Oil Under The Streets Of Los Angeles

Here's a photo from my Dad's collection of 1920s snapshots. It's June 1925 and the Belmont High Girl's Athletic Association is showing off for Club Day. Click on it so you can see them better. That's Dad's girl friend LaVerne in the middle. Dad always had the cutest girl friends. You should have seen my mother, for instance. A real wow. The cat's pajamas. In fact maybe I'll put up her picture too...


OK, here's Mom in 1926. She was an acting student at the Egan School of Dramatic Arts and this was her hand-out shot. In case anyone needed a good-looking teenager to star in a play. I tricked it out cause I don't know how to leave well enough alone.

Dad was an acting student too. They met when they were assigned to do a scene together from a popular play of the moment called You And I for the Pasadena Rotary Club luncheon. Or maybe it was called You and Me and it was the Glendale Elks Club. But you get the idea. They are young lovers having a spat. Then at the end of the scene they made it up with a big kiss. Dad always said he was kissing Mom before he even knew her last name. Well, one thing led to another - and here I am, some eighty years later, still going out to lunch on the same story. Waiter! There's a fly in my soup!

Anyway, to get back to oil under the streets of LA for a minute, last year's girl friend LaVerne and her friends are posing on the athletic field at Belmont High, which was and still is right downtown off 2nd Street. Look behind those flappers in their tennis whites, if you can take you eyes off them for a minute. I count five or possibly six oil derricks rising out of the neighborhood behind them. I just hope there won't be blood, don't you?