February 5, 1968: Elephant Rose

Letter postmarked February 5, 1968 (written February 5):

The CCZCC extends its winning streak to 23.

Dear Mother and Mike,

I hope the weather is still good in Texas. We spent a lovely 80 degree weekend just doing nothing much. There isn't any smog here in L. A. now and it is just beautiful, especially when looking at the mountains with snow on top of them. But, truthfully, we won't be sad to leave the wonderful climate and beautiful scenery. We have decided that nothing looks better than our big back yard on Osceola Trail.

Another Texas examiner is in L. A. - his name is Art Snyder. I never knew the man before, but I certainly do like him. He is married and has two sons, ages 14 and 16, but his family isn't with him - he'll only be here about three weeks. We had him over Thursday night and again on Saturday night. Art had never met Dirr, so the Saturday evening was Dirr's idea. Dave cooked out steaks, Suzie made a salad, I baked potatoes and made a couple of pies. If you're wondering, no! The pup did not come with them. The evening turned out very well (much to our surprise) and since Suzie wasn't feeling well (she thinks she's pregnant) she didn't "run off" at the mouth like she usually does.

[It sounds like the New Year's Eve fiasco didn't totally ruin the friendship between Mom and Dad and the Dirrs.]

In all honesty, I can say Dave literally hates that Suzie. Never before has he felt that way (or even close to it) about anyone. His whole personality changes just discussing her and when she's around the expressions on his face don't mask the contempt he feels. He can more-or-less laugh about Gene, but Suzie is a very touchy subject - nothing about her is funny or amusing to him.

[That is surprising. I never knew Dad felt that way about anyone. Sure, there were a few people he didn't much care for, but he tolerated them and if he hated anyone he did a good job of keeping it a secret from me.]

Friday I took David Wayne to the L. A. zoo again. Suzie went with us. This zoo has the most beautiful display of birds I've ever seen. The only trouble with it is that you have to climb a lot of steps to see all of it and I got very tired - my legs still hurt. While passing the elephant pen, one big elephant decided to do his "business" and naturally, this was very interesting to a five-year-old.

[Go to the Youtubes and watch a few videos of elephants pooping and peeing, and I think you'll agree that it would indeed be very interesting to a five-year-old.]

He didn't want me and Suzie to miss seeing this event (we were about half a block behind him), so he was yelling at the top of his lungs, "The elephant's going to the bathroom!" Quite a crowd had collected by the time I got there to shut him up. Then he really embarrassed me by saying, "And he didn't even need an enema!" (I had to give David Wayne an enema that morning and he hadn't liked it much.)

[I do remember getting a few enemas as a kid, and no, I didn't like them much.]

Another thing at the zoo was seeing the taping of a local TV show - "Ralph's Story." This Ralph was in a monkey cage and he was discussing the Chinese forecast of 1968 being "The Year of the Monkey." It was interesting to see them taping this show and we'll probably watch it next week.

["Ralph's Story" was actually "Ralph Story's Los Angeles," a very popular locally produced weekly show about Los Angeles, hosted by Ralph Story. It ran from 1964 to 1970. Ralph Story also hosted the game show "The $64,000 Challenge" from 1956 to 1958. (No, he was not implicated in the scandal surrounding that show.)]

Sunday we took a ride down to the San Pedro Harbor. There is a big toll bridge there so we drove over it - David Wayne said it looked like a giant dinosaur also. We also drove over a draw bridge which was exciting to David Wayne - Dave told him it might just start going up any minute. The Ports-of-Call village is in San Pedro, but may husband drove by it and didn't stop - things are expensive there.

[San Pedro is a little less than an hour south of where we lived, West of Long Beach.]

After the harbor tour, we drove to Pasadena and Dave showed us the Rose Bowl. He got a really good picture of it. I wasn't impressed much with the Rose Bowl, but the street we drove on to get there was just beautiful. The homes were magnificent, huge mansions with beautifully groomed yards. It was the prettiest section of L. A. I've seen.

[Here's the picture of me and Mom standing in front of the Rose Bowl.]

[Here's a closeup of me and Mom. She still took time to do her hair although she was six months pregnant.]

[I made it back to the Rose Bowl around 2009 when I was in Los Angeles on a business trip and drove to Pasadena just to see it. It really is in a beautiful setting.]

There are still things here I would like to see, but Dave just can't get enthusiastic about going anywhere. I can understand as he is really tired of being away from home. He has promised that we'd go to San Diego one weekend to see the zoo and Sea World, but he won't set a date to go. I don't really have too much hope that we'll make it now and it would be an expensive weekend.

