WWII History At Ayres Avenue

What day, exactly,  I began hearing the booming of big guns offshore I do not know. We lived on Ayres Avenue, 10600, in West Los Angeles, and I was a child of four, that I do know. This means it was 1945.

No one had to tell me what the guns were. They were the war, and I thought it had come to California.

Before that I knew only bits and could make little sense of them.

• Gasoline and sugar rationed--not sure I understood what that meant, although I remember seeing the ration books in our home, and I now know that my mother and father worried they didn't have enough gas to get to the hospital in Santa Monica so that Lucile could be born.
• FDR. The adults I knew had no use for him.
• Japan, Germany=enemy.
• Sailors wore bell bottom trousers and P-Coats.
• My brother Sterling wanted a P-Coat, which probably meant I wanted one, too. I loved him so much.
• Peeling the tin foil from gum wrappers, saving it for the war. Really?

The guns were loud and they made sense. They might shoot at our house. Should I stay inside? "No," my mother told me. "The guns belong to our Navy [so did the sailors I saw so often]. They're practicing."

One day, on my birthday, in fact, my mother and my Aunt Allie sat in the kitchen nook celebrating. I think Allie had a newspaper. The war was over, they told me.

The guns must have stopped then.