Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials LA, is the largest city in California with an estimated 3,820,914 residents within the city limits, ranking only behind New York City, since it passed Chicago in 1984 as the second biggest city in the USA. The Greater Los Angeles area today includes over 18 million diverse residents. LA is bounded by the Pacific Ocean in the west, and in the north by the San Fernando Valley, with the San Gabriel Valley to its east, about 469 square miles. LA is also the third-most visited city in the USA with over 2.7 million visitors in 2023. Founded in 1781, LA became a part of the First Mexican Empire in 1821, following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, LA and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and became part of the USA. LA was incorporated as a municipality in 1850, five months before California achieved statehood. Originally, LA was called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, “The Town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels.” There is a dispute about how to pronounce the shortened name, “Los Angeles,” in English. By 1900, the population of LA had grown to more than 100,000. In the early 20th century, Hollywood studios helped transform Hollywood into the world capital of film, and helped solidify LA as a global economic hub. By 1921, more than 80 percent of the world’s film industry was concentrated in LA. During World War II, LA was a major center of wartime manufacturing, such as shipbuilding and aircraft. After the end of World War II, Los Angeles grew more rapidly than ever. The expansion of the Interstate Highway System during the 1950s and 1960s helped propel suburban growth. In the second half of the 20th century, Tom Bradley was elected as the city’s first African American mayor, serving for five terms until retiring in 1993. In 2022, Karen Bass became the city’s first female mayor, making LA the largest USA city to have ever have a woman mayor. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of LA is the largest archdiocese in the USA. The 620,000 Jews in the metropolitan area have the second-largest population of Jews in the USA, after New York City. LA is the largest manufacturing center in the USA. The combined Port of Los Angeles-Port of Long Beach is the fifth-busiest port in the world. The LA metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of over $1 trillion, making it the third-largest economic metropolitan area in the world, after New York and Tokyo. LA is still one of the largest hubs of American film production, the world’s largest by revenue, but it also one of the busiest container ports in the Americas. LA and its metropolitan area are the home of eleven top-level professional sports teams, in the MLB, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, the MLS, and the WNBA. Besides the UCLA Bruins and the USC Trojans play in the NCAA. LA hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984, and will also host them again in 2028. What do you know about LA?
A trip to California in 1983
California! Here I come. After a couple of years vacationing in South Dakota, I decided it was time for us to move on. Where to go? I had seen plenty of the Benelux countries and the western Germanic countries in Europe. I grew up outside New York City. I had lived in Wisconsin, and we had driven through Iowa and Minnesota on our way to South Dakota. We had seen some spots along the Mississippi River and the Midwest in Iowa and Missouri. However, I had never been to California. On my research about Margaret’s ancestors, the Klein and the Ginsbach family, I found out that Margaret had relatives in California. Her Uncle Ray Ginsbach, her mother’s younger brother, lived in Redondo Beach just outside LA. Her first cousin, Jo Ann Dawes lived with her family in Walnut Creek, just outside San Francisco. Margeret knew both, but I had never met either of them. I talked it over with Margaret. She would contact her relatives to see if we could stay a day or two with them. I would make out a schedule or itinerary. I was planning a trip. Guess what! I have large scrapbook with a lot of postcards and detailed brochures about the places we visited. Neither Margaret, myself, or Joy had ever been to California. It would be an adventure for all of us. I decided to fly there because otherwise it would take too long to get there and back by car. I took the cheaper Western Airlines that merged with Delta Airlines in 1987. There slogan was “Western Airlines…The Only Way to Fly!” with headquarters at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), that had begun operations in 1925. We were headed to the Golden State, at the end of the rainbow. California was the most populated state in the USA, a place of modern business, great climate, and recreation. Specifically, we were headed first to sunny southern California, Los Angeles, the place to be from June 29-July 14, 1983, a little over two weeks. I have four postcards from California to prove it. We flew from O’Hare to Salt Lake City on Wednesday, June 29, before arriving in LAX. I rented a car from General Rent-a-car for two weeks with unlimited miles, as I learned about those crazy LA freeways. The first place we were going to was the home of Margaret’s uncle, Ray and Betty Ginsbach, at Redondo Beach, on the Pacific Ocean, about 10 miles south of LAX. I could do that. It did not take me long to get there. Have you ever been to California?
