Granada Hills Orthodontic School

I left in May to go to LA to Orthodontic School. I left Kaye and the kids in Alamo to sell our house. I started Orthodontic School at USC in June 1967. We had a class of 10 students. I rented a place near the campus. The furniture movers packed us up and took us to a house we rented on Zelyah Street in Granada Hills. The freeway was going to take the house out in a couple of years. It was a pretty nice house for $250 a month. One of the neighbors was an animal trainer for the movies. He trained the lion for "Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion" and other movies. We really never knew the other neighbors. It was really smoggy and hot there. Sometimes Cindy's face would get green when she played outside from the smog.

Life in Granada Hills

Each summer the Santa Anna winds would blow inland and there were lots of grass fires. Sometimes we would take the kids in the car and go and watch them burn. Luckily it didn't get too close to our house. Our girls would walk to school. Cathy was in 7th and 8th grade and Cindy was in 5th and 6th. Greg and Brad we enrolled at a private school called Pinecrest. They were too little for regular school and Kaye was teaching school. They would keep the boys until Kaye got off of work. I remember that Brad got an A in napping and Greg got an A in swinging. They even had pony rides there.  We had our two poodles, Mimi and Robbie. While we were at the house a stray mother cat went under our house while we were on vacation. When we came back we heard meowing under the house. Our poodles wouldn't let the mother cat get back in our yard. I crawled underneath the house with a flashlight and a mirror. I found the kittens were between the floor and the bathtub about 6 feet from the end of the of the bathtub. I had to cut a hole in the subfloor to get them out. Kaye and the kids fed them milk with an eyedropper. They started getting fat, but they died one by one. Kaye called the vet and he said you had to feed them canned milk that was sterile. The fattest kitten survived. I had a hard time with that cat. It wouldn't let me touch it. I had to get the kids to put it out. A year later when we were moving up to Santa Cruz, I took a load of furniture up there because we had to be out of the house by June 1st. Kaye and the kids stayed in a little motel until school was out for a week. We left the cat in the yard. When we came to pick it up the neighbor boy had caught and hung it on the swing set to die. It really upset the kids, but not me. One year on Halloween I took the kids trick or treating down the street. Cathy took off across the street without looking and was nearly hit by a car. It slammed on it brakes and almost hit her. It scared me to death. I commuted to USC and back in a little VW. each day. Coming back on day the motor blew up. I had it towed to a garage. The mechanic only fixed one cylinder because I didn't have enough money to do any more.