5@50 "Moonflower & the Meer cats"

I bet if you thought about it, you can remember how your taste in music was developed. I am not referring to the nursery rhymes or other such stuff that you listened to as a young child, but how you began to develop your likes and dislikes of music in general. For example, I am sure that you remember listening to music that your parents listened to, whether it was in the home or in the car. Influenced by friends and other family members, maybe a cousin or an older sibling. Even if it was something that you wouldn't listen to today, I am sure that you would still know the words, the melody, etc., and it could easily transport you back to a time frame of your youth.

When I was younger and hanging out with my friends, my early musical tastes were heavily influenced by what my friends listened to. At first it was the Jackson 5. Everything about them exuded "cool" and we listened to them every chance we could. We’d listen to them on 45’s, on the radio and sometimes on the TV (usually American Bandstand and Soul Train). Then it was Elton John. If I remember correctly, it was Elton's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album that we first started listening to. Then it was KISS and everything associated with them. From there it just blossomed into all sorts of stuff. But in the earlier days it was all about that one band or that one performer that we all liked more than any others in the moment. My own personal tastes tended to lean towards anything that was rock & roll and away from everything that was anything but. No easy listening, no adult contemporary, no country, etc., and disco was the enemy, pure and simple.

As our musical tastes began to develop and grow away from any one specific band or performer, one band that started to draw our attention was Santana. Sal was given a copy of "Moonflower" on cassette tape, and he used to play it continuously. This is still one of my favorite albums to this day, and I have owned it myself on album, Cassette, CD, and now on an iPod. Anyway, Sal had this really big boom box, I mean really BIG. It had twin cassette players, a radio, probably 4-6 speakers and it rocked. It probably took 8-10 "D" sized batteries and I remember that when we went outside, he had to be careful not to run the tape player for very long or else it would run the batteries down too quickly. Just imagine the picture of someone walking down the street with this huge boom box sitting on their shoulder and you have a picture of Sal leading the rest of us like the Pied Piper.

One of the places that we used to play was near the basketball courts and tennis courts of Potrero Heights elementary school. Even though the school was right next to our houses, the courts were quite a distance from our street. To get there you had to go through the upper fields and playgrounds, over a fence, and through another ball field and playground. These courts were clear on the other side of the school from where we lived. In fact, it was probably the length of 3-4 football fields away with the school building in between.

Now Sal & Sebastian's mom had this incredibly loud whistle. Not the kind of whistle that you use for sports, or a dog. I mean the kind of natural whistle that you do yourself. This is what she used to get their attention and call them home.  Before long, we all kind of got trained to respond to "The Whistle," like some “pavlovian” experiment. No matter where we were, if that whistle sounded, we knew what it meant: It was time to head home and to do it fast!  Keep in mind that Ronnie and I didn't need to leave wherever it was that we were playing. But, we were the four amigos, so if 2 of us had to go home, the other two would typically follow. Plus, it would not be uncommon for one of our parents to enlist the whistle in an attempt to get us back home too.

So there we were, playing basketball, listening to Santana on Sal's boom box and having a great time. Suddenly Sal & Sebastian stopped what they were doing and turned their heads in the direction of home. "Shhhh!!" They said. "What is it?" we asked. "I think I heard Mom's whistle," he said.

"No way!" I said. "There is no way that you heard your mom's whistle all the way down here while we are playing basketball and cranking Santana on the box."

Sal went over to the boom box and turned it off. "Shhhh!" he said again. We waited, we listened, and sure enough there it was. “The Whistle." Like a bunch of trained Meer cats we bolted upright, turned our heads in the direction of home and just stared. It only lasted for a brief moment, but we immediately sprang into action, gathered all our stuff. Ronnie got his basketball and we helped Sal lift the boom box up onto his shoulder, and away we went. Like I said, we didn't have to leave, but we stuck together. We knew that if the whistle sounded and if they didn’t respond, someone would get in trouble and be grounded. That meant no friends, period. And when something negative happened to one of us it usually affected all of us. 4 Amigos. 4 Musketeers.

4 Meer cats listening to Santana's Moonflower, playing basketball and waiting for the whistle.

4@50 Arroyo Drive Pt 2 "Drains, Driftwood, & The Dog Lady."

So a little more about the neighborhood on Arroyo Drive.

As I mentioned in my last blog, across the street from where we lived on Arroyo Drive was a large hilly area of land that belonged to a cemetery. At the time we were growing up, the cemetery was nowhere near where it is now and it is obvious that it has expanded quite a bit in the last 33 years. I am guessing that more people died, but I could be wrong.

One day, when we were exploring the hills, there was this woman walking through the hills and she had 2 very large German shepherd dogs. She did not say anything to us, but she looked really mean. She had this scowl on her face and she was looking at us like we were doing something wrong and were up to no good. Even though she was probably right, she didn't have to be so mean about it. We saw her on and off throughout the years, and we (dis)affectionately dubbed her "The Dog Lady." It was always the same, she would be walking to or from the 7-11 store that was down the street, always with her dogs, and she would either come down out of the hills, or head back up through the hills. We always thought that she lived beyond the cemetery and was just using the hills as a shortcut to get to the store.

For a while, even long before the development of Astra Drive, there wasn't anything across the street in either direction. In fact, the first development project was  a large apartment complex that was down the street a few blocks. But even before this there was nothing but hills. You could actually walk all the way across the hills up to the fence line of the Pomona freeway and come back home by following the fence line on the backside of the cemetery.

