Our Hollywood Driveway

I just learned that we had a "Hollywood Driveway," on that small lot of our 1955 tract house in Canoga Park. From the curb to the garage, the driveway strtetched straight probably one hundred feet, our pink stucco house on the left, and Muffy's rose bushes on the right. I remember having to weed and sweep that corridor often.

Dad was a machinist, but he liked wood and nail projects, too. He built a gate two-thirds of the way up the Hollywood, the type with a wheel that allowed it to open to the space between the garage and the gate, a space that we used to play ping pong on the homemade game table. We had to latch the gate properly when we pushed it closed, since we also had a small swimming pool in the back yard.

It all felt very classy to my nine-year-old self, but my favorite was our swing set, Rock Hudson pink and black. It sat behind the garage, far enough away from the mandatory incinerator, but terrifying close to the back neighbor's big-headed German Shepherd dog, Rex.

In the summer, Dad would char-burn chicken on a Weber barbeque, and we'd go swimming on weekend mornings in our baby-doll pajamas. Because it was so hot in the San Fernando Valley, and we had no air conditioning, so we were outside a lot, my birthday parties in paper leis and colorful muu muus, glasses of Hawaiian Punch, and Mom's frosted cupcakes, I and my younger sister grew up happy and Coppertone tan.

I recently got off the Ventura Freeway and was able to find my way back to Bryant Street. I'm proud that I even remembered the house address, 20388, and I drove slowly by my childhood home. The gate is metal now, with a coded lock box. I don't know what it looks like on the other side of the gate, but I have to say that the Hollywood Driveway, now adorned with brown pavers and lined with drought-tolerant bushes, looks attractive and modern. We had loved the smell of the grass after Dad had pushed the manual lawnmower over it, but the front was now rocks and cactus. The big palm tree still stands, but the roof is fire-retardant and devoid of its white rocks.

I imagine a family living there now. They probably have a gardener, maybe a Tesla charging inside the garage. I hope that some teenager makes a good allowance scrubbing the aqua pool tile with a toothbrush and Comet Cleanser. I also really want them to have kept that pretty pink Jacaranda tree with its pesky delicate puff blossoms and cocoons.

I've lived in apartments and houses on different streets. I am seventy-five years old. Dad yelled at me a few times for spilling the dust bin on the way to the garbage can, and Mom complained more than once about the chicken being dry. That Hollywood driveway made us feel like celebrities, and we stubbed a few toes dancing hot-footed on the cement patio, but it was all great.

What I miss more than the house and pool and swing set and ping pong table are my parents who trundled out West from Chicago in 1952 to find their $16,000 dream house in sunny Southern California.

The inside of the house was 14,000 square feet of windows, linoleum, 3 bedrooms and a full bath and one smaller one off of my parent's bedroom. Teri had the room that looked out on the front yard, and mine faced Len and Shirley's driveway, not as glamorously long as our own. Thinking back, the surface was all blacktop that actually pitted in July heat if you dropped, say, a hammer on it. Mom buffed the kitchen floor every morning to a glossy caramel finish. I remember seeing the washed buffer brushes free of wax drying on the back porch steps. The den was where we lived, with its one couch and coffee table and rabbit-eared television set. The living room was long and its sliding glass door perfect for slipping outside for a skinny dip in the lit pool on nights sweaty and cramped with the kitchen oven retaining dinner's temperature throughout. The one wall telephone was yellow with a six-foot kinky cord. It hung just inside the laundry room, and I spent many tortured hours sitting on top of the washing machine talking to my high school boyfriend, door closed to the kitchen. Every now and then, Mom came in to say that someone might be trying to call us and could I please hang up on Mike.

We didn't know our house was small. It was a changing gallery of furniture, going from Chinese boat table lamps with cream fringed lampshades to a low slung vinyl couch and long low table which my parents artistically glued together with glass tiles. When it was finished we had a pretty clear idea of what the huge stone heads on Easter Island looked like. It complemented the picture of the roiling ocean in moonlight with its gold frame. I saw that same print in many homes and hotel rooms later. Mom turned on the ambient light bulb each night when we weren't even sitting in the room .

Maybe they longed for a tropical paradise in California after all those frigid windy bus stops on Michigan Avenue. Our swimming pool replaced three nice orange trees in the backyard within a year of moving in. My Norwegian grandmother would leave Chicago in January and disembark her Pan Am flight wearing a mink stole, gloves and pumps. She cried the year that the trees vanished. Mom had oranges on the kitchen counter, but they couldn't console Grandma.

Now so many years later, I'm glad I stopped by the house with its Hollywood Driveway and neat post-modern lines. I have great memories of it, but mostly I understand how June and Chuck bought their first house and its fine accoutrements. I recall the laughs and tears, frustrations, and successes, and the love that can be a nuclear family.