Bestie was daughter of a Japanese American couple, born and raised in California. Second bestie was Chinese American. Upstairs neighbors were from Columbia. Family down the street was Korean. Next street over, from the Philippines. Mom's best pals were Hawaiian and Guamanian.
Old couple that sat on their porch and kept an eye out for us kids? Russian, and he was missing part of both feet from freezing marching back to Russia from Germany in WWI. Family next to them? She was from Spain, he was French. Her mom was from Japan and his was Dutch. Great family that, a cacophony of languages in that home, and with his French accent, he was the only person who pronounced my given name the way it should be heard.
School pals: Pennsylvania Dutch and few adults could understand them. One kid who came mid-year was said to be from Italy, but he had a VERY slavic name and accent. That was back when the iron curtain was concrete, barbed wire, and guys in machine gun turrets. His dad was a scientist and had recently gone to work at a big southern California university lab; teachers told us to NEVER ask where they were from, especially those of us who knew those weren't Italian names and accents. Three households on the block were Mexican Americans, or as we knew them to be: 'original Californians'.
Mom worked at the Navy Exchange on Terminal Island. Lots of 'war brides' from Europe and the Pacific there. She often invited them over for parties at our apartment with the huge front yard. All the neighbors came too. Block party at the UN there in Long Beach, CA. Everyone brought records from their nations, and foods. Dancing, singing, kids teaching other kids words in other languages. Mom's French co-worker got my granddad up doing a can-can with her at one of our block parties. He was a 78 year old widower and she dragged him out of his stiff necked midwestern male shell, without even a drop of wine needed.
BEST possible place to grow up. Then we moved to Orange County & for the first time in my life, I ran up against something 'foreign' to me: bigotry. Didn't sit well. Still doesn't.
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