Roomin' House Blues

Betty A. Carey was a person like the just plain people people that were there in Santa Cruz before the surfers, hippies, and hippies brought subcultures that didn’t depend on hard work, the students brought the antiwar movements and bedroom community dwellers from Silicon Valley jobs brought bigger money.   She was a person when there were lots of oakies looking like somebody  out of a New Deal photograph collection or Let us Now Praise Famous Men. And lots of Italians who came with fish filled boats.  And very old people who came with loaded memories and wanting a social security affordable place.  She was there before the house sharing students and the speculators strangled the cheap rents. Betty A Carey was ordinary and odd at the same time.  She lived a special home for people who were ordinary and odd at the same time -- a big old “retirement home” near the beach and boardwalk, filled with people who “had to take there medicines”.  Santa Cruz ...