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2000-01-04 - 20:39:54
When I was a little kid we moved to Oakland, CA. We lived there for about 2 1/2 years. I went to kindergarten and first grade there. Franklin school, probably Benjamin Franklin Elementary School or some such. I have the strangest memories of that time.
When we first moved there we lived in one of those very common California apartment complexes. Sort of a U shaped building with the entrance at the open part of the U. Two stories high with the doors of the apartments facing into the U. With walkways with railings and stairways at both ends. The inside of the U housed a swimming pool and sort of sundeckish area. It was dee-luxe...I guess. I remember playing army with the other kids around there. I got hit by a car when we lived there. (crossing where there was no traffic light to avoid the bullies.) I had pet chameleons (North American Anoles).
I'm telling only the good stuff, 'cause that's all I wanna remember. I think I've dealt with the bad stuff. Let it go.
We moved to another building in a tougher neighborhood. It was again one of those buildings with the hallways, if you will, on the outside and the stairways at either end. I remember it had a place on the roof where the mamas hung their laundry to dry on those weird spinning clotheslines thingys.
I hung out with some Mexican kids. They were cool. I remember them saying "meeda" all the time. They were saying "mira" or "look", or like "look over there". Anyway, they lived in this truly funky building that was next to a huge vacant lot. What was strange about it though was that the lot was higher up than the lot their building was on. There was like this hump that ran along the property line where it dropped about two feet. It was sort of a rounded step.
We used to have rock fights with the rival black kids. There were these things scattered all over the vacant lot that were like sheet metal Es. They had holes in them, like they were brackets or something. If you threw them side-hand, they spun really fast. Those things ended many a rock fight. They could really cut you bad. They were rusty too, heh heh.
Then we moved to this other building nearby. It was a two-story house thing. We lived in a basement/ground floor apartment. The landlord lived upstairs. His name was something like "Mr. Mellow", but I'm sure it was some Italian variant. He raised parakeets. There was this huge hexagonal cage out in the back yard that had dozens of parakeets in it. He had two gardens. One in the side yard, and one in the back yard. He let us grow stuff in one of 'em. Carrots, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce. He also had two fig trees. Have you ever eaten fresh figs off the tree? Probably not, I haven't since. That was 1968.
I was still friends with the Mexican kids and I remember we used to go into the Catholic church and run into the confessionals and get scared by the dark and then the sound of the priest's voice. We'd run out.
But what I'm thinking about through all this is the weather, the light, the architecture.
Oakland isn't the same as San Francisco. It's warmer, not foggy. But it's still the Bay Area. I'm thinking of warm summer days, but not hot. Not hot like they are here in Chicago. Not stifling, wet, swampy hot. Just hot. If that. Sunny all the time.
Then winter. Rain. Rain like I haven't seen since. I remember being outside in a rain storm and seeing water pouring down the street like a waterfall. The street I lived on was a pretty steep hill.
The architecture is very different in California. It has a different feel. Not like Chicago. This was the late sixties, though and when they tried to be modern...well, you know how it looked don't you? Okay, picture the Catholic church I was talking about earlier. Okay, it didn't look like that. It was gray concrete in sort of roundish curvy shapes on the outside. Shaped roughly like a stadium, or one of the greek amphitheaters. The roof was plexiglass skylights. The windows in the exterior walls were pretty small and rounded shapes. polygons or amoebic. With...stained glass, of course.
Inside was like one huge room. With the altar farthest from the doors. Then the pews sort of in three sections in a semi-circle layout. But the confessionals were these hexagonal kiosk looking little buildings. Free-standing. They didn't go all the way to the roof, so it was like they were little buildings. I don't remember how many there were, but like 3 or four.
Ah, nostalgia, I could go on.
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So, how do you like them apples?