1981
The first time I ever set foot in what
I would later learn to be South-Central Los Angeles,
I was thirty feet from a stage with a singer named Mick Jagger.
The bandstand was the equivalent of the end zone at the Coliseum
but there were no seats on the football field.
There was just a crowd of sardined fans of the band.
Not being what anyone would call "tall," unfortunately,
I saw more of swaying shoulders than Rolling Stones.
1990
On the morning of Christmas Day, Yearbook advisor Mr. Oliverio drove to school.
I parked my car across the street from Jefferson High School, exchanging a lot
of Christmas greetings and just having a jolly old good time.
However, I was in need of exercise that day so, instead of driving home to Burbank,
I drove to the Hollywood Hills and climbed all the way up to the HOLLYWOOD sign.
2001
It was a Queen Mary week end. It was an extraordinary week end with a couple
who drove up from San Diego and a guest visiting from New York. Post 9/11,
it would be possible to determine the exact date: the following day and Aerobus
crashed after take-off from JFK airport.
2002
Cute as a button and recently relocated from Mexico to Los Angeles,
Christina is modeling an LP by a singer she referred to as Bobby Dilly.
2004
Johnny Ray Scott was the bandleader in the last of the Oliverio Donut Concerts.
He is standing on the same stage that many years before had been graced
by the likes of Nat King Cole and Billy Holiday.
Their presence at Jefferson High School inspired me to raise funds to stage
a series of concerts. In total, I raised $10,000 in the course of six years.
Each of those years ended with a concert.
One month after this concert, I was a "retired Math teacher" but those three words–
when applied to me–are an oxymoron.
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