CHAPTER 1 THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING It was Thursday, January 27, 2022. As my alarm went off, the sun and I tangled in a game of chicken to determine who would get up first. This little game was not unusual. More often than not, over the past five decades, I had won this silly contest long before the sun splashed across the San Gabriel Mountains of my town of Altadena. After fifty years, your morning routine is kind of on autopilot, and this day felt no different . . . except it was.
I love Altadena. By California standards, it’s a small town. It’s the baby sister of its more well-known civic relative directly to the south, Pasadena (home of the world-famous Pasadena Tournament of Roses, including the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game). Pasadena, a proud enclave where the actual old money of Los Angeles resides, feels like a real city. In contrast, Altadena feels rural, with patches of its agricultural past still scattered here and there and homes tucked into its foothills.
The mornings are peaceful. Although we’re only twenty miles from where I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles (composed of the cities of Compton, Inglewood, and Hawthorne, and the neighborhood of Watts), in every imaginable aspect, it’s a world away. There’s no traffic noise, the birds chirp, and the air is sometimes still scented with jasmine or orange blossoms.
Since we’re at the base of the mountains, as the sun rises, you might spy a raccoon, cottontail bunnies, or skunks scurrying across a yard or back fence. We also sometimes hear of misguided black bears from the nearby Angeles National Forest roaming into our neighborhood. The bears are looking for breakfast from unsecured trash cans. In scenes that seem so “LA,” the bears also enjoy dips in backyard pools or the occasional hot tub (yep, it does happen; check YouTube).
On this particular day, though, I was waking up not in Altadena but in Brea, California, at the home of my best friend, Linda Votaw. It might sound peculiar for a seventy-one-year-old woman to say she has a best friend, but I’m not embarrassed to use that term at all. Linda is my best friend next to Mary, my inseparable twin sister.
Aside from being an alternate sister from an apparent other mother (I’m a Black woman from Compton, and Linda is a tanned sandy blonde from Huntington Beach, California, or as it’s internationally known, “Surf City U.S.A.”), our backgrounds could not have been more different. Anyone could easily assume that my inner-city sassiness and Linda’s cheery suburban outlook would never mesh.
For more than fifty years, Linda and I have dodged getting entangled in negative social influences that have poked at our friendship occasionally—but none of the outside noise matters. We’re simply two friends who have each other’s backs and believe in each other—as any good friends do.
With Linda letting me crash at her house since I had to be up early, my typical commute of forty-four miles (one way, mainly in the dark) was reduced to only eight miles. My relief and appreciation for not having to get up so early and drive so far were on my mind as I got ready for the day.
Getting in my car, I was conscious of what an exciting and beautiful day it would be. In Southern California, we tend to take our weather for granted, especially in January. On this day, Mother Nature did not disappoint, with promises of a bright blue sky and chilly morning temps in the mid-50s, rising to a brisk high of around 72 degrees (that’s sweater weather for us).
It started to happen as the freeway and side streets came alive with trucks and commuters. The sense that this day would be different began to sink in. A feeling of finality hit me suddenly, followed by a perception of closure and a rush of emotion that caught me off guard because something special was coming to an end.
Now, anyone who knows me knows I can hold back my emotions. I’m usually the cool cucumber in any crisis. That’s not to say I don’t easily smile or laugh. However, I’ve always been able to hold back tears, still a shaking lip, or hide a sniffle. But that steel completely fell apart at that moment.
It’s hard enough to drive at such an early hour, but to do it with tears streaming down your face and sniffles seeking tissues made for quite the situation. So I did what I always do in moments of need or if I want to kill time in traffic: I called Mary.
As I said before, Mary is my inseparable fraternal twin sister, and like many sets of twins, we might as well be conjoined. We live together, and yes, we can finish each other’s sentences and thoughts. Although our lives have taken us on different professional and personal paths, we have been going in the same direction in two distinct, singular lanes. Do we sometimes get on each other’s last nerve? Yes. But there is no one else on the planet I would rather have as my twin sister. While I was attempting to drive and compose myself, Mary strived to calm me down by phone, assuring me everything would be fine. She seemed surprised by my sudden expression of emotion; honestly, I was, too. She said, “Stop crying; you are going to be okay. You have such a strong passion for your job, and you enjoyed all the people you worked for and with, and now it’s time to put that passion into yourself.”
I don’t think there was a time when I didn’t like going to work, and I also believe in making your work environment pleasant. Through the years, I have always made my workplace enjoyable for me and those around me. Mary told me not to cry, saying, “You worked so hard to get to where you are right now. And you’ve done so well. Now it’s time to come home and savor your life with your family. Now we can have fun and do some traveling.”
When I finally arrived and parked, I had gained my composure. However, my visor mirror called for one last makeup check. As I always say, you have to look “cute.” I wasn’t sure if my sentimental waterworks had washed away any semblance of “cute.” With a few adjustments and tweaks, I was on my way.
It was just before sunrise. I met my escort for the morning, hopped into a little golf cart, and traveled a route I had taken perhaps thousands of times before. With each turn, every sight seemed to take on greater meaning. Our quiet little electric cart, rolling along at a top speed of fourteen miles per hour, soon had us at our destination. A few feet ahead were the gates leading to a place that had been my professional home for half a century. The sun started rising, signaling my favorite time of day at this special destination. I took a deep breath and walked into . . . Disneyland.
