Blog: The Big Parade -- Parts of Day Two

I got on the Big Parade at the La Coffee Mill Loop across from the Materials & Applications installation of Bloom, which is made of thermal bimetallic stainless steel and looks like my vegetable steamer only a lot bigger like a vegetable steamer for a giant.  The parade carried us up Cove Street and the Loma Vista municipal stairway and down past the Holyland exhibit that has Middle Eastern artifacts and a mummy casket over 2,000 years old and then along the track that leads through yellow grass and then under the boughs of trees, most of them not natives but some are, which is part of the old red car easement. 

In 1905, the first Pacific Electric Glendale line ran through forests on each side of the track and there were no houses, no freeways, no streets, no electricity pylons, no airplanes, no cars, not even a horse:  you could see down to the river and on the other side of the river all the way to the San Gabriel Mountains.   

The tracks came up in 1960, but the concrete footings of the Fletcher Drive viaduct remain as good as new.    If you stand on the long stairway on the other side of Fletcher that people used to reach the red car when it stopped -- stand somewhere fairly high up – and look down.   You can see a small building nestled within the Home Restaurant.   That small building housed Curry’s Mile High Ice Cream and there was a big sign outside that looked like an ice cream cone.   Children held their cones and the air trembled around them. Everything shook when the train went over the trestle. 

In the evening I went to the Laurel and Hardy Park near the music box stairs.   Dan Koeppel showed up in a rented van and pulled a movie screen down its side.   He let us see The Music Box Stairs, and then a Three Stooges that had to do with kegs of beer rolling down a steep hill maybe Baxter and past Chicken Corner in Echo Park. 

First, however, he talked about the Paramour, which was and is a Mediterranean Revival villa at the top of Mitcheltorena Street once owned by oil heiress Daisy Canfield and her husband Antonio Moreno at least until Daisy’s car plunged off Mulholland Drive.    Antonio Moreno was an actor from Spain and successfully made the transition to talkies.  Moreno starred opposite Greta Garbo in the Temptress and then starred in a box office hit with Clara Bow called It.   In 1954, he played the Scientist in The Creature from the Black Lagoon, originally released in 3-D, which, of course, was filmed at the arboretum near the Santa Anita Race Track, along with the incredibly famous and soy product-like actor Whit Bissell.