Keith Thursby writes: Ned Cronin was a columnist at The Times until his death in 1958 and his work has been featured often in the Daily Mirror. His son, Jerry, recently discovered the blog and we started an e-mail conversation. I asked him if he’d be willing to share some memories of growing up in Southern California and his dad. Here is a recent e-mail:

I have been thinking about writing a book about growing up in L.A. at that period of time in the days of the values of Ozzie and Harriet. Coincidentally, my mother’s name was Harriet and she was also a housewife like the role Harriet Nelson portrayed on their television show.

In those days, the male was the breadwinner and the female was the domestic engineer in charge of running the household. This created a major problem when my dad died when he was 48 years old. My mother had never had to work and I was their only child going to Loyola.

This is the sort of piece I really enjoy running. It originally appeared on latimes.com in 2009 and is available via Archive.org.