DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE ...

Just got back from a four-day trip to Crestline and Riverside, California - about 100 miles east towards Arizona. It was mainly "family business" and something I'd wanted to do for some time now.

Crestline, up in the mountains north of San Bernardino, is where Dad's sister Aunt Helen has lived for a couple decades, and since he's died, I've tried to get up to see her at least twice a year. Ann, who has been mainly in charge of property upkeep for Dad's estate, had Helen's handyman John paint the outside this summer since it was looking pretty ragged, and wanted me to take some pictures so she could see what he had done. We hope to put it on the market eventually - perhaps within the next year. (Dad had the house constructed specially for Helen in the early '90s so she could live in the mountains rent-free for as long as her health permits.) I stopped there first to visit Helen and get a mitochondrial DNA sample of inner cheek cells for Family Tree DNA , a genealogical testing lab in Houston; Helen is the last female link genetically to our grandmother and her female line of descendence back into the mists of Scandinavian history, so I wanted a record of her DNA before she, too, passes on. (Dad also carried the same genetic information, but getting DNA samples from him at this point would be pretty awkward - and macabre, to say the least!) But I digress ...

Riverside, a fairly major city I've never really visited, has ties to Grandma Sundberg's early years in America. She immigrated from Sweden in 1908 with her brother Frank and came straight out to Riverside to get established, living in the beginning with two uncles, brothers of her father, who was a farmer in southern Sweden (Skåne province right across from Copenhagen). She worked first as a housemaid in the homes of wealthy citizens of Riverside, saving up $1000 (or so) to pay for a Lutheran college out in Kansas (Bethany College) - a sizable sum in those days. She returned to California and, in 1915, married my grandfather, Ernst Sundberg, a "city slicker" from LA who taught high school math, also, a good Swedish Lutheran. After that, the couple lived in Los Angeles until they both died (1963 and 1958 respectively).

This was all part of oral family history, but I had nothing to confirm or disconfirm the details. A week before I left, I looked up a bunch of Lutheran churches in Riverside on the web and emailed them all, asking where the Lutheran archives for Riverside might be located and which church(es) might have been around in the early 20th century. A few church secretaries emailed me back, and the finger seemed to point to Eden Lutheran Church, founded by Swedes in 1888. In fact, even before I left, the secretary from Eden emailed to say she had located Selma Carlson's name in the church membership book and gave me the date she had been "received" into membership - September 20, 1908.

The present Eden Lutheran Church is neither in the same building nor even the same location as the original wooden building, but the congregation and all its files moved together in the early 1950's. When I arrived, Marilyn, the secretary who had responded to my email, greeted me and handed me a huge log book (3' x 2') and showed me the page my grandmother was mentioned on. It was comforting to see it down on paper, but a little disappointing that it was only one page. After I started snooping around the book, however, I slowly came to realize I had stumbled on a gold mine of family information. Not only did it mention Selma Carlson (the membership line stretches across two huge pages), but her brother Frank, and on page 1, an "Ernest Carlson" along with his wife Ida and four children and, on page 2, a "Carl Carlson" along with his wife Ida (popular name!) and their four children.

This confirmed the very vague oral account that "a couple of uncles were already out there", but I had never heard their names mentioned, or even their existence until I spoke with Dad's cousin Alice in Michigan this summer. But Alice couldn't remember the names. But here they both were, carefully hand-written in the huge volume along with - very importantly - their place of origin. Carlsons in Sweden are a krona a dozen, but Carlsons from Glimåkra, Skåne could only be relatives, since the town is a postage stamp. (Aunt Helen later confirmed that yes, the family used to visit an "Uncle Ernest" in Riverside when she was a young girl.) This was just as exciting as finding my grandmother's name in the book, since it meant we now had a huge new branch of the Swedish side of the family we had never even known, some descendents likely still living in the area.

Importantly, the membership book also listed the year members arrived in the US and when they reached Riverside (many lived in the Midwest for a time before continuing their immigration west). Now we knew that Selma and Frank had left Sweden in 1908 for sure (Dad only remembered that his mother was "about 16") and that they had come straight west to California from Ellis Island - most likely by train. Now, Riverside is not the kind of place a new immigrant would pick out of a hat when they arrived in the US unless they already had contacts there, so this bolstered the account that they had pre-existing relatives in the location: Uncle Carl and Uncle Ernest and their families. And Ernest and his family were some of the charter members of Eden Church, there when it was founded in 1888 - the first name listed on page 1, in fact! (The church secretary there was very impressed! She ended up giving me a nicely illustrated church centennial book as a gift.)

