Tag Archives: Oak Street

Feed the Birds Hodgepodge

Jo From This Side of the Pond is tweeting out some new questions for us to answer for Wednesday Hodgepodge.

1.  April 26th is National Audubon Day, honoring John James Audubon, the French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter known for his detailed study and illustration of birds in their natural habitats.

Do you have a bird feeder? 

Yes, several.

Any birds in your home decor?

A few.

Have you ever owned a pet bird?

Yes, and it’s a sad story I’ve told before. In the 50’s our Pop decided he would get pigeons and he built a pigeon cage for them in our back yard. I had 3 siblings at that time and we all chose one to be our pet. Mine was Green Neck. Things got so dire financially that our pet pigeons ended up in a pot of soup. All of my siblings and myself refused to eat that soup. Our Pop couldn’t understand why. OYE!

The photo above is of our Pop, my older sisters Kathy and Vera and that’s me with a pigeon on my head. I’m guessing it’s Green Neck.

What’s your favorite bird? 

This is tough. I love many birds. The majestic eagle and the hawk are special. I love the look of owls. Hummingbirds are adorable. I’m not a fan of pigeons and won’t let them find a place to roost.

2. What’s something you took to ‘like a duck to water’? 

Blogging.

3. Empty nest, nest egg, proud as a peacock, free as a bird, birds of a feather flock together, or the early bird catches the worm…choose one and tell us how it currently applies to your life. 

I’ll go with the early bird catches the worm because lately I’m finding myself awake at 5am and by 9am it seems like I’ve gotten all I need to get done, done.

4. Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, chia seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds…your favorite seed and a favorite food or dish made with that seed or topped with that seed?

Sunflower seeds first and pumpkin seeds come in second, roasted and lightly salted in the shells.

Have you tried all the seeds on the list?

I don’t think I’ve tried flax or chia.

Any you don’t care for? 

All are fine in limited quantities, except for sunflower seeds. I can crack and eat a whole bag of sunflower seeds!

5. Something in the past week that made you ‘happy as a lark’?

We took the plunge and are trying out a new satellite internet service. Waiting for one last mount before we are good to go. If you don’t see me next week you’ll know something went wrong. Where we live in the country our only good option is a satellite service.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

We are warming up the rest of this week and finally have mornings above freezing. We had our first walk on the Rotary Trail on Saturday morning and are looking forward to this trek a few times a week.

Today is a busy day with a 7am appointment for new tires on the car, an 8:30 appointment with the doctor, 9am Prayer meeting and then the window washers are coming in the late afternoon. Hooray for clean windows!

Our shadows on the trail last Saturday.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to be around to visit soon.

Tuesdays With Moisi

All the photos in this post were taken in the 50’s.  I believe this photo was taken after my parents bought our home in Montebello Gardens/Pico Rivera, 4635 Oak St. These are all family and friends who immigrated from Persia to the United States. Russian Baptists and Russian Molokans together. Moisi (Pop) is in the front row with his head on Nadia’s (Mom) shoulder.

The photo above was also taken on Oak street. Our mom is standing on the left. Our aunt Anna is standing on the right. Kneeling, our mom’s cousin Luba, and our aunt Nina. I recognize the lady in the center standing but her name has slipped my memory. Maybe my brother Leonard or sister Vera can leave a comment with her name. 🙂

This is a very rare photo of our mom and our aunt Ouiliana with trousers on. Our aunt Katie is in the center. Both of these aunts are from our Pop’s side of the family. One married to Uncle John and one married to Uncle Alex.

Aunt Zena, our mom, and aunt Ouliana in the back. Aunt Nina(our only aunt on my mother’s side of the family), ?, Mrs. Hamzieff, and Aunt Luba. We called most anyone our parents age aunt and uncle.

I’m not sure where photo was taken. Possibly it was at our Uncle Pete and Aunt Anna’s house since she’s the one with an apron on. Yikes! Is that a cigarette in our Pop’s hand? He did smoke for a while but always kept it a big secret from us kids. Generally you can tell who is Baptist and who is Molokan by whether or not the men wear ties. Ties were not a common dress code for Molokans.

Our maternal grandmother, babushka Vera with her dear friend and the mother of our Aunt Nina, babushka Manya.

The photo above is taken in front of our driveway at 4635 Oak Street.

Front yard of 4635 Oak Street. Moisi (Pop) is holding me.  I’m guessing this is Easter 1952.

Our sister Vera’s birthday since she’s holding the cake. This must have been in February in the early 50’s.

Easter on our driveway.

The same Easter but at our Uncle and Aunt’s home. Our maternal grandmother lived with Uncle Paul and Aunt Nina for many years before she got her own apartment a few doors down from the Russian Baptist church in Los Angeles.

We took a few camping trips to Big Bear with our cousins on our mother’s side of the family.

The photo above is a favorite of mine with our Pop working on a jigsaw puzzle while we were camping. He spent many hours working on jigsaw puzzles before he died.

Besides camping we’d drive to farms to pick berries and cherries for mom and pop to prepare for canning.

January of 1958 our brother Tim was born. This was in our living room on Oak street.

I’m guessing this is my seventh birthday.

Easter 1958 at our cousin’s home in Maywood, California. Our maternal grandmother lived with our Uncle Paul and Aunt Nina so we visited them regularly.

This photo above is from a road trip we took to Oregon stopping at Crater Lake.

Christmas 1958, Tim was 11 months old and we all needed to protect the tree from his curiosity.

This must be Easter 1959 at our Uncle Paul and Aunt Nina’s home in Maywood, California.

Backyard on Oak street after a deep sea fishing trip Pop took for yellowtail.

I’m guessing the photo above is from 1960 at our Uncle and Aunt’s with our maternal grandmother because our brother Steve was born in December of 1959.

The kitchen at a birthday for me just before we moved to Montebello. I’m guessing this is my 9th birthday. The next photo is of the same kitchen from a realtors more current photo. Looks like the kitchen has not been updated much from the 50’s!

Another photo from our backyard on Oak Street.

This is a historical post for my kids so I’m adding the three school photos I have from Montebello Gardens Primary School here, too.

And here is a current photo of what our house on 4635 Oak street looks like now.

This is the backyard now. Where this storage shed is today there used to be a pigeon coupe that Pop built.

This realtors shot of the hall to all the bedrooms in our house looks so dismal. I can see now why it was easy for us to jimmy up the walls since they were so close together. I ran down this hall one Easter or Christmas morning and slipped and slid into the cabinet of that utility room you can see at the end of the hall and broke one of my toes. I had to wear a slipper on that foot for church that day because of swelling, so embarrassing.

As I find more photos from our family’s time on Oak street I’ll add them to this long post. In a future post I’ll cover the time our family spent at 305 Los Angeles Avenue in Montebello.

Hope you all have a good Tuesday.