The purpose of this early morning visit was to take pictures for my impending retirement. After fifty years at “The Happiest Place on Earth,” I would officially hang up my mouse ears. So now you can understand my tears. Up to that point, my planned retirement seemed distant—always a few months away, nothing to be concerned with— and now I was about to have my retirement portraits taken.
As I stepped onto Main Street, U.S.A., and into Town Square, I was instantly reminded of why I love this time of day at the park. The landscaping, decorating, and maintenance crews were wrapping up from a long night. Everything had just been cleaned, the landscaping had been watered, and comforting scents of flowers, sweet baked goods, and fresh coffee mingled with the morning air to create a sensory overload. Once again, all was right in Walt Disney’s original Magic Kingdom. It was sparkling and ready to welcome guests from all points of the globe as it has done for sixty-nine years. And to think, I have been a part of this legacy for fifty years out of its almost seven decades. I paused at what we call “Christmas Tree Point,” the area where the park’s sixty-foot-tall Christmas tree stands every holiday season and where the straightaway lane of Main Street starts. Sleeping Beauty Castle was at the end of the street, just beyond the Plaza Hub. With the rising sun accenting its sparkling pink, blue, and gold hues, the castle looked like a piece of glittery architectural jewelry, creating a perfect storybook setting.
As the park’s part-time resident crows and migratory ducks made their morning flights over the plaza, they rattled me, as I had gotten lost in my thoughts. It’s so trite and overused, but the scene before me was magical. Nonetheless, it was time to get to the job at hand. Someone had done their homework, because the itinerary for the morning photo shoot seemed to follow my Disney career path. We started at Tour Guide Gardens and City Hall in Town Square. As the photographer got ready, my mind again drifted, and the nostalgia of the moment set in.
I was taken back to May 1971, when I started as an official Disneyland tour guide. My mornings would start almost identically to what I had just experienced: by walking across Town Square to City Hall, where I would arrive around 7 a.m. to work in the phone room answering calls and then spend the rest of my day conducting up to two or three guided tours of the park. My tours initially consisted of guests from near and far but soon included foreign dignitaries, VIPs, and Hollywood royalty (more about that later). Our next stop for photos was the Emporium, a re-creation of a turn-of-the-twentieth-century department store. This is where I entered management as a supervisor. I worked one summer at the Emporium and simultaneously as a merchandise buyer in training, eventually becoming a full-fledged buyer of everything from books to gifts to knickknacks.
We then took photos at the Candy Palace. I spent nine years as the candy buyer for not just the Candy Palace but all of Disneyland and the Disneyland Hotel. As you might imagine, you’re very popular when you’re the candy buyer, but more about that later. Eventually, we went down to Sleeping Beauty Castle, gleaming in all her elegance and grace. Our castle is not as imposing as Cinderella Castle (indeed beautiful and stately in her own right) at Walt Disney World. Instead, our castle is charmingly quaint, approachable, and singularly unique to Disneyland. I am particularly fond of Sleeping Beauty Castle because I saw its familiar façade on television as a little kid and teenager.
Sleeping Beauty Castle has served as the backdrop for a who’s who of twentieth- and twenty-first-century notables, along with people from almost every nation on Earth, photographically commemorating visits, vacations, reunions, birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, graduations, and more, before its gateway to Fantasyland. Now I was stepping in front of her towers and spires to commemorate my own milestone.
It may be hard to believe, but I’m not a big fan of having my picture taken. My heart was pounding a little from nerves, and my mind was racing as we wrapped up these final shots: so many memories, years, and faces. Almost anywhere my gaze turned that morning, there was a reminder of past good times experienced with colleagues, friends, or family, or a memorable moment with park guests. It was all so sweet but admittedly a bit overwhelming. My smiles captured in the photos were genuine, but they hid the fact that I was a nervous wreck during the entire photo shoot. On the outside, I was all smiles, but inside, I was running on a strange mixture of excited adrenaline for the future and the sad reality that my time at Disneyland was drawing to a close, as was our photo shoot.
The clock was ticking. We had to be finished by the park’s opening at 9 a.m. As we wrapped up and went our separate ways, I walked across the plaza toward my golf cart behind the scenes. I could see all of the day’s early guests assembled on Main Street, eagerly awaiting “rope drop” (the park’s official opening, which occurs at the north end of Main Street between the Plaza Point Holiday Shoppe and Refreshment Corner).
Rope drop is always fun to watch because you can see the excited anticipation of the guests. Seeing all their enthusiastic and happy faces, I thought, No more mornings like this for me; it will soon all be in the past. As I arrived at our golf cart backstage, I could hear the familiar recorded “Voice of Disneyland” at that time, Bill Rogers, officially greeting everyone on Main Street.
I sat in the golf cart for a minute, lost in a fog and shaking my head in amazement that fifty years had passed.
Wow! I thought. Then I sensed the waterworks coming on again. As the golf cart pulled away, I could hear Bill’s voice trailing off in the distance: “. . . and may you enjoy your day in this magical place called Disneyland.”
Copyright © 2024 by Martha Blanding & Tim O'Day. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
