View allAll Photos Tagged dragnet
I was off in the distance taking pictures of other things when I scanned the area and saw this photographer and the lovely young lady. I was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.... but DOH !! she saw me. Oddly enough she did not point me out. I could see he was trying to get her to look at his camera but she kept looking at my camera. I didn't stick around long at all. I took about 10 shots in a few seconds and moved out of view.
SWAT team have surrounded a woman with a gun barricaded in a vehicle at Slauson & 8th Ave. in the Hyde Park area. Don't know what lead up to the cause of the incident.
A lots goin' on down by the river. While taking photos of two U.S. Marine choppers practicing landing/ take off/recovery at the L.A.P.D. Jay Stephen Hooper Memorial Heliport, some camera men and Honda test riders set up shop and I got these shots of Trains, Marines, Ghetto Birds & bikes down by the L. A. River and El Pato Chile-Enchilada-Tomato Sauce Factory.
The Fort MacArthur Museum is proud to present what has become one of our most popular signature events. The Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942 is the museums celebration of one of the most fascinating and controversial events in Los Angeles History. A night when literally thousands of people both Military and Civilian were convinced that Los Angeles was being attacked from the air, and even from space!!! What really happened that night is a debate that will probably go on for years, but for those of us it's a time to remember the feeling of those early days of the World War II.
Slauson aven and Western. I don't know what happen but as soon as I started flickin off pictures the Boyz n Blue showed up and made everybody go home. When I meet up with the classic truck, muscle car & street rod crowd we don't get hassled by the Man.
Old bank converted into a book store in Down Town soL selegnA
A poor appetite for good books eventually leads to intellectual malnutrition.
Two man hole covers, asphalt & concrete shower street, front yards and driveways with debris when an underground electrical vault exploded which seems to have been caused by a nitrogen leak. Fortunately no one was hurt and only the back window of a car got blown out.
Probably my favourite thing
--
"La amo così tanto che vorrei non averla per comprarla di nuovo. Anzi la vorrei comprare ogni giorno."
"Sei pazza, te ne rendi conto?"
"Certo."
--
(Non è permesso l'utilizzo di questa foto senza la mia autorizzazione. Trovare questa foto su Google Immagini non la rende di pubblica proprietà)
(Please don't use this picture without my permission. Thanks!)
The beach has always been a strange place for me. Not quite the peaceful haven it is for others. I often wonder why I can’t just relax. Sit back. Let the sound of the lapping waves wash away my cares. I can’t say for certain. But I am pretty sure it has to do with the summer of 1977.
I grew up in a loving Italian family with lots of cousins always around. Fun was in no short supply in my family, and the memories of my childhood are something that I would not trade for all the world.
Save for the one. The one that concerns that nasty creature on that fateful day.
My grandparents owned a small bungalow on the east end of Long Island in a little town called Shirley. Summer weekends for our family meant packing up the paneled station wagon and heading out to be with my grandma and Nonno.
It meant afternoons on the rickety old pier, patiently waiting for crabs to nibble at the baited rings we cast into the murky water.
It meant nights spent around a giant bonfire, the likes of which would draw a S.W.A.T. team today if you tried to construct one on residential property.
And it meant the Italian folk songs my father and uncles and aunts brought with them from their homeland.
“Quel mazzolin di fiori che vien dalla montagna.”
Over and over. Until our voices grew hoarse. And our eyelids grew heavy. And we retired to the bungalow’s three tiny bedrooms. Still giggling. Joking. Children stacked like cordwood, two to a bed without complaint. Kids today complain about such things.
But this isn’t a story about today.
This was 1977. The year of the eel.
In all honesty, the beach in Shirley was not much of a beach at all. Coarse gray sand, matted with silt and blanketed in seaweed. Where seaweed gave way back to sand, horseshoe crabs and washed up jellyfish lay claim. But it was our spot. And I suppose, mostly because of its deficiencies, it was not heavily populated. Which allowed for great clamming and perhaps more important, gave us wide berth to bring out the dragnet whenever we so pleased.
The dragnet was not some fancy trap, or elaborate piece of equipment. It was precisely that. A net. That you dragged.
