Yesterday a visit with old friends... We arrive late afternoon with a bottle of champagne to spend a while with our former neighbors. We know the street well, having lived there for some thirty-five years. It lives up to its name, Ronda Vista, with its "round view", leading up the crest of the Franklin Hill at the far east end of Hollywood. From our old house we enjoyed a not-quite 360 degree view, from the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains to the east and the scrubby hills of Griffith Park to the north, then past the Griffith Park observatory (which I’d known for years as the site of the knife fight in “Rebel Without a Cause” before I ever saw it) and the famous tall white letters of the Hollywood sign that loom above the city of Hollywood itself, then out as far as the Santa Monica mountains and the Pacific Ocean to the west. On a clear day, out to the south and west, we could catch a glimpse of distant Catalina Island. This, for those many years, was our perch at what felt like the rim of the world.
Our long-time neighbors still live in the next house down the hill. They moved in about the same time as ourselves and their son was born not long before our daughter. We had bought our house, against all common sense, before we were married and with Sarah already on the way. One Armistice Day, on 11/11, with Ellie already eight months pregnant, we got up to a bright Southern California morning and decided to get married. Who but our good neighbors would we invite to be our witnesses? We drove downtown and met at a city judge’s office, reciting the necessary words before heading off to the posh Biltmore Hotel in time for a champagne toast at eleven minutes past eleven.
We have history, then. We peek into the house, where Linda is keen to show us the collection of Shel’s creations from his woodshop in the basement. We are astounded. We have known about this “hobby” for some time. Shel has often mentioned how he will disappear into his workshop with, long ago, one of his favorite pipes—now long abandoned in favor of an occasional cigar—to tinker with the wood he loves to work with. But this! It’s the work of years, an incredible array, literally hundreds of delightful, whimsical toys, figures and games put together out of scraps of painted wood crowding countless shelves and odd corners of the rooms. The product of one of those quirky and obsessive imaginations, the whole collection deserves, we thought, a full-scale exhibition at the Craft and Folk Art Museum.
Outside, on the back deck, Linda brings out an array of crackers and cheeses and Shel opens up our bottle of champagne. The sun begins to set out over the Pacific Ocean as we sit and reminisce about the many years we have known each other. Our old house looms next door, a comfortable and familiar presence. The “new” owner has kept the same exterior colors that we chose all those years ago. Soon, our friends tell us, it will be sold again—and likely at twice the price we sold it for. Having paid just a little more than $40,000 dollars for these grand old houses back in the early 1970s, we shake our heads in shared amazement at the memory. Ellie and I had been paying $230 in rent at a little house in a nearby street and we worried about coming up with an extra $20 for the $250 monthly mortgage payment.
All these years we have known each other, and have shared so much. No wonder we can sit in complete comfort now and share a glass of wine. I start to remark on that, but the others misunderstand me, thinking that I’m remarking on one of the privileges of age, to have nothing more about the fragile ego to protect. Which is true, of course, but what I was about to mention was that simple, profound feeling of connection, the pleasant feeling of sitting there at a table together with so much unspoken, so much unnecessary, even, to speak. A depth and wealth of shared experience that goes back fifty years.
The sun sets, the evening shadows start to gather around us, and we feel at ease. It’s this, I realize, that I’m trying to name and celebrate. A quietly sacred moment of communion.
Our long-time neighbors still live in the next house down the hill. They moved in about the same time as ourselves and their son was born not long before our daughter. We had bought our house, against all common sense, before we were married and with Sarah already on the way. One Armistice Day, on 11/11, with Ellie already eight months pregnant, we got up to a bright Southern California morning and decided to get married. Who but our good neighbors would we invite to be our witnesses? We drove downtown and met at a city judge’s office, reciting the necessary words before heading off to the posh Biltmore Hotel in time for a champagne toast at eleven minutes past eleven.
We have history, then. We peek into the house, where Linda is keen to show us the collection of Shel’s creations from his woodshop in the basement. We are astounded. We have known about this “hobby” for some time. Shel has often mentioned how he will disappear into his workshop with, long ago, one of his favorite pipes—now long abandoned in favor of an occasional cigar—to tinker with the wood he loves to work with. But this! It’s the work of years, an incredible array, literally hundreds of delightful, whimsical toys, figures and games put together out of scraps of painted wood crowding countless shelves and odd corners of the rooms. The product of one of those quirky and obsessive imaginations, the whole collection deserves, we thought, a full-scale exhibition at the Craft and Folk Art Museum.
Outside, on the back deck, Linda brings out an array of crackers and cheeses and Shel opens up our bottle of champagne. The sun begins to set out over the Pacific Ocean as we sit and reminisce about the many years we have known each other. Our old house looms next door, a comfortable and familiar presence. The “new” owner has kept the same exterior colors that we chose all those years ago. Soon, our friends tell us, it will be sold again—and likely at twice the price we sold it for. Having paid just a little more than $40,000 dollars for these grand old houses back in the early 1970s, we shake our heads in shared amazement at the memory. Ellie and I had been paying $230 in rent at a little house in a nearby street and we worried about coming up with an extra $20 for the $250 monthly mortgage payment.
All these years we have known each other, and have shared so much. No wonder we can sit in complete comfort now and share a glass of wine. I start to remark on that, but the others misunderstand me, thinking that I’m remarking on one of the privileges of age, to have nothing more about the fragile ego to protect. Which is true, of course, but what I was about to mention was that simple, profound feeling of connection, the pleasant feeling of sitting there at a table together with so much unspoken, so much unnecessary, even, to speak. A depth and wealth of shared experience that goes back fifty years.
The sun sets, the evening shadows start to gather around us, and we feel at ease. It’s this, I realize, that I’m trying to name and celebrate. A quietly sacred moment of communion.
not only do I have many connections to Cambridge, I lived up that street.
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