March 17, 2011.
It is a beautiful day, and I have had a great visit with Mary Alice.
Tell Lynn she is visiting here, and now it is his time. I just realized I didn’t hugged her as we ate and then drove to see Buddy, and they were talking and I left to come on to the library.
I was thinking, partly to save gas, that I would start going less to the library—in a sense I have said all I feel the urge to say about my/our history. As Don Slater said, it is on record, and his part is in the magazine and newsletters, etc., so let history decide on its own.
But it is strange to then find a book at the library on the discard rack that is about Don & Tony’s area, called The Madonnas of Echo Park.
It is of course interesting to see mention of all the areas we have walked in, and it would be nice to share this with Tony Reyes, but he doesn’t do computer and in a sense seems not to care to remember those long years they lived there.
It is doubly interesting as the author, Brando Skyhorse, is Mexican American and shows a side of Los Angeles I would not have experienced, and doubt Tony did. But mention of Pioneer Market—for some reason he changes the name to Pilgrim—and other local places and streets brings back memories I have forgotten.
Above the lake is where the picture of Melvin and me was taken that is on the cover of ONE. I don’t know if the area has changed much—the book is 2010. The houses on Carroll Street are still on a tour route I think. But who lives in that house across the street from Don’s, and next to Rudi Steinert, where Erich Segal lived, the author of the book/movie Love Story, and a few other famous people. I think the houses are still expensive. And he talks about it being Angelino Heights—I remember Don insisted on calling it that even though everyone else called it Echo Park.
And Skyhorse of course echoes one of the many “concerns” of Don that made him so special. That is that he, and the book, never forgave Los Angeles for stealing Chavez Ravine from the owners to give it to the Brooklyn Dodgers. That is the Don that others can’t seem to know or that would help them understand him.
