Readers Remember

I can remember when the hillside area of Burbank was wide and open. There were fields with poppies, lupine and other wildflowers and a few houses here and there.

A vineyard took up much of our area. I loved watching people ride horses back and forth.

Soon the bulldozers moved in to level off the ground. Houses were being built everywhere. The vineyard was replaced by a school and the horses were restricted to a corner of the other side of town.

One day I gazed up at the hills over the sea of rooftops and wondered what had happened. I felt fenced in.

I had witnessed the postwar population boom.

GRACE E. HAMPTON

Burbank

Here I am, trying to get over the fact that I just turned 55. I have vivid recollections of my early life in West Los Angeles. Where we see housing and a shopping center today, there were fields being plowed, planted and harvested. Four-engine, propeller-driven airliners being produced at nearby Douglas Aircraft were taking off and landing within our view at Clover Field.

On occasion, if my mother and I were unfortunate enough to be driving past the head of the runway along Centinela at National, airliners preparing to take off would blow oil and chunks of carbon onto our car.

What’s now a concrete river channel was a creek bed where my young buddies and I could look for polliwogs, frogs and water snakes lurking by the stream.

Calling the changes “progress” is nearly as tough as turning 55.

DAVID OHMAN

Irvine