Friday Sight Seeing - Part I

As expected Friday we would not be leaving early but eventually we left. My sister had to go return a sweater to one of her friends and as I started driving I remember one of her friends I had met last year owned a Mexican crafts store in that area so I asked her if we could go check it out. I am glad I did, we spent nearly an hour just looking around and admiring the Mexican craftsmanship in all the product she sells.

Lots of nice stuff in this store.
This is Linda, owner of Artesanias Mexicanas in Glendora, California.
Next we would go eat as by now we were all hungry. My sister recommended this restaurant in the heart of South Central called La Carreta. On our way there I asked her to park the car so I could take some pictures of an old Baptist Church that was just sitting there looking abandoned. As I stepped out and left the door open my niece freaked out cause she said you don't do that in that neighborhood. Yeah,it's a little rowdy but we grew up around there and survived it.

It would be great if this church would be restored.
A couple of blocks up the road was Jefferson High School, the high school that Chely attended. I was supposed to go there too but I opted for Huntington Park High. Needless to say we stopped for more photo ops there. Basically we would be going down memory lane for the next hour or so.

Jefferson High School.
Finally we got to La Carreta where they ate some carne asada sincronisadas and I ate... yep you guessed it, tacos. There was a guy there with a guitar and harmonica playing music and he was surprisingly good. He sang typical Mexican music but he also belted some good ol Rock en Espanol. Of course Chely had to go and request some songs and then pose for a picture with the guy.

My lil sister and I.

Street performer and Chely.

After we finished our food we headed for our old neighborhood. What a surprise to see the park I used to go to every day completely surrounded by a fence. Granted the fence was kindda nice but it was fenced. Just goes to show you the kind of neighborhood it turned out to be. Truth is it was always a rough place to grow up in but luckily many of us survived all the gang and drug activity in the area.

The parks perimeter was surrounded by this fence. Ummm I wonder why?

The father of two of my friends owned a bakery on Maple Ave and I decided to go see it it still existed. Not only it did but I got to see one of the two friends. We were disco dancing buddies from back in the 80's. To say it was a nice surprise would be an understatement, we spent a good amount of time going down memory lane and then we said goodbye.

La Tapatia Bakery.
A quick stop at our first home which by the way was just up for sale not too long ago I was told.

First house my parents ever owned.
And last we also stopped by the little neighborhood chappel were we attended mass on Sundays.

El Santo Nino Chappel.

Nest stop will be the Nokia Center but that will have to be a totally new post as we also took a zillion pictures there. So stay tuned and please come back later.

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Memory Lane

On my last post I told you that "mi chica" and I spend Tuesdays and Wednesdays at my mom's house, that means we wake up on Tuesday morning go out to work and we don't come back home until Thursday night.

My mom and dad did very good for themselves as they were always hard working people but best of all they new how to save money. Recently her 35" TV broke down and it took me a while to take it to my work so they could check if it could be fixed. In the interim my mom went and bought herself a 62" screen TV, not a plasma but an LCD.

Three days later she tells me that the TV looks small in her living room, I told her "What are you talking about, your TV is
huge". See her 35" rested in a wall to wall entertainment center which we moved to the den when she bought the new TV so of course now all she saw was a bare wall with a big TV in the center but needless to say the wall overpowered the TV.

So "mi chica" and I took her to the furniture store where she right away picket up a brand new entertainment center for it. (Must be nice)

So now I have an old school mom with state of the art electronic equipment.

I remember I was still in Mexico when my dad won our very first ever 5" B/W Sony TV. While some of my friends had had theirs for five or six years we started to enjoy our. I remember we could only watch for just an hour or two max a day and then my dad would put it away.

Prior to that we were allowed to go to my best friend's house on Sundays to watch their TV, I remember turning it on and having to wait as much as five minutes for the image to appear as it had to actually warm up. The voices would be talking but the screen was black and then all of a sudden it lit up. As a kid of 9 years old I remember wondering if we turned the TV set upside down if the people inside would fall.

We were all in awe on day when my best friend's uncle brought home a TV with remote control, it was a hand size metal canister with a long (About 20 feet) cable, each time the canister was pressed the dial would jump to the next channel, and you could do this from the comfort of your sofa, imagine that.

Then when told to turn it off we would remain sitting motionless staring at the little dot that took forever to disappear. It's funny how we used to find excitement and fun in event the smallest things. Nothing like the fast pace life our kids live now, in our house the TV seems to be on 24/7 and kids don't even go out to play any more.

The programs now as compared to the ones I used to watch as a kid have no value, even cartoons are nothing but a big commercial to sell action figures. My appreciation for classical music came from watching the loony tunes, find something like that on TV now.

And to all this, guess what my mom has in the guest room were we sleep when we spend the night there, if you guessed a 13" TV in black and white with dials you were absolutely right and nope there's no remote control for it.

How times change, and while at my mom's we seem to enjoy a little of both time zones.