Globe Avenue was the perfect neighborhood for a kid growing up in the 1950's. We were surrounded by all kinds of really neat places.. The beach, now called Dockweiler Beach State Park, was just a few miles west on Venice Boulevard. Some Sunday's after church we'd head on down there. My brother Jim and I would run in and out of the surf while Mom read the newspaper and Dad slept. I don't think Dad could stay awake for 5 minutes once he heard the waves.

Around the neighborhood were all sorts of adventures. Jim and I became experts at canvassing the many fruit trees growing in our neighbor's back yards. We followed a simple rule of etiquette. If fruit had fallen on the ground and it appeared that the tree was producing too much for the owner to consume, well we felt at liberty to take a few samples, from the tree, not the ground. There were a few dwarf peach trees that produce only a dozen or so peaches and we left them alone. There was an abundance of apricots and one plum tree. The plums were especially good not only because we were faced with a steady diet of apricots but because the house with the plum tree had a wall around it and a dog. One had to make sure that the dog was in the house before venturing into the yard and you had to be quick. There was another fruit called a loquat, some sort of tropical fruit. The fruit was about the size of a walnut, soft yellow pulp around a rather large pit as I remember. When ripe the fruit had sort of a "golden " color to it. This fruit was too valuable to eat because my sister loved them and thought it was beneath her station in life to poach some from a neighbor. I could snatch a couple of pocket's full of them in no time and beat it back to the house. "Golden fruit" was not subject to the rules of neighborhood fruit gathering etiquette. Not when a 10 yr old could use them as barter to get out of the chores assigned to him (which was pretty much every chore in the house as I remember).

When we weren't gathering fruit we socialized with other boys in the neighborhood. It was customary at the time, for some reason or other, to throw rocks or "dirt bombs" at one another. A dirt bomb was made by grasping the stalks of wild grass and pulling it out of the ground. You were left with a clump of grass with dirt clinging to the roots. These were preferable to throw at some one because you couldn't throw them hard and if they hit the target there was no injury, just a dirt shower. There was a certain etiquette followed when throwing at friends and strangers. The object was not to hit someone, but to make them move to avoid being hit. The tosses were soft lobs and you only threw if someone knew you were throwing at them. Aggressive throwing was considered bad form and was frowned upon. Of course if you had a little brother and needed some target practice.. just make sure that your sneaky sister isn't looking or you'll be running to the loquat trees to get enough fruit to buy her silence.

Nov 2005 - Henry John Hein