My Dad took my brother and I to ride on the streetcars in L.A. on the last day that they were scheduled to run. It was 1963 and we were just kids, I was 13 and my brother was 11. After parking our car, I remember watching two cops throw a guy to the ground on the sidewalk in front of us and point a gun to his head before handcuffing him. Never wanted to go back to downtown L.A. after that.
My last trip to L.A. WAS my last trip there.
I was job-hunting and had a pretty good position locked up. Still, I wasn’t happy about leaving Oregon and called home several times during the trip to see if any jobs had opened up locally. At one stop, I had to wait for the one public phone top become available as a very pretty young woman was using it. I remember her tight yellow pants and red shoes (OK, I remember other things too but those were important later.)
She finished her call, jumped into her car and headed south into L.A. I made my call and a few minutes later, followed her. About Newhall I ran into a traffic jam that all but stopped traffic. Along with a few thousand other people, I jockeyed my car along until I could see a mass of red and blue lights ahead. Creeping past two wrecked cars I glanced over to see a familiar pair of yellow pants sticking out from under a blanket. One foot still wore a red shoe.
I turned around at the next opportunity and went home. To paraphrase Douglas MacArthur, ‘I shall NOT return!’