Silver Lake and the Discouraging Word

My first memory of Silver Lake is of standing in my crib on Angus Street, chewing on the paint of the rail, while the neighborhood rocked during an earthquake.  I remember my mother being pleased that I was so calm. It might have been all the lead in the paint.

The lake itself, actually two reservoirs built in 1906 and named for a member of the Board of Water Commissioners, was the focal point of my Los Angeles neighborhood in the 1950’s.

 It was at the base of the lake that I attended preschool; where I learned to paint on an easel, use public toilets, and learned the word “impetigo.” The teachers had advised my mother that she should take some classes about dealing with a child like me.  She did, but they were the wrong classes.

Our neighborhood was a postwar hodgepodge of ethnicities. The Chinese would teach us about using ginger when cooking broccoli, introduce us to the best restaurants in Chinatown and baby-sit us. The Japanese who had made the transition from internment camps to middle class homes were eager for their children to excel. Poor Jimmy Yamashita had to suffer the teasing that came, not because he was Japanese, but because his name had “shit” in it. There were Hispanics, some of whom spoke no English. One such family sent their son, named Jesus, to our school but he lasted less than a month.

My parents were very social and befriended many of the young families in Silver Lake. One in particular remains firmly in my memory.  They were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe and had the most exotic names I had ever heard up to that point: Hottie and Zelda. From them we got a white mouse named Snowball. And for years, more than I’m willing to admit, I thought the refrain from “Home on the Range” was “where Zelda has heard a discouraging word…” My curiosity about the “discouraging word” lasted much longer than the mouse.