The Italian VIsit

Another summer had arrived at Angus Street and, as was the custom, my father picked us up on the last day at Ivanhoe Elementary School and took us horseback riding in Griffith Park.  This terrified my mother who had a fear that we would be bucked off onto Fletcher Blvd, or worse, the nearby freeway.  We survived every time.  But the year that I was around nine years old we were greeted at home with fascinating news.

My mother told us that her good friend, and former and fellow Burbank School District music teacher, would be coming to visit with her husband and two children.  They would be taking the train all the way across the country from New Jersey.  Priscilla and John had a son about my age and a daughter just a touch younger than my sister.  I was excited. 

When all the sleeping arrangements had been made and the house cleaned, we finally drove down Sunset Boulevard, past Olvera Street, to Union Station.  I now know it as a beautiful retro building seen in many movies, and, at the time, I must admit, I had never been to such an opulent train station.  The little Atwater station was nothing like it.  Union Station was not the sort of place that you put a penny on the tracks to find it flattened.   And, frankly, we didn’t know any people who traveled by train.

We waited at the tracks for the train to pull in, and I can only image now how tired the family must have been.  My first and very vivid memory was of the father, John.  He was wearing a navy blue, double-breasted suit.  My dad dressed more “Mad Men” and there wasn’t a single double- breasted suit in his wardrobe, let alone anything navy blue.

The two families quickly melded; the adults talking and the kids playing.  There was the de rigueur trip to Disneyland where Priscilla mouthed to my mother that the Magic Castle was a “J.I.P.”   But I was in pig heaven.  We probably went to Marineland too, but I have no memories of that.

The one two-family expedition that I vividly remember was when Priscilla took us back to her old neighborhood in Burbank/Glendale.  I can still see the sycamore trees and the 1960’s bungalows that lined the street.  This is where the story gets fuzzy.  Do you remember the TV series in the 1950’s called “December Bride”?  Well, Verna Felton, a character on the show (a show that I had watched when I was home sick) had been a neighbor.  But the visit on that neighborhood trip that really wowed me was to the home of the widow of Babe Ruth.  I was impressed.

Then one day during the stay of the New Jersey family the father, a violinist, announced that he would like to make an Italian meal for all of us. 

Now—my mother was a good cook.  But “regional/ethnic” cuisines were a bit lacking and supplemented a great deal by Lawry’s packets of spices and MSG.  So for the Smithson family, spaghetti meant pouring a packet of Schilling spices and powders into tomato sauce, simmering it, and dumping it over spaghetti pasta and topping it with Parmesan cheese from a green cylindrical container.  Trust me, this didn’t happen often as my mother had a great fear of us getting FAT.  To my mother, pasta equaled getting FAT.  This is why I love macaroni and cheese.  But I digress from the story.

John took off his navy blue double-breasted suit and started to cook.  Smells like I had never experienced wafted through the Angus Street house.  Oregano, basil, garlic, and rich tomatoes simmered into a sauce.  And when the dinner was served, I was rather shocked.  THIS was not the Italian food that I had known. 

There was music too.  The daughter played a memorable version of “I am climbing Jacob’s Ladder” and, though I don’t recall this, I am certain my parents must have played their guitars and sung their repertoire of folk songs.  Perhaps John played his violin.

Year later the New Jersey family would return.  But that is for another story.