As it turns out, the acoustics in our home are excellent, due, I think, to the cathedral ceiling in the living room. They also liked the fact that the dining room, where they played, was somewhat higher than the living room level, which made it a sort of stage. We served them homemade blueberry pie. I'm all for more musicians doing little concerts in our home!
Afterwards we visited the home of a friend whose birthday it was, and sat around and talked about dying parents, which, I notice, is a frequent conversational theme for people my age. But not for me. My parents died some years ago, Dad in 1983 and Mom in 1995. I usually sit there, listen, and wait for us to move onto something less depressing.
I added some aerial shots of Burbank (which I got from my pal Mike earlier this month) to Burbankia. More to come. This one shows the freeway exit for the street upon which I used to live, Lincoln St., during the Seventies, when I lived there.
I was in a grocery store yesterday and heard a cashier extolling the wonderful bakery smells of his old neighborhood in D.C.; as it turns out, he grew up near a bread manufacturer. This caused me to remember Helms Bakery, an especially fond memory for Los Angelinos of my age.
The bakery is long gone, but do I ever remember it from my youth; the trucks used to roam the neighborhood and we kids would run up and buy doughnuts, which were kept in wooden drawers inside. The smell of the baked goods in those trucks was nothing less than intoxicating, and is an especially vivid memory - bread, dough and sugar! Ahhhh... heaven must be like this.
Apparently they converted the bakery building into a furniture shopping center. A Helms Bakery web site is here - check out that great neon sign! I would very much like to see an animated neon sign renaissance. (It's unlikely I will, however. Jumbo signs using LEDs seem to be what's in now.)
I got my doctor to change my blood pressure meds; it is now half the strength of what it was and I am less dizzy. Yesterday's reading was 116 over 79. So far, so good. I wonder how much weight I need to lose to get off the meds entirely, or if that's even possible...
I am now reading Magical Mystery Tours - My Life with the Beatles by Tony Bramwell, an insider. Unlike most books about the Beatles I have read, this one goes into the sex. Who knew roadie Mal Evans was such a sex fiend? I didn't. Truth is the daughter of time.
Yesterday I learned that shock rock king Alice Cooper is just this far from being a pro golfer, and, when he was a major league alcoholic in the Seventies, used to polish off a case of Bud every day. Whew.
1 comment:
I hear you on the dying parent theme. My folks were teens when I was born and so, we all grow old together, making those conversations even more painful and awkward. My Dad still rides his horses!
Constant Reader,
Sherry K.
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