Hunt Travels

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“Hunt Travels” is the English equivalent to the concept of “adventures” in American Sign Language, according to the Ameslan textbook by my teacher and friend Lou Fant. These stories are the exceptional moments of my life journeys. Our stories are the monuments to our lives, markers to our brief presence here on the planet. Here are some of my favorite hunt travels, offered for your amusement and my legacy.

“Those of you who are under eighteen will be charged with curfew, and those of you over eighteen will be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for keeping the under eighteens out after curfew.”

“WHAT?”

“At least until we figure out what’s going on.” the Monrovia police officer declared as they loaded us into the back of the squad cars.

“But, we haven’t DONE anything wrong!” I protested.

“We’ll see. Get in. Watch your head.”

It’s hard to sit comfortably in the back seat of a police car when your hands are handcuffed behind your back, but fortunately it was a short drive to the station. I wasn’t really scared because I knew it was all a big misunderstanding, but being charged with “contributing” WAS a big deal. How did it come to this?

It was late summer of 1971, I was only nineteen, and we were just drama students, fresh out of high school, doing a fun “scary tour” for our friends. Performance art al fresco. Literally “taking it on the road” as it were. It was “The Giant of the Canyons; Legend of the Eight Foot Man” landmarks tour. The tour had gotten popular, due to word of mouth among our friends and former classmates, and so we started having two shows a night. After the first performance that fateful night, we all met up by the bank at the corner of Myrtle and Foothill to laugh and share experiences, and then load up the second group into Wayne’s tiny, white Opel Kadett.

Instead the police were loading US into THEIR cars!

I suppose the presence of a gang of young people, some of whom were in scary makeup, hanging around a closed bank at 10:30 at night was kind of a red flag to the arresting officers, but it never occurred to us that this would happen!

We had no idea at the time just how serious it had become or how long they had been watching for us.

Wayne later explained how he came up with the idea to do the tour in the first place.

“Our extended High School Drama Family was mostly home from school, students from four different classes, from ’69 through ’72, including younger siblings, and we were all friends, looking for fun and entertainment. Two of our friends came up with a fun idea. Rick and Paul started a hokey “tour” in which they piled two or three “customers” into the back of Rick’s Chevy Corvair and drove around Sierra Madre after dark, telling the story of “Monk E. Mann”.”

“In the story, which cleverly included a close brush with a very old, secluded monastery in Sierra Madre, a child who had been left on the monastery steps had grown up to be a dangerous psychopath. They told the story of murder and mayhem in the quiet suburban hills around the monastery. During the tour, they used various landmarks and attached stories related to Monk E (for Edward, I think) Mann. It was all great fun, and for a few weeks, most of our Drama Family and their friends had taken the tour. Sadly, as the end of summer neared, they had to stop the “Monk E Mann” tour to prepare for the coming school year.”

“Ever enterprising, still hungry for theatrical fun, and willing to use the coattails of Rick and Paul’s success, a few of us came up with another, strangely similar “tour”. The story we came up with was the “Legend of the ‘Eight Foot Man’ ” or “The Giant of the Canyons”. I knew a secluded area in northeastern Monrovia in the hills above Mountain Avenue, mostly on a winding, hilly road, Norumbega Rd. that would allow for lots of mischief. It had been part of my car paper route a couple of years earlier. Our story was that of an abandoned baby (apparently there were lots of those in the San Gabriel Valley in legendary old times). The baby was awkward and huge. His height made him an outsider, other kids called him names, and he became reclusive. There was a terrific old one-room schoolhouse on Norumbega, and we came up with a story related to that. We decided we would include in the story that he had just disappeared years ago, but there were still stories of sightings.”

Wayne would bring the tour to various dark, remote places, like a park in the foothills or a vacant lot, playing a tape recorder with appropriate music and sound effects as he went, and tell the tales, setting up for various staged segments, such as the rock cairn, a strange pile of rocks that mysteriously kept getting bigger, even when removed, rocks being added by some spectral entity… the ghost of the Giant! While he drew them in with his spooky tale, (probably shining the flashlight up on his face) the rock pile would suddenly collapse, secretly triggered by me pulling a hidden cable, sending the group screaming down the path to the car. In one field, the ghostly figure of a woman, (Shari in a sheet) was seen fluttering into the darkness.

Many of the details of the tour were lost to me, as I was in makeup and costume, lying in a field with tall grass and weeds, in the dark, waiting for them to arrive. I had a huge black cape and ghostly white face with sunken cheeks and ping pong ball eyes, cut in half with iris holes cut out so I could sorta see. Dopey close up but scary from a distance.

They would pull up and get out of the car and he would start to tell a story about the Giant sightings, shining his flashlight around the field as he spoke. When his light swept past, I would stand up from my concealment, prone under the black cape, suddenly “appearing” as he swept back. I would start toward them menacingly, and when the screams started, he would jostle the flashlight. I would then flop on the ground again, hidden, so when the light came back I had “vanished”! Still screaming…in fun, of course, they all piled into the car and careened down the hill around a hairpin turn, only to discover the SAME monster coming up the road. (Jon, dressed the same with ping pong ball eyes.) So they’d squeal a U-turn back up the hill, only to encounter me coming down the road. I could hear the screaming from inside the car as they screeched another hard U-turn and headed out a different way. The scary thing for me at that point was, with the darkness and ping pong ball eyes that didn’t allow me to wear my glasses, I had to just step out into the path of whatever car was coming, assuming (hoping) that it was them, here on this rural road.

