March 16 through July-ish, 1968: Oh baby, baby

The previous post covered the time shortly after Mom and I arrived in Texas, until Dad arrived almost two weeks later on March 15. Today we'll find out when she finally had that baby. Before the baby arrived there was apparently enough time to have some visitors to our house in Carrollton. Fortunately for us, Dad must have wanted to show off the Polaroid camera he purchased while we were in L. A. First, here is a picture of my maternal grandmother (Nana) and Aunt Sara, with some kid in a Batman t-shirt photobombing them in the background.

Aunt Sara is my grandfather's sister who was mentioned in a few of the letters and turned 99 years old on Christmas day of 2017. Next is a really neat picture that includes a few more people mentioned in Mom's letters.

Seated on the couch, left to right, are: My paternal grandparents, David C. and Jessie Lee Jennings Mom, looking more than a little pregnant Uncle Wayne Steven Aunt Linda And of course that's me on the floor laughing. The other neat thing I love about this picture is the items on the coffee table I was able to identify by zooming in. From left to right, they are: - A pacifier, presumably Steven's - A triangular purple glass ashtray that was a fixture in our house for as long as I can remember (since Mom and Dad both smoked) - The first of two glasses that are part of a set that may still be in the house I grew up in - A mug from the Playboy Club in L. A., with a white Playboy swizzle stick - Two Polaroid pictures - A small ashtray I don't remember, plus a tabletop cigarette lighter I don't remember - A newspaper (It might be the Belton Journal, but I can't tell for sure.) - A small bowl for a small turtle, with a bridge and a plastic palm tree. Snappy apparently made it back to Texas! - The second of two glasses from that set referred to previously The last doctor Mom saw in Los Angeles, Dr. Wright, estimated an early April delivery. But Mom waited until April 25 to deliver my sister Laura at Flow Memorial Hospital in Denton, the same hospital where I was born and where my sister Amy would be born in November of 1969. Dad was very happy not to have a foreign-born child, and he frequently reminded us kids we were fourth-generation Texans. Here's a picture of Laura in the nursery at the hospital.

If I really zoom in on that sign I can definitely see "Jennings," and if I use a little imagination I think I can see 6 lbs., 8 oz., and 19 inches. And here's a super adorable picture of Dad holding me up to the window to see Laura. Note the wall-mounted ashtray behind us.

So what do you do when you bring a baby home? You take pictures of everyone holding the baby. Here's a picture of me holding Laura. Note that I am wearing a Chinatown t-shirt.

Here's a picture of Dad holding Laura. He sure had a lot of hair back then, although you can see his infamous bald spot in its infancy.

And here's a picture of Mom holding Laura.

Is Mom glowing there, or what? Here's a picture of a few relatives who were mentioned in the letters and visited us shortly after Laura was born.

That's Uncle Nate (Dad's brother), Aunt Judy, their daughter Tracey, and me in the Chinatown t-shirt. There are more photos of various combinations of people, but that covers all the visitors I have pictures of from the time we got back to Texas until shortly after Laura was born. I could keep going and give you the rest of my life story, but Laura's birth seems like a good place to stop for now. I am working on a few more posts to wrap things up, and I hope to publish those daily. But don't panic if I do not.

September 13, 1967: A sad goodbye

Diary entry for September 13, 1967:

Went to Farmer's Market. Wonderful place. Saw many interesting things. Had to hurry though and did not see near all of it. Drove to airport. Had sandwich there. Very sad to see Mother go. Drove home. I was worn out. Mother bought David Wayne a turtle at the Farmer's Market. It was gone when we got home but we found it.

I don't remember having a turtle when we lived in Los Angeles, so maybe this wasn't his only escape.

Although that seemed like a quick visit for my grandmother, she was actually there for eight days and seven nights. While visiting us she went to Olvera Street, Chinatown, Alligator Farm, Knott's Berry Farm, Disneyland, Busch Gardens, Griffith Park, Griffith Park Observatory and Planetarium, and the Farmer's Market. Not a bad week.

