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| Original Tommy's at Beverly and Rampart, photo from the 1970s |
I really admire those bloggers that can pound out material everyday. I escaped to the southland for a mini-vacation and now realize that I should have pre-prepared a posting or too. I don't lack material, it's just that there's no time. There are too many places to go, there just isn't time to dedicate a few hours to this.
I come back to Los Angeles maybe 2 or 3 times a year. Usually it’s during baseball season to take advantage of catching a Dodger game or two. But yesterday morning, we got up at 5 a.m. and traveled back to my old stomping grounds in the dead of winter. So here I am, with so little time and so much to see.
Do I go out for a Tommy’s Burger? What about Philippe's? Or my favorite Mexican restaurant, “El Tepeyac” for a Manuel’s special? I’m tempted to stop by Chavez Ravine, just for a look. But there are others with me who won't go for that. Then there is the old neighborhood. I usually drive through it real slow and check out all of my old haunts. It’s a trip through nostalgia and when I used to go back with my kids, they usually didn't have much patience to accompany me to all of these strange places.
They'd get the old travel log speech from me as their eyes roll to the back of their heads:
“That’s where I used to have Little League practice?”
“When I was a Cub scout, we would go to that chalk hill over there and dig for fossils.”
“Did you know they filmed “Back to the Future” at that mall, yeah, right there is where Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd escaped from the Libyan terrorists. That 24 hour Fitness used to be a JC Penneys.”
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| Scene from Back to the Future filmed at the Puente Hills Mall, 1980s |
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| Puente Hills Mall Today, almost from the same vantage point. JC Penney's has been replaced by a 24 Hour Fitness |
“This is the short cut we’d take when coach would punish us and make us run several miles.”
Andy Etchebarren used to have a liquor store right here. In 1971 he came with several members of the Orioles here to sign autographs. It was a big deal, they were the defending champions at the time.”
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| Brooks Robinson, Andy Etchebarren and Dave McNally celebrate their '66 World Series victory against the Dodgers. Those three appeared at Etchebarren's Hacienda Hts. liquor store in 1971 along with Jim Palmer and Davey Johnson. |
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If you get a chance, go take a look over at a fantastic new blog:
http://dodgerfilms.mlblogs.com/
Bobby Crosby, referred to by Randy Wolf as “the You Tube guy,” has started a blog, and it’s a good one. I won’t post links to his YouTube videos because I’m sure he’ll be doing that a lot in the future, but if you want to see them, you’ll find them under the moniker, “Dodgerfilms.”
