From San Antonio to Bunker Hills in Los Angeles by Mimi Lozano

The memory below is Chapter 2 of My Life History
Bunker Hills, the First House I Can Remember

It must’ve been in 1934 because mom said I was an infant in arms, and I was born in October 1933. It was towards the end of the Great Depression. Mom's parents and all her brothers and sisters had moved to Los Angeles. Mom wanted to go to Los Angeles to be with her “familia.

Perhaps it was for the cost of the gasoline that dad made a rather questionable arrangements with some man he happened to meet in a bar. The man wanted to pick up his children at the elementary school they attended, and drive to Los Angeles. It was a divorce situation and It was against the legal divorce arrangements.

Mom, my sister Tania, and I would travel with the man to Los Angeles . . . in his car as a cover. The police would not be looking for a family group of four children, a mother and a father. Dad would drive in a separate car. Perhaps dad agreed . . . in exchange for the cost of the gasoline.

Mom agreed because she would be reunited with her family. With two little ones in diapers, and no family, she was desperate. I doubt that either mom or dad at even thought of the consequences, if they had been caught. Kidnapping is a very serious crime and they would’ve been accomplices.

Mom said she packed two boxes of sandwiches and other foods, plus diapers, clothing, and blankets. We left San Antonio with this stranger and his two children. While they were traveling, Mom said all the radio stations were blasting over the air, asking for help about the children who had been kidnapped by their father. Mom said for days the kidnapping even made the newspapers, both the San Antonio and Los Angeles newspapers. She did not know what happened, if the children had ever been reunited with her mother.

When they got to Los Angeles Dad and Mom found an abandoned house and squatted for a duration. Mom said a drawer out of a chest was used for my bed.

Abuelito Alberto and Abuelita Petra were renting a room in one of the large houses in the Bunker Hills area. Many Mexican families had moved to the area. After a while, we too were living in the same house with grandma and grandpa. I seem to remember .mom saying that Dad made money by finding abandoned cars fixing them up and selling them. Mom would clean the house for her older sister who provided food in exchange.

Mom was happy, being there with family, but dad wanted to return San Antonio, where he was born, had had a business and had family. One day dad took Tania, my sister, and left for San Antonio.

I was an adult before I was able to put the pieces together. I remembered some incidences happening where we lived when I was about 16 months old which I did not think would’ve happened if my year and a half older sister had been there.
I asked my mom where my sister was when we lived Bunker Hills. She looked shocked and said, "You can’t have remembered that. You were just a baby." I said I remembered that for while, Tania was not with us. I did not know how many months.

Mom said that against her wishes, Dad had taken Tania to San Antonio, assuming Mom would follow him back to San Antonio. She did not.

There was a physical confrontation between mom and dad. It may have been when dad was was leaving the house with Tania. I remember being held in the arms of my grandmother, watching Mom and Dad fighting on the sidewalk, lots of screaming, and blood on my mom’s forehead and face.
I asked my sister if she remembered being taken to Texas when she was a child, and she proudly said that, was when “dad stole” her and took her to meet all the relatives. For her, it was a good memory. Ultimately Dad brought Tania back. Mom and Dad reassumed their marriage, which ultimately resulted in divorce.My sister's relationship with our Dad was also much closer than I had with him. He and I never did seem to bond.

In spite of it all, I do not remember lots of bad times, mostly it was good memories, with cousins, aunts, and uncles. We were taken to Echo Park, Griffith Park, Silver Lake, La Brea Tar pits, "el rio".   The houses were big, especially inside and they were tall, three stories, and sometimes more; stately, majestic to a child; interesting, some looked like castles.

History of Bunker Hill: Early Development

In 1867, a wealthy developer, Prudent Beaudry, purchased a majority of the hill's land. Because of the hill's excellent views of the Los Angeles Basin and the Los Angeles River, he knew that it would make for an opulent subdivision. He developed the peak of Bunker Hill with lavish two-story Victorian houses that became famous as homes for the upper-class residents of Los Angeles. Angels Flight, now dubbed "The World's Shortest Railway", took residents homeward from the bottom of the 33% grade and down again.

Initially a residential suburb, Bunker Hill retained its exclusive character through the end of World War I, but in the face of increased urban growth fed by an extensive streetcar system, its wealthy residents began leaving for enclaves on the Westside and Pasadena. Bunker Hill's houses were increasingly sub-divided to accommodate renters. Still, Bunker Hill was at this time "Los Angeles's most crowded and urban neighborhood". By World War II the Pasadena Freeway, built to bring shoppers downtown, was taking more residents out. Additional post-war freeway construction left downtown comparatively empty of both people and services. The once-grand Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill became the home of impoverished pensioners. Wikipedia

www.messynessychic.com/2013/07/25/the-lost-victorian mansions-of-downtown-la/

archived from realpeople@downtownnews.com

Despite once attracting high-income residents with its fashionable apartment buildings, By the 1920s, Bunker Hill had become a working class lodging district. The once thriving leafy ... After the Great Depression, the grand old Victorian mansions were run-down and being used as cheap apartment hotels.

I was relieved to learn, as an adult and got interested in history, to find that Bunker Hill history had been saved in the preservation of some of the Victorian mansions. It was through the efforts and attention of artist Leo Politi that the Los Angeles history of Bunker Hill is known and appreciated.

Especially well known for his children's books;. however, he verged into adult books to the most innovative which was the hills, a series of paintings of this stately Victorian houses which populate advanced section of downtown before the skyscrapers irrevocably altered the landscape In total third 30 books and illustrated an additional 15 to 20.

In scrolling through photos this one attracted my attention. It seemed very familiar to me. Research revealed it was was referred to as the Castle. Located at 325 S. Bunker Hill, it appears it was among some of the few Victorian mansions preserved as part of the history of Los Angeles. Leo Politi immortalized the Bunker Hill mansions with his art.

M
		During its 60-plus year tenure as a multi-unit residence, the Castle would play host to all walks of life : Salesmen, doctors, waiters, elevator operators, miners, firemen, tailors, printers, hotel food checkers and many others called the Castle home, at some point in their lives. When the WPA conducted a census of the area in the 1939, the castle at 325 S. Bunker Hill Avenue was comprised of fifteen separate units, including a small guest house, built in 1927. The landlord’s family resided in four rooms while the rest of the tenants occupied single rooms and shared six toilets. Rent ranged from $10 to $15 a month and occupancy at the Castle was anywhere from six months to eight years. The WPA reported that majority of the occupants were single, white and over 65 years of age. When we were living there, in 1934-35, there were Mexican families, and lots of children. My grandfather was quite educated. He was superintendent of schools in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. He could read in three languages, and spoke fluently in Spanish and French.

Jean Bruce Poole, historic museum director of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. She knew Polti since 1977 when he painted the mural "the Blessing of the Animals" on the side of the Biscailiz building, depicting the annual Olvera Street event.

"His paintings were always very sweet," she continues, " they were not of people in sorrow or agony or distress. He painted people as he like to see them, happy and enjoying life and being good."

In preparing this chapter, it made me more aware of the heartache associated with migrating families and individuals, the confusion of separation from loved ones, challenges to adjust to the new. The dissociated from the familiar, . . . growing, changing, adjusting. Our ancestors did, and many of us did also.

Remembering helps heal memories and increases understanding. Recently one of my cousins repeated a thought that I shared with her long ago, concerning my father's death. She said I told her, "My one regret about my relationship with my dad, was not being able to know my father . . . as an adult."

I hope you accept the challenge and start writing your own personal family history, for yourself and for others. The ten questions which I answered are in the Family History section.