Hopefully Nana's visit was enough of a pick-me-up for Mom to get her through the rest of our time in Los Angeles, especially since she has this little pregnancy to deal with now.

September 12, 1967: Shop, watch, pack

Diary entry for September 12, 1967:

Feel fine today. Drove to Penney's. Bought some clothes. Then drove to Griffith Park Observatory and Planetarium. Saw a show about stars and many exhibits about the universe. David Wayne loved it! Came home, cooked supper and ate, and then Mother packed.

Well, darn, Nana's already packing to go back home. :-(

I'm glad Mom felt good enough after yesterday's surgery to get out and about today.

Here are scans of the front and part of the inside of the trifold brochure from the Griffith Observatory and Planetarium.

We very likely attended the first showing of the "Northern Lights and Other Sky Colors" show, which sounds really awesome, since that one started today and showtimes were 3 PM and 8:30 PM. I wonder if Mom was disappointed about not seeing the "Trip to the Moon" show, since she mentioned that in her August 23 letter.

September 11, 1967: Operation

Diary entry for September 11, 1967:

I went to doctor today and had an operation. Wasn't too bad. Drove home myself, called Dave, and went to bed. Slept most of the day. Mother cooked and kept David Wayne.

That is a shame that Mom had to deal with an outpatient procedure during one of the days my grandmother was visiting. It sounds like it went ok and she was able to drive afterwards, so that's good.

Hopefully we'll do something tomorrow.

September 10, 1967: Busch Hippies

Diary entry for September 10, 1967:

Got a late start today. Went to Busch Gardens. It was too hot and too crowded. Couldn't ride monorail because of long line. We went on boat ride and saw a few birds. Left early.

Next, we got a watermelon and went to Griffith Park. Saw and heard hippies. David Wayne played on park equipment. Then on way [home] we drove down Hollywood Blvd. Saw Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Having gotten home from Disneyland at midnight last night, it's no wonder we got a late start today. That's a bummer about Busch Gardens being too crowded. I still need a bank from there, too.

This visit to Busch Gardens is what I was alluding to in the post on the September 3, 1967 diary entry, when I mentioned a future event that made me think Mom backed off on the alcohol consumption after she found out she was pregnant. She always liked to tell the story about how much Dad enjoyed this particular visit to Busch Gardens because they gave each adult visitor a free beer after going through the tour of the brewery. Since my grandmother didn't drink alcohol and Mom couldn't drink any because she was pregnant, Dad was very happy to get two extra beers at the end of the brewery tour. Anyone who knew my dad would have no doubts about the truthiness of that story.

I think Mom had previously mentioned that the hippies infiltrate Griffith Park on the weekends, so we were apparently victims of that today. Unfortunately there is no mention of whether or not I brought my guns with me.

Sunday didn't turn out quite as well as Saturday, but at least we tried and Nana got to see a little bit of Hollywood. We'll see what adventures unfold this coming week.

September 9, 1967: I'm going to Disneyland!

Diary entry for September 9, 1967:

Went to Disneyland today. Everything was wonderful. We especially enjoyed Tomorrowland section. David Wayne did an Indian dance in a show at Indian Village. Bought Mickey Mouse bank and some things for Tracey. Stayed ten hours but had a wonderful day. Had a midnight snack when we got home.

It sounds like we had a really good time at Disneyland, especially if we were there ten hours and didn't get home until almost midnight. I suppose this was good training for my parents because years later we would go to Six Flags over Texas at least once every summer and stay all day, sometimes until the park was closing.

The Tomorrowland we visited was not the original Tomorrowland that had been there since Disneyland opened in 1955. According to Wikipedia, this Tomorrowland had just opened in the summer of 1967 and the theme was "World on the Move."

I don't think I ever heard about my participation in this Indian dance show. Too bad there aren't any pictures of it in the photo album because I would definitely publish them.

Hey, I thought Mom already bought a birthday present for my cousin Tracey. I guess you can't pass up a chance to spread some Disney cheer.