Apparently not rural enough, as we learned some time after we arrived at the police station.

First they separated us into groups. We had to empty our pockets while they checked for contraband. I had a pocketful of rubber bands from a playful exchange with my boss on the job earlier in the day, which was a little hard to explain. Then they took the two of us in makeup and a third guy, Evans, a junior in high school and an innocent bystander who unfortunately happened to take the tour that night, and took us through a heavy metal door to a holding cell where they made us strip naked and left with our clothes!

Meanwhile Wayne was searched, questioned, and then held alone in a tiny cubicle.

“I was told by an officer that we were separated so they could get a statement or story from each of us before they put us back together. They told me that when I complained about being in a broom closet instead of a cell with my friends. Once there, I started to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in my best Lou Rawls impression, hoping the others could hear, wherever they were.”

After awhile, Wayne needed to pee and asked to use the bathroom. Perhaps fed up with his complaining and Lou Rawls impression, they chose to bring him to our cell instead, to use the cold stainless steel seatless unit. By then we had our basic clothes back, sans shoes or belts. (Lest we hang ourselves, I guess?) We were all in surprisingly good spirits, bolstered by the knowledge that we hadn’t done anything wrong, and Wayne led us in a chorus of “Jailhouse Rock” while we waited.

Another friend of ours, one who was not involved with the tour, was also arrested. He knew about the tour but hadn’t been on it yet. Paul decided that he’d try to scare us by being an unscheduled performer and jump out to scare us all at the right moment. He followed us to the first site, the rock cairn, and sneaked around in the dark. His pale blonde hair would have given his presence away, so he wore a reversible skull cap that tied under the chin. It was from a childhood costume and was leopard spotted with cute little ears, but reversible to be a black stealth cap. He lost us in the course of things and had shown up on the corner to join in when we all got busted.

The leopard cap with cute little ears in his pocket was also hard to explain.

They made him drop his pants and bend over and spread ’em while the cop checked for contraband and commented, “I see more assholes this way.” Then they brought him to the cell the rest of us were in.

Meanwhile, as the police were loading us into the cars, another friend, Jack, was just arriving for the “late show”, and hurried up to my house to tell my mom that I’d been arrested. I think she called Wayne’s folks and the word spread, so, by this time there were several parents and relatives in the waiting room while the police tried to figure out just what they had on their hands. Fortunately, Wayne’s father was an attorney and was intervening on our behalf.

Apparently the police had been getting reports of screams and speeding cars, but every time they went out to check, we were long gone. One guy, whose house abutted the field where I did my scene, had heard and seen enough to be convinced that there were real vampires infesting his field, and he was going to shoot one to prove it. Fortunately, his son, an LAPD officer, decided to do a stake out during his off-duty hours to catch us, mainly to placate his perhaps delusional dad and keep him from shooting up the place. But our performance schedule was so irregular that he missed us every time. Luckily we got arrested before his dad had a chance to shoot ME with a silver bullet. (Or whatever! Yikes!)

Wayne later said, “According to my Dad, the police told him (somewhat apologizing for hauling in a bunch of “nice kids”) that someone in the neighborhood was afraid there was another Manson Family in the hills.”

My mom overheard them talking about fearing that they had another “Red Light Killer” on their hands, a guy who would pull people over with a red light, as if he was a cop, and then do them in. She also saw them goofing around behind the counter, jumping around with the cape on, saying, “Oooh. I’m a VAMPIRE!” and the like. Fortunately they saw the humor of the situation and we were released without further ado, albeit at 4 am…on a work night…er, morning. Wayne’s dad persuaded them to change the charge from “contributing” to “detained for questioning”, otherwise we’d all still have a stain on our records for being convincing performers.

Sadly, two of those involved faced serious repercussions from angry relatives, but the rest of us were unscathed, with understanding, stage-door parents who were once playful teens themselves. We DID learn some lessons from the experience, though. Like, don’t meet in front of a bank on a busy corner in the middle of the night wearing monster makeup….that sort of thing.

And…for sure, I don’t want to do the jail thing ever again, despite the fun story.

Through a series of lucky circumstances, I landed a gig working free-lance for Mattel in 1984, the summer of the LA Summer Olympics. At that time they were still in their creaking old facility in Hawthorne, CA, and there was no real photo department. They had two regular photographers, but no studio space, so their table top sets were crammed into a store-room accessed through the security office. Everyone else they needed they hired free-lance, project by project. My first job was mostly on location, making line presentations for the upcoming toy fair season and was more of a property master/ photo stylist gig.

Mattel was going through a growth spurt then, however, and soon they got a warehouse facility nearby which was converted into studio space, new full-time staff was added, and a proper photo department emerged under the aegis of the Marketing Department’s Creative Services division. As a set builder, I continued as a free-lancer on a project by project basis, leading to the opportunity to go to London for a month to complete the International Catalog the very next year. After that the Samples Department drafted me to make miniature sets for their Toyfairs in New York and Monte Carlo.

PHOTO DEPARTMENT

Most of the time I was working in the Photo Department, though, making table top sets for catalog and packaging photography and such.

I’d make such things as a living room set for them to pose the latest version of Barbie and her new furniture line, or a moonscape for Astronaut Barbie.

Or a Hot Wheels futuristic city with lighted domes.

One of my specialties was making miniature trees and foliage, Barbie scale. (Which is roughly 2 inches to the foot.) I was their go-to tree guy and eventually there was a miniature forest in the prop room. The more modular sets I built, the more there was to draw from for future shots.

