Had James Vernon Schneider dreamed of the agony of uncertainly, expense, litigation, and slander into which he was about to be plunged, he would never have signed the agreement to purchase a lovely home in Huntington Park, southeast of Los Angeles.

Though still pained with the bruises of the long odyssey with his house, Jim is proud he stuck it out. The house now rests peacefully in the industrial City of Commerce. It is much more a part of him than it might otherwise have been.

The several small communities between Los Angeles and Long Beach have also become much a part of him — like some painful operation he can never forget. So in telling of Jim and his home, we have departed from current parsimonious rules of story-telling, and given in small bits a little of the colorful history of an area slighted by local guidebooks and histories.

Unlike Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Anaheim, the two dozen communities along the Los Angeles, Rio Hondo and San Gabriel rivers are unfamiliar to most readers. And such is the color of the area’s past that its story, as much as Jim's, cries out to be told.