Thanks to all that attended ! My parents, my brother and sisters were most happy that so many people attended . We had a wonderful time ! Here is Jack and Alice with their immediate family , 5 children , two daughter in laws , three son in laws, 10 grandchildren, one granddaughter in law and a great grandson !
After the celebration , on the way home , I took a little detour to visit some important places in our clan history .
Here is a picture of the Van Nuys Ranch house shortly after it was built in the mid 1940's .
Here is a picture of the house today . Still stands ., nice fresh coat of paint , big trees block some of the details of the front , but the central windows and front doors are readily seen when you compare it to the old picture . The house serves as a club house for a private tennis club that was closed today so I was unable to get any closer . The pool is still in the back but dry with no water. The front lawn has been paved over to serve as the parking lot for the club.
The barns on the Van Nuys Ranch still stand , a real echo of the farming past .
San Tong Jue reserved some of the lots after part of the Jue Joe Van Nuys ranch was sold for subdivision . My mom and Dad lived in a house on Rubio Street adjacent to the Van Nuys Ranch . I was raised there as a baby for a few years before I had a sister and we moved to a larger house . Here is mom and I on the front porch of the Rubio house.
Here is the Rubio house today. It has a metal rather than wooden railing and some brick has been added to the front but still looks nice and the current owners have kept it up nicely.
My Dad looked for a bigger house for us as the family grew and found this custom house not too far from our Rubio house on Lassen Street in Sepulveda. The Rubio house had three bedrooms and one bath and so did this house but the rooms were much bigger. My dad loved that it had a ranch look about it and looked like a barn . My mom was not so sure she wanted to live in a house that looked like a barn but finally went along with the idea. . My brother and sisters loved the place . My sister Arlene lived in the silo over the front door and my sisters Adrienne and Leslie lived in the room out back , my parents had the room to the left of the silo and my brother Richard and I lived in the room over the "barn" or garage.
Nice to see the house still standing and in good shape .
What a beautiful 60th Diamond Anniversary celebration all of you gave to honor your parents!!! It was so loving and so much fun for all who attended. The skits were hilarious, and the dance exhibitions were facinating. You did a great job! And you made your parents so happy and so very proud of all of you. Auntie Soo-Yin and Uncle Ed.
ReplyDelete#4 Photo of Redwood barns: I see Jew Joe's buckwagon, the one he drove over the Cahuenga Pass with 4 horses hitched to it!!! It is still there--to the left of the big red barn that faces Vanowen St. The ground is not as level as it used to be so the buckwagon looks lower than it is. But if you enlarge the photo you can see its 5-inch wide iron wheels, two wooden horse hitches that protrude from the wagon's front, a single iron seat that Jew Joe sat on, and to the seat's left (right, for a driver) is an iron stick protruding upward with a brake-lever to squeeze in order to stop the wagon. The body of the buckwagon has a flat layer of wooden boards laid on top, then five inches of plywood underneath, and finally another layer of flat wooden boards laid beneath the plywood. Like a sandwich. This reinforced the buckwagon's strength to carry Jew Joe's heavy crates laden with potatoes and with asparagus. It had to withstand a bone breaking journey over rocky soil along the Cahuenga Pass to the L.A. Plaza's Produce Mart, three hours each way. San Tong told me that this is where Jew Joe always parked his buckwagon when it was not in use, next to the horse's stable, and near his cabin that is no longer standing today, the cabin was to the far left of the above #4 photo. After Jew Joe died, San Tong never moved the buckwagon and I spent many happy hours playing on it. Regarding the "Transnational History of a Chinese Family," by Haiming Liu, I repeat briefly my comment in the "Asparagus Farming in the Valley" section: Sam Chang is the same person as Sam Chung in an L.A. Times news article of April 1, 1944, that brother Jack has in his scrapbook. After San Tong died, Jack and Joan gave each of the siblings a copy. Sam indeed farmed on Hayvenhurst and knew Jew Joe and San Tong (who is mentioned in that article). Auntie Soo-Yin.
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