My sets were on the package for the first Holiday Barbie, the success of which led to a new edition every year, and eventually paving the way for an expanded collector doll series.

Some of my favorite sets were for the collector catalog which demanded more attention and featured more realistic and elegant sets than the basic production Barbie. Wardrobe was often designed by top designers such as Bob Mackie and Halston and sometimes the Barbie character gave over to special edition collector dolls featuring the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, and Elvis.

Unfortunately, the shooting schedule was usually so tight, we often shot a set a day, leaving me scrambling to wrangle today’s set while simultaneously shopping for and building tomorrow’s set. This led to some very long days.

Later projects involved doing the sets for the illustration photography for different series of children’s story and educational books featuring a licensed Barbie, sometimes dressed as characters in the story.

These sets were far more elaborate and detailed than the simpler catalog and packaging photography, as they told a story, sometimes including extra characters unavailable in the Barbie pantheon and on a few occasions I had to modify some dolls to match characters, re-sculpting their faces to be older or bald, or cutting their legs down for height variety. Luckily there was another photo stylist who was a brilliant Barbie scale costume maker to complete the transformations.

BARBIE BOOMS

I had always felt a degree of social guilt for helping to perpetuate a questionable role model such as Barbie, but there was a new drive in the eighties to change that perception, due to a large extent by Jill Barad who was put in charge of the Barbie line in 1982. Not entirely for altruistic reasons, she sought to make Barbie a more effective role model by breaking the glass ceiling with the motto, “We Girls Can Do Anything”. The formerly struggling product subsequently rose to $1.4 billion by 1995, or 35% of their gross. An unnatural reverence for the doll emerged within the company as a result, and the iconic doll began to be referred to as “she” and treated with a certain reverence as though she were a real, almost supernatural being, her look, personality traits, and style being defended as inviolate. “Oh, Barbie would NEVER wear THAT!” A staff of stylists would spend exhausting hours grooming the dolls, styling their hair perfectly and attending to fine details. There was even an officially approved color shade called “Barbie Pink” (which was disturbingly like Pepto Bismol, to which I have a visceral reaction.)

Barad’s aggressive corporate business and marketing methods successfully changed the brand and propelled her own rapid rise through the ranks ultimately to CEO in 1997. Except for having dark hair, her persona matched Barbie perfectly; a self-possessed rich white girl with the extravagant makeup and wardrobe, the fancy cars and houses, and her charming, albeit disingenuous smile, all made her the perfect spokesperson for the line. She was reshaping Barbie in her own image.

One of her strategies to grow the company was to acquire floundering companies and pirate their products as their own. They would make line presentations of new products to be introduced using one-of-a-kind prototypes to see if they get enough positive response, and orders, before actually putting them into production.

I was working on a set at the back of the photo studio one time, late eighties, maybe early nineties, when I happened to notice one of the products, a boys toy recently acquired from a British company, which was sitting on a side table, waiting to be shot. The $20,000 prototype, a play set for posable action figures, was of the top half of the Statue of Liberty, not unlike the last scene from Planet of the Apes. It was a post-apocalyptic scenario where the country has fallen, and the Statue had been turned into a fort for the special guerrilla forces “defenders of freedom”. Her face plate popped open to reveal cannons and the command center. There was a helicopter pad on her head and warriors rappelled down from the torch to waiting battle vehicles. It was SO offensive to my principles that it took every bit of self-control not to pick the irreplaceable prototype flown in from England and smash it to the ground. (And pretend it was an accident, of course.) It was the WORST kind of child influencing toy imaginable to my mind.

But it would surely have ended my career with Mattel, and possibly my own liberty, so instead I spoke up and made its reprehensible tenets widely known amongst the employees, hoping it would hit the grapevine and eventually reach the “suits” in “The Tower”. C’mon people, we have a responsibility to the world here! Ultimately they never produced the toy so apparently somebody else saw it for what it was, too.

TOYFAIRS

The most important events of the year were the Toyfairs. For those of us who had to actually put them together, they were annual death marches, but the compensations tried to bolster your courage. The pay was good and the overtime phenomenal. (The NY Toyfair alone made up a third of my yearly income.)

Plus, you got to play with toys! Well…work with them anyway.

They would put you up in nice hotels like the Waldorf, but then worked you so hard that you never saw your room. You got a per diem but never had time to stop to eat. You got to travel, but it was really more of a chore than an adventure.

The last time we did the International Toyfair there, the trip from LA to Monte Carlo took me, literally, 24 hours with layovers and plane changes, lugging my heavy suitcase and toolbag, which had to clear customs. Then we pretty much never left the building as our rooms were upstairs from the showroom and we generally ate in the lobby cafe. The only outing was the one day trip to Nice, in the next country, to do our shopping for supplies as, unsurprisingly, there were no hardware or fabric stores in Monte Carlo.

One fun memorable event, however, was the Barbie 30th Gala at Lincoln Center in 1989. Created in 1959, the doll turning thirty was a perfect opportunity to celebrate, and publicize, its newfound success and a gala event was thrown at Lincoln Center. They rolled out the pink carpet and pink champagne flowed freely.

There was a life-size cardboard cutout of Barbie in a special gown designed just for the occasion that you could have your picture taken with. (Barbie and I made a cute couple.) The same gown was reproduced on just fifteen hundred special edition dolls which came in a white box tied with a pink ribbon, and were distributed to only guests of the event. (Those rare dolls are now worth a small fortune.) As mere crew people, we were snubbed from the guest list, typical of Jill’s regime, so we dressed up and crashed the party anyway. Not surprisingly, security was lax, nobody noticed, and we deservedly enjoyed the break from the salt mines.

