IngleToday 7-5-18

Page 1

July 5, 2018

VOL. 31, No. 73

INGLEWOOD, 4TH OF JULY, 61 YEARS AGO

By Dispatches from Skip Gorman’s Audioblog You had to be there. The decade was the fifties, the place was Inglewood, California, half a block from Centinela Park, and for us the Fourth of July was indeed the best of times. We kids (the six of us) made out like bandits on the Fourth of July plus we got to enjoy a wonderful fireworks show in the park. See, this particular holiday meant streetwise hustle and applied capitalism. We never much associated the Fourth with American Independence or patriotism. To us it was mostly about easy money and finders keepers. Centinela Park had the best fireworks show our side of the nearby Coliseum at Exposition Park. People drove in from all over town to BBQ and picnic and play in the park until nightfall when the fireworks get started. The trouble (for them) was the lack of available parking. This is where we made our driveway and front yard into a grassy little parking lot. Other neighbors did the same thing but we were generally the cheapest and easily the most aggressive at directing

them in. I think we charged $2.00 and never had a dent. Pop loved it. $16.00 of easy money in a good year and we even had returning customers over the years. A further opportunity in all this was the fact that the park had very little lighting. So after the fireworks ended, all the picnic blankets and stuff had to be gathered up by the visiting families and toted out to there cars in the dark. It was wonderfully dark and not everybody brought flashlights. So lots of nifty stuff got lost. This is where the coolness of the Fifth of July comes in. Inglewood’s Finest patrolled the park after dark to discourage nighttime “treasure hunters”. But the park was a cluttered and trashed mess that desperately needed to be cleaned-up so in the cold gray dawn the Parks Maintenance guys “hired” us kids to help them do it. We were told to turn-in all wallets and jewelry and wrist watches we found but we could keep any loose change and pocket knives and sunglasses and sports equipment and uneaten cupcakes (or

whatever) that we came across as we collected trash and helped them cleanup the park. It was like Easter and some years the picking was bountiful. By noon

we were generally done and each had a satisfactory amount of found money and lots of nifty stuff for trading or selling

4

LOS ANGELES LAKERS GRAB LEBRON JAMES By Francis Taylor, Asst. Editor

Probably the biggest news this week in Los Angeles, especially among sports fans, is that LeBron James signed

a four-year $154 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers. It was the largest amount the Lakers could offer and it is significant that James elected to sign a four-year deal, compared to a more popular two-year deal for free agents, which would have given him the option to become a free agent after two years. With Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the Lakers president of basketball operations, it would appear that James trusts that Magic will restore the Lakers to the prominence it held when he and his teammates dominated the NBA in the ‘80s and ‘90s at the Inglewood Forum, giving the City of Inglewood the moniker, the City of Champions. Magic appears to be well on the way to helping the Lakers recapture

its glory. After acquiring James, the Lakers agreed to bring back Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on a $12 million deal; inked a one-year deal for Lance Stephenson for $4.4 million ; a one-year minimum deal for JaVale McGee and, a one-year, $9 million deal for Rajon Rondo. The Lakers could definitely use a sharpshooter on the wing and a stretch-four. If they don’t add anybody who fits either of those descriptions, they will be betting on improvement by their existing players. Kyle Kuzma, for example, might be able to

5

SEE INGLEWOOD CITY COUNCIL LIVE ON WWW.INGLEWOODTODAY.COM

JOIN US ON


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.