CATAGORIES: 126 CARTRIDGE FILM,FAMILY,History,PHOTOGRAPHY,SCANNED FILM,USMC / MARINE CORPS / SEMPER FI,YARBZ LIFE PICTURE DIARY,YARBZ NEGATIVE/POSITIVE ARCHIVE — Yarbz @ 9:24 am

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This image was taken around 1969 while our family lived in San Clemente, California. On the right is my younger brother, Paul. On the left, if I remember correctly, is his neighborhood friend, Alice. They used to play together everyday and I remember them being almost like brother and sister at the time. My mother would most likely have taken this picture of the two hobbit-like kids wearing the Los Angeles Rams helmets (both the new and old style). The helmets look so massive on their little bodies and the facial expressions so somber, it takes on a freakish and Diane Arbus-like quality. The only thing this image needs is a square crop and de-saturation to black and white and it could be one of her pictures.

During this time, my father was in the Marine Reserves and away once a month for training at Camp Pendleton. On the weekends when dad wasn’t practicing storming the beaches, the family would watch the Rams play on Sunday with their quarterback Roman Gabriel leading them nowhere each season. My parents would take us to one or two Rams games each year at the LA Coliseum. We’d always stop at the long defunct Shakey’s Pizza and eat before going to the stadium.

Going to the Coliseum was a relatively rare event for us kids however and we’d usually watched the Rams in our family room or “den” as we used to call it, on our new and amazingly large 20-inch, state-of-the-art vacuum tube television! It could have been a 19 or 23 inch or something else similar but I can’t recall. I just remember that when dad brought it home it was a terribly BIG deal. Dad also had an antenna rotator which was a box with a round dial with markings for North, East, West and South. Depending on what channel you wanted to watch, there were little numbered stickers on the face plate which indicated the previously determined position for best reception for that channel. When the dial was turned, it would slowing rotate the antenna, which was in the attic, to the corresponding direction. We would get fantastic reception on all three channels available. With the rotator, we sometimes even got to watch San Diego channels. In 1969 or 1970, cable television came in and radically altered our definition of great reception. No longer was a picture with only a slight ghosting “great”. Before cable, you would adjust the antenna until you got the ‘minimal ghosting’ and you were in visual heaven. There would always be one person who was known to be able to tune in the television better than anyone else. In our house, that was dad.

After tuning the channel just right we’d sit in the den and watch the game with dad and sometimes a few of his friends. At half-time my older brother and I would go out to our front lawn and play “The Rams Greatest Plays” which we would act out in slow motion. This half-time event was filled with amazing catches and fantastic tackles until the beginning of the second half.

The Rams were an indelible part of my memories of growing up in San Clemente, CA. At eight or nine years old, I was such a Rams fanatic that I studied the game programs my parents brought back from the Coliseum and actually memorized the Rams entire roster by name, number, position and years in the league. I’m certain that I knew that roster better than Howard Cosell or any other play by play announcer. Thankfully, that desire to memorize team rosters went away and no longer plagues me!

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