Another memorable moment had nothing to do with Mattel. President Bush and Gorbachev met together in Manhattan in 1991 and coincidentally both stayed at the Waldorf at the same time that we were staying there for Toyfair. I’d come home late, disheveled and trailing disco dust from the Barbie gallery, while passing Secret Service men in the lobby casually scrutinizing us and talking into the sleeves of their black suits and trench coats. It seemed pretty certain that our pictures had been studied and that our rooms had been thoroughly searched while we were gone to work and there was a general air of tension with everyone. Looking down from my window, I could see that both side streets were blocked off and filled with black town cars and limos and there was a line of uniformed police standing shoulder to shoulder, all around the block.

Intense!

NYTF

Toyfairs were the most aligned with my theater training. They were shows that had to travel, involving extensive sets, lighting, scripting, designers, directors, actors, long hours, and an inflexible opening date. The stakes were high as most of the year’s orders came from these shows. Failure was not an option. The problem was there were WAY too many directors.

Each product had its own space in the complicated maze of rooms that made up the gallery. Each product also had a manager and staff responsible for their areas, whose jobs literally depended on the success of their products. (This was one of the criticisms of Jill’s reign was that she kept firing staff if they either fell short of her expectations or challenged her vision and decisions, and then replaced them with inexperienced, terrified product managers who had something to prove. It was also a component to her later downfall.) The burgeoning corporate structure made everything about competition, numbers, and return, de-humanizing what had been a fun, garage-born toy company named for the children of the founders, and creating an atmosphere of fear as everyone scrambled to make their products shine…or else.

We’d fly in from California to the dead of winter and hit the ground running. The New York show was the biggest, most important one and a limiting budget was essentially non-existent. So much depended on the success of these shows that the sky was the limit. Got a problem? Throw money at it. This led to some wild expenditures and shocking waste. The work schedule was daily for two or three weeks with no days off. It always began civilly with reasonable hours but by the end it was around the clock exhaustion.

A large part of the problem was changes. We would kill ourselves trying to make the opening deadline with the already approved plans, when, a few days before the opening, the marketing babies would fly in from the coast, fresh, tanned, and caffeinated and, in their inexperience driven panic, start making ill-advised changes, too often capricious and aesthetically questionable.

The competition and power displays might have been laughable except that we were the ones who had to undo weeks worth of work in mere hours to accommodate the clueless marketing children. Egos, posturing, and fear led to small feuds for space in the gallery. In one instance the marketing VP of one product insisted that a particular wall be pushed back six inches. But that meant losing six inches from the next room, which was somebody else’s space, and which also had custom cut mirrored walls imported from out of state. Also, the carpet was custom installed for each room requiring replacement, not to mention having to reset all of the lights. This particular instance was resolved by a higher up veto, but I recall another such a feud between two product lords which resulted in the walls moving three times in a display of power and control. Like we didn’t have enough to do delivering what they had already signed off on months ago.

I was assigned to the decorator crew and did tabletop sets to display the products. The large set pieces were manufactured by a production company in Arizona and trucked to the New York showroom on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. (Because Mattel is such a large company with a huge line, they’ve outgrown the Javitz Center and have to have their own showroom.) Then I would come in and make little worlds scaled to display the products. (I had to get a special dispensation from the mob, I mean union, boss assigned to the project, since I wasn’t NY union, but brought a specialized skill and used my own tools.)

One time, the night before opening, I stayed until five AM to finish a cool jungle room for some little powered dune buggy-like cars. The table had motorized “reveals” which turned around, which I camouflaged with miniature jungle foliage. I came back a few hours later, just before they opened the doors, to gather tools and do a final check, only to find that the marketing baby had come in early and decided that things didn’t match the order he wanted, AND HAD RIPPED EVERYTHING OUT! It looked like a category five hurricane had hit! He was just standing there amidst the confusion as they opened the doors downstairs to the buyers, fumbling around, trying to make the set match his closed mind, rather than just change the script.

Insane!

Some products, of course, commanded more authority, and naturally Barbie was at the top of the list (The line comprised 35% of Mattel’s gross revenue by ’95.) As the lead product, the entrance to the gallery was through the Barbie gallery. The gateway was a room dedicated to the big new item of the year and in 1990 it was the Barbie Magical Mansion.I was assigned to create a fanciful landscape around the prototype, two story mansion, open at its back, sitting tall on a large turntable reveal. One day just before opening, as I worked, the VP of Creative Services came through in anticipation of Jill’s walk-through and stood fretting about the Mansion.

“Hey,” he commanded as I installed shrubbery, “Get some glitter and sprinkle it all over the roof. This wants to be more sparkly.” he pronounced.

Not my job, I asked him, “Will it be coming with glitter on the roof?”, thinking it would be misleading to the customers.

“No, but it needs it. Just do it.”

“But isn’t this a one-of-a-kind prototype? Can we DO that?” I returned.

“It needs it. Just do it.”

Not wanting to take responsibility for altering an expensive, approved prototype, I told him I would advise the Samples Department of his request. They agreed with me and it didn’t happen.

Three days before the show opened, Jill led her royal procession through her kingdom, passing judgement on various aspects of the gallery and leaving people scrambling in her wake. While I worked discretely to the side on the display, Jill entered the room with her retinue attending, including the aforementioned VP with notebook in hand taking down her commandments, along with Rick, who was in charge of the whole gallery, and my boss Alison, the head of the decorator crew.

