This Weekend Last
Los Angeles
Running around, hosting the Dahlia tour on Saturday and taking photos of the trash incinerator in the backyard of the house next to Greene and Greene’s Merrill House on the Pasadena Heritage tour on Sunday, left me precious little time to blog, but don’t think I was totally shirking my responsibilities to you, dear reader. I still found time to put my feet up and flip through the paper, and on seeing Joan’s posts this morning, was reminded of a couple tales…
Re: She Who Must Be Obeyed, perhaps Frederick Mason should’ve married Mary Agnes Morgan:
As James P. Morgan told it to Judge Bowron, the first twelve years of their marriage went along just swell, until one day in Agnes was struck dumb. She moved her effects to another room, and from there shuffled about in silence, cooking meals and soundlessly accepting her meager Saturday allowance. James finally asked for a divorce on the charge of desertion. Quipped Bowron, “Most extraordinary—never heard of the like. I know men who would say you were blessed beyond imagination.”
And oh, the joys of sweet, innocent youth. You’ve read about the pyro predilections of Joan’s Bakersfield brats—let’s throw kidnapping into the mix.
You know, in your neighborhood, were an infant to be kidnapped, everyone would go apeshit, and there’d be feds everywhere, and News Chopper 5, and so forth. Over in Boyle Heights, they just sigh, and trudge over to Hazel Oden’s house, 2706 Wabash Ave. It seems that Hazel, eight, one of thirteen children, suffers from a mother complex that compels her to steal any tiny infant she sees unguarded; she will nurse and rock the baby for a time and presently forget all about it. (Just like a real mother—how cute!) Policewoman Georgia Robinson had to make the trudge on the 21st to go fetch one Estella Richmond, two months of age, who was sleeping in her buggy outside her home one moment and was wheeled off to Hazel’s the next. Hazel has been sent to Juvenille Hall for observation, where she will be examined by psychiatrists to determine whether or not her impulses may be controlled.
Unfortunately, it would be another forty-six years before Hasbro introduces BabyAlive.