Things That Go Bump In The Night........part 2

Even though I wasn't aware of any Native American (commonly referred to as Indian) burial grounds directly adjacent to my new home, I knew several existed along the California coast. There is quite a bit of Indian culture as well as Spanish in California, and most people have a basic knowledge of the Spanish language because half the streets, towns and businesses have Spanish names.

Grandma J loved to walk her dog, Charlie up to the park on the Mesa to run and play. It was a very nice park with a great vista of the ocean that was about a mile away. Another nice feature was the fact that hardly anyone was ever there. Without any facilities, it wasn't very popular.

Another element of life along the Southern California coast is liquefaction. The soil is unstable and sandy. There are also a plethora of fault lines running through the area....so a bit of creaking is normal and just stuff settling all the time. Believe me, trying to scare people about earthquakes never worked because they still crowd there sweet arses into the State of CA. Except me of course who moved to Texas....which is a whole multi-part blog in itself.

A little creaking at night.....we're used to it. Hearing a kitchen cupboard close not so normal. But then, maybe I really just imagined it. One morning, I get up, go downstairs and three cupboards are open. Now, I never ever leave cupboards or drawers open...EVER. My cupboard doors were the type that didn't have knobs, and were self closing with a nudge. So, I'm feeling a little nervous and I check all the doors, and they are still locked. OK, I tell myself that maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing, and just because I never leave the doors open, I might have accidentally forgot.

For a few weeks I hear and see nothing. Then one night I'm watching TV and hear what sounds like footsteps upstairs. I turn the volume down on the TV.....hold my breath as I listen, and listen.....

Nothing! I turn the TV volume back up and forget about the noise...until I get up to fix some tea. I walk past the stairs on my way to the kitchen and hear the upstairs bathroom door shut. I freeze in my tracks for a moment. At the same time Charlie lets out a growl. I grab his leash, put it on him and take him out front.....now I'm afraid to go back in!

I walk Charlie around the neighborhood, and realize I'm being silly. No one could have gotten in the house without me seeing them or Charlie barking. I shake it off and go back inside, and fix my tea.

Later, as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard some noises downstairs....I hold my breath, as usual. The noises continue, but I freeze, lying there with Charlie, holding my breath, facing the opened bedroom door. My thinking was this, if someone was down stairs, so be it. Just don't come upstairs and we will all be fine. Take what you want, just leave me alone....I eventually drift off to sleep.

I become sleep deprived....as this continues off and on.

No one gets much rest anymore. Then one day, I had company over, and one of my friends, who was a planner with the city, remarks about how surprised he was when the city of Huntington Beach approved the permits to build on this tract of land. I asked him why he was surprised. He said the parcel wasn't large enough for most builders to consider developing, and the easement requirements were stricter too.

I'm like "huh?"

He said, With the Indian burial ground up on the mesa, most builders were reluctant to take on the additional cost of having an archaeologist analyse the perimeter to determine the burial grounds boundaries, so the city waved the requirement as long as they agreed to add a flood control easement between the hill and construction.

Now that I knew about the Indian burial ground up on the mesa, it made sense that over time, with erosion due to the soil conditions in the area, some of the relics had no doubt made their way down below. I was probably living on someones grave.

This was a relief to me. Honestly? I decided to have a little pow wow with my Indian friend. If you could have been there, you would have had me committed.

With Charlie on my lap, I told my boarder that we had to co-exist with respect for each other. She just couldn't go around scaring me. Guess what? It worked. Every so often I would hear a door or cupboard...then I would quickly remind my friend that it wasn't nice to try and scare me because it didn't work anymore!

**I've added a new gift idea below. It's a new infomercial by Vince the Shamwow guy....remember? You'll say WOW everytime. Thanks to my boyfriend Michael K. at dlisted, I borrowed it from his site....take a trip over, he's the funniest evah!

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Chesapeake Bay Woman is obsessed with loves her Ouija board. She doesn't come right out and say it, but from time to time she brings up that fact that she insists on likes playing with it on sleepovers in creaky historic houses, or on the back porch, or while riding her John Deere.


It's possible that I've gotten some of the details mixed up, but you get the idea. She loves her Ouija board.

They give me the heebee geebee's, and I won't even go to the virtual one online called The Museum of Talking Boards.


In all fairness, I don't know much about the supernatural, except for the ghost that lived with me in Huntington Beach, California. It was at least one female Native American ghost. Probably a member of the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation.

The Juaneño Band was one of many that were indentured by the Spanish Franciscan Missionaries in building the 21 Mission system along the California Coast.



This particular band of Native Americans were instrumental in building Mission San Juan Capistrano.

The Juaneños were a coastal tribe, living in small clans on plateaus along the Orange County Coast, living off of the natural vegetation and wildlife as well as the abundant sea life of the Pacific Ocean. Each clan was governed independently, basically like an extended family would. Several clans would gather for ceremonial occasions, or for trading wares and joint endeavors.



This meant several different burial grounds scattered throughout the County. Each number indicates a clan, and probably uncovered artifacts or relics.

Huntington Beach California, like so many other cities, grew from a population of around 12,000 to over 100,000 within a 17 year period from 1963-1980. This was due to the space program and several Aerospace companies building plants on the affordable land in this sparsely populated County along the coast.

