Coming of Age in Los Angeles: Snapshots from the Life of Young Dave
For lack of any other order, these appear chronologically as I lived through them. First is the hospital I was born in. It didn't look quite so much like a submarine back then.
This is the house I grew up in. We moved there on August 12, 1972, when I was almost 4. That's Dad on the porch.
This is my elementary school. It never occurred to me at the time that it was so bizarrely modern-looking. Then again, it was LA.
This is the sweatshop at the bottom of the hill my elementary school is on. I imagine it changed name and ownership several times between my childhood and today.
The building in the background is Frank Lloyd Wright's "Hollyhock House." I took a couple of minor artsy classes there as a child, but I put this picture here mostly 'cause it's such a great juxtaposition of fancy architecture and what most of my hometown looks like.
Here's a picture from my bar mitzvah. That's the rabbi behind me. The big furry guy is the Torah.
My modern and butt-ugly junior high school. In case you're wondering who Thomas Starr King was, we were taught that he "saved California for the Union" prior to the Civil War.
This is my high school. I believe it was built in 1927. The only person I've ever met on the East Coast who went there was 70 years old. She went there in the late 1930's, I think. Her name was Jocelyn Ball. I rented a room from her for a few weeks once in a carriage house in Washington, DC. She painted portraits and had a primitive concrete fish pond in the middle of her living room.