I don't have any specific memories of going to Disneyland, but let's take a look at some items and pictures.

First up is a small (4" x 3") booklet that I believe my grandmother saved as a souvenir. It's about 20 pages and is sort of like mini postcards, with each flip of the page showing a picture of a Disneyland attraction on the right hand side and a description of that attraction on the left side. Here are pictures of the front cover and the Monorail pages.

The next four pictures are the Dwarf Series. The captions for each photo are my mother's captions from the photo album. Try not to be distracted by my belly sticking out from under my shirt in a few of these pictures.

One of seven dwarfs at Disneyland

I'm not entirely sure which dwarf this is. My best guess is Sneezy.

David Wayne with Happy, one of Snow White's dwarfs

David Wayne with Doc

Snow White and Seven Dwarfs figures at Disneyland

Unfortunately I only see six dwarf figures in this picture.
[Edit: Thanks to someone who said Bashful is hiding, I now see seven dwarf figures. Bashful is hiding behind a post to my right.]


Next up is Mom and I standing in front of the Matterhorn ride, followed by a closeup of me and Mom.

The Matterhorn Mountain at Disneyland. A very bumpy bobsled ride toured the inside.

Next is me in front of a ride in Storybook land.

This whale is the entrance to a ride through Storybook land. Boat sails right through mouth of whale.

Of course, a trip to Disneyland wouldn't be complete without visiting (and hearing) "It's a Small World." Here is a picture of me and my grandmother standing in front of it.

Mother and David Wayne at Disneyland in front of "It's a Small World" ride.

Once again, Nana is dressed like she could be going to church. Also note the animal-shaped hedges in the background.

Here's a wide shot of "It's a Small World." That thing was huge.

Ride at Disneyland - go inside in a boat and animated dolls from all countries sing "It's a Small World."

Lest you think corporate sponsorship is a new thing, here is a closeup of that long sign in front of "It's a Small World."

"it's a small world" Presented by Bank of America

That's almost all of the Disneyland photos that include me. The rest are photos of different areas at Disneyland, none particularly noteworthy. Too bad there aren't more of Mom and Nana, and none of Dad.

The Mickey Mouse bank purchased today brings the bank total to 9. I do still have the bank, but there is so much to write about that particular one that it deserves its own post. I'll probably save that for a future slow news day.

Ok, the first day of the weekend was a long one but a good one. Will we be able to top that on Sunday?

September 8, 1967: Alligator Knotts

Diary entry for September 8, 1967:

We drove to Buena Park today. First visited Alligator Farm and then Knott's Berry Farm. We enjoyed it all. Bought souvenirs again. Ate lunch in grill at Knott's - very good food. Took pictures.

Mom always told me the first place I wanted to take Nana was the Alligator Farm. Not Disneyland. Not Marineland. Not the place we had already visited three times, Knott's Berry Farm. Nope. I wanted to take Nana to The Alligator Farm. I don't know how thrilled she was to see the alligators chomping each other at feeding time, but she probably enjoyed watching me have such a good time.

Since this was our fourth trip to Knott's Berry Farm I'll take this opportunity to present some more items from there. First up we have the menu from the Ghost Town Grill at Knott's Berry Farm.

The front of it has a very detailed drawing of an old west town with a prospector walking a mule down the street. At the very bottom in parenthesis it says "Take me home I am fun to color." But I have my doubts regarding how fun this would really be for most children to color, given all the detail, shading, etc.

Here are some sample prices from the inside of the menu, which I did not scan:

- Pioneer Beef Stew: $1.75 (That's the most expensive item on the menu.)

- Chicken Liver Plate: $1.50

- Cheeseburger Sandwich: 95 cents

- Hot Dog with French Fries: 60 cents

- Hot Fudge Sundae: 50 cents

- Milk Shakes (Boysenberry, Chocolate, Pineapple, Vanilla, or Strawberry): 35 cents

- All drinks were 15 cents.

One dollar in 1967 bought about as much $7.29 today. One dollar today buys about as much as 14 cents did in 1967.

