Echo Park was my first residence in Los Angeles, after migrating from the mid-west at the young age of 18, and arriving on a Greyhound bus to have a new beginning in the city of the angel's. I lived in Echo Park for approximately eight years, and those were my fondest memories, especially the ducks, geese and swans at the lake and the "grasshopper" type oil wells just down the street on Bonnie Brae and near Belmont High School.