One mystery, however, was that no mention of Selma's marriage date was written in the book. Family lore said the pair had married in Riverside, so it seemed odd that the church she was a member of wouldn't have recorded it. I next visited another old Lutheran church down the street - Trinity Lutheran - but their list of marriages went back only to the 1940's. It looked like the civil county records office was the next best place to check.

I had assumed one merely had to go up to the recorder's window, give the employee the names and wedding date, and they would check a database to verify the information, but no. You had to pay for a certified reprint of the original marriage license. - $13. Whatever. She called some other office, and they faxed their microfilm photocopy - and when she handed it to me eventually, we both agreed that it was too degraded visually. I could barely read the names! She recommended I go straight to the regional office and get a fresh photocopy "right off the printer", so I did. I now have an official County of Riverside Marriage License (modern official stationery) with a print of the original license, which helpfully contains not only the couple's names and marriage date, but the names of witnesses (Ernst's sister Esther Sundberg and some unknown best man from Nebraska, a Victor Pearson) and - most importantly - the name of the officiating pastor, the Rev. L. N. Dahlsten, who, it turns out, was pastor at Eden Lutheran during 1915. So, Selma stayed loyal to Eden up through the wedding, but it was still odd the membership book had a blank, mentioning only a membership transfer to "Los Angeles".

After Riverside, I drove back north to Crestline (about an hour's drive) to see Helen a second time and get the second DNA sample (they had to be taken at least 8 hours apart). When I mentioned the oddity concerning Selma's wedding information being absent in the ledger, Helen said, "Well, of course! They didn't get married in the church. They had the ceremony at Mission Inn." (Mission Inn is a huge rambling mission-style hotel in Riverside dating back to the 1870's.) So, now all I have to do is write the Mission Inn historical museum to see if there is any record of Selma and Ernst's wedding there. Since the Inn has been a "big thing" locally since its beginning - presidents slept there - it's very likely they've kept careful records - unlike, say, the Motel 6 in Riverside along Interstate 10!

THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN

I should have brought my camera this evening. I was about to, but the thought of lugging it on a "brisk hike" for an hour kind of dissuaded me. Still, I should have brought it.

I've been going up to a particular trail in Griffith Park on an almost weekly basis now. (Griffith Park, one of the largest natural parks in a US city, starts just one street north of Franklin St., which is at the end of my block, so it's "in my backyard", so to speak.) The trail starts just behind Griffith Observatory on a hill overlooking this part of Hollywood and continues up into the hills as far as the famous Hollywood sign - just one of many paths in the park. I haven't made it as far as the sign yet, since I usually hike a half hour up and a half hour down - not enough time to get to the sign at the end of the trail.

In any case, this evening I parked my car on the road leading up to the Observatory, usually packed with cars of people checking out the view or taking the trail. But mine was almost the only car there. The reason was pretty obvious. It had been unusually hazy, smoggy, foggy - whatever - all day, and by evening, there was really nothing to see over the edge. Not even the immediate city below the Observatory. (Usually, you could see out to the Pacific shore at Santa Monica westward and all the way across town to the Palos Verdes peninsula southwestward, one of the best views in town.) I resigned myself to ignoring the lack of view for the hour and doing the Nike athletic thing: "Just do it."

As I climbed the dirt path higher and higher, I seemed to pass out of the fog and into some higher plane disconnected to the city below. At the end of my half hour "there" and before heading "back", I stopped at one of those million-dollar overlooks. In the distance, not too far at all now, was the hill with the Hollywood sign (and a broadcasting tower on top), like an island in the mist, perched between Hollywood to the south and the San Fernando Valley to the north (another foggy sea this evening). In fact, LA had suddenly become very simplified, as though a flood had rolled in covering 99% of the city and only the tips of the Hollywood Hills had escaped the deluge, like some Mt. Ararat. There was my hill, with the overlook and the high trail leading in either direction from it; the hill with the Hollywood sign; and another tall point across a gulf of white, where distant lights twinkled in the growing dusk like a space port in Star Wars. The sun had already disappeared a good 20 minutes earlier, leaving the violent, twisted cloudy mass in the west glowing an angry orange. The palette of the world had suddenly become very simplified: orange, white, pink, dark blue, and the gray of the surviving land masses peeking out of the marine layer. And there, in the dark southern sky above the sea of white, imperious Venus shone, untwinkling -- almost at my eye level, it seemed -- a regal distance from (mere) earthly elements.