[If Mom got tired walking around the Los Angeles zoo she definitely would have gotten tired walking around the San Diego zoo. I've been there, and I remember it being quite hilly.]

I also wanted to take blood-thirsty David Wayne to a bull fight, but going into Mexico doesn't interest Dave at all. All I hear from both my Davids is "going home." They sound like a broken record.

[I don't recall being all that blood-thirsty as a kid, but I probably would have enjoyed the bull fight much more then than I would now. I have zero interest in seeing one now and, for the record, I am appalled they exist.]

There isn't much else happening to us so I guess I'll close. I am fine except for the usual feeling of being terribly uncomfortable - I am so big, I look like we're having at least twins. I am so uncomfortable that I don't sleep well at night as I always have.

[Speaking of being uncomfortable, here's a picture of me and Mom sitting together in our apartment in L. A. Mom's caption on this one is: "David Wayne and Mom in apartment in L. A. Mom was pregnant with Laura. We didn't sit in the same chair for long."]

[It's difficult to tell which one of us was more uncomfortable in that picture. You can definitely tell it was a tight squeeze, especially looking at my face.]

[I really wore that Peanuts shirt a lot, didn't I?]

Take care of yourselves and I'll write again in a couple of days. By then, maybe something really exciting will have happened.

Love,

Linda

October 19, 1967: Creepy visitor

Letter postmarked October 18, 1967:

The CCZCC now stands at 10. Double digits!

This letter is being posted one day after the date of the postmark because the October 17 letter was split into two posts.

Dear Mother and Mike

This may not be legible - I have written three letters already this morning and I'm lying in bed and I've got Kleenex in both hands. No, I don't have a cold - I'm just trying to filter the air as I take it into my lungs. Coming from a family of breathers I find it hard to exist in this climate. I think within a few years the population in Los Angeles will have gills instead of the regular breathing apparatus. Either that or they shall all surely suffocate. The smog really isn't too bad now - by that I mean you can see "Mr. Sun" peeping through, but we are due for another siege on Thursday.

[That ongoing smog problem sounds awful. Reading Mom's firsthand account of her difficulties dealing with it has given me a little more appreciation for the tighter restrictions on things like automobile emissions in California.]

[The handwriting in this letter is definitely different than the handwriting in previous letters. The most noticeable thing to me is the lack of a slant in this letter. I have scanned in samples of this letter and the previous one so you can see for yourselves.]

Handwriting sample from letter postmarked October 17, 1967.

Handwriting sample from letter postmarked October 18, 1967.

Of course, we could go to the mountains again like we did last Saturday, but then we might be called upon to fight the forest fires that are surrounding us. They (the police) have arrested several known "fire setters" this week and I wonder if our little handyman will show up for work today. (That's another reason my hands are sorta shaky, I suppose. I get just a teeny bit nervous on Wednesdays.)

[Forest fires in California. Imagine that. (Those of you reading this way in the future can google "2017 California forest fires.")]

David Wayne said for me to tell Nana that Mike is a Knucklehead. He really misses his Uncle Mike and is always talking about fighting with him when we get home. So tell Mike he better get in shape - David Wayne is a lot bigger now than when he last saw him. Also, David Wayne keeps in practice by fighting with Dave. They are constantly rolling around on the floor and I wonder how many lamps we will have to replace.

Dave and I have something in common with the Johnsons. We also have a child that makes visits during the night. It's a little eerie to wake up and find someone standing by your bed, but it is better than him getting out the door and chasing him down the street. You should tease Dave in your next letter about our having the same experience as the "cookoo Byrds."

[I didn't find anything to confirm this, but I suspect the Johnsons Mom is referring to here are President Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson, or perhaps their first daughter Lynda Bird Johnson. That seems like a logical reason for the "cookoo Byrds" comment.]

[I wonder if I ever woke up Mom and Dad yelling "Red Rum!" repeatedly?]

Joan Baez is going to be giving more free concerts for the next ten days - this time to the men in jail where she will be in residence. It seems that she was a ringleader in a big riot on Monday. I think this riot or sit-down or whatever happened in front of an army induction center where they were protesting against the draft system. Anyway, the police drafted her and her mother to jail for ten days. I wish I could go to jail with my mother for a few days - I think our relationship is lacking in some way, don't you?

[Joan Baez gave a free concert for an estimated 30,000 people at the Washington Monument in Washington, DC in August of 1967, to protest the Vietnam War. The arrest Mom is referring to here occurred in Oakland.]

