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Old
Curiosity Shop
By Bob Davis dnry122@yahoo.com
Old Curiosity Shop for Jan 2021
There used to be a TV show called “That Was
the Year That Was” (also known as TW3). For 2020, it should be
“That Was the Year That Sucked”. Normally, the January issue of
Bobby Boy’s Old Curiosity Shop looks back over the year that just
ended and forward to what might happen in the year ahead. 2020 got
off to a rather inauspicious start when for the first time in
several years, we did not go out on New Year’s Eve to watch the Rose
Parade float convoy travel through San Marino under cover of
darkness. We did go out to the front lawn to watch the USAF B-2
bomber fly by the Sierra Madre Mountains (we’ve dubbed it the
BatPlane) and viewed the parade on Ch. 5, a local tradition. A few
days later I took the Metro Gold Line and Red Line trains to
Hollywood for the City Girls and Country Music show featuring
Heather Lomax, whom I had seen a year earlier at the Elvis Birthday
Bash.
Heather Lomax at the last Elvis Birthday Bash in Burbank
(Jan 6, 2019) she sang two of my favorite “Early Elvis” songs:
“Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and the song that was on his first commercial
recording, “That’s All Right Mama.”
Later that month, it was my turn to
entertain with a slide show for Electric Railway Historical Assn. at
the Metro building next to Union Station. The photos were from my
visit to Chicago in Sept. 1971.
These South Shore interurban cars were the nearest thing to
riding the Pacific Electric in 1971, and were one of the main
reasons for going to Chicago.
Then things went downhill. Evie Sands had a
show scheduled for a club out in the San Fernando Valley, but had to
cancel due to illness. The end of the month was occupied by the
purification ritual and going over to a clinic in Pasadena to get my
innards looked at. This meant missing a show in Culver City, but at
least I got that process out of the way. We had a February 29, this
year, so I used the extra day to vote in the California Primary
election at the local library. They were using a new voting system,
but the County had a well-trained crew on duty, including some very
helpful young people, so it was a good experience. Little did I
know that going to a polling place would, for many of us, become a
thing of the past.
Now we were starting to hear about
mysterious disease called COVID-19, caused by a “novel corona
virus.” Around March 18, the word went out: “Unless absolutely
necessary, stay home!” Going to Dodgers Opening Day with daughter
Kathy was annulled. Grocery stores were observing special
protocols, which had us getting up at O-dark-30 for the special
senior citizen hours at the local Ralph’s Market on March 27, and
waiting in line for the store to open. When we got inside, we found
that many products were out of stock. In the words of the ancient
Hebrew prophets, “Oy vey!” We tried “Home Chef” meals in a box
delivered to our doorstep, I went to Olive Garden in Arcadia for a
meal pickup, and our family Easter gathering was through the magic
of Zoom.
Evie Sands had to postpone the official
release of her new album, “Get Out of Your Own Way,” until later in
the year because the record production facilities were affected by
the shutdown. I had three possible music events and a railway
excursion planned for the latter part of April, and all were
cancelled. To top it off, our DSL service failed, and we had to be
off-line for three days until the ATT tech found the bad module and
we could rejoin the civilized world.
We started doing food pickup at the WalMart
south of the Edison headquarters in Rosemead. This involved Pat
doing an online order through the WM website and me driving to the
designated pickup area. The crew member loads the order into the
back of DNRy 123, and I bring it home. One part of the pickup is
that if I have some beer in the shipment, the WM person has to check
ID, even though I’m obviously not a teenager.
One good news item, Heather Lomax’s latest
CD showed up in the mail. Other than that, we stayed in quarters
and depended on the internet, the TV and our vast supply of books
and records for entertainment. One of the new books was by a woman
who calls herself “The Professional Hobo” and recounted her journey
from Portugal to Vietnam by a series of trains (I used this as the
basis for one of last year’s Old Curiosity Shops). Another musical
experience from last year that could not be repeated was the Harry
Nilsson tribute night at Molly Malone’s.
Back in 2016, I was so proud that our older
daughter could go to her work in the Lo s Angeles Civic Center area
on the Gold Line electric railway. But when the pandemic alert
changed everything, she had to forsake the daily train ride and take
care of business from home through the internet. The good news from
the Gold Line is that construction is beginning on the next phase of
the Foothill Extension from Azusa to Pomona. First construction
site was at Gladstone Street (which some wiseacres call “Happy Rock
Avenue”) where Glendora and San Dimas meet.
This was in July 2020. Since then three more grade
crossing projects have started and Gladstone has been reopened.
We haven’t seen him lately, but Dusty came over for dinner
several times.
On the good news front: Evie’s new CD (and also the LP format)
arrived, much to the delight of the local members of the
International Cult of Sands Worshipers. Sometime next year we
should have an official CD release party.
The Inimitable Empress of Soul/Pop shows that she “Ain’t
Done Yet.”
Of course the big national and international
news of 2020 was the Presidential Election. Here in Los Angeles
County, we were supposed to receive mail-in ballots on Oct. 5, but
they showed up on the 3rd. We found that the nearest
drop-off box was in front of San Marino City Hall. Between the time
we received the ballots and made all the choices, there had been an
incident in Baldwin Park, where some lowlife had set a ballot
collection box on fire. We were not concerned because the San
Marino collection box was next to the firehouse and around the
corner from the police station. Just to be on the safe side, we
used the County Registrar’s website to confirm that our ballots had
been collected and tabulated. Then it was the long wait for the
first week in November, and the long, drawn out counting process to
determine that Mr. Biden will be our next President, and Ms. Harris
will be VP. The way things have been going, many of us won’t relax
until Noon EST on Jan. 20. Some writers have envisioned Mr. Trump
being dragged kicking and screaming from the White House, or maybe
sneaking out the back door, trying his best to avoid notice.
What else do we have to look forward to in
2021? Two different COVID 19 vaccines have been approved, and some
shots have already been administered to health care workers and
residents of old folks’ homes. Our numbers will probably come up
some time in the spring, and by then the pandemic should be abating,
and I can start looking at train timetables with more than academic
interest. Although some of our favorite gathering places may have
gone the way of the Big Red Cars, live music will again fill the
air.
I’ll leave you with a memory of happier
times, when we enjoyed music in the great outdoors of Adams Pack
Station and Terry Okey’s Second Sundays shindigs:
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