The entrance was regal with a sparkling new contemporary crystal chandelier dripping from the ceiling and matching wall sconces which had been approved and purchased long before. She briefly paused, taking in the scene, and then, indicating the lighting fixtures, proclaimed, “No! It’s not enough! I want BIGGER! More BARBIE!” emphasizing her meaning with sweeping jazz hands, and then paraded on to the next room.

The next day, now two days before the opening, Rick and Alison spent their entire day, indispensable people needed back in the gallery, wasting their precious final hours combing Manhattan in taxis for fixtures that might pass for “Bigger! More Barbie!”, finally purchasing and renting a range of choices, returning late in the day exhausted. Then they took an electrician off from his already jammed lighting schedule to climb up a ladder and hang, wire up, and light each one, then stand back in exasperated discussion, evaluating its “Barbieness”, continuing late into the night, until, at last, they decided that nothing would suffice. Resigned to spending their final day on another search, they had the electrician re-hang the original set so that other officials walking through would at least see the intention.

The final morning, I was finishing up my display when Jill made a second pass-through with the toady VP, and, upon seeing the SAME chandelier and sconces, proclaimed, “OH YES! That’s MUCH better!” and walked on.

Wow!

She was probably just distracted as she had just given the current president an ultimatum to promote her or she would take an offer from Reebock International and leave.

Subsequently named co-president, she rose to become CEO, until her ambition drove her to greater and greater acquisitions, overextending the company while greedily snatching up competitors such as Tyco and Fisher-Price, and ruthlessly eliminating upper-level subordinates, leading to the resignation of many top-level Mattel executives during the three years of her tenure as CEO. Her Waterloo was the acquisition of The Learning Company in 1999, which came with a huge debt and ultimately caused the company a loss of $50 million, prompting shareholders and investors to pressure her for her resignation in 2000. Barbie to the end, she received a $1.2 million annual pension as part of a severance package of, ironically, $50 million, the same as the loss.

Some people, honestly…..!

After single handedly tanking the company, she walked with that disingenuous smile and a full purse, leaving the company to regroup into austerity. Sets for packaging and ads were replaced with computer graphics, line presentations became DVD’s, and the Photo Department was pared down, making my services obsolete. Meanwhile, I was still only free-lance and living out of state by then….and the phone stopped ringing.

That’s OK. Seventeen years as Barbie’s personal decorator was quite enough.

I still have our picture from your birthday gala. Thanks for the memories, babe.

Tour de France- 1967

“The City of Homes” is the motto on the official crest of my home town and it was a fine example of a post-war bedroom community. A quiet middle-class suburb of Los Angeles snugged up against the mountains, it was a pleasant but pretty boring place growing up. The only shopping then was an antiquated “downtown” stretching only a few blocks, left over from its hey-day as a segment of the famous Route 66, and a few small grocery store shopping centers. We had a nice park with a public pool, a bowling alley, and one movie house, but that was about it. Quiet, smoggy, and boring.

Then early in 1967, a little before my fifteenth birthday, my mother received an invitation letter from my Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jim in Michigan inviting me to join their family in a summer-long bicycle adventure in France! What an opportunity! My cousin Chuck who lived in Long Beach was also invited, making a total of eight of us.

I was a shy, extremely skinny, asthmatic kid then, smart but seriously lacking in self-esteem and confidence. The notion of traveling by bike with a group of people I barely knew for a couple of months in a distant non-English speaking country was daunting, but how could I say no. Coincidentally, I had been studying French in ninth grade and so had some interest both in the country and using the language. So after getting the necessary shots, my International Youth Hostel membership, and packing an Army surplus canvas bag with a week’s change of clothes and some bungee cords to strap it on the bike, I left for the big adventure, flying with Chuck to Michigan, driving with the family to NYC, and flying TWA out of the then new ultramodern Eero Saarinen terminal to Paris!

We stayed for a week in a little hotel near the Tuileries Gardens as we acclimated to our new world, taking in the sights of Paris before heading out to the countryside.

One day when we were on the top of the Arch of Triumph, awed at the view, my cousin Alon and her friend Brenda came running up to Chuck and me, bursting with excitement about something.

Chuck, perhaps intimidated that I spoke some French, had boasted to the girls on the plane that he spoke German and that he could step up if the need arose. (Knowing full well that we would only be in France and Italy, and that it probably wouldn’t come up. I personally knew that he had struggled with only a semester of it and that I probably knew as much as he did, but… egos, you know.)

“Chuck! Chuck!” they bubbled, “We found someone you can speak German to!” and, grabbing his arm, dragged him over to a bewildered man standing nearby taking pictures of the Champs Elysees.

Realizing his bluff had been called but not wanting to admit it yet, Chuck straightened up, and throwing his shoulders back, approached the man confidently.

“Guten tag.” Chuck began.

“Ja ja, guten tag.” replied the man with curious anticipation, wondering what this was all about. Why were these American girls all excited to see him and who was this brash other guy?

That being the extent of his German mastery, Chuck struggled to remember anything from his class dialogs that might be appropriate for the moment. The girls looked back and forth, first at Chuck and then the stranger, with breathless anticipation, excited to have engineered this historic cultural exchange moment.

Pausing, in panic to say something, he mustered, “Mein platenspeiler ist kaput!”, delivered as a serious pronouncement to this absolute stranger.

The stunned man’s mouth fell open in confusion.

“Bitte?”

The girls were irked when I burst out laughing, not realizing that what he had said was “My record player is broken.”

