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Growing up by the water
Jul. 3rd, 2007 11:31 amI haven't posted about the Fire Island weekend because Ernie's parents were here and I didn't have the time, and then I was playing catchup on other things, but I was thinking a lot about why being near the water makes me so happy and how that was such an important feature of the weekend.
I was born in the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles and lived there until my very early teens when we moved to the beach town of Corona del Mar. Both of my parents loved the beach so from a very young age we were taken there. Neither of my parents could swim but they took us to the YMCA for swimming lessons since they wanted us to be able to go into the ocean and not drown. I remember being very young and on the bus with my mother - the only time I remember us travelling by bus, soon after that we became a two-car family - for lessons where the instructor would toss pennies into a pool, deep enough a child could dive into it and have to swim to the bottom. It was a great strategy because it wasn't swimming or holding your breath or being underwater, it was getting the shiny penny and everything else was just natural. I think it was some sort of Red Cross certification levels that we went through. Then I was a boy scout and we were in a troop that when camping once a month and we were often around lakes (although they were usually very cold.)
My youngest years, my parents would rent a hotel room for a week or two in La Jolla, San Diego. I remember an old stucco-y place, very _Chinatown_ era, that I loved. Then we stayed in a modern place - this would have been late 50's, so it was atomic modern. I haven't found any photos of the inside but I was able to get a number of photos out of old home movies.
My brother was older, so I'm the smaller child in these photos.
More ( history and photos behind the cut )
I was born in the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles and lived there until my very early teens when we moved to the beach town of Corona del Mar. Both of my parents loved the beach so from a very young age we were taken there. Neither of my parents could swim but they took us to the YMCA for swimming lessons since they wanted us to be able to go into the ocean and not drown. I remember being very young and on the bus with my mother - the only time I remember us travelling by bus, soon after that we became a two-car family - for lessons where the instructor would toss pennies into a pool, deep enough a child could dive into it and have to swim to the bottom. It was a great strategy because it wasn't swimming or holding your breath or being underwater, it was getting the shiny penny and everything else was just natural. I think it was some sort of Red Cross certification levels that we went through. Then I was a boy scout and we were in a troop that when camping once a month and we were often around lakes (although they were usually very cold.)
My youngest years, my parents would rent a hotel room for a week or two in La Jolla, San Diego. I remember an old stucco-y place, very _Chinatown_ era, that I loved. Then we stayed in a modern place - this would have been late 50's, so it was atomic modern. I haven't found any photos of the inside but I was able to get a number of photos out of old home movies.
My brother was older, so I'm the smaller child in these photos.
More ( history and photos behind the cut )
