The Long View From 1964 – 23 and Me

Some things we bury. Not for any big reason, for a lot of little reasons. Things we just don’t think about anymore because times have changed and we’ve changed. But then stuff around you happens, and you start remembering.

So let’s go back in time again. Not to Superman. To before me.

Manhattan Beach. Truly one of the most beautiful places you could grow up. I spent years there as a toddler, then off and on through the 1970s, since my father’s family moved there in the 1920s. Why do I mention this? Bruce’s Beach. I won’t spend paragraphs on it, go ahead, show some initiative, ask your favorite AI about Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach.

Here’s how it touches me. My grandfather was the city councilman instrumental in getting the Bruce family’s property stolen through eminent domain and turned into an unnecessary park. Stolen from Manhattan Beach’s Black family.

Follow the story forward. Nearly a century later, L.A. County finally settled with the Bruce family for close to $20 million. Too bad it took so many decades. My grandfather helped take that land. I grew up ten minutes from the empty lot he helped empty, and never once thought about who used to be there.

I spent most of my life thinking of my family as quietly Southern and decent. Turns out we were also thieves, and it took me eighty years to say that plainly.

Move forward many years. In one of my Long View From 1964 commentaries, I mentioned my father tried to talk to me about women, and I, with puffed-out chest, declared I already knew candy was dandy and liquor was quicker. Five wives later, it dawned on me I should’ve put down the beer and listened.

My father was born in Alabama. A real Colonel, not the fried chicken kind. He always thought of himself as a Southern gentleman without the accent, and I honestly cannot remember ever hearing him use a cuss word or a racial slur.

Once again, guacamole, chips, a few beers, hadn’t gotten to the gin and tonics yet. Ten miles from Watts, working in Inglewood, a stone’s throw from East LA, Dad dropped one of his pearls of wisdom. This was before the gin and tonic, mind you. It’s been fifty-plus years, so I won’t fake the exact quote, but it went something like: “Son, you come from a good old Southern family. Before you pass judgment or start throwing stones, it may be your cousin you’re throwing those stones at.”

That’s not something most little white boys hear from dear old Dad. Probably a good thing Mom the Bigot was on the other side of the room.

This may look like it’s wandering without a direction, but there’s one here somewhere.

Being footloose and fancy-free in the ’60s, I always had a few questions. Decades later, when my kids started doing 23andMe and Ancestry.com, I got curious, and figured I’d probably have to prove Don Henley wasn’t their father. So I joined both. Kids were disappointed to learn I was Dad, and Don Henley was out.

You can post a photo to your profile on those sites. And I keep finding more and more second and third cousins with really, really dark tans. Maybe that should be a requirement for the whole family reunion.

Thanks, Dad, for the heads-up, all those years ago in Inglewood. He or she just may be distant family. And that stone, the one my grandfather threw, the one I nearly kept carrying, really belongs on the ground.