The perplexed stranger’s response was understandable, and fortunately he also spoke English, figured out what had happened, and an international incident was averted.

We never let Chuck forget it, though.

At the end of our week’s stay in Paris, we went to a local bicycle shop and purchased eight new bikes. My little cousin Loren was only six and had to learn how to ride a bike in a Parisian park that day. The sturdy little guy picked it up right away and pedaled the whole thousand miles with us. Bon courage!

Preferring not to lead our troupe through the busy streets of Paris, Uncle Jim’s wise plan was to take the train to Chartres and bike from there. The next day we checked out of the hotel and made our way to Gare Montparnasse to begin the journey.

Needless to say, such a lengthy trip is punctuated by interesting stories and I had brought a tiny notebook with the intention of keeping a journal, but my entries were sadly vague and truncated, partly out of teenage laziness and partly from actual fatigue at the end of long days of biking in the hot summer sun. The following particularly memorable stories are introduced by the journal entries for those days.

THE DAY I WAS ALMOST ABDUCTED FROM A PARIS TRAIN STATION

“June 19-
Dear Diary,
Today we finally left Paris. All day it took us to find the right station, train time, etc. We arrived in Chartres and soon found the hostel there. Fortunately the warden was English so we had no trouble in translation. Our first youth hostel!”

We were running late by the time we arrived at the Gare Montparnasse that day. While Uncle Jim and Aunt Ellen stood in line for our tickets, as the group’s primary French speaker, I went looking to find out where to bring our bikes to put them on the train. I found a bank of windows with signs over them, and a long line of people at the one open window. As I stood there, trying to read the signs with my as yet untested ninth grade french, a disheveled old man whose unshaven face showed missing teeth came up to me and said something I didn’t understand, so I asked him if he knew where to bring the bikes in the best French I could muster. He said something else that I didn’t understand so I repeated my question. Exasperated, he grabbed my elbow and started to lead me away. “Good.”, I thought, he is just going to show me. At that moment, a woman who had observed the incident stepped out of line and physically separated us, cursing at him in French. He gave her a shove and grabbed my arm a little more forcefully and started to drag me off again. She separated us again and gave him a shove this time, shouting French obscenities at him, and then turned to me with a desperate look and said in a heavily accented English, “RUN! Run for your life!” and then turned to chew him out some more. I jumped back, shocked and confused and ready to retreat when cousin Chuck arrived to tell me that they had found where to go. The woman continued to gesture at me and shout at him as she returned to the line, the entire crowd stunned and silent as the old man tossed it off and grumbled away. “What did you start?!” Chuck exclaimed as we hurried to find our group. “I don’t know!”

Setting out from Chartres, we traversed the French countryside, taking many side trips to take in various historic sites made richer and more relevant by former history professor Uncle Jim’s al fresco lectures. For some of the little villages we went through, we were the first Americans to have come through since the end of WWII, only 22 years prior. Needless to say, a young family of eight adorable Americans on bikes traveling through their towns made an impression. One such place threw a small party for us in the local youth center. There was music and dancing and one awkward moment when the youth of the town proudly offered to sing their national anthem for us, the Marseillaise. They all stood and belted out a triumphant, full-voiced rendition replete with harmony! At the end they insisted that we reciprocate and sing our national anthem. Struggling to find a common key, our little band timidly attempted to comply, offering up an embarrassed stumbling version of the Star Spangled Banner, “and the rockets red glare” causing some agonized screeching and wincing. (Why can’t we have a national anthem that we can sing?)

The response was polite.

The days were mostly uneventful as they were mostly spent traveling from one place to the next, interrupted by occasional mechanical problems with the overtasked bikes. One day Chuck was experiencing some derailleur problems and had his bike leaned against someone’s fence trying to figure it out. The considerate homeowner saw his plight and came out to assist.

“Do you need any tools?” The man asked.

“I don’t parlay fransay” Chuck responded distracted with the bike.

“Yes. But do you need any tools?” he repeated in perfect English.

“I don’t parlay fransay.” Chuck repeated, not even looking up.

“Chuck! He’s speaking English!”

By the time the bike was fixed, it was getting late and we were miles from the next little town. The man turned out to be a sales rep for Citroen and he and his family graciously fed us and then drove us in custom models to the nearest hotel a number of kilometers away, which was really only a few rooms over a bistro. They stored our bikes at their place and then came back for us the next morning. A wonderful exchange of international, no… human hospitality and good will!

As the weeks passed we settled into a comfortable routine. My French made me the group liaison and I often found myself making inquiries and lodging arrangements for the group. One time, though, things went awry.

THE FRENCH PADDYWAGON RIDE

“July 6-
Today was a lovely day for Butch and me. Somehow we all got separated and everyone made it to the auberge except us. After 7 hours of waiting, we reported to the police station (AFTER DARK). Jim had already notified them so they loaded our bikes and us into a paddy wagon and took us to the auberge. Dined in the dark.”

It was raining off and on the morning we left Ruffec causing us to lose time, ducking under bridges and into cafes until the brief summer deluges passed. Cousin Monroe and I were at the head of the pack and less inclined to stop as the others were, as it was warm enough and not raining that much, so we thought we were miles ahead of everyone when we got to Angouleme. There was a standing agreement that we would all meet at the town sign when we got separated, but we thought we were so far ahead that we would be the heroes and hurry in to town, find the hostel, and have it all set up to receive them when they arrived, and then return to the sign to wait for them. We somehow missed seeing the sign altogether, but inquired about the hostel. Someone sent us down to the park by the river near the town’s edge and we went there, expecting a structure but found nothing but camping and tents. So we went back to town and the next person I asked probably misunderstood hostel for hotel and sent us struggling up to the top of the the medieval hilltop town. Finding nothing, we decided to go back to the sign to wait for everyone.

