Odds & Ends Around the Valley

Do You Remember?

Julie Engelhard, 63, moved to the San Fernando Valley in the early ‘50s when, she said, “it was heaven on earth, really beautiful. The skies were true blue, and the mountains shimmered. The air smelled like orange blossoms, and neighbors talked to one another and cared for one another. There was a lot of time and space, nothing seemed cramped or hurried.”

Engelhard, who moved here from New York City, said she never worried about locking her door or the car.

Things, of course, have changed. “Now it’s more like New York used to be,” she said. “And you can’t live in New York at all.”

But Engelhard hasn’t forgotten how things were. In her Burbank home, she has built a room that is something of a shrine to the era when Elvis Presley was king and interaction was something you did with another person, not a video.

“I have a lot of things in that room from the ‘50s, including a soda fountain with a really beautiful Formica top,” she said.

“I also have a lot of bikes from that time, and I’ve restored them all, including the baskets. They’re in that room, too,” she said.

Engelhard doesn’t think of her ‘50s room as a personal museum.

“It’s my favorite place to be, and all my friends love it, too,” she said. “When we have a party, some people head for the bar in the den, but a lot of people go straight for the soda fountain.”

Engelhard knows what to do when they arrive.

“I make a mean banana split,” she said. “Since there aren’t any real commercial soda fountains around anymore, kids hardly know what you’re talking about when you ask them if you want one,” she said. “I show them what they’ve been missing.”

International Relations

Viewpoint School in Calabasas recently played host for two weeks to 10 Japanese students from Sangyo University High School in Osaka. The students are part of an enrichment program that brought them to Southern California to experience the American way of life.

“The thinking is that many of these young people who are studying engineering and computer technology will be returning to the United States once they graduate from school, and it is important for them to have a sense of how to get along in this country,” said Russell Cooper-Mead, director of development at Viewpoint.

To provide the youngsters with a useful crash course, the school turned them over to the Russians.

“We have three Soviet students on scholarship with us for the fall semester who have developed good English skills and are living with American families. They really have a handle on what the Japanese students wanted to know,” Cooper-Mead said.

The school divided the visitors into four sections with one Russian student for each group of three or four Japanese students. Then, according to Cooper-Mead, the Soviet students went to work.

“The Soviet youngsters wanted to teach the Japanese useful things, like how to introduce themselves to people, how to order in a restaurant and how to buy something in a store,” Cooper-Mead said. “But the Russians complained that the Japanese students weren’t exercising proper classroom discipline.”

One of the problems, according to Cooper-Mead, was that the Soviet students are now used to the way U.S. students engage in a lot of give-and-take with their instructors, something the Soviet students have learned to appreciate. “So,” Cooper-Mead said, “they were offended when the Japanese students, who are used to listening politely and not interacting, just sat and listened politely.”

Cooper-Mead said he thought the Japanese students found the experience interesting, even if the Soviet students didn’t think they were giving it their all. He wonders what is going to happen to the three Soviet students when they return to their home country, where the classroom setting is more formal--although not as formal as in Japan.

Yulia Barskaya, Mikle Podlozov and Yulia Usikova were invited to come to Viewpoint after spending a short time at the school last year with seven other Moscow high school classmates.

Viewpoint decided to invite the three students back for a longer and less superficial stay this semester. The school saw to their transportation to the United States, arranged to put them up in homes of fellow students and saw that the youngsters had the benefit of a full social life.

One student is staying with a family in Thousand Oaks, another with a Westlake Village family and another with a Malibu family. “I think they are enjoying American family life,” Cooper-Mead said.

Asked if the school was going to seem less like the United Nations in December, when both the Japanese and Soviet students are gone, Cooper-Mead said “not really.”

“Viewpoint is something of an international community anyway,” he said. “About 40% of our students come from homes where English is not the first language. One of 13 other languages is,” he said.

Child’s Play

When Al Pavangkanan, 11, a sixth-grade student at Strathern Street School goes to Orlando, Fla., the weekend of Dec. 8, he plans to play lots of Nintendo.

As a matter of fact, even though he is going to be staying at the new Universal Studios complex there, playing Nintendo is about all he is going to do.

Pavangkanan, son of Peter and Kay Pavangkanan of North Hollywood, is the Southern California champion Nintendo player after two weekends of competition at Universal Studios in Southern California in October.

Al read about the competition--which attracted thousands to the studio--in a Nintendo enthusiast magazine. “I talked a friend into going with me to the contest, but I didn’t think I was going to win,” Al said.

But he did.

It was a little intimidating though.

Universal had installed nearly 1,000 Nintendo video game units in an area the size of three football fields. The competition arena was constructed with high-tech V-shaped pod structures, sleek individual-performance game-terminal capsules and a jeweled throne area for high-powered play. There were also two 6-by-8-foot rear-screen video projectors to monitor the action.

Al calmly entered himself in the 11-and-under category and started to play.

He played Super Mario Bros.

He played Rad Racer.

He played Tetris.

He scored big in the specially developed triathlon video game designed for this contest.

When all the points were counted, Al was the winner in his category. He won $250, sports shoes, a trophy and a trip to the national competition.

If he wins in Florida, he will receive a $10,000 savings bond, a 1991 car, a large-screen TV and Nintendo games and accessories.

Al’s stoked.

It would be a while, however, before he could drive the car. The $10,000 would probably go into a college fund for Al, according to his sister, Ann, 22.

But his parents and sister don’t know what to think about the 5,000 Nintendo games.

“We had to ground him two years ago when he first got the game,” his sister said. “He was spending too much time doing Nintendo and not enough with his studies, and he’s an honor student,” she said.

Al, who’s on vacation now, says he spends as many as four hours a day playing the different games. “It just happens that because my school is on a year-round schedule, this is my time off.”

Sort of.

How’s That?

The San Fernando Chamber of Commerce recently honored the Police Department and its Police Explorer program that offers young people an alternative to gangs.

There was an hors d’oeuvres buffet, a check-passing ceremony from the chamber to the Police Department youth organization and lots of socializing.

But the hit of the event was a Police Department exhibit of confiscated weapons and illegal drugs.

Anyone coming late to the event must have thought the group was offering some awfully strange door prizes.

Overheard

“I’ve never gone over 70 on the golf course yet, because my husband told me that was the best score, so I just stop counting when I get there. Anything more would be superfluous.”--At El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana