Haven’t blogged for a while. Sort of writer’s block, I imagine. When my brother was killed and had his life, with a great predictable future, snuffed out, things went downhill from there for my family. My parents divorced after I returned from Minneapolis when I was about 9 or 10. My father started medicating himself with narcotics, lost his practice, and moved to Philadelphia as a construction worker for Rose Bros. Demolition Company owned by one of his brother-in-laws to straighten him out. It didn’t work, but he eventually pulled himself together, and taught Anatomy and Physiology at the U.S.C. dental school (the only dental school in LA, and later one of his students was my dentist for a while.) I had almost no contact with my father during my formative years except for an occasional parental visit, which was very strained. I really did not get to know him until I was 29 years old and newly married. We had little money, but managed without alimony or child support except on a rare occasion. I had some kind of a job from the age of 10 until my retirement in 2016. Magazine delivery, paper boy for the LA Times, starting at 5:00AM before school, bus boy at a local eatery, worked at the Beverly Hills Ice house lugging 300 lb blocks of ice up a ramp into a cubing machine and while the block was being cubed into a large vat, bagging two bags of cubes, 100 lbs each, a riveter at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica when I was 16, putting in the bomb bay boxes on the A20G fighter bombers used in the North African campaign in WW2, and a bunch of other jobs, even driving an ice cream truck in Glendale selling to the neighborhood kids. The point is, I was not lazy, but after six or seven elementary schools, including a year when I was 10 years old in a disciplinary military school, I had no interest in school. Too bad, because the solid base of lower schooling before college really is very necessary in one’s educational growth. The Army straightened that out and I knew in order to get anywhere, you have to get that education, particularly if you have no place to start earning a living, try for a profession. A profession once acquired is yours and can’t be taken away.
I mentioned earlier, I was living on Reeves Drive in Beverly Hills and part of that time I was assigned to the Santa Monica Branch Office. My son was born during that time in April of 1959. I eventually was reassigned to the main office, Down Town LA. One just can’t predict where life will take one. For some reason, I was talked into buying a GI. House about as far as you could go North in the San Fernando Valley, on Reseda Blvd. which ended at San Fernando Road in Northridge which at that time was the residential part of the Valley which ended about three houses from the fence delineating the Porter Ranch. The area where the houses were located at that time was rural. Today the area now extends all the way up the Ridge Route taking one from LA County to Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley and the area that was Northridge has been divided into another part called the Porter Ranch City today.
Well, we moved to a little GI house with nothing but the structure, no air conditioning, so we had to put in a water cooler, no sewers, so we had to put in a cesspool, no foliage, so we had to roto-till the front and back yards, dig trenches for the sprinkler system, then a dichondra lawn, and then put in Mother’s Day trees and plants, get a hand lawn-mower and we also needed to put in a rural mail box on top of a 4 X 4 board which was a problem because the soil was adobe and you had to dig a hole to put in the board; it was impossible, as the ground was as hard as cement. Luckily, a neighbor had a power drill to cut through the ground, so the mail box could be placed. Lastly, I had to put in a block wall fence for the back yard and complete the whole thing by assembling a Jungle Gym. All this, because I got talked into buying the house by my father-in-law; the theory being the kid needed a place to play.
What a crock. The weather was awful, in the 100s in the summer time with heavy winds and freezing cold in the winter time and again with winds, and the child didn’t need all that space anyway.
The good part is- as a result, which I’ll go over later, we eventually moved to Newport Beach, where the weather was great, and I developed a pretty good legal practice which we will get back to later.
The move changed my car pooling from David, Raul and Sterry, to Ron Einstoss, an LA Times Reporter, Steve Crossman, who had been reassigned to the Main Office, and David Aisenson, who later became a LA County Superior Judge. All good guys living in parts of the San Fernando Valley. The commute was about one hour each way, but time passed with good conversation with some really neat guys.
OK, so one weekend day, while picking the weeds out of the dichondra, Maxine tells me the Office is on the phone and has to talk to you right now. So, in I go pick up the phone and it the main boss, number 2 in the Office, Manley Bowler, who tells me “All hell is breaking out in the Hollywood Los Angeles Police Station, two LAPD cops have been kidnapped, someone is in custody and there is another suspect on the loose. Get down there and do what you can.” Which I did.
The case became one of major murder trials, a best-selling non fiction novel and a major movie about kidnapping and murder.
To Be Continued
Marshall
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