Meanwhile, everyone had come to town, gone directly to the hostel, which WAS that campground. (only recently opened, with room tents, so apparently the townspeople we asked were unaware of it.) Then, of course, they began to worry.

We passed the hostel back out to find the town sign and waited forever, and then we got a sandwich or something with my last ten franc piece at a cafe on the road by the sign and sat where we could watch for them and tried not to worry. No money and cousin Alon had our plane tickets and passports.

When it got dark we went back to town, passing the hostel again and struggling up the now vacant streets, climbing that hill again to the police station.

WHICH WAS CLOSED!

The old building was U-shaped, rather like the Louvre is shaped, with an enclosed courtyard, but the building extended past the fence and there was an open window about six feet off the ground with a light on and we could hear voices. I climbed up on a ledge and pulled myself up to the window to look in. There was a man in gendarme uniform sitting at a simple table in the middle of the room, supping soup or some such, as the serving woman left the room. I timidly spoke, “Bonjour Monsieur?” Startled at my voice, he fumbled his spoon and jumped up.

“Ma famille est perdu.”, I ventured.

“Attend! Attend!” he shouted as he rushed out of the room.

I climbed down to tell Monroe, feeling a little afraid that somehow we were in some kind of trouble, when the floodlights to the courtyard flashed on and gendarmes flooded out of the doors. It was like a prison break scene or something and we were instantly scared. I tried to explain our predicament but they didn’t seem to care and were busily chattering amongst themselves.

Suddenly a paddy wagon rolled up and they loaded us and our bikes into the back. Nobody bothered to explain to me what was happening, but their expressions were reassuring and the mood was one of excitement, like they were proud and relieved. Then we went careening down the hill through the quiet, dark and empty streets, sirens blaring, people throwing their windows open and leaning out to see what the commotion was. We swung in to the campground and had our reunion.

Then Uncle Jim disappeared to his tent to check his rage and Aunt Ellen got us food and we ate in the dark in silence. I still don’t feel like I did anything wrong, but was sorry for the trauma for everyone. It was awhile before Jim trusted us to be on our own again.

As Bastille Day approached, it became more challenging to find lodging. Once we slept in the dorm of a Catholic girls school, closed for the holidays, and another time on the floor of a community rec room.

We were in Laguepie in Southern France for Bastille Day and the town was busy with vacationers. The town is situated in the Dordogne River Valley which is host to some amazing Cro-Magnon caves featuring extensive artifacts and cave paintings which we got to enter and see. It was exciting to explore through these ancient caves, seeing up close these wonders is an indelible memory that I cherish. Many of those caves are now closed for their own protection.

Human breath alone had changed the humidity and the art was being adversely affected.

A couple of weeks later we arrived at our last hostel of the trip, a short distance from Albi where we were to sell the bikes and then take the train for the remainder of the trip along the Mediterranean coast to Rome and Florence, before returning home.

THE ROWDY GERMANS

“July 23-
Today we left Laguepie after 3 hours sleep and made it to Albi by 10:30. Fooled around ’til noon and had lunch at the auberge, Charley is sick. We all took a nap until 7:30. Then we went down and had dinner. The auberge is crammed with touring Germans.”

This entry was two days before we sold the bikes. We were winding down and tired from the long journey, but also toughened by the experience and were more familiar with France and its culture by then. Our six weeks of experience with hostels left it clear that the the Germans’ behavior was rowdy, rude and inappropriate. They were having food fights in the dining room, unapologetically including us, as I recall. My memory is vague about the place but it seems that it was in an old country manor, with probably three floors. We were on the second floor and their group was up on the third floor where the common bathrooms were.

“July 24-
Everyone was late this morning so we missed breakfast. This afternoon Monroe and I swam at the piscine municipale. This eve we all went to the Illumination at the cathedral.”

When we got back, the Germans were up in their dorm, carrying on so we all went to bed. The next morning was a big day for us as we were selling the bikes. Having spent the better part of two months on them, they seemed like old friends, and I suddenly felt strangely vulnerable without wheels.

Their boisterous behavior continued late into the night as they had an extremely loud drinking party, right over our heads! After things calmed down and they were passed out, while everyone else was sleeping, I got up to go use the bathroom. There was a broad stairway which led to the third floor landing. The first door was the Germans’ dorm and the next one past it was the bathroom.

Mercifully, the light was on in the bathroom and served as a beacon as I sleepily trudged up the stairs, when I caught a glint of reflection at my eye level at the top of the stairs. They had stacked their empty wine bottles, maybe eight or so, across the landing so we’d stumble through them in the dark and send them crashing down the stairs. Realizing their plan, I carefully stepped over them and completed my mission. Then went down and woke Monroe and told him what had happened. We both went back up and quietly stacked all the bottles against their closed door, maybe waist high, and went back down to bed.

“July 25-
Got up early and had breakfast. Then we took our bikes, cleaned ’em up, and took them to the Peugeot dealer and sold them. Sniff. Boo hoo. Nothing going this afternoon. Jim and Ellen went to get train tickets and the girls went to the cathedral. Monroe, Loren, and I lay around.”

