Ramona Drive Hill

Behold! The very front of the upper eastern corner of the Tingle property as it abutted Romana Dr.  The house was in the early stages of construction, as is suggested by the pile of block sitting there in the lower left corner of the picture.

 

upfrontramonadr

The little redwood fence beyond the block marked the property line of our neighbors at the time, the Schmits, I believe they were called. Beyond the Schmits was more truck farm off to the left of Ramona Drive as it ran on up the hill, past the Casa De Oro Elementary school (that rather official looking structure off to the right), up a pretty steep bit of road that I hated biking, and beyond that more homes, the homes of the more affluent.

 

The class structure was pretty well laid out by the hill; the poor at the bottom, the upper poor more towards the middle, and then the solidly affluent up at the top.  These houses were in general just as ugly as the houses lower down the hill, but they were bigger, and boxier and they all had “views.”  The price of a house could go up or down depending on this intangible thing: the view.  At the very top of the hill, one might on a clear day make out the glisten and glimmer of the Pacific, way off there somewhere.

We had a view too but it was sort of a lateral view, a south to north view out the back window and not a truly valuable east to west view of the Pacific.

In a general way, this picture confirms my earlier description of Southern California as a rather dry and dusty place lacking green weeds.  True, up the hill a bit the truck farms stopped farming and tumble weeds took root in the abandoned dirt. These were actual tumble weeds and during a good wind they would become uprooted and tumble right through our back yard.

My brothers and I all attended Casa De Oro Elementary for all or a portion of our elementary school education.  The Boy Scout Troop that I was forced to belong to met in the basement cafeteria of the Elementary School.