1960

Four spankin' new immigrants (well, five, including the fluffy Mr. Prince) arrive in Southern California! Naturally, we had to visit Santa Monica.

I do believe that Annie and I did not speak English at the time.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

We rented a place in Anaheim at first. It must have been close to Knott's Berry Farm, 'cuz we could hear Richard Nixon speaking there during the notorious 1960 Presidential campaign. (Of course, I had no idea who Nixon was.)

Check out the incinerator. Every home had one. Virtually all of them were demolished years later.

This place doesn't look like much, but it was a big step up for the Bauer family, which was accustomed to trailers in remote power stations in the Canadian bush. But we saved our money and, soon, we moved into a new home.

This is actually from about 1962. I suspect that it's Pismo Beach or perhaps a bit further north.
Ray was born late in 1961.

My parents bought this house toward the end of 1960, I believe. It is in the City of Orange, but very near Villa Park (Santiago Blvd.), where I attended school. As I recall, we paid under $20,000 for this "pink house." My parents still own it (they moved to the Trabuco Canyon area in 1975).
In my view, the home designs of the time were, well, ugly. I wonder if growing up in an ugly, pink home messed me up? That '61 Ford in the driveway wasn't much better.
I've never understood tolerance of those gawdawful telephone and power poles. Don't they strike you as seriously ugly? To me, those poles are like turds on a birthday cake. What kind of people would enter a shiny new neighborhood, even one with pink houses, and not marvel at the absurdity and stupidity of sticking crudely hewn, tar-encrusted poles in the ground and hanging ugly black wires on 'em?
But the zeitgeist of 1960 embraced "progress" and plasticity and new-and-improvitude. It's damned hard to defy a zeitgeist, isn't it?
Well, that explains pink, squat, meandering, crap-encrusted houses and flashy, bewinged Ford crapmobiles, but how does it explain those fucking poles and wires? I dunno.
I seem to be peevish tonight.
Sorry.
And urban sprawl! Even as a bewildered little kid from wild and woolly Canada, I was shocked and horrified by the disorganized and promiscuous spill of humanity that is urban sprawl! How could people flock to this? What is the matter with them? Will they next move onto methane-belching landfills and vacation on oil-drenched slag heaps? Anyone with half a brain knows immediately (I thought then and think now) that any person who is insensible to the soul-killing ugliness of urban fucking sprawl will eventually abandon car batteries on his lawn, toss old couches into the street, and will inevitably shit on the sidewalk.
(Sorry. The weather's awfully nice here, though, isn't it? Yep.)