Ralph Deutsch took a job at the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1952 and settled into an apartment in Inglewood. He also taught graduate courses in mathematics and engineering at both UCLA and USC during this time. I understand that he also played trumpet in a local community orchestra.

After two years, they bought a two-bedroom house in Inglewood.

I was born in Inglewood on April 15, 1955. I remember nothing of the Inglewood house – but I was very young at the time!

Ralph and Leslie Deutsch at the Inglewood house

My father also bought his first organ at this time – a Conn Artist. As an aside, I have always thought the person who came up with trade name “Artist” for Conn had a great sense of humor. Conn manufactured organs with the name “Artist” for many decades. It must have been an inside joke.

In 1957, my father took a job as Research Manager of Advanced System Technologies at Philco in Philadelphia. It must have been a very attractive position because he really loved the Los Angeles area.

My mother really liked the house they had in Rydal, outside of Philadelphia. It was a split-level house with lots of land. I do not remember it at all. My only memory of living in Philadelphia was the train station. It was a terminal so the tracks came in and dead-ended at the station platform. I remember being upset that the trains had no way to get out again!

My father took up model railroading at this time. He built a small layout on plywood, which I only remember from its existence after the move back to California.

My father had also begun his model shipbuilding hobby by this time. His first big ship model, the Cutty Sark, was in the Philadelphia house. All of his models were built from commercial plastic kits. The difficult part was always the rigging. These were sailing ships, for the most part, with complete standing and running rigging.

My parents stayed in Philadelphia only a single year, returning to Los Angeles once again in 1958! They had one of the worst winters on record that year and my mother and I were snowed into our house for several days. I suppose they remembered why they moved to California in the first place.