704 Sunset Avenue in Venice Beach, California

This was a fun place at the corner of Sunset Avenue and Seventh Street in Venice.  Easy walk to lovely restaurants and the beach.  It was especially fun for me because I had three chickens, three ducks, one cat, two dogs and Gertie the goose. 
I was working as executive secretary for Senior Vice President John Hancock at Security Pacific Bank.  Every morning I would get up at three and paint for at least two hours, make a lunch and take a long Santa Monica bus ride to downtown LosAngeles to the bank and then home again.
The following morning I would continue the watercolor painting that I started the previous day.  At that time I was entering art competitions and becasue I had a tendency to get anxious I would enter one per week which would keep me too busy to fret.  Usually each piece won something, usually first or second place.  Prize money really came in handy and kept me in supplies.
I rented this little house for several years from Canned Heat drummer, Adolfo "Fito" de la Para who was the world's best landlord. Eventually, Fito asked me if I wanted to purchase the house.  He wanted to sell it because he was building a recording studio at his residence, also in Venice Beach.  I would have but could not afford it.
Eventually Venice became a hot spot for thugs and gang members.  When bullets started coming thru windows and walls I decided it was time to move and I leased a home and opened a little gallery in the ski resort of Wrighwood, California in the San Gabrial Mountains.  It was called "The Purple Cow" and because I love cooking, I also opened a gourmet shop called "Aubergine Imam Bayildi" meaning, "eggplant, the priest fainted", named after a Turkish dish.  Story has it that while the priests were tending the veggie garden they could smell this eggplant dish being prepared and one priest in particular,  would get so excited he would literally faint. I'm with him, I love cooking this dish.    

Canned Heat is an American blues and rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its efforts to promote interest in blues music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat", from the original 1914 product name Sterno Canned Heat, After appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals at the end of the 1960s, the band acquired worldwide fame with a lineup consisting of Hite (vocals), Wilson (guitar, harmonica and vocals), Henry Vestine and later Harvey Mandel (lead guitar), Larry Taylor (bass), and Adolfo de la Parra (drums). The music and attitude of Canned Heat attracted a large following and established the band as one of the popular acts of the hippie era. Canned Heat appeared at most major musical events at the end of the 1960s, performing blues standards along with their own material and occasionally indulging in lengthy 'psychedelic' solos. Two of their songs — "Going Up the Country" and "On the Road Again" — became international hits. "Going Up the Country" was a remake of the Henry Thomas song "Bull Doze Blues", recorded in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1927. "On the Road Again" was a remake of the 1953 Floyd Jones song of the same name, which is reportedly based on the Tommy Johnson song "Big Road Blues", recorded in 1928. Since the early 1970s, numerous personnel changes have occurred. For much of the 1990s and 2000s and following Larry Taylor's death in 2019, de la Parra has been the only member from the band's 1960s lineup. He wrote a book about the band's career, titled Living the Blues. Mandel, Walter Trout and Junior Watson are among the guitarists who gained fame for playing in later editions of the band.

I've always worked as an artist but had to suppliment my income while taking secretarial jobs through temporary agencies. I usually worked legal because they paid more but sometimes I would take a permanent position. 
I was executive secretary in World Banking for John W. Hancock (related to you know who) at Security Pacific Bank downtown LosAngeles.  I learned a lot from Mr. Hancock and was grateful he was supportive of my art.  When I had an exhibition at Keri's Art Gallery located in the World Trade Center he and his lovely wife attended the opening and purchased a watercolor painting of a tennis player.