The following volume II sketches are about my remembrances of a city in high anxiety from 1949 until 1965. The reason for 1949 isn’t arbitrary or accidental as it was the first year I could remember anything, being four. It also happened to be the first time I attended a USC football game in the Coliseum. I attempt to take the reader through a kaleidoscope of humorous history of a city that in a few short years was transformed from a place visited in the theater through film or on two week vacations to a metropolis of locals just a few generations old. In just 16 years all that was good about Los Angeles changed forever.

During this time tragedies struck hard as fires swept through neighborhoods, earthquakes leveled whole city blocks, monstrous freeways were engineered and magic of entertainment unfolded. As Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.” In 1949 one could see from the ocean to the snows on Mt. Baldy 45 miles away. By 1965 the view was scarcely a few blocks because of freeways, people and ignorance. Riots caught everyone by surprise and everyone suffered, few did not understand why nor did they care. In a few square blocks of South Central where I spent a year riding my tricycle the sky turned black and the night became an inferno, red cinders fueled by rage perhaps festering for decades but it happened. It’s a period worth mentioning only from the standpoint I lived through it, loved then hated it. We cherish what we remember and attempt to disguise and forget the bad.

This is about a period which created great sports figures and the media forms that made it a joy to read, listen, and watch as a new form of social gathering emerged labeled the sports bar and radios on the beach. The names Scully and Murray came into our homes and transistor radios marking the first real superstars of the sports media world. A man came into our life and living rooms every Wednesday at 8:00 and us kids would watch the wonders of Frontier and Tomorrow Land. Then his genius created a place where kids, moms, dads and grandpa were in heaven as they stepped through the gates and entered a Shangri-La of fantasy, adventure and dreams. It is still there but not the same.

I attempted to sketch the very best and worst in a city that at times mocked its given name. On September 4th 1781 forty-four settlers known as Los Pobladores founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles." In English it is "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels. Hopefully, there will be smiles and reflection as I know it will never be the same again. In the final analysis only those who witnessed these events as I and then left for the east can say some good about a city that grew up to fast leaving in its past the orange groves, dairy farms, haciendas, clear sky and visions of sail boats casually making a one day journey to Catalina Island.

We are products of our own folly and the excesses of progress. Some remember while others accept the transgressions and regressions. Most don’t have a clue on a way of life not “Gone with the Wind,” but rather gone with the memories of a far different world, my world, as I remember her not the way it is today but the way it was. A “Requiem for a Lifestyle” may be too good for what happened to her, but at least I have the memories.

Jack Sullivan, 11 August 2014