Memory 1

In the early years of Hollywood Riviera (circa 1950s) it was a wonderland for children. There were so many different sights and sounds to be explored. We were never bothered by the thoughts and concerns of the world. We were busy filling our young innocent minds with the wonders of nature. The fields surrounding were rolling on and on with colorful white and yellow daisies with patches of golden California poppies. We could run and run and run through the vastness of color while playing hide and seek or just laying on our backs and watching scenes of cloud formations, excited to point out the similarity of their clusters to animated objects. The puffy fluffy clouds slowly churned to show the face of Mickey Mouse, an old man with a crooked nose or a beautiful Hollywood starlet. It kept us busy for hours stimulating our young minds. (south of Riviera school)

Memory 2

Just a short distance from the fields of wild flowers, we could watch the horses roam and run free through the natural meadows as the enjoyed their freedom in a large fenced ranchero. Horses were very abundant in the area and there were several riding stables around HR thus horses were very fascinating to us. We were too young to be able to ride them so we observed them from a distance. Several times we would try our bravery by slipping under the fence to see how close we could get to them before they saw us. It was always our desire to get close enough to one, to pet it, but when they saw our approach they would let out a high nay that would send us scurrying back to the safety of the other side of the barbed wire as fast as our short stubby little legs could carry us. (east end of Via Colusa and north of Riviera school)

Memory 3

One of our neighbors, Armand La Point, had a large collection of Indian artifacts, bowls, dolls, pestles, arrowheads and baskets; he would sit us kids down and tell us about the Indians that once lived where we now lived. He told us of the Indian burial ground that was down near the Torrance beach. (It was later uncovered when they began construction on Parkway elementary school). This of course set us on the idea to dig for tubers and we felt ambitious enough to dig horseradish; whether they were actually horse radish or not, I will never know, but we would spend hours at the task collecting all sizes from small to extra large. There was never a shortage of boxes and extra pieces of wood, so we set about constructing a road side stand to display our vegetables. We had often seen the Japanese do the same thing throughout the area with strawberries and flowers, so we thought we would get rich too. We set up our makeshift road stand on Monte d’Oro and offered them for sale. Occasionally someone would stop and inspect our goods but we never made much money if any at all. (west end of Via Pasqual and Monte d’Oro)

Memory 4

Halloween only comes once a year and is one of the favorite evenings for all children and that was no exception for the kids of Hollywood Riviera and why not? It was an opportunity for a child to dress up in any clothes or costume he or she desires and parade up and down the street, knocking at doors and filling a sack full of free candy. It was a small community and our parents didn’t have to worry about our safety because all the neighbors watched after all the kids. One year was totally different. The children were not running back and forth across the street screaming and wanting to be the first to each door so as to get the best of the pick’ns. A new device had hit the market and had all the children sopped dead in their tracks. The had all formed a line on our front porch gazing through the front windows in amazement. We were the first on our block to get a television and everyone would rather feast their eyes and ears upon this amazing fish bowl, that reflected images from far away and with sound, than to think about the free candy. (Via Colusa)

Memory 5

One of our favorite places to launch a new adventure was to set out for the pollywog swamp. To us young ones it was right out of the pages of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. It was just what the name inferred. It was a swamp with mounds of tules and cattails with bunches of tall grass and the water was loaded with pollywogs. There were always planks and boards laying around, probably brought there by the older kids and thus we would set out with poles in hand to conquer the swamp. After we grew tired of the raft, we would gather our jars which we always brought along to catch as many pollywogs as we could carry home. The young pollywogs never seemed to survive, so we were careful to catch the ones that were almost developed into frogs. We enjoyed sitting at home and watching the final stages develop until they were ready to leave the water for our back yard. The frogs never seemed to get the idea that they were to stay home, so it finally became as it was in the days of Egypt: the frogs were so numerous around the neighborhood that it became a decree by our parents and neighbors that we could no longer import the little critters. But to their dismay and our delight they hung around for many years to come. (the shopping center and South High School)

Memory 6

The television was all new and it made an impression on all us kids. We were the first generation to be raised by the influence of network programming. Two of the shows that stimulated our thinking was "Rama of the Jungle" and "Tarzan of the Apes." It was exciting to see all the trees and greenery as they cut their way through the jungle to one adventure after another. We were soon to discover a similar place in our own back yard, Palos Verdes. HR had only a few small trees and not many bushes. It was mostly running meadow fields. So we would hike to the barricades. The barricades were steel poles set in the middle of the roads to divide us Hollywood Rivierans from the P.V. area. When we reached them it suddenly turned into another world. Tall Eucalyptus trees, brush, bushes and greenery everywhere. As we wandered over near the golf course it really turned thick; just like on the television. So we spent many days playing out the roles that so impressed us from the television. We brought ropes and slung them over the limbs of the tall trees and would swing back and forth imitating the loud famous Tarzan yell. We could fashion machetes out of fallen branches and wade through the thick brush pretending to be whacking our way through the jungle. There were gullies and high places that resembled the backgrounds we saw on Hopalong Cassidy, and we would switch games in mid-stream, choosing sides as cowboys or Indians and a whole new world was opened to us. We didn’t need to fashion our props out of the branches because every kid in the early 1950s had the whole Hopalong Cassidy outfit with shiny pistols and all. The only addition we needed was a long straight branch to place between our legs as we ran along, pretending it to be a horse.

Written by Robert John Garvey II – May 1995