmas, I think Mom's letters and diary entries mentioned visitors to the apartment on 29 different days. There were probably more. Here is a list of all the visitors in order of appearance (like they sometimes do in movie credits), with their relationship to us. Barbara Hansen (wife of Dad's coworker Erland Hansen)
Bee Gee (unknown, presumably wife of a coworker)
Eloise Mordecai (Mom's mom)
Ed Kubala (coworker of Dad's from Texas) and his family (Joyce, Stephen and Stephanie)
Jimmy H. and Marsha (friends of the Kubalas)
Gene Dirr (coworker of Dad's) and his wife Suzie
Ginger (the Dirrs' dog)
Mr. and Mrs. Sivell (old, old couple who were friends of my paternal grandparents)
Eric (the baby Mom babysat for the week before Christmas 1967)
Hartford Jenkins (large cigar-smoking coworker of Dad's)
Cliff Flescher (sp?) (coworker of Dad's) and his family (Mary, Ginger and Lynn)
Erland Hansen
Hartford Jenkins' girlfriend, name unknown
Art Snyder (insurance examiner stationed in Los Angeles for just a few weeks in February 1968)
Mom and Dad also visited various people in their homes while we were living in Los Angeles. Counting the Thanksgiving 1967 trip to San Francisco to visit Cliff and his family as one visit, I counted 13 visits to other people's homes. The only one in addition to visiting the Hansens, the Dirrs, the Sivells, and Cliff's family was the party at the apartment of the bridge playing bachelor on December 22, 1967. And let's not forget that I visited Mrs. Bruffy, the lady with the aquarium in her apartment, on several occasions. The next post will reflect on the Time Machine we went through while going through the letters and diary entries.