OCTOBER 1 - DISNEY'S 50th

(Getting caught up bit by bit here …)

One item on my LA to-do list since I got here early this year was to go back to Disneyland.

It's not just because Disneyland is one of the top 10 tourist destinations locally, but because Disneyland has a family connection going back to the '60s. Some of my strongest childhood memories involve our family long vacations when, back in LA (Dad's "point of origin" for Aramco vacation policy purposes - they would pay your way back only that far), we would always hit Disneyland as far back as I can remember. It was an expected part of every long vacation. (I think Mom and Dad feared the scene that would ensue if they should fail to take us!) So, I am a long-time Disneyland aficionado - over 40 years now.

Anyway, one reason I particularly wanted to see Disneyland sometime this year was because it is also the 50th anniversary of the park's opening (1955). The park has been spiffed up, old rides renovated, and a super-duper pooper fireworks show has been added.

Anyway, the perfect chance came up the first Saturday of October. A group from a church I have visited off and on in Long Beach was planning a Disney day out, and several church members who are Disneyland employees volunteered to get a bunch of us in FOR FREE. (Can you say "opportunity knocks"?)

We met 9am at a bakery/restaurant in the new Disneyland Downtown (I had never heard of it), a free public-access area of the Anaheim complex with shops and restaurants. There were about 4 Disneyland people (and one or two employee friends drafted for the occasion) who could each sponsor 5 guests, so we got a bunch of us in.

The trip was as well-scripted and planned as any package tour I have been on. I knew we were in good hands when Glenn, the group leader, showed up with a list with cell phone numbers and made sure every single person on it was there or contacted them before we walked past the turnstyles. (The cell phone is a wonderful invention, I am coming to believe more and more.) The lines are famously long, but this "insider" crew knew all the strategies, and got us "fast passes" on many of the most popular rides. It's a special ticket you reserve when you get to the park that assigns a time to you, and you … walk right onto the ride. It felt somewhat first class/steerage class to breeze past the endless lines of shorts-clad families with whining kids, bypassing all hoi polloi to plop our buts into the car for Space Mountain.

All that togetherness was wearing on me a bit by dinnertime - and the constant noise. We adults dragged in for dinner in Tomorrowland amid the blare of a pop band's sound system in the background, still frenetic kids with their dragging parents, and the rustle of trays and silverware - it brought back (not so fond) memories of lunchtime in my high school cafeteria! After we ate, I begged off of the last ride to get a little time to myself and visit a few old family special haunts - Toad's Wild Ride among them. And I desperately needed to get away from the noise and (as much as possible) the people, people, people.

The coup de grace was the evening's fireworks display - perhaps the best I have ever seen. (I've seen a bigger display for 4th of July celebrations on the Mall in DC, but this was the most varied and technically awe-inspiring.) They had set fireworks launchers on all sides, so you felt in the middle of a Roman candle Stonehenge. And being Disneyland, it had to accompany everything with a musical score, a potpourri of Disney songs and styles.

A long day for an old fart in his '40s, but the perfect Disneyland trip!

SEPTEMBER 27 - ROOTS

(A lot has transpired since Sept. 25, so I'll try to get you up to date in severals belated blogs!)

One of the main reasons I picked LA as my base during my job hunt (I could have gone almost anywhere) is family history. Since Dad died and the last remaining relatives are aging themselves, I wanted to take some time to reconnect with the Sundberg roots and learn as much about their decades in this city as I can. I realized a couple of months ago that I now live within 5 miles of the graves of my father, grandfather Ernst, and great-grandfather Johan Emanuel Sundberg! The Sundberg's go back pretty far in this town by California standards - over 100 years. (At least to the 1890's, when JE uprooted the family from Omaha to come west yet again. I'm hoping to narrow down the year with some more research.)

