Cecilia Rasmussen, L..A. Then and Now : A 'Carny Kid' Tells Students How He Beat the Odds, Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2005, B2. 1940s
"[Kenny] Kahn was born in Los Angeles in 1941. He spent his early childhood on the midway at Ocean Park Pier, one of the many names it bore, an amusement zone on a pier at the end of Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica.
"He writes that his father, Barry, was a small-time carnival hustler who rigged pinball machines and games of chance. His mother, Faye, danced the nights away to big-band music in local nightclubs and ballrooms around the pier.
""They each had their own interests, and being in any way good domestic parents was not on the agenda," Kahn states.
"When his brother Ricki was born in 1944, Kahn, who was not quite 4, became the primary caregiver. He rarely saw his parents, who gave Kahn instructions to "never wake them before 2 p.m. . . . I felt like strangling [Ricki]," Kahn writes.
"He got out of baby-sitting when he started school in 1946. After school, he roamed the boardwalk, where he made friends and earned pocket change selling newspapers.
"The pier suffered from neglect after World War II, and the customers who had been the elder Kahn's lifeblood soon left.
"When Kenny was 8, he writes, his mother went to jail for having sex with a minor and his father hit the road. Kenny and Ricki were sent to a foster home in Alhambra.
"A year later, he writes, the parents retrieved the boys for a family summer business, what carnies called the "hankie-pank" games-rigged games-at county fairs in several states.
"By 1952, Kenny was earning $20 to $40 a day shortchanging customers at the dime-toss booth, according to his book. He'd also wax the plates to a sheen, making it virtually impossible for dimes to stick.
"In 1954, the family-which by then included a heroin-addicted baby sister, Cookie, he writes-was evicted for unpaid rent and other bills. They headed to Ramona Gardens, an Eastside public housing project.
"Within weeks, their Lancaster Avenue apartment was a shooting gallery for neighborhood junkies.
"The housing project was-and still is-nestled in a dell between a freeway and railroad tracks at the edge of Boyle Heights. Built in 1941, it was the first housing project in the city. Guns and hard drugs flooded in; staying alive became the definition of success."
" . . . "