From "Nuestro Pueblo - Los Angeles, City of Romance" Copyright 1940, by Charles H. Owens and Joseph F. Seewerker ‘SHE’S MY HOME’ Many and weird are the tales told of Boom Times Los Angeles homes. A report widely circulated in the East had it that sale of nine newly finished houses was delayed when a child leaned against a corner and all collapsed. Vaudevillians repeated the libles joyously, and spoke of landlords who hired trucks to carry their money to bank, and demanded letters of introduction from would-be tenants. The truth is that tourists and capital reached Southern California in the early 1920’s in such quantities as to demoralize the building industry. Unscrupulous contractors ran up jerrybuilt structures and sold them to the unwary almost before the plaster was dry. The case of Nick Antonio, peanut vendor, somehow sums up the home-owner’s affection for his property - however faulty - and his woes when imposed upon. Nick Antonio is somewhere in the middle sixties, a little man whose very wrinkles are cheerful. He bought a bungalow at 2215 Long Beach Avenue during the boom. As he goes from door to door selling his peanuts, he flashes an ingratiating grin and tells of life in that house: ‘I go to bed. Plaster, she’s fall in my face. I open the window. The window, she’s no open. I go outside. The stucco, she’s fall off and hit my head. Bad? Yes. But, you think I not like? Sure, I like! She’s my home!'