And in dragging it, you brought up whatever wandered into its 20 foot swath. The killies and shiners of the Moriches were no match for our dragnet. We hauled them in by the bucket full to be used as bait for crabbing. And the crop was seemingly endless.
But once in a while, the things that would pop up in the dragnet surprised us. And on this particular summer day in 1977, the haul we brought in would be the stuff of nightmares.
As I remember, the day was perfect. There was a picnic of salad and pasta and taralles, and Nonno’s home made wine. An acquired taste for sure. But mixed with a bit of Coca Cola, it went down just fine.
The gang was all there this day. My own family, mom dad and sister. My dad’s brother John’s family which included their three girls Isabella, Roseanne and the littlest one, Maria, not yet two years old. And we were joined this day by the three daughters of my mom’s sister, who spent quite a good deal of time with us after my aunt passed away.
Yes. The Cortese family defined “extended.” Gloriously.
After the pasta was eaten and the clams were dug, and the Frisbees and beach balls and seaweed were tossed bounced and used as devices of torment, respectively, there was but one bit of business remaining. The dragnet.
Fetching it from the trunk of my grandfather’s old Volvo, my dad began to unroll the spooled netting. Handing one of the driftwood poles to his brother, off they waded into the Moriches Bay.
The first pass proved uneventful. As did the second and third. The usual fare was brought from the ocean floor. Tiny fish and sea creatures of all shapes and sizes. Some edible. Some not. All fair game for the crab lines.
The fourth pass began as any other. My father and uncle in their overly tight (in that seventies kinda way) bathing trunks and tank tops, goose-stepping into the brown/green chilly water. Gold chains around their necks glimmering in the midday sun.
Wanting to be a part of the action, I was delegated to the mostly ceremonial position at the center of the net. And so we dug into the mud and pushed forward. Diagonally sweeping the inlet as we marched toward shore. My dad and uncle guiding the net as I followed behind.
Things seemed to be business as usual. Not a snag. Not a snarl. Just a perfect dragnet run, guaranteed to provide more live bait than we could ever hope to use in one weekend. I trailed along. Just one of the men, all fifty pounds of me. Holding up the center of the net with a great flourish.
As we rose out of the water I scanned the faces of everyone on shore. My mother’s pride. My cousin’s awe at the fishing skills (far beyond my 8 years, certainly) that I was displaying. But there was something else I saw in their faces as well.
Something dark. Coming over each of them. One by one. First my sister. Then my oldest cousin Karen. The same look. Like a blanket of terror. They stared into the net, just below my hands. I could not imagine what they were seeing.
This was not the amazement of a truly great haul.
No. It was something far worse. Something far, far worse.
I stood ankle deep in the water, mouthing the same single stupid word over and over, “what? What? What?”
When the shrill scream escaped my cousin Laura’s lips. I knew it though I refused to look down. I would not, could not chance even a glimpse. Not even when I felt the sting of its tail slap at my tiny sunburned shin through the net.
“Eel!” screamed my mother.
“Eel!! Eel!” shouted my sister.
“Eel!” from my uncle. And my father. And my cousin Isa. Like some crazy game of audible tag, they passed the word back and forth. “Eel!! Ee! Eel!” Trying to find meaning. Trying to find sense. But most of all. Trying to understand what the hell to do with this devil creature now that it was on our beach.
My father approached and it hissed. And thrashed. Then lay in wait for the next human hand to attempt its foolishness.
Coiled black anger. Slimy and mean. All muscle and madness with a crazed look in its beady eyes that suggested a malevolence, the likes of which none of us had ever known in our happy little world. A head no more than two inches wide, yet hosting no less than six thousand teeth. Each and every one sharpened like a razor as if the thing had been waiting for this very moment. This was personal and it was gonna get ugly!
“Kill it, “ someone shouted. As if this thought had not occurred to anyone else.
“Don’t go near it,” came a voice of reason. I can’t say for sure whose insight that was, but I was with them all the way.
And then, like some squat Clark Kent in dress socks and sandals, my grandfather stepped into action with a single, confident, take no prisoners word.
“Aspetti!” he shouted. Wait. And so we did.
