Wellington Reunion

The trip to my old neighborhood was just great. We started out over at Virginia Road  where all of us went to  elementary school. Sat down, had a picnic. Freaked people out, I think to see the lot of us all camped out on the front lawn. Of course when we were kids, the front lawn of the school was always the place to be, this was where we had the big football games. It's kinda crazy when you think of it, that we actually generated an NFL quality player playing as we did in this little narrow patch of grass and on the front yards and streets of my old neighborhood.  Of course everything looks smaller than it used to.

The kids had a ball, running and chasing each other around before we got a real football game going. D. was the star and even though she already had her wrist in a cast, she burned everybody in the secondary and caught the first long bomb of the game.  Previous to that our rush had caught Deet five yards behind scrimmage. I only wish I had audio of that trash talk. But he was redeemed by the bomb, except that D tripped over her own large feet as if she were in a horror flick and banged up her knee on the sidewalk. Game over. She walked it off in ten minutes but had everyone shaking their heads and sucking their teeth. She's got grit, and when the football got stuck in the tree before the game, she was the first one up the tree. We got us some women in our family.

They managed to surprise me with a birthday cake served out of the bed of Pop's truck. It was lemon, my favorite. Well, lemon banana creme is my favorite but nobody makes that kind of cake. Then we started our trivia questions and headed to the old block, which was two blocks away. It looked like a pilgramage. Doc was the first one to see somebody we recognized. It was Beverly. Beverly was the first person I ever knew from outside of my family. She adopted me when I was just a little guy and we lived upstairs in the back apartment at 3013. So she was just shocked to see all of us together.

We had to line up and show whose kids belonged to whom. It turned out that when her folks died, she sold that house and then bought old Mr. Green's house. Mr. Green was the meanest man in creation and if you ever walked on his grass he'd get after you with a pitchfork. I think I might have tried to make a friend of Mr. Green just to prove it couldn't be done, but the details of that story elude me. I'll make one up that I can tell when I'm 60. She's getting ready to head out to the Antelope Valley. A lot of folks from the old neighborhood went that way, and some to other parts of Central California like Camarillo. We got the phone numbers for her two daughters too. Deet and Doc remember them better than me. See the neighborhood was packed with kids back in the day and everyone had at least 4 friends in their age bracket, so those were central. We walked back across the street to the Ivory's old house and I stood on my favorite rock. It was the first thing I played on when I was a kid. I wonder if I could buy it off of those folks. My rock. Wow. 

Next thing you know we find Ray. Man where has he been? He came down for the Dorsey 70th anniversary just like Doc and Deet. Susan Miller Dorsey was the first female superintendent of schools for Los Angeles. They built the school in 1934 and designed it to look like an airport - very streamlined and industrial. Paula, one of our first babysitters showed up. She graduated in 1960. Deet was in the class of 84, I think. Ray was '82.

What trip to Wellington would be complete without Mrs. Stanley? Somebody ranked on her saying that Pops should take a picture of her peeking out between her window shades. She was the neighborhood busybody but got much love from all of us. Well, now. She has the most unforgettable voice and like many of the folks from the old 'hood, came out here from Dallas. Her husband Ocell died about 20 years ago. Couldn't tell him nothing about football as the Cowboys would smash the Rams every year, but at least we could beat him in basketball. He got to talk smack, we got to beat him on the court. Lilly slammed Doc by telling him that both Deet and I scored homeruns in our marriages and ahem... Had us all bustin' up.  Some things never change.

Right about now the kids were getting restless, as kids do when the adults start telling jokes about things that happened before they were born. Over at the school I kept their attention talking about how we used to rock-climb the brick walls up to the second storey and how to properly hop a chainlink fence, but now they were starting to get weary. I can't believe they even took the boombox back and put it in the minivan. We were jammin' some ConFunkShun and Bar Kays. Oh well, by the time we started talking with the old neighbors it was a distraction anyway. Dorothy Arnold showed up as we looked at 3026 and described the way to climb up the chinaberry trees. Big hugs all around. None of the Arnolds were around but Deet said he ran into Teresa a couple months ago. It turns out that the guy who owns our old house is some kind of actor. He was on The Shield last season, but I haven't seen him in anything else.  But the old house looks like it's doing OK. I mean nobody kept it up as well as we did, and I can see that some of the tiles on the roof need painting, and the old gate needs a lot of work, but at least they've got the plants doing ok.

Next on the list was the Myers house. Last stop actually. Rosetta was there and so was Burt. Burt and his brothers were the oldest kids on the block. Burt is now 54, and he's still cut. That's him in the tank top third from the left. Burt taught me how to slapbox. I always did want to play with the big kids. He's a personal trainer down in Laguna and a vegetarian. What? And there's Ronnie Woods. He came down for the Dorsey reunion too. Man he looks exactly the same. I asked about his sister Terry. I haven't seen them in decades. I heard Donny was coming by too. I completely forgot about Hazel and Audrey. Ebon was my friend. I wonder where he is now. I gotta catch up more often.

So needless to say the trip was a huge success and we caught up with a lot more folks than we expected to, even though 'Lonzo wasn't there. Oh well. One day we'll get the word out and have everybody come down. That would be very special. This is a birthday to remember.