A Moving End to an L.A. Story That Defied a Stereotype

A chapter has closed on Bleakwood Avenue.

The movers arrived early. Mother and son, side by side, watched as almost half a century of memories were wheeled, hefted and carted out the door to the waiting big rig.

Mom had turned 80 earlier in the week. She had been widowed for more than six years and living alone was beginning to be too much for her. Reluctantly, she decided to leave her home on L.A.’s gritty Eastside and head south to a retirement hotel in the peaceful suburbs of Mission Viejo.

Unintentionally, Mom had defied one of Los Angeles’ most enduring stereotypes: its reputation for nomadic dwellers lured from home to home about every five years until the place is big enough, the neighborhood good enough or the money simply isn’t enough to keep moving.

She lived in the same home for 48 years, the first place she and my dad bought after their marriage. They were its only owners. I grew up there and--spiritually, at least--for 46 of those years it was my home, too.

So on this bright and warm morning last week, the goodbyes we said were also to a place and a time that exists no more.

*

“It’s a Hamilton home, real plaster,” my dad would say. He dropped the largely unknown name of the tract’s developer in much the way proud car buyers would boast of American know-how by kicking the tire of a 1956 Buick Roadmaster.

The new tract, part of a huge building boom sparked by the end of World War II, was eight miles dead east of City Hall, right off 1st Street. It was hard to imagine this would eventually be considered part of the inner city. Bleakwood Avenue (a strange name in hindsight) seemed the end of civilization. Cattle grazed just 10 doors north of our new home, stuccoed yellow and framed by a bright redwood railing.

This was long before Los Angeles began to earn its title as a multicultural melting pot. But on Bleakwood, early signs of this were emerging.

My parents emigrated from Eastern Europe. Most of our neighbors were Japanese Americans who’d recently returned to Los Angeles after being brutally uprooted and thrown into wartime “relocation camps.” Immediately to our west and south were the barrios of East L.A.

Yet the street was as American as apple pie.

Most of the families were young, just starting out. The place was full of kids. Few of the moms worked outside the home. In an ingenious early attempt at some kind of liberation, they forged a pact among themselves, each agreeing to take responsibility for all the block’s kids for a single day. The rest were thus freed to do as they pleased. That generally meant cleaning house or shopping for groceries.

There were few freeways and a second family car was a rarity. We walked. When it was my mom’s turn with the kids, she would have us all grab onto a long rope and lead us through the park several blocks away or on some other neighborhood adventure. You got to know the moms almost as well as the other children.

It’s fair to say that over the years, things did change. The awakening discontent within the Latino community brought big protests to the park where we used to play. School friends went off to Vietnam, never to return. The crime rate soared. Local gangs, whose most fearsome weapons had been switchblades and broken bottles, turned to the drug trade and real violence.

Still Bleakwood Avenue and its surroundings remained a relative oasis of tranquillity and safety, even during the recent riots that tore through much of the city’s urban core. An unusually high number of longtime residents, like my mom, also defied the odds and L.A. culture by staying put.

Several weeks ago, we threw a party and invited them all. They came to share memories and worries about their own future. Tears flowed.

*

With all the furniture, pictures and knickknacks gone, the house looked odd--probably because the last time it was empty was 1947, when the floors glistened bright oak, the wooden windows opened without a creak and the place still smelled of new paint.

It’s astounding what bright sunlight, years of shuffling from one room to another, careless spills and heavy objects dropped (not to mention several major earthquakes) can do to a place. Like a person, it begins to show the cracks and wrinkles. A house, once seemingly large and roomy, also can suddenly seem to shrink.

I asked my mom to walk with me through the house one last time. As we did, her eyes clouded and random memories began to emerge: how she would bathe me and my older sister in a service porch washtub, the gallbladder attacks that kept her bedridden for months, how my baby sister was not allowed to cross the threshold of my room without expressed permission, the family celebrations, the tragedies we all shared.

For me, the hardest part was turning the key in the front door for the last time.

For my mom, I think it was waving so-long from the passenger seat of my four-wheel-drive.

“You’ve been a great house,” she sighed. “I’ll miss you.”