Welcome to Travel ➕Explore ➕Play with Sallee Jay where I am your host. To all my Jay’s I hope you are soaring and flying high.
It’s my favorite month of the year, my birth month. As I reflect back over my life, I’m reminded of my teenage years. It was during this time I traveled the most, given that my parents lived in different states. Go back with me as I relive my days as a teenager sharing time between in Los Angeles and Denver.
I moved to Culver City the second half of my 8th grade school year and came back to Denver as a high school sophomore. The make shift ID you see was made by the school, by request of my mother because I was required to have ID to travel as an unaccompanied minor. Like I didn’t have to have a state issued ID to fly and I had a passport. Y’all… we used to live in much simpler times. 😂😩🤷🏾♀️
I was known as the super shy, athletic tomboy from the “mountains” because that’s what everyone thinks when you tell them you’re from Colorado. People also think it snows and is cold all the time which is also false and strange.
Flew in to Denver for homecoming and then back to Cali for my own homecoming. Denver peeps Evelyn.
If you’ve ever read author Jerome Dickey’s books, you’re familiar with cross streets Overland and Jefferson, the general area where my family lived. It was a quaint city, well maintained and the home of Sony studios and the Fox Hills Mall. This was also the first place I lived where I could walk to school. I had a little posie of folks that I would walk with from my community. Latoya, Jade, Charles, his twin brother and I would walk to school together almost every day. I liked the walk because we had to cross this creepy bridge to get to the school, it had spiders on the chain link fence, was wooden and would creak as we stomped across it. This was during the early 90s when Shaquille O’Neal was a Laker and rapper 😩🥴. Often times when coming from the library we would see him driving down the street in a custom white Mercedes with his custom T.W.iS.M license plates, bumping his own song. I used to live for it every time I would see him or any random celebrity on any given day because, it’s LA baby.
The middle school and high school were connected, sharing a cafeteria if my memory serves me correctly. I remember thinking it was odd to go between classes outdoors, as this definitely was not a practice back in Colorado. During the summer teachers would open the doors and windows, inviting the breeze into the classroom. It was also in California where I was exposed to real diversity I was in school with kids from Tonga, Samoa, China, Africa, India, Brazil you name it. Coming from Denver I was corrected a lot concerning race and nationality as I only knew of Blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics.
Class trips were to fun places like Knotts Berry Farm, The Pier and Magic Mountain. Up and coming talent would come perform at mid day pep rally’s and during homecoming festivities.
They also had this practice called “tardy sweep’s,” which if you were late you would receive Saturday school, the equivalent to detention, except on a SATURDAY at 8am‼️‼️. Therefore if we knew we were going to be late, we would head over to the McDonald’s across the street. You would think we’d be safe there, nope… School security would come over there and hand out tardy sweeps right in the McDonald’s parking lot, what a freaking joy. If you failed to show up for Saturday school, which could be a real problem for a lot of the kids that were bused in from central Los Angeles then you had to go to court and were then were placed into the system. Do you want to talk about a pre-school to prison pipeline…. The one and only time I ever got caught in a tardy sweep, was at freaking McDonald’s. I digress…
Pictures from LA
I told y’all, modern day IG
The other cool thing to do was to get your picture taken at the mall. It was like $15-$20. You’d pick a background, get 3 poses and like 25 wallets to share with your peeps. These pictures were the modern day Instagram. You had girls at the mall every weekend taking pictures to have fresh pics to hand out Monday morning on the bus or on the walk to school.
I also went to school with several child actors. You’d see them in class and they’d be on some show at 7pm on CBS, or they would miss class or have to leave class early for auditions. Their parties were bananas…like grown people functions but for teenagers. I’ve never in life experienced some of the things that I experienced in my short time in Cali.
My favorite LA story was with my girl Sheree or “Ree Ree” as we called her. She was a couple years older and we connected when she moved in the community as I was the other new kid. One day we’re walking up Jefferson and this SUV stops us. Michael Bivins is sitting in the passenger seat. 🤩🥴🙌🏾 He asked our ages, we tell him 15 and 17 respectively. He then looked at his boy and said y’all too young but damn y’all fine and drove off!! Thank God it wasn’t R. Kelly, I could be telling a much different story. 😩😒
While I only lived in Cali for two years my mom remained for years so I would frequent Cali often. From the Slauson swapmeet to Vince beach, I’d always find fun and sun. I didn’t enjoy living there but it’s a fantastic place to visit.
Hope you enjoyed this blast from my past. 💕
Sallee Jay 😘