Family and baseball

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, in Southern California. I lived in a small part of the valley called Pacoima. I moved into Pacoima in 1968.  I was just about 4 years old when we moved into our own home. I enjoyed living there for a while. We had an enormous back yard; it was about ¼ - ½ acre. When I was little, I got winded just walking from the front yard to the back.

I lived in that neighborhood most of my life. It would be decades before I moved from there. I’ve mentioned before that I lived in a predominately Mexican neighborhood. There were people there who moved from Mexico to the U.S. and children of people from Mexico. As time went on, my neighborhood was starting to look like Mexico.

I can’t tell you how many times I had to slow down coming home to let someone’s stray chicken cross the street. Some of my neighbors had goats, sheep; I never thought I’d live near so many farms. My dad even got involved in this stuff; one day, he brought home two turkey chicks. He named them Tallulah and Tilly; imagine his surprise when Tallulah turned out to be a TOM Turkey! They were funny animals to be around. I won’t say that it didn’t bother me, having turkeys around the yard; at least we had a large enough yard for them. My Irish setter, Candy didn’t really mind them; she would just watch them when they trotted around the property.

Tallulah and Tilly, often ate fresh pomegranate from our tree. We had the largest Pomegranate tree in The San Fernando Valley. I go to the store here in Central Florida and purchase pomegranates here; I find it funny that they charge $3+ for a fruit that was only half the size of the ones I had at home. The girls ate well. They were funny; they had these bizarre behaviors for turkeys. Unless one spends time with them, you’d never know what kind of personalities they had.

I was in the practice of listening to the Dodger games out on my front porch on the nights that I wasn’t at the games. I had my hibachi or smokey joe jr and made my Dodger Dogs, had my coca-cola and just enjoyed listening to the game on the radio. Imagine my surprise when I found suddenly that Tallulah and Tilly also enjoyed listening to the game.
They would suddenly show up on the brick planters near where I was sitting, and just took great interest in the voices coming from the small box sitting on the side table that I had. I wondered how they had come to show up in the front yard.

The next day, I went to the back yard and tried to figure out how they got through the gates, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find where they’d breached them.
I decided to pay closer attention the next time they showed up in the front yard. A couple of nights later, there I was listening to the Dodgers on the radio, snacking on my sunflower seeds and Coke. All of a sudden, Tallulah shows up, having leapt from the roof of the house onto a small tree and then leapt down to the ground where he was able to leap up to the brick planter. A few moments later, Tilly followed. They took up different sides next to the radio and proceeded to watch the radio intently.


Again, the next day, I went to the back yard to see how they got up on the roof. They were so portly, they couldn’t fly. As I was looking in the back, I noticed an aluminum ladder that was propped up against our tool shed. The roof of the tool shed was only a few feet away from the roof to the house, the back part of the house where it was much flatter than the main section of the house.

As the summer went on; they continued to come and enjoy the evening Dodger games with me in the front yard. After a while, they started to roost up on the roof and Tallulah made several attempts to roost on the neighbors pine tree, unfortunately, Tallulah was a bit too heavy and would fall through the branches onto the front lawn. After a while, the feelings of awkwardness of having two turkeys in the yard went away.

Toward the end of the summer, I came home from a day at Universal Studios, Hollywood to find that Tilly and Tallulah were missing. So, I did what any good son would do; I went off in search of my fathers two missing turkeys. Up to this point in my life, I was fairly proud that I’d never embarrassed myself in my neighborhood. I was fairly respected, with a nice sprinkling of feared amongst my neighbors. I think some of that was lost as I walked around the neighborhood investigating the whereabouts of two wayward turkeys.

I walked up one side of the street and then down the other. I asked anyone whom I came across, if they’d seen anything strange, a couple of turkeys. Most people hadn’t seen anything. I went around the block and continued asking anyone I came across if they’d seen the two birds. I came across this gentleman, working on his car and told him that I was searching for two... when he replied, “the turkeys?!” Imagine my surprise when I heard this. I spoke to him for a few minutes and he told me where the turkeys were. Before I continued on my way, he asked me about my pomegranate tree. He asked if he could have some pomegranates and of course I obliged him. I went and found Tilly and Tallulah and decided that I wasn’t going to put two turkeys in my Shelby Turbo CSX.
I gave the man who had incarcerated Tilly and Tallulah 20 dollars and assured him that I’d be right back to take possession of the two birds.

I went and found my dad who had no problems putting the birds in his Renault Alliance.
I took my dad to the house where the two birds were and upon their release, they followed him to his car, where he placed them in the back seat of his Renault and proceeded to drive away, turkeys and all. What a life I lead…

The turkeys continued to thrive at home; for a while anyway. Eventually, they went off on their way again; this time, I couldn’t find them, no matter how long I searched for them. That Thanksgiving was especially sad for my dad. He didn’t enjoy the holiday; as a matter of fact, he didn’t eat a bite. I felt bad for him. I missed the girls.
A few weeks later, dad brought home a chicken; they named him Danny Boy.
What a life I have.