The last episode of M*A*S*H – February 28, 1983
The final TV episode of M*A*S*H was one of the highest-rated shows in American television history. “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” was the final episode on February 28, 1983, two and a half hours long. This episode got a Nielsen rating of 60.2 and 77 share. According to a New York Times article the final episode of M*A*S*H had 125 million viewers. This episode broke the record for the highest percentage of homes with television sets to watch a television series. Thus, it became the most-watched television broadcast in the USA from 1983–2010, for 27 years. It still remains both the most-watched finale of any television series and the most-watched episode of a scripted series. More than 83 million homes in the USA in 1983 had televisions, compared to 115 million in February 2010, who watched Super Bowl XLIV. M*A*S*H aired weekly on CBS, with most episodes being a half-hour in length. This series was usually categorized as a situation comedy, although it has also been described as a “dark comedy” because of the dramatic subject matter. M*A*S*H was an American war comedy drama television series that aired on CBS from 1972 to 1983, developed by Larry Gelbart. This was the first original spin-off series adapted from the 1970 film of the same name, that was based on Richard Hooker’s 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. The show was an ensemble piece revolving around key personnel in a USA Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) in the Korean War (1950–53). The “4077th MASH” was one of several surgical units in Korea. The asterisks in the name are not part of military nomenclature and were creatively introduced in the novel and used in only the posters for the movie version, not the actual movie. The ensemble cast originally featured Alan Alda, Wayne Rogers, Frank Burns, Loretta Swit, McLean Stevenson, Gary Burghoff, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher. The series varied in style and tone, including broad comedy and tragic drama. While the Vietnam War was still ongoing, the show was forced to walk the fine line of commenting on that war while at the same time not seeming to be against it. The show’s discourse, under the cover of comedy, often questioned, mocked, and grappled with America’s role in the Cold War. As the series progressed, it made a significant shift from being primarily a comedy with dramatic undertones to a drama with comedic overtones. The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 was a significant factor as to why storylines became less political in nature and more character-driven. While the series remained popular through these changes, it eventually began to run out of creative steam. The 4077th MASH consisted of two separate sets. An outdoor set was in the mountains near Malibu for most exterior and tent scenes for every season. The indoor set, was on Stage 09 at Fox Studios in Century City. Many regard this show as one of the greatest television shows of all time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the fifth-best written TV series ever and TV Guide ranked it as the eighth-greatest show of all time. In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked it as the 16th-greatest TV show. In 2023, Variety ranked M*A*S*H #24 on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows of all time. It regularly had about 20-25 million viewers and won a lot of Emmys. Obviously, it is available in syndication today. I liked some of the characters, especially Alan Alda, but I was not a big fan of the show itself. I was not among the millions who watched the final episode. What did you think about M*A*S*H?
The new store manager at the Outlet Store
What was next? The death of Dale Hoffman was not part of my plan. Who would make the decision about the new store manager at the Franklin Park Outlet Store? Montgomery Ward Corporate offices were in downtown Chicago at 618 W. Chicago. I did not know anyone there. My only link was the warehouse manager, Ed Thomas. About a week later, Ed Thomas came to the store to introduce me to the new store manager, Bill Kadlec, who was about ten years older than me. I later learned that he had been on a medical leave, with a combination of heart and mental problems, but had been a store manager before that. I guess that this was a safe landing spot for him. He was a tall man, 6’2”, and heavy set, about 250 pounds. I showed him the office and he seemed to like it. Ed Thomas explained that if he had any questions, that I would be able to answer them, since I was like an assistant manager. Anyway, it went well. I told him that we had most of our employees on Saturday morning, if he wanted to meet all of them. He said that it would be fine. For the time being, he would just look around and greet whoever was there. He was a little surprised that we only sold furniture and appliances, but no clothes. It also seemed to him that we had a small staff, and he was right. I had to decide for myself. Should I stay there and work with this new store manager like I did with Harry Haggstrom, or try some other adventure? I felt that I had put Margaret and Joy through enough. I was making a decent living and the new store manager would have to depend on me for certain things. I decided that I would stay and work there, since I was very comfortable working with the people who were there. I would continue to be the appliance manager. Have you ever decided about staying or leaving a job?