The home building boom was in full swing, and every so often the construction crews would unearth human bones, and they would have to halt any digging. If the remains were determined to be Native American, and not the result of some unsolved crime, and there was evidence of this area being a sacred burial ground, then the land was preserved from any further disturbance. Usually, the city involved, along with the developer would landscape the area as a public greenbelt park. It would have sidewalks, trees, plants and grass, but no buildings or playground or sports equipment. To the unknowing, it would be just a park. To the Juaneño, it was a sacred burial ground.

The few native American burial grounds that I was familiar with, were on mesas, or plateaus. This made sense as a matter of preservation and protection from floods. A topographic map of the area would indicate the numerous flood plains.

So, in the mid 80's, Grandma J buys a lovely near new home nestled against a mesa! There's a public easement directly beyond the rear property line, with a concrete gutter/wash running the length of the small development beneath the mesa. The hill is covered with beautiful native ice plant (succulents) that blooms nine months of the year, and requires little or no water, creating a nice vista from the pool area.

Grandma J isn't the first owner of this three year old home, nor is she the second owner. The two previous owners had what seemed like legitimate reasons for not staying. The first was a job relocation, the second was a commercial pilot who married someone with kids and a home of her own. No one mentions the mesa being an Indian burial ground. No one explains the ramifications of erosion and ground movement over the last century or two. No one suspects that things were slipping and sliding eons ago. Grandma J finds out the hard way that she's not living alone after all.....

to be continued.

BLAST FROM THE PAST
or, Life comes at you fast!

My son works for a company that has that slogan along with the saying, ...we're are on your side.

Recently several events have brought the past square in front of me. The first was an invitation to a retirement dinner for a guy who used to work for me part time when he was in high school and college. I looked at the invitation and thought there had to be two Gary H. because the one who worked for me was just a kid! Well, it was the same Gary H. The next event was knowing that my third oldest child was heading to California to attend her twenty year reunion this summer. The third event was the recent passing of my brother-in-law, who was several years younger than me. It's been several years since I've seen him, but the void is apparent. He will be missed, especially by my sister after 30+ years of marriage.

So with these events all coming at me fast, I started reflecting on the good old days, and how different life was when I was a carefree teenager living in Huntington Beach. It was a slower time back then, the town wasn't a resort, and it was sparsely populated due to the lack of employment opportunities. My father was self employed so we were fortunate enough to have a beach almost in our backyard, and the only time there were crowds where on the weekends in the summer, or Holidays.

I thought I'd tell you all a little bit about what being me was about back then, and how I spent my time when I wasn't in school, or doing chores...because we had some real chores, like washing windows, mowing lawns, doing ironing for a family of seven. The kind of things most kids our age did back then. You may think life as a teen growing up in a beach town was a bit different, and it was.

To start, I will tell you what this is, since you didn't guess and missed a chance at the $500 I almost offered as a prize.
It sits on the back side panel of this!
This is the first car Grandma J had. Well, not this car, but one like it in black. It was a 1958 Chevrolet, Delray. The cheapest model Chevrolet made. Seriously. I had to share it with my sister, who was a year younger than me, but it was wheels, and it got us where we had to go. Now, since I was a year older, I had a job, and since I had a job, it was considered selfish for me to take the car to work and just let it sit there doing nothing! So, on my days to have the car, I had to let my sister use it while I was at work, because really? Why should it just sit there! The only problem was, my sister didn't have a job. Which meant my sister didn't have the same cash flow that I had, which also meant most of the gas that went in the car where on my dime....most not all. And hey, just because gas was only twenty nine cents a gallon didn't mean it was free. And hello? Please don't forget to pick me up when I get off work. And, if you have a flat tire, don't hitch hike home and leave the car on PCH. Because someone has to get it fixed, and then pay the parking ticket. Just saying!

The thing is, my job was at night. I worked a dream job at this really cool place called the Golden Bear.
It was many things over the years, but in the early 60's it was a folk/blues coffee house/bar kind of place. I wasn't old enough to serve alcohol but most of the people who came at that time were into the coffee and expresso drinks. The people I met was unreal. Hoyt Axton practically lived there, as well as at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. To those younger readers, he wrote "Greenback Dollar" for the Kingston Trio and "The Pusher" and "Snowblind Friend", both recorded by Steppenwolf.
I got to know Theodore Bikel quite well, and paged for his bigger concerts in large auditoriums. Others who played there regularly were Joan Baez, Ian and Syvia, and Joe and Eddie (they recorded "There's a Meetn' Here Tonight", and "Children Go").

When Grandma J went out at night with her friends, it was to dances at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, which was about 5 miles down the road. Dick Dale and the Del Tones played there on weekends. Dick Dale was known as the King of The Surf Guitar. He had two hits that I remember, "Miserlu" and "Let's Go Trippin", which was the inspiration for the Surfer's Stomp, a popular dance in Southern California. Dick Dale is still around, living in Newport Beach.

So like, is that all Grandma J did? Hang out in dance halls, work in beatnik joints? No way Jose! I was a good student, and eventually got a better job.

Now, this is my granddaughter in Florida, she's an East Coast surfer girl.
These are my oldest daughter's kids, Pooper and Beauty.
and can you guess who they take after? Yep, Grandma J.
OK, so that's not really me.....honest...It's not. But the truth is, I did surf. I wasn't a great surfer. Maybe I wasn't a good surfer. But I surfed. I had my own surfboard. I knew how to refinish it and bought my share of resin and fiberglass...something that had to be done regularly on the older heavier, Hobie longboards. And I used it. Often. That's what girls did if they had an ocean instead of a bicycle.

Today? I still love the ocean, and when I go in the water, it's body surfing only!

"Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing....where have all the flowers gone, long, long time ago......."