I didn't really realize this as a kid, and it suddenly dawned on me later on as an adult, but Arroyo Drive was/is aptly named. Arroyo in Spanish means "brook" or more accurately a "wash" or dry creek bed that will suddenly fill with water after a significant downpour. Wikipedia says that this would be synonymous to a Wadi in Africa or a Spanish 'rambla.' Let me tell you, there are times in Southern California that when the rain comes down, it comes down in buckets, and Arroyo Drive would experience flash flooding. The area right in front of our house was notorious for flooding since it was the perfect confluence of hills on both sides, a significant rise in elevation if you turned right and drove away from our house, and a slight rise in elevation after you passed by the area that eventually would become Astra Drive. Again, for a visual, you might want to check this out on Google Earth.

Anyway, in my early years when the area flooded the water didn't have anywhere to go. There wasn't a storm drain system (yet), so the water just stayed there until it was absorbed into the ground. For kids this was great fun. We waded through the water, splashed each other, and sometimes made small, makeshift boats and then bombed them with rocks. But the best fun came when we were a little older and we noticed that some people would try to drive through the water. Some of them made it but most of them didn't. Eventually their cars would stall and there we were, eager to lend a helping hand -- for a fee! We would walk up to them and offer our services, usually $5 or $10 bucks would get you pushed clear of the water and off to the side of the road. If someone declined we would politely say ok and then turn and walk away. Most of the time they would give in and call us back, but sometimes there was the occasional person that would make the mistake of opening their car door and then curse as water poured into their vehicle. After a few days the water would recede and then there would be a ton of mud and debris in the street and across the street in the hills.

Eventually the city or county built storm drains to handle the flooding. This probably coincided with the development of the housing areas in the neighborhood. Oak Hills apartment complex had a huge inlet pipe that was directly below the hill that the apartments were on, and this faced the hills that were owned by the cemetery. The pipe was big enough that we could walk into it and explore underground for several hundred yards in about 3 different directions. In hindsight, it was probably stupid to go into those drains, but with a flashlight and a little nerve, it was an adventure.

The area directly across the streets from our house and leading right into the storm drain typically looked like a dry riverbed most of the year. Even though the storm drains helped to reduce the flooding, it didn't stop the accumulation of debris. In fact, a large amount of debris would get caught up on the grate that covered to drain inlet. At least the grate that was there most of the time. :-) 

Surprisingly, a lot of the debris was wood. Sticks, branches, limbs, and a lot of this wood was rather large. I am not sure where it all came from, but it would definitely accumulate in large quantities. We called it driftwood even though there wasn't an ocean closer than 30-40 miles away. Of course we had to do something with the driftwood, but what? Well, what do you usually do with driftwood? You make a Bon Fire!! Somehow, I was always tasked with getting the fuel to light the fires with. Either matches or a lighter from my house, and the gas can that we used for the lawn mower. One time we decided that having a bon fire in the middle of the day was no fun, so we waited until later when the sun went down. It wasn't really dark, but it was dark enough so that the flames were significantly brighter.

So, there we were, Sal, Sebastian, Ronnie and I sitting on driftwood chairs, watching the flames, reveling in our bon-fire making skills and just enjoying the evening. Wouldn't you know it, that's when the fun ended. We started to hear some screaming. No, not screaming. More like yelling. Someone was mad, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. I looked back in the direction of our homes and didn't see a parent. That was good, because they didn't really know what we were up to and frankly they wouldn't have approved.

Then Sal saw it first and pointed. It was definitely the source of the anger and the yelling and I have to be honest here: this was one of the most frightening sights I have ever seen. There, on the other side of the bon fire up on the side of the hill was "The Dog Lady." At first I could barely make her out between the flames. I had to move my head from one side to the next to be sure I was seeing correctly. Sure enough, there she was staring right at us and yelling something indecipherable. She was flanked by both of her dogs and I could swear they were growling and drool was dripping off of the corners of their mouths. The light from the fire illuminated their three faces and shadows were dancing across the hillside all around them. Her shadow and the shadows of her two dogs stretched up the hillside making them look much bigger and ominous then they really were.  It looked evil. Then it dawned on me why I couldn't understand what she was saying. It was German. She was yelling at us in German and she was pissed off. She probably thought we were going to start a massive brush fire and I really can't blame her. She was probably right. I really wasn't thinking it through that far though. I was just terrified. It was like something from a terrible WWII movie and I thought that the evil Nazi dog lady was going to release her dogs at any moment and they would rip us to shreds.

We decided to make a run for it back home, and we took off. Right before we got to our homes we looked back and she was gone. She had disappeared into the darkness of the hills. Either that or she went to get a Slurpee.

We got some buckets of water, returned to the bon fire and put it out. I am pretty sure that was the last bon fire we ever made over there. We continued to see the dog lady every once in a while. She never spoke to us, but always gave us the dirty looks. At one point we never saw her again. One time, when we were exploring in the hills we found a place in one of the gullies that looked like someone had made a little cave. There was garbage all over the area. Empty food containers and tin cans, old clothes and blankets. It looked like someone that had been homeless had lived there. I am not sure if it was her, but there was a good chance that it was. If it was her home, I imagine that she probably kept the dogs for protection as much as intimidating little boys.