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Posts Tagged ‘Southern California Memoir’

Things of Memory Think for a moment about a treasured photo of you as a child. Of the surroundings, of your smile or the frown. Maybe your childhood home is in the background of the frame, maybe you are playing on a swing at the park with friends. You get the idea. In viewing even [...]

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A CHRISTMAS TREE AND THE FOREST For my mother and father, the tree had to fit these specifications: a six to seven foot Douglas Fir, fresh if possible, big blue-green needles, full branching.  And oh, yes. It must exude that wonderful resiny smell of the forest on a summer day, the trade mark so to [...]

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FARMING I grew up on a 7000 square foot city lot in inner-suburban Los Angeles. I grew up gardening. But I considered it, or imagined it, to be farming. In Southern California before automatic drip systems, the homely hose was the workhorse of the garden. Since my family often traveled through the San Joaquin Valley [...]

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ROMANCE, 1928 The woman in the picture is eighteen. The location, resembling a Hollywood stage set, is Avalon, on Catalina Island, some 30 miles west of Los Angeles harbor. Yachts anchor offshore, a casino is in the background. The time is around 1928. The photo of the woman is well composed. A slight angle of [...]

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THE  CHRISTMAS  CABIN Once upon a time there was a woodsy cabin, made of alder logs, set deep in the woods. This cabin was very small. That, however, made little difference. This is the thing: Each Christmas season, around December 6, the cabin was reoccupied for a month. Sometimes it stood firm, heavy with snow. [...]

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