Taking the Wilshire Boulevard Tour [in 2005] was as if I strolled along Memory Lane.

I was school girl in 1927 when my family moved back to Los Angeles. Yes, that was a while ago; but I remember our living in an apartment a couple blocks from the Bryson and Arcady on Rampart.

Both Westlake and LaFayette Parks were my playgrounds, as were the tennis courts across from the latter -- still exist? There I played tennis with a youth who at a later time introduced me to the man I married.

A girlfriend lived at the Hershey Arms with her granddmother, another lived up the hill from the Elks Temple on Park View. My nephew was born in a small hospital a few doors from the Westlake Theatre.

Until I left Los Angeles in 1941, I had the good fortune to live at three or four different locations just off Wilshire -- the Parks District, Mid-Wilshire, and the Miracle Mile. Along the tour I could attach memories to most of the wonderful landmarks.

So many times I walked by the Otis home/art school, watched the building of the Town House and Bullock's Wilshire and others. We walked and rode the yellow double-decked bus. I alighted from the bus in front of Villa Medonna; danced at the Cocoanut Grove after a high school graduation; learned to drive in the neighborhood including the famous Wilshire-Western intersection.

We moved to the Miracle Mile and I played at the La Brea Tar Pits long before it became the current cultural center.

The drive on Wilshire from downtown to Santa Monica remains high on my list of favorites throughout California. Thank you for making it possible to 'take it' another time.