Every so often on my blog (like here, here, here and here) I write about places at or near the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The house I grew up in was — and come to think of it, still is — a mile away and for some reason, I have some worth-telling (I think) stories that occurred at or around that corner. Today, the newsfromme time machine is transporting us back to when I was around eight years old and was taken perhaps a dozen times to a place near there called Kiddie Land.
There have probably been many thousands of Kiddie Lands and Kiddielands (without the space) in this great nation of ours — tacky arrangements of cheap rides and things to climb on and maybe even games of skill or chance that promise you might win something neat that no one has ever actually won. My parents took me to this Kiddie Land from time to time, often with my Uncle Aaron and my Aunt Dot in tow. As a general rule of thumb, I rarely enjoyed any place I was taken to because it was built for the sheer purpose of amusing children my age.
In my life — I'm 71 now, especially around the knees — I have somehow never gotten around to making an exhaustive study of all the Kiddie Lands in the world. Still, I feel confident in saying this one had to at least tie for the title of Cheapest, Tackiest Kiddie Land ever. What you're seeing in the only photo I've ever seen of the place is probably about half of it. See anything amusing in this amusement park? I didn't then and I don't now.
I have no good memories of this Kiddie Land or any similar one. The rides were never fun and I don't just mean to me. I remember a sense of bonding with other kids my age who were there. We'd exchange looks with one another — looks which said, "Like you, I don't want to be here and pretend I'm having a good time but my folks are making me be here and pretend I'm having a good time." Once or twice, I think we said that aloud to one another.
There were children there who seemed to be happy to be there…who seemed to love riding around on the stupid little trains or on the stupid little horsies or the stupid little tugboats. I could never decide if they were (a) experiencing joyful sensations that were somehow alien to me or (b) much better actors than I was. As I learned later when I was working on TV shows and had to sometimes read opposite someone auditioning for a part in the show, it's pretty easy to be a much better actor than I am.
One time, a boy my age and I started talking while we waited in the line to ride the stupid little horsies that neither of us wanted to ride. He asked me why I was there and I replied, "Because my parents think this is fun for me and I can't convince them it isn't. Why are you here?" This was his answer and I think I'm re-creating it pretty damn close to what he said…
"You're lucky. You have parents who are together. Mine got divorced and every other week, Dad gets custody of me for a day and the only place he can think to take me is here or the Kiddie Land over on La Cienega."
I said, "That's too bad" and he said, "Sometimes, it's not so awful. After we leave here, he'll take me to this restaurant we like and there's a toy store next door and he'll buy me something I really want."
From that point on, I could notice how many of the other kids at Kiddie Land were there with divorced fathers who didn't know where else to take their sons or daughters. It was maybe half the children there. I could even see the divorced fathers chatting with one another, bonding as I did with other kids who didn't want to ride the stupid little trains, horsies or tugboats.
Sometimes as I mentioned, my Uncle Aaron and Aunt Dot were with us. The phrase I most associate with Uncle Aaron is "They're sitting on the land." Here is what that meant…
Uncle Aaron was in the window display business but he was always fantasizing about being…well, I don't know exactly what you'd call it. A Real Estate Investor, maybe. He wanted to be one of those people who buys a piece of property for fifty thousand dollars and sells it years later for ten times that amount.
As far as I know, he never put actual money into any such speculation but wherever he went, he would be evaluating the investment potential of every plot of land he saw as if he was considering buying it. I don't think he ever even had the kind of money it would take to make any of those purchases.
Whenever he saw a little building on some piece of property — a hot dog stand or a gas station, say — he'd announce, "They're sitting on the land," meaning someone bought the property and put up a little business or rented it to someone who did. That was so the little business could generate some income while they waited for the value of the land to go up and a big business could appear at that address. They'd tear down the hot dog stand or the gas station and build a huge shopping center or an immense office building.
Or if he passed a huge, profitable development like a mall or a sprawling apartment complex, he'd shout, "I could have bought that entire lot for twenty-seven thousand dollars!" For years, no large, successful business could be established in this city on acreage that my Uncle Aaron couldn't have bought for a pittance…but didn't.
"Sitting on the land" was, he said, the raison d'etre for the Kiddie Land to which I was dragged. It was probably that for all Kiddie Lands everywhere…and you know what? He was right. Uncle Aaron was absolutely right.
A few years later, that Kiddie Land was razed: There one day, gone the next. It was an empty lot for about a year and on it, a small touring circus was parked for a couple of weeks. Then there was a trampoline park there for a few months. You could pay — I never did this — to play on one for a while. A sign said "More Bounce For Your Buck."
Then the trampolines were gone and that October, there was a business selling pumpkins followed immediately by one selling Christmas Trees. My folks and I went to the Christmas Tree lot and bought an anemic spruce that made Charlie Brown's tree look lush and full by comparison.
Finally, a huge May Company department store went up on the land where we used to ride the stupid trains, the stupid horsies and the stupid tugboats. Uncle Aaron was genetically incapable of passing it without proclaiming, "I could have bought that whole piece of property for thirty thousand dollars!"
The Kiddie Land over on La Cienega was torn down to make way for the Beverly Center which, for about a decade after it was built, was the biggest and most expensive shopping mall in all of Southern California. Uncle Aaron was dead by then but every time I drive by the place, I can hear him shouting, "I could have bought that entire lot for fifty thousand dollars!"
Maybe he could have and maybe he couldn't but I'm glad the Beverly Center displaced that Kiddieland. It means one less place that young, impressionable children can be forced by divorced fathers to ride the stupid trains, the stupid horsies, the stupid tugboats…