Fun Fact: In 1932, a horticulturist named Ralph Boysen gave Walter Knott the last few dying vines of a hybrid berry plant he had created but was unable to make a commercial success. The vines eventually thrived under the care of Walter Knott, who was able to sell them from his berry farm. He named this new berry boysenberry.

Next is the back side of the Ghost Town Grill menu, which includes a very detailed hand-drawn map of Knott's Berry Farm with an alphabetical listing of buildings and attractions on the left side. (For some reason the Ghost Town Grill is not listed there.) The map has numbers across the top and letters along the side, providing the grid coordinates for each item listed.

Knott's Berry Farm was huge, and now we know how huge. According to the back of this menu Knott's Berry Farm had 200 acres of restaurants, entertainment, shops and free parking. According to Wikipedia it now has 160 acres and no free parking.

Last but not least, the August 26 diary entry mentioned me sitting on top of a giant turtle at Jungleland, and I mentioned the photo album had a picture of me sitting on a giant turtle at Knott's Berry Farm. I'm sure you were all disappointed I didn't post the picture at that time. Well, your wait is over. Here it is.

That's Mom in the background wearing the dark dress and holding a white purse.

Not a bad couple of days so far with Nana in town. Let's see what we do this weekend . . .

September 7, 1967: Shop 'til you drop

Diary entry for September 7, 1967:

Took Mother to Olvera Street. Ate lunch in a Mexican restaurant - very good food. Bought many things for souvenirs. Took pictures - had a good day. We were so full we didn't eat any supper, but Dave drove us to Chinatown that night. We went in many shops and again bought souvenirs.

Wow, that must have been some lunch if they were so full they skipped supper. It may sound like the souvenir budget was used up on the first day, but I doubt it was.

Here's a picture of me with my grandmother on Olvera Street.

I like the contrast between Nana dressed up like she was going to church, and me decked out in a Peanuts t-shirt and some swell plaid shorts. My shirt has the word "Happiness" in large letters over Snoopy's dog house, with Linus partially lying inside the dog house and Snoopy on top, I think. It's probably one of those "Happiness is" quotes, but I can't read anything else.

Hey, haven't we seen those plaid shorts before? Yes, I believe we have. In my post about Mom's July 25, 1967 diary entry I posted a picture of me standing in front of The Brown Derby restaurant.

I do believe I am wearing plaid shorts in that picture, too, but is it the same pair?

Here are closeups of my shorts in both photos.

Although you can't see the colors very well in the Brown Derby closeup, you can tell in both photos that darker stripes (blue) are on either side of the zipper. It's also the same number of stripes from there to my left pocket. Fabricated mystery solved.

September 6, 1967: Nana's here! Nana's here!

Diary entry for September 6, 1967:

Cleaned house in AM then drove to airport to pick up Mother. No trouble for a first time on freeway, but I was scared. The airplane was late which meant I had to drive home in 5 o'clock traffic.

We did nothing that night. Had spaghetti and meatballs for supper. David Wayne very excited about the visitor.

So on the day of Mom's introduction to driving on Los Angeles freeways she was lucky enough to drive in rush hour traffic. At least our apartment was only about 30 minutes from LAX airport.

No clues yet on how long my grandmother's staying, but I'm sure we'll be busy.

Although today was a big news day with the arrival my grandmother, there isn't a whole lot to say about it so we'll take another trip in the Wayback Time Machine. Today we'll revisit the post from August 20, 1967, which was the day we went to Little Tokyo for the Nisei Week parade. The first picture here is the only one in the photo album from the parade. It's a distant picture of one of the floats.

If you zoom in you can see the front of the float says "Fun Time." (Maybe "Fun Times.") If you compare this photo to the one of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain that I found on the Nisei Week web site . . .

. . . you can tell from the building across the street with the tall rectangular windows (in groups of two) that the two photos were taken from the same side of the street, maybe a few hundred feet apart.

