This was taken in 1956, when the as-yet-incomplete Gregory family (Sally would debut later, when we lived on Huasna Road) lived at 1063 Sunset Drive.

In the first photo in the gallery below, it appears that I have just been informed that the Soviets have the hydrogen bomb.

Either that or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was on TV. He appeared fully vested and berobed, complete with skullcap. I think I confused him with Count Dracula.

I didn’t realize for years that Sheen was a kindly man whose spiritual bent tended toward the optimistic.

Or it might’ve been another favorite show of theirs, Liberace. He scared me, too.

Here’s a slide show that helps to demonstrate why.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XDY-VfUjGbOK39YqqDP15JV7u-AQxIAQ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113498512731063171773&rtpof=true&sd=true

Note Mom’s Singer showing machine, behind me at left.

She also had a loom. Since the Industrial Revolution began in textiles, that made teaching that topic so easy for me fifty years later. I could explain power looms and flying shuttles and spinning jennies. The loom was a Christmas gift, seen in the photo above.

And Mom was kind of an artist: knitting, sewing, weaving, crocheting, a little needlepoint here and there.

That is a washing machine we are watching in the photo at the top of the blog enrtry. We were simple folk. Just kidding. Sgt Preston of the Yukon must be on. With his dog, King.

That’s me, Roberta as a hobo and Bruce as a pirate at Halloween. Roberta’s wearing Dad’s beautiful felt hat, which were just out fashion. That makes me sad. Men’s hats are one reason I love old movies so much. The other clown, holding my hand, was all grown-up. At least twelve. She was very kind to me.

Once Mom and Dad went out on a date and dropped me off at another very kind person’s house, an older lady (meaning ten-fifteen years younger than I am now.) She made me hamburger. She put a tomato slice in it. I shrugged and took a bite. When my parents came back to pick me up a couple of hours later, I was still raving about how good tomatoes on hamburgers were. Elizabeth pointed out that it probably was a home-grown tomato, because they taste so much better than the store-bought once, and I bet she’s right.

Once it snowed. Once I ran out the front door and realized I hadn’t put on my pants yet. That was embarrassing.

Once Mom dressed us all up, including the Cocker spaniel, as desert Bedouins. She used eyeliner, I think, to give Bruce and me curly mustachioes. Both Roberta and the Cocker, a little girl, had gauzy headdresses and the boys wore burnooses made out of dishtowels. We all wore our bathrobes. Yup. Mom was pretty cool.

And the Fair Oaks was pretty close. That’s where we saw Lady and the Tramp (the Cocker’s name was Lady, of course.) and also The Ten Commandments (hated it when Pharaoh’s horsies drownded in the Red Sea) and The Searchers (the Comanche attack scene, where you don’t see the Comanches, scared the hell out of me.)

We also saw a movie with Jeff Chandler, The Toy Tiger, and I still have mine, eyeless but more or less intact. We were gullible, what with Cocker spaniels and stuffed animals. I think I also watched a couple of Tammy movies with my big sister, and Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Scared the hell out of me.

Note Dad’s love of large turkeys. Shipped overseas (Grandma Kelly STILL said “Clean your plate. Children in Europe are starving!”), one of ‘em would need its own container ship. That’s what nearly twenty years of Great Depression and wartime rationing did to Dad. We always ate well.

Speaking of food, I was a ham even then.