Dale Hoffman got sick and died
Everything was running smooth at the Franklin Park Outlet Store. Dale Hoffman was making plans for his personal around the world cruise in his own sail boat, stopping where ever he wanted to. For him, the price of a boat was just a little more expensive than a nice car. However, he had to store the boat in the winter and then have a slip to anchor it in the summer on Lake Michigan. He was getting excited about his coming trip. I noticed that he was going out to lunch more often and then taking a nap in the afternoon. He always was very casual with his drinking of alcohol. They had moved out the Catalog area so that he had a bigger office than before. He started getting stomach aches. I thought that he might have ulcers. One day, he told me he was going to see his doctor about his stomach problems. He never returned to work again. He called me to tell me that his doctor had hospitalized him for observation, and just make sure that the store was running well. I got a little nervous about this. Being in the hospital is never a good thing. I figured that he would be back in a few days. They would probably give him some tests for his ulcers. After a week, I got a little worried. Ed Thomas, the warehouse manager, wanted me to know that he had been to the hospital and that Dale Hoffman did not look good. I wondered if it was his heart, but Ed Thomas thought it might be an aggressive cancer. His stomach was expanding. Finally, I decided to go see Dale Hoffman in the hospital after work one day. I was amazed when I saw him. His stomach had expanded to twice his normal size. I did not know what to think. I had never seen anything like that. He told me not to worry about him. He would be fine as soon as they got the swelling down. He wanted me to take care of the store. I never saw him again after that. I do not know what happened. He died within a couple of weeks. I did not go to the funeral. I stayed working at the store. Ed Thomas came in to see how it was going. Otherwise, it was normal as usual at the store. However, I had lost a friend and mentor, who I had known for over ten years. It all happened so fast. I had been to his house a couple of times. I knew he had a wife, one daughter, and two sons. Dale Hoffman was gone. Have you ever had a friend die in their early 60s?
The plan at Montgomery Wards
I had returned to work at the Montgomery Ward Outlet in late 1981, with the general idea that Dale Hoffman, the Store Manager, would retire in a couple of years and I would take over. Thus far, everything had gone according to plan. I was an appliance salesman for a couple of months. Then I became the appliance manager. I do not know the exact date, but I know that Dale Hoffman was getting his boat ready to sail around the world. He was going to retire within the next year. I believe it was near the end of 1983 or 1984. He began to show me about budgets and other things from a company computer printout. There was a new manager in the warehouse or the Distribution Center as they called it. Ed Thomas had taken over for Ed Fogler. I knew both of them, but I knew Ed Thomas better since he had been an assistant for a couple of years. This made me comfortable, since they had decided to give the job to someone at this location instead of bringing someone from outside. Everything at the Outlet Store was going smooth. We just kept getting damaged goods and selling them. I just had to make sure that the store had enough appliances to sell. I went two or three times a week to get some from the warehouse. A guy in the warehouse would make out the order. John Short in our Outlet store would receive it off the revolving track in the warehouse. I would get the price tags ready to put on the merchandise. I would decide the prices as a certain percent of the original price, usually about 70%, since there was less markup in appliances compared to furniture. We sold a lot of refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers, freezers, and TVs. There was a lot of remodeling of two flat houses on the northwest side of Chicago, so some of these remodelers were looking for cheaper appliances that were only slightly damaged. We offered a Montgomery Ward warrantee, plus the five years on the refrigerator compressors. Besides, we offered service contracts that extended the warranty by a couple of years. We wanted to be sure that customers were satisfied and comfortable with their purchase. We had a Montgomery Ward repair service at nearby Rosemont. I got to know the manager there well. The plan of me taking over as store manager made sense, since now I knew about furniture and appliances as well as the warehouse structure. Have you ever worked with the sense that you would get a promotion?