September 27, I visited the new "Collapse" exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History (an exhibit based on UCLA prof. Jared Diamond's recent best-seller, also titled "Collapse"). The Museum is one of the oldest in the LA area right next to the LA Coliseum, where the '32 and '84 Olympic Games were held. (I have a photo of my dad and aunt as kids in front of the Olympic stadium.) It's all in the USC complex SW of downtown, in an otherwise "not a good neighborhood".

Since I was near the old stomping grounds of my father and grandparents, I decided to combine the museum trip with a visit to some of the family's former houses. The first was a short distance west of USC, the house my grandparents lived in from the 1910's through about 1940. (They were living there when the Long Beach earthquake struck in 1933.) I didn't hit me till I visited the museum that they had lived so close to USC, the Museum and the '32 Olympics. To take the photos I have, they had only to take a short neighborhood car trip (or even walk). Dad had taken Ann and me by the house back in the '80s, when it was in an all-black neighborhood. In 2005, the neighborhood is in transition yet again, with Spanish-language shops on the nearby shopping streets and many Latinos walking the neighborhood sidewalks. I was pleased to find that the current owners were taking excellent care of the property: there was a healthy rose garden in front, and the yard and house were immaculate. I think Selma and Ernst would approve! They moved out of my Dad's childhood home when Art and Helen began to attend UCLA in the early '40s so they wouldn't have so far to commute. (USC, closer by, was the expensive private school out of reach of a math teacher's budget - UCLA was the state-subsidized public university.) I'm currently trying to pin down where their UCLA-era second house was. Lois mentioned the area in passing, and I have photographs, but this is a big city!

My second house stop was to find one of the first apartment buildings my great-grandfather JE and Elsa lived in after moving out to LA in the 1890's. (They originally lived near Olivera Street, the oldest Mexican settlement, and attended Lutheran services in the first church in town, a Catholic parish.) I had only recently gotten the address from Dad's cousin Lois, so it was the first time I'd ever seen the neighborhood. It turned out to be in the "Fashion District" (the industrial and garment district SW of the big downtown skyscrapers) on a grungy street full of textile, clothing and other low-end stores. The original building at 721 E. 9th Street had obviously been razed, and some bland new concrete structure had taken its place. I snapped a photo anyway. A couple of buildings away was a 5-story apartment building that looked like it was from the right era, so it gave me an idea of what JE's family likely experienced back in the early boom era of LA before cars, before motion pictures, etc. The neighborhood was pretty urban even then, like Brooklyn. You could picture the teeming streets with horse carriages, livery wagons, and factory workers. (JE worked for a downtown factory making kitchen and bath fixtures.) The quiet streets with stand-alone, single-family homes were several neighborhoods away even then. That would come later.

The last family outpost wasn't far away, just west of downtown, almost under the Santa Monica and the Harbor freeways today. JE and Elsa eventually saved up enough to get out of the downtown and buy their own home, 1701 Burlington, now a Latino neighborhood with mixed Mexican and Salvadoran residents (to judge from local shops). Their blue, two-story Victorian home (quite respectable looking) was still in good condition, obviously well taken care of by the current owners - Mexican-American Catholics, to judge from the large cloth image of the Virgin of Guadalupe hanging in the parlor window. I snapped a few pictures and drove around the neighborhood, a quiet historical preserve of Victorian Los Angeles architecture with a few modern apartments inserted every so often. (The city is full of these quiet backwater historic districts, many gone Latino now over the years.)

I realized weeks later that the Sundberg's old family church, Angelica Lutheran, was just a couple of blocks from JE and Elsa's old house. It made sense. In that era, people were pretty much creatures of their neighborhoods, and the 30-mile auto commute was unknown. Today, the neighborhood is solidly Latino, lower middle class but busy and seemingly prosperous. Definitely not a slum. Hard-working families with their jobs, homes and churches, much like life for the hard-working Swedes and other new immigrant families in 1890's LA. (The abundance of Spanish-language churches of all denominations is one of the underground, little noticed facts of the new LA. This is a very RELIGIOUS city, Hollywood stars excepted, and the Latinos are some of the most devout.) Today, the pastor of the Iglesia Luterana Angelica is a Hispanic, the Rev. Carlos Paiva. I hope to visit some Sunday and compare notes.