Back At The Hood

It's a funny hood, a changed hood from the time I arrived in the summer of 1956.  The hood back then was white as white good be. It was young families popping out kids right and left that created the baby-boomers, my generation. Schools were modeled on mass production just like the jobs our dads and moms worked at that supported the good life. It was all utopia for the up and coming white families that moved in mass from Los Angeles city side to the San Fernando Valley.

We barbecued, played baseball, and improved our lives from that of our parents, refugees of the Great Depression. Only not everyone went up the ladder, just like salmon, some of us were caught, some of us never made it to the next rung. That's what happened to my family. We stayed in our little pond and never left. I tried, went out for a while but in the end came back by a series of strange events.

I like the hood now even with the changes. There are Muslims from Iran to the right and Jews from Israel on the left. Makes me feel like the Gaza strip being the American queer in the middle. I bring them both vegetables from our garden. They give me strange gifts of candy from Iran and sour oranges from Israel.

And though it has been my dream to see the world and haven't, I have met people all over the world that have moved into the hood in this mix from the spill over from Los Angeles into the burbs. And since I can't write about my travels, I will write about the people that have traveled here and settled around the Gaza.