[Fun fact: It was during this jail sentence that Joan Baez met an inmate named David Harris, whom she would marry in March of 1968 and divorce in 1973. She was pregnant with their son Gabriel when she performed at Woodstock in 1969.]

We are busily getting ready for Halloween. David Wayne was driving me nuts asking how many more days, so I made him a calendar and he is marking off each day. The witch pinata we got on Olvera Street is really cute and we have decided not to break it. I don't know how we will get it home but Dave says he'll figure something out.

You just thought you bought the little turtle for David Wayne . . . but Dave is the one who pays the most attention to Snappy. He even talks to it! Sunday, on Olvera Street, they were displaying some turtles that were ten times bigger than Snappy and Dave wanted to buy one. I wouldn't have minded, but I know he would have come straight home and played with it the rest of the day. I imagine we'll get one this weekend. By the way, how is your livestock? Any little hamsters yet? Adelia wrote David Wayne that they were expecting twin goats and that if we had twins she would swap him for one. He thought that was a great idea, naturally.

[Adelia, in case you have forgotten, was my grandfather's second wife. They lived on a farm in Sanger, Texas at the time.]

I will close for now. Please write soon as I have started accusing the postman of losing my mail. You wanna hear something funny? I get so much mail from Mordecais that the postman wished me a "Happy New Year" a couple of weeks ago. I took me a while to figure out that greeting. Another funny thing . . . Dave cooked outside on Yom Kippur (the day of Jewish fasting) and we got some mighty dirty looks that day! I'm afraid we have a lot to learn about living around Jewish people. Maybe we will learn since we're going to be here so long.

[Mordecai is apparently a traditionally Jewish name, but as far as I know you have to go back quite a ways in our family tree to find a Mordecai who was Jewish. Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) in 1967 was on October 5, and Yom Kippur was October 14. So here's some more exposure to other cultures that Mom and Dad were not exposed to very much while growing up in small Texas towns.]

Love,Linda

P. S. - Does Linda Kay have one of those electric baby food warmers? They are something new . . . at least I don't think they had them five years ago. It saves putting water in a pan to heat the jar of food. Anyway, I would like to get one for her, so find out if she has one please.

September 24, 1967: Political nightmare

Letter postmarked September 24, 1967: The CCZCC now stands at 2. Today's letter is being posted before today's diary entry. You'll see why at the end. "Dear Mother and Mike," "Sounds like you both are busy and I do feel sorry for you. I wish I had more to do so I wouldn't have any time to feel sick. I don't actually get sick in the mornings, but I have to eat crackers and lie very still. My back hurts at night and I usually stay on David Wayne's little bed and watch TV." [I think I've mentioned it before, but my little bed was a folding metal cot. It will make an appearance in at least one upcoming photo. I can't imagine why a pregnant person with a sore back would find it comfortable.] "I'm glad your trip on the plane was good. Very glad that Mike took care of things so well during your absence." "I just don't know what to make about Mrs. Hall. Mike, what are you doing up there at school to get in bad with her? I was her pet. You step lightly around that old witch, she has a lot of influence in that school, or she did. Of course, she hasn't got a brain in her head and she's very moody. If you're going to be a politician, you will meet a lot of the Mrs. Halls so learn how to handle her type. But never sacrifice what is right just to please - just make her think you are." [I looked up Mrs. Hall in Mom's high school yearbook. She was the Speech and Drama teacher, and I'm pretty sure Mom was in plays in high school. My uncle doesn't remember exactly what his issue was with Mrs. Hall. Perhaps he was more focused on his political career than his acting career.] [Politician? Uncle Mike? I asked him about that, and there's more to it than just his own political aspirations at the time. I'll reveal just part of his response here: He wore a coat and tie to school every day his senior year of high school.] "David Wayne is completely in charge (so he thinks, anyway) of taking care of Snappy. He feeds, changes water, and puts in new gravel. He's also got the duty of putting it in the sack - her or his home when we are gone." [What a responsible young man I was.] "Ed Kubala and family from Austin have been vacationing here this week. We have enjoyed seeing familiar faces and talking about people we all know. (Excuse my writing this morning - I'm sorta shaky.) David Wayne was at a total loss of how to play with their children for about an hour. Finally, he got okay and really enjoyed them. I guess he's just forgotten how to act with other children." [Now I have something to blame my lack of social skills on: A few months of isolation from my peer group at the age of five.] [Since this is the last mention of this visit by the Kubalas, I'll tell something else interesting about them. As I mentioned before, although they lived in Austin and we lived in the Dallas area, we would see Ed from time to time when he was in Dallas on business, and I'm pretty sure Dad would visit them when he was in Austin. The two couples remained friends through the years, and the last time they were all together was at a career development seminar Dad and Ed attended in Portland, Oregon in July of 1991 (bringing the wives along), since Dad died while traveling back from that conference at the age of 53. Ed was so torn up over my dad's death that he couldn't attend the funeral.] [Fast forward to early 2009 and Ed's wife Joyce passes away. Some time after that Ed finds a way to contact Mom and says he and Joyce already had plans to make their annual trip to Hawaii in May, and would Mom like to join him. Mom said yes because she loved to travel, and over the next four years the two of them traveled the world together to more places than any of us can remember, and essentially became a part of each other's families until Ed passed away in 2013.] "David Wayne had a terrible nightmare Wednesday night which scared us to death. He woke us both up about 3 AM. When we ran into the living room, he was out of bed, had the front door open (as far as he could with the night chain), and he practically had the night latch pulled off its hinges. It took me about an hour to get him settled down and back to sleep." [Yikes. I bet they made darn sure that night chain was on before going to bed every night after that.] "He said he had dreamed about monsters. He hadn't watched any television that day as we had the Kubala children during the day and that night we had all gone out to a Shakey's to eat supper. We had to laugh the next day at him though. I had taken him into our room after the dream and Dave and I both rubbed his back and talked to him. The next day he said, "I couldn't go back to sleep because of that snoring daddy." [If only the movie "Monsters, Inc." had been released back then . . .] "I better close for now and get dressed. I am going to make Dave take us somewhere today - I feel like the walls are closing in on me. Take care of yourselves and Taffy." [This letter does indeed have a postmark date of September 24, 1967, so Mom apparently wrote it Sunday morning and got it in the mailbox the same day. Today's diary entry will tell us if Mom was successful at getting out of the house.] "Love, Linda"

