California Residences

I stepped out of 931 Seaview for the last time the morning of our wedding day. Actually I still had some last-minute things to do there so I did not attend a church service that morning. We had already moved our belongings into 411 Bonnie Drive and we spent our wedding night there.



931 Seaview Drive, El Cerrito, CA

After I had to move out of the Quadrangle because of WWII, I roomed in a house on Iowa Avenue in Iowa City, several blocks due east of the old capitol. Did I spend the night after my graduation ceremony there? I must have since I did not ride back to Gowrie that evening with my parents and Vincent. I can’t remember walking out of the house for the last time.

In San Pedro I roomed in about four private residences as I recall most notably and for the longest time in the home of Hugo and Palma Johnson. They lived in one of the home that Hugo had built in his career as a carpenter and contractor. Another very well-built house. It was while I was living there that Vincent was visiting me at the time the atom bombs were dropped on Japan. He was stationed at the time out near Malibu as I recall.

Hugo had been one of those quick-active people but had developed Parkinson’s disease and was even more restricted in what he could do than my father when he had the disease. It was a sad situation. I suspect that it was because of their reduced finances that they took me in as a roomer.

In San Pedro I also lived briefly in an apartment and I also spent some time at the YMCA over in Long Beach. I cannot recall when I stepped out of all these places for the last time.

And then there are the two houses I lived in, in Berkeley and Oakland after the move from the Los Angeles before rooming at 411 Bonnie Drive in the first of my two residences there. The first was on Shattuck Avenue right next to a little park (Love Oak? Codornices?). The second was on Grove Street (later Martin Luther King) another well-built house that was torn down when Children’s Hospital of the East Bay expanded.

Then there was the house on Seaview that I owned while still a bachelor. That house was greatly expanded and modified by the people that I sold it to. And the house in Houston which looked the same the couple of times we drove past it later on, in 1977 and 1980.

I forget the name of the people in the Shattuck Avenue house but they were quite elderly then in the late 1940s so they are long since deceased. So are the Reymanns on Grove Street and the Wilsons at 411 Bonnie Drive. They were also well into their 60s when I knew them so they have been dead for years. I never kept in touch with the Reymanns but we did keep up with the Wilsons for awhile — actually visited them once or twice near Felton where they moved to after we bought 411 Bonnie Drive from them.



411 Bonnie Drive, El Cerrito, CA