My City, My Beautiful City

Good Monday morning.

Yesterday, after church, I had a sneaky little vacation all by myself.

I didn't come straight home!  I went lookin'.

When we first lived in San Diego in the early sixties,  Mission Hills was practically all I knew.  We first lived in an apartment in Clairemont but every night after supper we'd go riding around in search of our future neighborhood.

The evening that we first drove up Juan Street Hill, I said to my husband, "This is it!!"  And before long we searched out a realtor, and before my second baby was born we were happily residing on Hickory Street.  After a time, with baby number three coming along, we found another, larger house on Lyndon Road, with a huge canyon in back, and we moved there.

We hadn't paid a lot of attention to the canyons before we went there, but the canyons of San Diego are worthy of much notice. They range in size from the small and sequestered to the huge and open. Our canyon, for example, was fully a mile across at the top (I'm guessing) from our street to the houses of Washington Place across the way, and there was a deep steep incline in between, filled with bushes, plantings, wildflowers (radish and mustard) in spring, and trees.  Still, it was wide and airy, and from this I began to call the canyon systems of my beautiful city, "air canals."

This canyon, as it rambled west, descended also, and came out not really very far from the Naval and Marine training bases at Point Loma.  In the mornings as we lay abed on Hickory, we could hear the mighty roars of hundreds of young male voices calling out as they greeted the raising of the flag.  Once in a while we'd find an abandoned uniform of day-wear down on the canyon where someone hoped, perhaps to return to his faraway home without detection.

There was lots of wild life in the canyon, foxes, raccoons, coyotes, who came out at night and ferretted around the houses for whatever they might find.  We loved having them and I remember in a hot summer spell, filling a metal tank with water halfway down the canyon so that the foxes might drink.

As my kids grew up, I became a night walker, taking to the complicated knots of streets to discover ever more little neighborhoods within neighborhoods.  There was a neverending display of differently designed residences and gardens. I 'd take my two chihuahuas on a leash and often I'd end up carrying them home as their little legs finally gave out on them.

To me, at that time, San Diego consisted of Mission Hills, Hillcrest, Point Loma, La Jolla and Clairemont.  But a big change came for me when I began teaching in about 1970.  Armed with the huge substitute teacher map provided by the San Diego City Schools for its subs, I went all over the area. Since I was concentrating on bi-lingual, the neighborhoods tended not to be the ones mentioned above, and I was out in the dawn looking for places I'd never even heard of.  I'd go in in the dark, practically, be handed a door key, go into a cold dank empty room smelling of sour sponges, old chalk, and kids....look for a lesson plan, and lots of times just improvise when that inevitable bell rang and a crowd of raucous, curious little kids charged in.

It's toward those unfamiliar neighborhoods that I go now to look around.  Places I'd never thought of before I saw them.  The canyons are there, the neighborhoods albeit shabbier in some cases, filled with an ill-sitting but vibrant group of immigrant families from all over the world now; inhabiting the tree-shadowed woodsy lots, planting in the canyons, pushing their children on the sidewalks.  And over all hangs the incredible San Diego weather: almost too still, almost too mild, almost too perfect.

It's amazing to me that I cannot even afford (outright is how I 'm thinking nowadays) to buy most of these derelicts.  The prices in San Diego proper are almost astronomical.  I wonder that these families can afford them. By renting them mostly, I am sure.  But there are hard workers there, and people who know how to save and put by.  If they don't own their house this year, just give them some time. It will be worth it.

So that's where I go driving, sometimes, after church of a Sunday.  I give myself the limit of an hour so I won't get home too late...but faced with the prospect of maybe or surely leaving it forever before too long, I cherish every moment and every strange new street and every beautiful new canyon hiding behind it. YAZZYBEL

One, Toast with Butter is Delicious, and, Two, there are Too Many Chickens, or are they Chickens?

Good morning.

I am eating breakfast and my mind is running upon thoughts of food.

I am regretting toast with butter, which I no longer indulge in because of my pore little old artery attack, but--toast with jelly is good too and I do allow myself that though not with dilly bread as I had this morning.

