The Long View From 1964 – 23 and Me – Video

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.

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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.