With his bare hand he grabbed the creature. Never for one second, faltering in his determination. It stung at him, drawing blood. Which Nonno kinda took personally.
“Oh, god!” screamed the crowd.
“No!” pleaded my cousin Nancy. Certain that engaging this animal would seal all of our fates when the thing summoned its eel army to swim ashore and wage end times. “No. NO!!”
“Stah zeet!” screamed Nonno. “Be quiet.” Partly at us. Partly at the eel who, apparently, was just as unhappy about the day’s turn of events as WE were.
Walking toward the big rock, we wondered if what we were all thinking could actually be happening. Our fears were met with a mighty, definitive “Thwap”.
“Thwap!”
“Thwap! Thwap!”
“Come onnnnnnn” shouted my grandfather. Apparently disappointed by the eel’s unwillingness to cooperate.
“Gino. Go my trunk. Getta da hammer.” Ever the dutiful son, my father headed to the Volvo without question.
“THE HAMMER!!?!?!?” a joint protest from the crowd.
It thrashed again, catching my grandfather’s leg this time and drawing blood. Rising from its listless state like some kind of slithering, sea-faring, sushi-grade Michael Myers bent on revenge.
“Sum-a-da-beetch!” my grandfather cursed the eel.
“Bam! Bam! Thud!” The hammer met the eel dead on, leaving it bloodied and still.
“Ahtzoh!” exclaimed Nonno, “that ting no wanna die.”
The children wept as my mother sheltered us from the horrific scene.
My grandmother screamed disapprovingly. “Tony! You make a beeg-ah mess-ah dere.”
And, as if refusing to be bested by some off the boat barber in plaid swim trunks, the eel rose once more. Flailing on the rocks.
The screams doubled. Tears flowed openly. Aunt Lina covered her baby to protect it from stray serpent shrapnel. This was Armageddon.
“Dat’s it! You die, you leetle bahstahd!” Nonno screamed, grasping the eel by the neck.
“What the…” he couldn’t. He wouldn’t! My God. The horror.
What happened next is almost too much to bear.
For there perched the eel, between the lips of this man whose kisses I cherished. The lips that had praised me as a “good boy” all these years.
These same lips, pulled back in a snarl. His gold capped teeth bearing down, he bit the monster. Directly. Between. The eyes.
There was fainting. There was swooning. There were gasps and cries and prayers to Jesus Christ himself for mercy. Upon the creature? Upon my grandfather? I can’t say which with any certainty.
Nonno stood there smiling maniacally, gore dripping from his gray-bristled chin like a child that had gotten into the holiday pudding. The lifeless body of dinner hanging from his left hand.
Amid the cries and gasps, stood my grandmother, nonplussed. Gleefully decreeing in her perfectly sweet, broken english.
“Oh, that’s-ah beautiful. We make a nice-ah soup!”
The “History of Transportation” mosaic mural was erected and put on display at Centinela Park in Inglewood, Calif. in 1940. Later it was restored and relocated . This Mural is a cultural and historic public arts treasure listed on the California Register of Historical Resources. It was created as a Works Project Administration (WPA) Arts project, completed in 1940 and designed by a noted California artist, Helen Lundeberg. Despite extensive damage, it was fully restored and relocated & rededicated at a new Art Park located at Manchester Blvd and Grevillea Avenue in Inglewood across the street from Inglewood High School.
www.cityofinglewood.org/pdfs/Parks/Tranmuralhistory/ycgar...
The Shakespeare Bridge on Franklin Ave. in the Franklin Hills/ Los Feliz area of L.A. The bridge was built in 1926 and was renovated and retrofitted in 1998 after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake over concerns it would not be able to hold up in the next major quake here in “Shake City”
In 1974 it was designated a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #126.
The Fort MacArthur Museum is proud to present what has become one of our most popular signature events. The Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942 is the museums celebration of one of the most fascinating and controversial events in Los Angeles History. A night when literally thousands of people both Military and Civilian were convinced that Los Angeles was being attacked from the air, and even from space!!! What really happened that night is a debate that will probably go on for years, but for those of us it's a time to remember the feeling of those early days of the World War II.