Joy was a middle school student
Joy was nine in fifth grade in 1983. I began to realize that she was growing up before my very eyes, without me noticing it. She and Margaret were all involved with St. Lawrence O’Toole Elementary School in Matteson. Margaret was the junior high teacher and Joy was the middle school student. They were busy with Brownies and Girl Scouts. She was involved with cheerleading, volleyball, and basketball. Joy did not play any baseball or softball in the summer. Swimming at the Aqua Center with her mother Margaret was her thing. Margaret was also a cheerleading coach. Back home, the Dutton kids were not around. Joy had new friends that went to school with her at St. Lawrence O’Toole. Stephanie Rangel, the daughter of John and Ann Rangel, who lived at the other side of Woodgate, was her new friend since they drove in a car pool together when Margaret was not available. Joy and Stephanie played office in my basement office. I had all those trading cards from the CBOE and I had some leftover sign cards from selling signs. They loved playing with them. In fact, at one point they wanted to learn French or German. I tried to teach them on Thursdays, but they were not as interested when they actually had to do some work. They liked learning new words rather than the language and the grammar. I helped Joy with some of her projects. I know that she had one about universities in Europe. I was excited about helping her with that. On my Thursday day off, I would pick up Joy and bring her to visit my mother at Thornwood House. Sometimes, my mother and Joy would go shopping at the Thrift stores in Chicago Heights, since they had a bus that took them there and back. I know that Joy liked to visit her grandmother. I gradually got more involved in car-pooling, as Joy got older and Margaret might have something else to do. Do you remember your children in Middle School grades?
The Woodgate changing neighborhood
Before I knew it, it was 1983. We had spent ten years at our new Matteson house. Some of Joy’s young girl friends had moved away, the Duttons and the Toblecks, but so had a few other people. I guess that I never noticed it at first. I remember the Fricke family was one of the first to move, but they were going back to Michigan. The same was true about the Farmers going back to Kansas. A Mormon couple, whose husband was in the FBI, had moved. Another couple whose son had a Norman Rockwell style of painting moved from Allemong also. There seemed to be a trend of other people moving east to Indiana or west to Will County from Cook County. I also noticed more and more African American families moving in, but not in our cul-de-sac that still only had one black family, the Cato family that had moved in with us in 1973. Sometime in the 1980s, I went to one of the local meetings at Woodgate Elementary School, right beside our house. A lady from the village hall was promoting racial diversity. I was surprised at that. Why not let it just happen naturally, without promoting it? Then Henry Swan, an African American insurance guy, who I knew very well because he was in our Woodgate Bowling league, got up to speak. He was a long-time resident of Woodgate. He posed a series of questions that I had not heard before or since then, “What does diversity mean? When is a place integrated? Does integration mean 5%, 20%, 50%, or 90% black? Was there integration in Woodgate when only 5% were black or African-American? Would it still be integrated if was 90% African-American? Was there a magic number?” The lady from the village hall said that the ideal number would be 50%. Henry objected to that. If we had one black person, would that be an integrated neighborhood? Is there some number that makes it a black neighborhood? Ten years later in the mid-1990s, the Village of Matteson sent an advertisement asking for white people who wanted to live in an integrated neighborhood to come to live in Matteson. Guess what! More African Americans wanted to move to Matteson, because they would be accepted there. The actual statistics show that percentage of Black people in Matteson has gone to 82% in 2020. My estimate is that it was around 30%-40% in the mid-1980s in our Woodgate area. The problem is not the black people living there. The real problem is that white or European descendent families do not want to live in black neighborhoods. They will not buy a house from a black family, so that the value or the market for houses owned by black people decreases, while the value of houses owned by white or Caucasians increases because of the wider market. Everybody wants to own a white owned house versus a black owned house. There still is segregation in housing, whether implicit or explicit. There is a tendency to equate black with poor. In 2023, the median income for an 82% black population in Matteson was $97,149. That is what integration looks like. Have you ever lived in an integrated neighborhood?