Next up we have a picture of the bank that was purchased that day, which is a caricature of a Japanese woman. This one is painted ceramic, with no chips or cracks that I could see. There is a small sticker on the bottom that says "Japan." Not "Made in Japan," just "Japan."

September 5, 1967: Nana's coming! Nana's coming!

Diary entry for September 5, 1967:

Went to doctor today. Found out I need an operation this next Monday. I was down in dumps so I bought a couple of dresses (for my condition) and had my hair fixed. Came home to find telegram from Mother saying she would be here tomorrow. Then Dave showed me how to get to airport.

A little shopping therapy is always good for the soul. Maybe not so good for the bank account, but definitely good for the soul.

That's rather unfortunate that Mom finds out she'll be having an operation presumably while my grandmother is visiting. I don't know what the operation was and neither does my sister.

I bet Mom was really looking forward to driving to the airport the next day.

A telegram? What's that? It's time for another history lesson, boys and girls. Way back before email and texting, if you wanted to get a message to someone quickly (faster than snail mail) you had to call them on the telephone. But what did people do before telephones existed, or if one of the parties didn't have a telephone, or if they couldn't depend on the receiver of the message being near the phone when they were called? Well, there was something called the electrical telegraph that came about in the mid-1800s that used electricity to send messages over long distances. Various methods of sending those messages were developed, with the most well-known among them being Morse code.

[Fun fact #1: The Pony Express ceased operations two days after the east coast and west coast of the US became connected by telegraph in October of 1861.]

[Fun fact #2: The Pony Express was in operation less than two years. I had always thought it was one of those things that existed in the wild wild west for decades.]

Anyway, telegrams were a way to quickly send important messages back in the day. As I understand it, the sender would visit the local telegram office, give them the name and address of the recipient, write out or dictate the message, and pay for the telegram. The local office would send that info, presumably via telegraph, to the office closest to the recipient, where it would be printed out and hand delivered to the recipient at his or her address. Isn't technology amazing!

As you can imagine, the use of telegrams gradually declined as telephones became household items. And then after Al Gore invented the internet, the fate of telegrams was surely doomed. The most well-known company to send telegrams, Western Union, discontinued their telegram service in 2006 because they sent ONLY 20,000 telegrams the previous year. But if you still want to send a telegram you can use iTelegram dot com. (It's not cheap, surprise surprise.)

In case you've never seen a telegram, today is your lucky day. Mom saved the telegram my grandmother sent her about the flight arrangements. Here are scans of the front and back of the envelope, with the telegram inside.

The envelope itself measures 3-1/2" x 6-1/2". The recipient's name and address are visible through the front window. (Note the misspelling of the street name. It should be "Normandie.") The back of the envelope informs you that on any occasion, it's wise to wire.

Here's a scan of the telegram itself. Unfolded it measures 8" x 5-3/4".

Some things to note:

- Rather than being typed or printed directly onto this form, it looks like all the text on this telegram (except for the date and time stamp on the right side) was printed on a narrow strip of paper which was then cut into sections as necessary and glued onto the form. Seems a little labor intensive.

- The part glued over the second "N" in "Union" at the top looks like a series of emoticons to me, especially if I turn my head sideways.

- The second line shows the city and state of origin (DENTON TE) and the time it was sent, which was 4:07 PM Central Daylight Time. That would be 2:07 PM in Los Angeles. I assume the telegram was sent on Tuesday, since Monday was Labor Day.

- The stamp on the right side indicates the telegram was received at the other end at 2:45 PM Pacific Daylight Time. That's 38 minutes after it was sent. Not too bad I suppose, considering all the cutting and pasting required to create the telegram in Los Angeles.

Ok, so now we know my grandmother (Nana) arrives on a plane tomorrow afternoon, and Mom and I are going to pick her up at the airport. I can only imagine how excited I was, because unfortunately I don't remember Nana visiting us at all. I find that really strange, and a little sad, given what bits and pieces I do remember from our time in Los Angeles. Maybe some upcoming diary entries will jog my memory.