The Blue Line Follies

Those under the age of eighteen must provide permission from a guardian to read this post. It begins at the downtown Central Library and ends inside Long Beach...and later Westminster.

Hope Street is the southern exit for the  Los Angeles Public Central Library. Outside now, I buy a coke at the Market Café for shade and get ready for my trip back to Huntington Beach. The downtown temperatures register eight today. I head towards  Seventh Street and the Blue Line Trolley..
    Earlier inside the library, I posted a few pictures  from the Chicago Tribune of August of 1940. Inside that issue on the front pages, it appeared that Hitler had a new weapon to aid an army ready to channel it and invade England. Bombs hit major cities as there was little hope for peace.
   But only a few cared. August meant the College All Star Game. The best collegians football players would go up against Green Bay Packers. Moneys from these games went to crippled children hospitals. Polio and infantile paralysis were the scourge of the times. Archie Ward was he editor of the Chicago Tribune who brought the games to Soldier Field. Schindler had told him that his Dad retired as a Captain n the British Navy.
   But after my research I needed time to finish my Panda Express meal, bought inside the library. The buildings toward over me and the slight westerly flow gave me a serene feeling that the Surf City just could not provide. But it was two o'clock and time to return to reality, oh shucks.
    
I remove a quarter and a dime from my pocket and tap my card in the machine. Before rush hour, it is thirty five cents to return to Long Beach for a senior. I tap my card again at a turn-style
and head down an escalator to the platform for the Expo and Long Beach lines.
   A few homeless stake out their seats as I remove a People magazine and take a north side seat headed to Long Beach. Still it upsets me that the writers of the rag the Register did not print any of the football exploits of Ambrose Schindler who had a hand in two victories against Ohio State in both 1937 and 1938...There Cotton Bowl game is scheduled for today.
    The train lurches forward to the first stop, the :Pico station. I relax in the knowledge that my book will compete with the best biographies ever published. Earlier in the day, I  had provided copies of my Ohio Chapter to the Manager of the U.S.C. book store. To my chagrin, the campus was  closed for the week. On the seats in back of me, a  middle age girl tells her friend that the connection to the Green Line will return her to Redondo Beach. A speaker comes on as it generally does on each trip to Long Beach, so unsafe that the police never enter these cars.
    "Please report any touching, indecent exposure...Also don't buy from anybody and keep valuables close to you...Thank you."
     I ignore a radio that plays rap music and read my magazine. I peak at the downtown skyline and at :Pico station, two new buildings are  going up to the heavens. I have never seen so many tall cranes!  I take a sip of my coke when I hear a shrill noise
     "Chargers for sell...Get your chargers!" 
One passenger buys one and at the next stop, another vendor comes aboard at the L.A.Trade Tech station.
     "Cold drinks, Doritos. candy, all for a dollar."
     In a trance, I ignore the travesty on the train and focus at the stores on Washington now as we head to the San Pedro Station. Graffiti covers most of these small buildings as their day had been gone a long time ago. Must have been grand living downtown then. I dream about settling downtown as the underground transportation and tall buildings make it exciting.. Besides, U.S.C. and the Central Library are a few blocks away.
     The coke bottle is finished as the train swerves onto Long Beach and sallies forth to Firestone, Watts towers, and finally to Anaheim and downtown. I feel refreshed since I did not driven at all today. The 91 bus on Fifth takes me to my bus stop on Seventh, across from the VA building. There is nothing like seeing downtown L.A. and I get a rush of energy. I grab a red vine from my Trader Joe bag and wait for the 560 Westminster bus.
   I am totally relaxed and get off at Magnolia. On the corner is my Vietnamese fish market. It is large and I pick out a two pound Perch. Another is ahead of me and he has about seven fish being cut up with the inners removed. Besides the Perch, I buy some ice berg lettuce and also large navel orange. My #33 bus will arrive soon to return me to Garfield.
   HAPPY NEW YEAR.