I wake up hungry, which is a good sign. If you are consistently not hungry when you wake up in the morning, check your blood sugar.  I've never eaten habitually after dinner, and the 'bedtime snack' is anathema.

Having said that, I remember some wonderful after theater Dutch apple pie with ice cream that we used to eat in Dallas after going to the summer outdoor theaters...how wonderful that pie was, especially with good Texas vanilla ice cream on top. I'm thankful I indulged in that when I was twenty or twenty-one years of age, when my body could take it!!

And I have been thinking of the wonderful fried chicken restaurant in Waco, Texas, in the early fifties.  Everyone went there after church for their Sunday dinner.  That chicken was just scrumptious.  And fried, fried, fried, glistening with richness there on the plate. (I was thinking of those dinners the other day upon eating a hard, greasy piece of supermarket fried chicken. Sigh!) And yes, I pull off the skin now, deed I do. Good girl~!!

That restaurant had one of the best banana pies I've ever eaten (though I didnt manage to get banana pie into the title up there.) It was made with a flaky baked crust, cooled and filled with sliced perfect bananas, a sprinkle or two of sugar, and whipped cream on top and served chilled.  Oh, how good it was!

But back to the chicken--remember when I wrote about Too Many Lobsters not long ago?  There are way way WAY too many chickens and especially chicken breasts out there on the market. Chicken breasts are rumoured to be pieces of CLONE, in the subterranean world in which I exist.  Clone, I tell you, manufactured meat!  Even if they are not, the number of slaughtered chickens required to put out the number of pieces of chicken meat out there on the supermarket shelves is ASTRONOMICAL.
There is astronomical suffering involved.  It just ain't right, I tell you.

Vegan is the only way.  A piece of fish stolen from the cold pristine waters of Scandinavia cannot always be amiss, but really, can't we see that, unless we grew it in our back yard and did it in ourselves, chicken as an American food just has to go? It's just too much.  YAZZYBEL

Happy Mother's Day, Mama

Happy Mother's Day, Mama!

I was thinking of you today at church, wondering what kind of Heaven you'd ended up in, and I realized I already knew.

In one of our Father's many mansions, lives my mother.  She has lots of people around her, the ones she cared about.  She lives in an immaculate residence, simple, but with touches of luxury about her.  Her bath is large and warm, her bathtub is a very large pearl, and there are glints of gold in the decoration.

When she cares to eat, she has the best of food, with plenty of cream and butter and salt and pepper.  She has a dark chocolate every now and then.  She hears hints of Latin and French, which she learned at (an American public) high school in Temple, Texas, and of which she taught me a little, getting me started when I was a little child.  "Il etait une berger-uh," she would sing, and still does.

When she wants for company, she has her child cousins about, and she discovers she's a child again herself and plays with them contentedly. Sometimes she thinks of a friend from her adult years, and shares time with that person too.  One wonders if she thinks of my father, though I think he lives in another mansion, one suited just for his unique self.

My mother is not inclined to travel, so she is happy in her beautiful house.  She has a few books and reads them seldom.  Since her eyes have improved remarkably, she enjoys her crossword puzzles.  A little walk around the grounds is permissible, and she walks there admiring the gardens.  She especially likes the carnations, I think, and their spicy smell.  So do I, Mama.

A happy Mother's Day to you and to all of us, Mama!   YAZZYBEL

Well, There Went Poetry Month!

Good evening!!

Apparently my attempts at verse brought down the ire of my Muse, for all efforts were thwarted a couple of weeks ago when Theodore had to go to the hospital and the nursing home.

I was smitten by my continuing asthma and coughing, as well, and exhausted from driving and running back and forth.

Poetic ambition was stifled, for the time being. But I am going to pick up the thread now and try to keep a similacrum of a blog going along.  That's all for now.  I just got a cute picture of Foxy with his new haircut and I'd put it on if I had the Capability.  Too many retarded handicaps, moi. LOVE TO ALL< YAZZYBEL