[Edited 9-25-17: Clarified the location of the career development seminar.]

September 23, 1967: The camera

Diary entry for September 23, 1967:

Stayed home most of day. We bought a Polaroid camera on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Ed and Joyce, Jimmy H. and Marsha came by before they went to ball game. We took pictures.

As Mom mentioned in the September 19 letter, Dad wanted to buy a Polaroid camera due to a lack of success taking photos up to this point. Hopefully this one was purchased at a retail establishment at the corner of Hollywood and Vine and not from some street vendor. (Hey, wanna buy a camera?) We can expect lots of pictures going forward, but unfortunately we don't have any of today's visitors for some reason.

Now we know why Ed and Joyce Kubala were in town this week. It was to attend the Texas vs. USC football game. Both teams were ranked in the top 10, and USC won 17-13. (The offensive coordinator for Texas was future head coach Fred Akers.) Texas finished the season third in the Southwest Conference. USC, on the other hand, went on to be consensus national champions, no doubt helped along the way by a junior running back named O. J. Simpson.

September 19, 1967: More visitors

Diary entry for September 19, 1967:

Wrote letters in the AM and then slept in the PM. Ed and Joyce Kubala came at night. We enjoyed visiting with them.

This is pretty neat for many reasons. Ed Kubala was a coworker of my dad's at the Texas State Board of Insurance. He and his wife Joyce lived in Austin, and I assume Dad met Ed when he started working for the Board of Insurance there in the early 1960s. I don't remember Ed from when we lived in Los Angeles, but I do remember him visiting us from time to time while I was growing up in the 1970s, and my parents remained friends with them until my dad died in 1991. Ed was always a neat guy to have around. I could write several interesting anecdotes about him that would get us off track, but here's one.

Ed had a glass eye. It wasn't terribly obvious unless you were really close to him and looking him in the eyes, especially since he wore glasses. Whenever the subject of Ed's glass eye would come up (not while Ed was around) and someone would ask which eye was the glass eye, I always knew the answer because I had an easy way to remember it. Would you like to know how? Dad said he and Ed used to travel together via automobile, probably making trips to examine small insurance companies located in small Texas towns. (The aforementioned burial runs.) Dad said it was somewhat unsettling, especially the first time it happened, when Ed was driving and during a lull in the conversation Dad would glance over from the passenger seat and see Ed's glass eye staring up at the ceiling instead of straight ahead at the road. That's how I knew Ed's glass eye was his right eye.