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Moved to a One-Room Apartment

Chapter 4  (1)  (2)  (3)  (4)  (5)  (6)

Los Angeles, 1945

I don't know what went wrong between my mom and her third husband—all I know is that one day he was gone and that we could no longer afford our comfortable apartment overlooking Echo Park. So we moved into a very small apartment near the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd. and Vermont Ave.

The apartment had one room with a pull-down Murphy bed, along with a small kitchen and bathroom. We moved there during the summer of 1945, and when school began in the fall I would be going to Virgil Junior High School on South Vermont Ave.

Beyond that, it looked as though World War II might be ending soon and that life would be better for everyone.

Smog had not yet come to Southern California—nor had freeways—but buses and streetcars were plentiful.

5¢ or 7¢ (depending on whether you rode the Red Line or the Yellow Line) got you just about anywhere in and around Los Angeles—and you usually didn't have to wait too long for a bus or streetcar.

No new cars had been built in nearly four years (auto makers had been building jeeps and tanks and armored personnel carriers) and what cars there were all had little stickers in the corners of their windshields indicating their monthly gasoline allowances.

You also had to use "ration coupons" at the grocery store for things like meat, butter and sugar.

Looking back on it some 50+ years later I can now appreciate that Hollywood wasn't a bad place to be living in the 1940s.

I was in the 9th grade at Le Conte Jr. High School and would be going into the 10th at Hollywood High in September.

Differences Between Girls & Boys

School was a little different then. It was easy to tell the girls from the boys.

Girls had long hair and wore dresses—boys had short hair and wore pants.

Okay, that's oversimplifying things—but by not muPg. Girls also wore skirts and blouses of course (except for one day each semester, which was set aside as "Shorts Day," when girls could wear—well—shorts). Either way, they almost always wore "bobby sox" (socks with folded down tops) along with their saddle shoes or hush puppies. (In fact, teenage girls were frequently referred to as "bobbysoxers.") When they wanted to dress casually (not allowed at school) rolled—up or cut—off jeans with dad's (or big brother's) untucked white dress—shirt was a favorite outfit.

Boys not only had short hair, crew cuts were actually considered stylish. For pants, they wore jeans with fold—up cuffs. (Jeans were sold by waist size only then—you adjusted the length by making a cuff.) "Keds" tennis shoes were the favorite footwear. T—shirts were as popular then as they are now. (Earrings were not.)

Of course kids then (both boys and girls—but mostly boys) would sneak cigarettes into the restrooms, but you didn't hear about drugs in those days. I'm not saying they didn't exist—but they didn't seem to be a problem at school. In fact, school was pretty cool. However I wasn't too cool.

I wore glasses, and wasn't part of any "in" crowd, and was generally thought of by classmates as being "nice" but "square." Girls just tended to ignore me.

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Do you remember Mad Man Muntz?

Earl Muntz was the flamboyant used-car dealer who claimed to be crazy and who would proclaim,
"I buy 'em retail and sell 'em wholesale! It's more fun that way!"

In fact, he even built cars for a while. (1950 Muntz Jet shown here)







He later went into manufacturing "Single-Knob" TV sets and 4-track stereo systems.

(Top of Page)

My best friend Carl had gotten me a job selling newspapers on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Gower St. (a.k.a. Gower Gulch) and my life seemed to be more or less under control.

My mother had recently married again. This was her fourth husband—a professional waiter named Bob who worked at The Original Pantry in Downtown Los Angeles—and she seemed to be reasonably happy.

This was good for me, because when she was unhappy she tended to make my life pretty miserable. In fact, since breaking up with her previous husband our relationship had been steadily deteriorating.

I won't go into details, but suffice it to say my mom was a hyper-emotional person, who was a charmer when she was happy, but a hellion when she wasn't. She'd been through a series of failed marriages (her marriage to Bob would last less than a year and a half) and she often seemed unhappy and disillusioned with life in general.

As a result she had become more and more emotionally dependent on me, as the only "stable" male figure in her life. This emotional dependence would take the form of suspicion, distrust, and eventual hatred of anyone whom she perceived to be "taking me away from her." She hated Carl.

But Bob the waiter seemed to have turned her life around—for the moment. She even accepted the fact that Carl (who had gotten me my newspaper job) was my best buddy and that he and I would be working together daily after school. She had mellowed considerably.

1945 Teenage Stuff

There was quite a bit of excitement to being a teenager in 1945. With the war winding down, we guys felt relieved in believing it would be over before we were old enough to be drafted (and possibly sent into combat). There was no way we could have guessed that the Korean War would take many of us five or six years later.

In the meantime, there were plenty of fun things to do in 1945 Hollywood. There was no Disneyland or other "theme park"—but there were two amusement piers—one each in Santa Monica and Long BeaPg. Both had a rollercoaster and an assortment of other traditional fun rides (the Octopus, Tilt-A-Whirl, etc.).

There were plenty of game booths and shooting galleries, along with penny-arcades, where for just a penny you could see hand-cranked "flip-the-cards" movies of Charlie Chaplin, The Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton, and many others.

You could also see Gypsy Rose Lee doing a strip tease—and you didn't even have to be 18. (Of course you really didn't get to see very much either).

And if you ran out of money at the pier, there was plenty of sand and surf to fill out the day.

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Don Edrington's Home Page          Brief Bio   All Stories

Prologue   Ch.1 Alameda - Los Angeles 1939-40   Ch.2 Echo Park 1943   Ch.3 Virgil Jr Hi 1944   Ch.4 Le Conte Jr Hi 1945-46
Ch.5 Gower Gulch 1946   Ch.6 Hollywood Hi 1946-47   Ch.7 Drop Out 1948   Ch 8 Norma Jean Salina 1948   Ch 9 Fort Ord 1949
Ch.10 Fort Belvoir 1950   Ch.11 Korea 1951   Ch.12 Back to Civilian Life 1952   Ch.13 Cornet Stores 1953   Ch.14 Puerto Rico 1955
Ch 15 Signs by George 1956   Ch 16 Mexico 1958   Ch.17 Fullerton 1960   Ch.18 Fallbrook 1973   Ch.19 Assorted Strange Cyber Stories