West Seattle born Arlene LaCamera Berg turned 90 March 30, and celebrated with loved ones, most referring to her as "Mama", at the Wet Seattle Golf Course Sunday, May 1. Some might say she is feisty as ever, others would swear she is feistier than ever. She was raised in a home at 3920 California Ave. SW, a street she now calls "Condo-fornia".

Berg attended Holy Rosary Grade and High School where she later taught PE and coached sports. She operated "Arlene's Craft Shop" on 16th Ave. in White Center. She has a son, Randall, of Randall Berg & Associates Property Management on California Ave. with whom she lives, and two daughters, Nina Hagen and Pami Girsh.

Nina and husband Ron operate El Dorado Farms in Enumclaw and breed thoroughbreds. Pami is a mortgage banker in Bellevue, married to Alexei Girsh, Eastside Symphony Music Director. Their son, Arlene's only grandson, Sean Bold, is Director of Snowsports at Crystal Mountain.

Berg's third daughter, Debbi, was a flight attendant who was killed in a plane crash in Alaska at age 20 in the 1970's.

Berg gave a speech which began, "Let's go down the line with all the people that have come into my life."

Her son Randall, or Randy, promptly responded, "Geeze, Mom. You're 90 years of age. It's going to take a long time."

She told him to hush, and went on with the somewhat lengthy oratory, including her memory of demonstrating her locally-famous "Mama LaCamera's Pasta Sauce" at a supermarket. (The product may make a comeback.)

Said Berg, "One time during a demo with Randy, he made me so angry I kind of hit him, and a lady in the audience said, 'Hit him harder.'"

Fresh food runs in the family.

Her parents were from Italy, and her father, Anthony "Tip" LaCamera started an open air produce market in 1920 at 4710 California Ave. where Taqueria Guaymas now is.

After serving in WWII, her husband, Norwegian-born, and Ballard-raised Peter or "Nick" worked for Consolidated Fruit and Produce, and then Pacific Fruit and Produce.

"I went up skiing one day (to Snohomish) with my friend Ruth and we met two Peters," she recalled, recounting how she met her husband. "I paired up with one, and Ruth with the other one. That other one walked up a knoll and the sun glinted on his hair and it looked like British copper. He had broad shoulders, and man, I was sunk. They sat with us going back on the train. I happened to have Hawaiian bananas and Peter had never seen bananas before. Well he enjoyed them, and from then on (…) that was it.

"I was invited over to his family ," she continued. (Their name in Norway was "Kipperberg" then shortened to "Berg".) "That was scary. I practically had to show my passport on the Ballard Bridge in order to get there. Here is this darling lovely little Italian girl trying to infiltrate into these blonde Norwegians. It was tough but I made it. They were very reserved compared to the Italians that I knew but in later years I found they could be fun too.

"It really was fun to grow up in West Seattle, it really was," she said. "We were divorced from Seattle in so many ways, but we had everything, Woolworth's, JCPenney, G. O. Guy Drugs, two furniture stores, two hardware stores. The community was just one. We didn't miss Seattle.

"My mother had to go to Seattle twice or three times a week," she said. "We went on this rickety train. The engineer was a very kind man, but looked like an ape. You just hoped and prayed you'd make it into town."

She said that while West Seattle was safe, once she returned by train in one piece, she did have an altercation later on, as a teen.

"I took Jiu-Jitsu from an ex-policeman," she said. "I only used it once, but I did use it. I got off the bus at 9:00 at night. This guy grabbed me and I flipped him. Nobody was more surprised than I was. But the instincts were there. It was a delightful feeling. I was about 18. My father heard me scream and came running. He was ready to hit him. I said, 'it's OK Dad'. The guy was crawling away."

Randy then retold a memory his father often told.

"Our father would talk about about waking up in the morning," he said. "In Ålesund, Norway, there was so much snow on the ground that they had a hatch in the thatched roof, so he'd pop the top, put the skis on, off he'd go to school."

"Not true," Pami protested loudly so that all the attendees at her table, and a few beyond, could hear. "They lived on the second story of an apartment building."

"Mama" responded with a wry smile, perhaps because she believed Pami inherited her feisty gene.