Frank

Karlyn: So you grew up here in Angelino Heights?

Frank: Angelino Heights of off Temple and Douglas, well our family was on Bellevue, and uh, when we grew up, what we did, we was like little rascals back in the fifties.  There was a lot of little neighborhoods, a lot of kids. The old stores were, uh, wooden fence, wooden doors, you had that certain smell, the fresh vegetables. And in the streets there wasn’t any iron gates, or on the windows, everything was open. People could go to the store, and leave the their door open and come back and just tell their neighbor “Hey, you want something? I’ll come to the back door!” Or, “Get yourself whatever you need!” You know, it was just, it was trusting cause people…

Karlyn:  So Temple and Douglas are cut off by the freeway, right now…

Frank: …by the freeway yeah. We used to live on Bellevue, and my uncle lives on Bellevue, and… because my dad, my father and my uncle bought two homes and my dad had to move to the other side and the freeway came in back in ’48-’49.

Karlyn: So they just built the freeway through the neighborhood?

Frank: Yeah.

Karlyn: Mmm. You know I heard this joke a long time ago, uh… "Why do Mexicans live by the freeway? And the answer was: “It’s not that we live by the freeway, the freeway came by us.”

Frank: Mmhmm. But right here there was a lot of Germans, lot of Europeans…

Karlyn: Mmhmm.

Frank: … Filipino’s, Italian’s, Jewish people you know…

Karlyn: So I know that Chinatown used to be Little Italy?

Frank: Yeah.

Karlyn:  Was it still that way when you were a kid?

Frank: Yeah, well yeah but a lot of Croatian’s

Karlyn:  Oh, there’s a Croatian church up on uh Grand right…

Frank: … on Alpine

Karlyn: … right up there…

Frank: …up on the hill…

Karlyn:  …in Chinatown…

Frank: Yeah.

Karlyn:  I’ve seen that and I’ve been really curious about that Croatian church. And there’s a Croatian cemetery, or Serbian rather, cemetery down on third and uh…

Frank: Yeah but they…

Karlyn: That’s a different thing…

Frank: Yeah but some of them don’t get along now.

Karlyn: Yeah. Croatian’s and Serb’s.

Frank: And [garbled] Yugoslavia was all stuck together.

Karlyn: Mmhmm.

Frank: Like people from Central America.  You put all these little countries together but it didn’t work out after a while, you know?

Karlyn: Mmhmm. Yeah, different cultures and everything.

Frank: Yeah, look at Central America, it had like 12-13 countries right? And eventually they couldn’t stand their neighbor; they could not work with them.

Karlyn: Mmhmm.

Frank: But anyway, it was a… it was a lot of neighborhoods. And everybody respected… when you were walking, or your mother was walking with a couple of bags, the kids would run over and help the lady take her bags to her home.  And so and so’s mommy or, Bobby’s mommy or Susie’s mommy, you know?

Karlyn:  What were the names of some of the stores? Like was “Bob’s” here at that time?

Frank: Oh yeah, “Bob’s” (Bob’s Market) was here, “Charlie’s”…“Charlie and Ida” on Temple and Edgeware. Mr. Brown, he had this store called “George’s Liquor” which used to be uh… used to be a drug store and a pharmacy.

Karlyn: Mmhmm.

Frank: And… it was a soda fountain place and he turned it into a liquor store in the late 50’s and 60’s. And it used to have the old wooden… uh… telephone booths.

Karlyn: Mmhmm.

Frank: They had two of them in there. And uh… yeah it was a real neighborhood. People would knock on your door “Hey, can I have some… I wanna buy some lemons?”

Karlyn: Mmhmm.

Frank:  And uh… They’d leave you ten cents for three lemons or something, or  a nickel, it depends. You’d say “Hold on, let me get you a bag… No, no, no it’s OK Ma’am. We have plenty, you can have ‘em!”, you know. But people were polite, you know, knock on doors.

To Be Continued...