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After everyone had gone to sleep, I remember looking at the Empire State building out of our hotel window.

And the waitress. I thought she was such a beautiful woman, with a beehive, and such

makeup, and showing lots of skin, and she paid attention to me. A big four year-old crush.

In the tile shop, my dad had set up mock walls that showed off the different types of tiles.

There are also View Masters that showed the various tiles in various bathrooms and

kitchen designs. Showing these to customers was fun. Of course my own disks were

there to look at when there was time..

I learned not to ever talk to the contractors. But greeting the couples that

came in, showing them the tiles and features of the store, the weekend customers, this was the job I gave myself.

The mock bathrooms were my place to hang out. There were these mosaic tiles that came on a fiber glass matrix so that all you had to do is put on the grout. I played with the matrix, and could make the tiles move in waves and patterns. There were also the trim pieces for the mosaic sheets that I played with for years after the tile store days.

I wonder if the shop closed or if my dad sold his interest.

The tile shop was a happy time for me.

If we went to the shop by Rosemead Boulevard from the south, we would pass by an area near a dam where people used to run go-karts. My dad would stop so we would watch for a few minutes. I’m not sure when this happened, but he bought me a go-kart. It had a governor on it so it couldn’t go very fast, but it was still lots of fun.

He sold it when we were thinking of moving to Mexico.

The summer I turned five, in 1958, my father was really excited about driving the brand new interstate highways across the country. He even bought a brand new Ford station wagon for the occasion.

That summer the TV news was filled with the drama of school integration. There were angry people making other people unhappy. We saw images from Little Rock, Arkansas, where cops were knocking people to the street with powerful water from fire hoses and beating others with clubs.

At that time, there was a row of new car dealerships on Colorado Blvd in Eagle Rock. When someone said they were giving my dad a ride to pick up his new car in Eagle Rock, I heard Little Rock. I threw a fuss insisting I had to go with him. I didn’t want the cops to kill my dad, but I didn’t say that out loud. He really didn’t want to take me, but he did. On the whole drive there, my eyes were on the look out for police and rioters.

We got to the dealership and my dad poked around the car, and he looked under the hood, and signed the papers, and we drove back home in our new car.

We left for our trip before dawn the next morning. I was so excited and proud helping my dad load the car.

Off we went, my mom, my grandmother, and my nine month old brother in the back seat. I rode in the front with my dad, with my books, and was put in charge of the radio. Searching the dial for the Monitor Radio Network was important to me. The song Volare was a big hit and was on every station in every town. The new station wagon needed to be serviced every so many miles so we stopped at dealerships all the way across the country and back.

The memory of small children is not often reliable, but I do have some very vivid memories of a couple of things.

When we got to St. Louis Missouri, the hotels and motels wouldn’t rent a room to my mom and dad. I suspect now it was because they suspected that my dad was black. My mom, my grandmother, and brother stayed in a hotel, and I went with my dad to the YMCA. So happy to be having an adventure with just my dad. The room we stayed in had a bunk bed, and I don’t think I had ever slept before in a bunk bed. I was overjoyed to sleep on top. But my dad was unhappy.