Onward to La Jolla

Before I talk about moving to La Jolla I wanted to mention that my cousin Janos' ex-wife has been visiting from Germany and I learned a few things I hadn't known before.

The first is how my aunt Margarete got the nickname Vesti:
Margarete was always very religious. Even as a teenager she attended church every day - and would have nothing to do with boys. One of her brothers (probably Mathias) joked that she should have been a Vestal virgin and started calling her Vesti... The nickname stuck... And I would have never guessed that's what it meant :-)

The next thing I didn't know is that Margarete was a track and field athlete on the Hungarian Olympic team for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
BTW: Most people are not aware that Hungary is one of the higher ranked countries in Olympic history. They finished third in Berlin (behind the U.S. and Germany) despite having a population smaller than Manhattan.
But Margarete injured her arm and ended up not being able to compete - however - she made some connections while in Berlin and was offered a teaching job at a girls' school in Potsdam. That is significant because if Margarete had not already been in Germany during WWII her sisters (including my mother) would not have fled there from Hungary and my mom would have never met my dad, etc, etc. So - yeah - I didn't know that about Vesti, but it doesn't surprise me :-)

The final thing I learned is that before Margarete passed away she terminated my grandmother and aunt's grave sites and donated the markers... Yeah - in Germany you only keep a grave site as long as somebody pays the fees... So those graves are gone and nobody knows what became of that statue pictured in my entry: Fleeing Hungary
Sigh - it's just like Vesti to make that kind of decision without letting anyone else know...

Now - back to the story:

By the end of November 1968 we were already more than a month behind on the rent on the Mission Beach condo. And, as I've mentioned before, back then you could get into an apartment for just one month's rent (plus security deposit). So it was actually cheaper to move to a new place than to pay the back rent on the Mission Beach condo. And that's exactly what we did.
We found a nice little apartment on Camino Del Sol - right across from the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club. I'm not sure of the exact address - but if you go to Google street view at 8120 Camino Del Sol and look east you'll see hedge with a gate. That was it. It was probably more than we could afford but - as I've mentioned many times - that was not the kind of thing mom ever worried about :-)

I ended up going to La Jolla High School. Back in 1968 the place was a mess. The buildings were ancient and were about to be condemned. I heard a story that there was a mirror in one of the girls restrooms with a plaque saying that it was paid for by the class of 1919 and dedicated to the class of 1969... The point being that the buildings were really old - the nicest classrooms were the trailers our back... It was all very dark and run down...

Being a creature of habit I continued to follow the patterns I had established at Mission Bay High: Rode the bus to school - didn't eat lunch - and walked home. I really don't remember very else much about it - other than the incident when that girl noticed I was staring up her skirt. I told that tale in one of my first blog entries: Embarrassment So - I've finally come full circle on that :-)
Now - most of the students at Mission Bay High were pretty laid back. But (as near as I could tell) almost everyone at La Jolla High was just plain nasty - lots of teasing and ugly remarks... Yeah - I didn't look and act exactly like they did so obviously I had to be attacked... But to tell the truth it really didn't bother me. I was way beyond caring about anything at that point...
BTW: I quickly discovered that if you acted stoned the other students tended to leave you alone... I was good at pretending to be stoned :-) Of course - I never really went to school stoned... Drunk: yes. Stoned: no :-)

You know - during all those years there was always at least one girl around who seemed to like me and (in retrospect) wasn't bad looking... But at the time I was so obsessed with finding "the perfect girl" that I didn't really pay attention to any of them...
At La Jolla High there was this one girl who had this Bohemian / counter-culture vibe - sort of like Ellen Page in the movie "Juno". I don't remember her name but I do recall that she was sitting right next to me when the "Embarrassment" incident happened. (That's kind of burned into my memory...) I recall that she was turning colors trying not to laugh :-) But that's not the main reason why I remember her:
I was generally depressed in those days and whenever I ran into her she would invariably say something that made me feel better. It was always"on point" - almost as if she could read my mind... It was really quite amazing... It crossed my mind that I'd probably really enjoy hanging out with her... But she didn't fit my image of perfection...

I should probably make it clear that I really have no regrets about never having had a girlfriend in high school. I'm just pointing out what an idiot I was for having such totally unrealistic expectations. If there's one bit of wisdom I'd like to pass along on the topic it's that a relationship that's not based on friendship isn't worth having :-)