late night feedings prompt thoughts

I can vividly recall my commute to Los Angeles every morning during the early '80's. We would leave Orange County, the bastion of conservative thought and untold wealth, to trek through the maze of freeways and side streets to the Canyons of Downtown Los Angeles. Having a keen interest in the urban environment made the journey an adventure, too bad I wasn't into photography as much then as since the digital age. There was the 'rust belt' the small manufacturing areas, tin buildings, rusty steel, people working of all colors and creeds. Then came skid row, the core of poverty and despair that marked the entry to downtown proper. The smells, the visions of bodies lying on the sidewalk, the drunks, the druggies, the sidewalk missions where the homeless would sit through a sermon just for a hot meal, sometimes the only nutrition they had. Cardboard condos, the boxes they called home, the Maytags, the Whirlpools,  marked every vacant place. There was an abundance of liquor stores but little else, unless your business was Serving the Lord and a hot meal to the unwashed that surrounded you. Nearby you had the garment district, with the sweatshops creating the designer labels for the well to do, and racks of clothes moving from warehouse to truck and on to where the money was, never worn by those who worked in old brick buildings hunched over swing machines and cutting tables. Then there was Broadway, a street of glory, so tarnished by the passing of the great movie houses, now turned into indoor swapmeets or small shops. Every where you looked the signs were in Spanish or Spanglish, as the culture was mixed there. Past the older hotels and shops we would fly, on our magic carpet of the express bus, few stops, only to let off the managers or supervisors that lived in Orange County but worked in the bowels of Los Angeles. Finally you entered the financial district, the clean sidewalks, the bustle of office workers, the coffee carts, and the occasional mentally ill street person, pleading their case to a public who did nothing more than brush them aside. The language changed, from Spanish to English, maybe Farsi, a little Hebrew, and some that I could not recognize. I made my transfer, to another line, to another culture, mostly black, some hispanic, as we headed south on Figueroa, towards Adams and the small area around USC. I worked in a Spanish Revival building that was the headquarters of the Automobile Club. Oh, the memories.

Saturday

What will the day bring? I guess I'll discover that when I face the day.

Bike is on the brain, so is fishing. The local swapmeet awaits and hence discovery.

Got to do some work to prep the 'puppy pen' for their future home.

Got to decide what to do with other junk, such as an older Nissan engine and other scrap.

Oh well, the day awaits.

Mid morning post...

Went 'downtown' to the swapmeet, checked out a bunch of vendors, bought some Roma tomatoes and a couple of ripe avocados. Stopped at the Cirle K Market for a newspaper and some donuts.  Back home, and now about to go outside to place a new yellow jacket trap and a few additional fly traps.  Got to make a dent in the place, hauling stuff to the dump.