We had waited outside under the covered porch for the moving van. We may have even said goodbye to our friends the Tiptons and the Hofeldts. The moving van was large and slow. Dad stopped a couple of times along the freeway from Whittier for them to catch up, complaining that they were probably slow because they were getting paid by the hour. This apartment complex above with a pool was our destination that sunny day.
The aerial photo of that complex today shows that the swimming pool no longer exists, but the place looks very much the same as it did in the summer of 1959 when we moved in. Grandma still lived with us and would until we moved in with the others in another house across the street and a couple houses down the block from the triplex being built for all of us on Lomita Avenue in Orange.
Even this place wasn't particularly a happy one to live. Grandma Sanchez was difficult to live with, as always. She treated my cat Tiger poorly, feeding him leftover oatmeal, which he would not eat, instead of cat food. He wandered the neighborhood, being an outdoor cat much of time. I would also learn another mean trait from Willene, our soon-to-be stepmother. It would be she who would tell dad that I could not keep Tiger after we all moved in together at the beginning of 1960. So dad told me that he would simply dump Tiger somewhere along his route of visiting paint stores. One day, which he said would take him by an ideal locale for Tiger to spend his remaining days, he took Tiger with him in the car and that's the last I saw of my cat. He lied to me about a week later, saying that he again had gone by the place where he had dumped him and saw Tiger carrying a fat mouse in his mouth. Even then, I suspect that I was skeptical about the convenient story.
We didn't have any friends that summer. I did become acquainted with a much older woman who lived in an apartment at the end of the complex. I got into mischief one day, unfortunately, probably from boredom. I stepped into an oil spot on one of the parking spaces and tracked it across several other spaces, finally wiping my feet on the grass. I stepped into mud and tracked those across the sidewalk inside the complex, cleaning off my shoes by dangling them into the pool. I was accused of doing all of this by the older woman and by my Grandma Sanchez; and, of course, I lied, being 10 years old. It wasn't me, I pleaded through my tears. But that one afternoon was the extent of my wild, rebellious ways that summer. Otherwise, we played canasta with Grandma, watched some television, and listened to dad's collection of Broadway cast recordings of such musicals as The Music Man.
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