Marysue Eulitz
My sympathy to Darralyn’s family,I only learned of her passing today thru my genealogy sites. I just was shocked.Darralyn Kingdon was my very first friend. The Kingdon family lived on Redondo, next door to me in Long Beach, CA, beginning in 1941. I was age 5 and Darralyn age 4. We did all the things little girls do. We played house, dressed up in our mother’s discarded clothes. We would roller skate on the sidewalks for hours. These skates clamped onto your shoes and to tighten them, you used a Skate Key. You always had a skate key on a string around your neck. One day Darralyn got a little bossy with me and I took the string with my skate key on it and the key happened to land on her head. Blood started roll down her face and needless to say… I wasn’t allowed to play with her for a couple of weeks. You know.. I still have that skate key, but no skates. We would pick anyone’s flowers and tried to make perfume. It really was toilet water…… awful. We would pick pomegranates from a neighbor’s tree, when they weren’t home. I have to say that the bad things were my idea, not Darralyn’s. Darralyn’s folks were good to me. We are talking about WW2 era and Darralyn’s father was block warden, meaning when we had an air raid alarm, her father would put on his hard hat and walk the neighborhood to make sure all windows were covered with black material. Darralyn and I would huddle outside watching the search lights pan the skies for the “enemy”. Almost everything was rationed. Darralyn’s dad worked for a meat packing company, I think. He seemed to acquire some things that were nearly impossible to buy. Even gum. You just could not get bubble gum, but her dad had a stock of “Double Bubble Bubble Gum”. So if I was a nice little girl…. they would share some with me. That was wonderful gum. I hope a few of the things here make you chuckle. My family moved from Long Beach to San Diego in 1948, but thru the years we kept in touch. Being a recent widow, I know how hard it is to lose your loved one. It is very difficult to live with just memories. It pains me to lose my friend and now she is one of my oldest memories. Again….. My sympathy to all the family. Marysue Kirkland Eulitz