The 50-year-old pinochle club
In the mid-1970s, we played a lot of games with our next-door neighbors in our Matteson, Allemong Drive cul-de-sac, Jan and Ken Vlach, who shared the same large driveway with us. One time, Bud and Delores Fricke were there, so that we started to play pinochle, since it was a game that we all knew. Ken Vlach said that he knew a couple at the other end of Woodgate who liked to play cards. Thus, he invited Chris and JB Smith to play pinochle with us. Somehow the Vlachs did not want to play as much as the rest of us. Bud and Delores were our teammates on the Woodgate Bowling League with Margaret and I, that bowled every other Saturday night. Thus, this group decided to play pinochle once a month, on a Saturday that we did not go bowling. The Smiths decided to invite the Webers, but that did not work out. Chris and JB Smith then suggested their good friends, Bob and Barb Strehmann, but they did not live in Woodgate. We would have to drive to their house. Then Bud and Delores moved, since he was opening-up an insurance business in Livonia, Michigan, just outside Detroit, where he had grown up. However, we kept in touch with them. Thus, we stopped to see them on the way to the 1976 Montreal Olympics and went to the double wedding of their daughters with Chris and JB Smith. We got a new member for our bowling team, Dick and Judy Farmer, who lived close by in Woodgate. They also played in our pinochle group, that was now the Finnegans, the Farmers, the Smiths, and the Strehmanns. However, Dick and Judy Farmer with their two boys moved back to Olathe, Kansas, since he was involved with insurance also. Then Jim and Chris Bailey joined our bowling team and the pinochle club. Their children were going to St. Lawrence O’Toole Elementary School. In fact, Brian was in the same class as Joy. Thus, we never had an exact date for the starting of this pinochle club, but sometime around 1974 or 1975 seems right, since it was before 1976. We are still part of that group in 2025, so that means that this group has been together for at least 50 years. However, two members have passed away, JB Smith and Jim Bailey, so that Chris Smith and Chris Bailey take turns being the male in this group, since the pinochle games were always men against women. Chris Smith remarried last year. Sometimes, now we skip a month or two because of sickness or travel, but we try to keep this fifty-year old game going. Have you ever belonged to something for over fifty years?
The Illinois toll road
My daily commute to the O’Hare area included the Tri-State Tollway, a controlled-access toll road in the northeastern part of Illinois. This toll road connects Wisconsin and Indiana, going through Illinois, but avoiding the city traffic of Chicago. The Tri-State goes from I-80 in Indiana via I-94 through I-294 to I-94 in Wisconsin. Along the way, you can stop or exit in the southern, southwestern, western, northwestern, and northern Chicago suburbs, including O’Hare Airport, without going into the city of Chicago. Originally, this was an attempt to alleviate congestion in the city, by going around the city. There were no red lights but toll booths that acted like red lights. In 1958, the tolls were set at 25 cents at the main plazas and 10 cents at the exit ramps. Thus, I always had a lot of quarters and dimes in my car. However, in 1983, the tolls increased to 40 cents at the main plazas and 15 cents at most ramps. Then I had to have nickels for the 40 cent tolls. When the I-Pass system started in 2005, after I had stopped using the toll road daily, the tolls for cash payments were doubled, while rates for cars equipped with the I-Pass transponders remained the same. In 2021, cash tolls were eliminated altogether. The problem with the old cash tollway system was that you had stop every 10 to 15 miles to a pay toll, plus the exit toll. The I-Pass has made it a real tollway without stopping, and is much better. On the New Jersey Turnpike, when I grew up, you got a ticket when you got on and you paid it when you got off. The same was true on the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes. That was simple enough. I still remember the time that I drove from one Illinois toll plaza to the next toll plaza stop, going 5 miles per hour. I was so mad that I was paying to drive on a tollway, only to be stuck in traffic for nearly a half hour. If I wanted congested traffic, I could get it for free on the Kennedy Expressway or the Dan Ryan. That is what made me decide to use the Mannheim Road–LaGrange Road local traffic route. I did not mind congestion, if I was not paying for it. Those red lights did not cost me anything. Do you like toll roads?
Gene Finnegan Remembers Living Eighty Wonderful Years 