[Rodamala]

When I was in kindergarten and before my brother was in school, I got to leave school early for the summer as we were going to California to see an uncle. The old man flew his Piper Cherokee from NJ to CA. It was a loooong trip. A memorable part of the trip was flying down to Anaheim from Sacremento to go to Disneyland.

[Aliska]

Rodamala, that sounds like fun, and some people are used to private planes, but that's a lot of flying. It would be long. Yes, we stopped in Sacramento to visit my mom's father's first cousin. They had us stay there which is sometimes kind of an imposition. I went on with a 3rd cousin and her aunt to San Francisco. They had one of these atrium two-story houses set back quite far from the ocean. She dropped me and my younger cousin off at the zoo the next morning. All I remember about that is my cousin noticed two tigers I think it was doing their thing and asked me what they were doing. I would have given her a dodgy answer. Then my folks and sister came from Sacramento and picked me up, went to Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, drove around, lots of sights there, dodged a drunk walking across the street. I loved the serpentine Lombard Street and made my husband take me down it years later. Thank you for the reminiscence.

Osage Orange, yeah, visiting relatives gets old, fun for cousins if they are close, lots of extra work for the relatives but everybody except the kids pitched in. CA seemed nicer in those years, but people were gravitating out there for the warmth and didn't have much going for them. It was not nearly as culturally diverse then as now.

I loved the scenery, Lake Tahoe, Monterey, the scrubby pine, on down to LA and a couple more friends, Farmer's Market where I had my first egg foo yung, Huntington Gallery, and Disneyland. I do remember the smog; it was already bad then.

We really saw and did a lot more going and coming.