The next morning, we went down to have breakfast before hitting the road on our bikes for the last time. As we were finishing up we heard a huge “CRASH” from upstairs. “What was THAT!?” someone exclaimed. Monroe and I refused to make eye contact and stifled our amusement, knowing full well what it was. Shortly a couple of them came down the stairs with dustpans full of glass, glaring over at us accusingly. There WAS one other couple staying there, but they KNEW it was us. Of course nobody else in our group knew so their innocent expressions were real. We left before they had finished cleaning up so vengeance was averted.

THE “LUCKY” ASTHMA ATTACK

“July 26-
5:00. Everyone to the train station. Got to Toulouse. Blew the whole day and met back at the station. Huge city. Very nice. At 11:04 we left in a coachette for Rome. Our bags were sent on to Vintimille, a border city of France. From there on to Rome. Our coachette seems very small with the beds down. Fell asleep to the sound of the wheels.”

“July 27-
Rotten night. Roll, rumble, squeal, crunch. Got up at 5:00 in Marseilles. Saw the Mediterranean before anyone else. Got sick. Medicine in my bag. In Vintimille I put up a fuss, got my baggage and medicine. Fortunately too because the baggage would have stayed there! At 10:00 we pulled in to Rome. Happy Day. Checked in to Hotel Marconi.”

My asthma was so bad during the whole trip and I relied on my old fashioned inhaler with the rubber squeeze bulb a lot. I think this was the trip where some of us got on the wrong train car in Toulouse and it stopped in the night to re-couple with another train that was heading south to Spain. We had to change cars in a hurry. At any rate, the bags were somehow tagged to stop at the border of France and Italy, unbeknownst (don’t get to use that word much) to us.

The train ride was miserable for me all night, not being able to breathe, and I discovered that my medicine was in my bag in the baggage car. When we stopped at the border, I decided I HAD to walk back to find the baggage car with my bag. But we found the bags sitting on a cart on the landing, already unloaded to stay. Jim got in an argument with some guy about it while I struggled to breathe. Jim was arguing that I needed my medicine from my bag and the guy was insisting that the bags were to stay there and showed him the wrongly marked tags. At one point Jim gestured grandly to me and shouted, “HE’S DYING!” at which point, I collapsed onto the cart, wheezing to emphasize his point. (But he wasn’t far wrong.)

“Bags stay here.”

“Like hell they do.” He retorted and started grabbing them up. “C’mon Dave!” he shouted and I grabbed the remaining bags, gasping for breath as we hurried to the soon-departing train. Nobody followed us and we were underway soon. I gratefully dug out my asthma medicine, opened my lungs, and vowed never to pack it away again.

The trip wound down from there with a brief visit to Rome and Florence, taking the train through Switzerland back to Paris and then home.

The impact that this trip had on me is immeasurable. I went from being a shy, insecure nerd to a more confident, self-actuated person with a global perspective. I returned to start high school with the confidence to throw myself into theater, eventually earning a degree in theater which ultimately opened employment doors, which enabled my return to France twenty years later!

Thanks Uncle Jim and Aunt Ellen!

In the early eighties I did a two year stint with a small ad agency which did mostly real estate accounts. Our boss, Hedy, was a remarkable woman originally from Switzerland who decided that we should diversify our accounts. Using his trademark finesse, our primary account executive, Paul, managed to land a major account with the Southern California Maserati importers. Part of the deal involved product placement in major media, such as movies and television.

Somehow Paul arranged for Sylvester Stallone to have a Quattroporte, their luxury four door sedan, (MSRP appx. $65 K, eighties dollars) at his personal disposal, which was also used as Rocky’s car in Rocky 3. (It seemed odd, later, since the Italian Stallion might be better represented by Ferrari. But, no matter, it got exposure.) Stallone ended up purchasing one.

The very sporty Merak, a classic red sports model. (MSRP appx. $40K, eighties dollars) also appeared in Falcon Crest on CBS.

Paul was close to closing a deal for the Merak to replace the Ferrari on Magnum P.I. but to keep things as they were, Ferrari offered Don Belisario three free cars and said the cast could buy at cost. Maserati couldn’t match the deal.
One of the gigs for the Quattroporte was on Bob Newhart’s TV Special, and another for an episode of Remington Steele was being shot at some polo fields near the ocean in Malibu, for which I was selected to deliver the car. This was my first opportunity to drive one and, knowing how shooting schedules work, I came prepared.

Arriving for an early shoot, two of us waited in the posh, leather upholstered lounge, reclined in splendor, listening to the powerful, encompassing custom sound system, snacking on fruit, cheese, and crackers, and sipping imported wine while we watched the polo ponies thunder by. It was a gray day with occasional sprinkles blowing in off the Pacific which kept holding up the shoot until finally they gave up and never even used the car. Just in time for us to face the rush hour traffic from the west side. But the day was passed ever so pleasantly and it makes for a good memory. A classy, relaxing afternoon.

And I was on the clock!

While I had gotten the experience of driving the Quattroporte, I had never gotten the opportunity to drive the head-turning Merak. Others had always gotten the privilege, until one fateful day when the others weren’t available and it was finally my chance. It was brand new and had to be driven back to the dealer, many LA miles away, after a local shoot. Hedy followed me in her car to conclude the deal and give me a ride back.

Everything started out fine and I was on my very best driving behavior, terrified at the responsibility, especially with the boss on my tail. But I was also relishing the experience! It was low slung and rumbled with power, demanding awe and respect from lesser conveyances.

Driving down Rosemead Blvd. headed for the I-10 freeway, we came to a stoplight and I was the first car at the crosswalk. When the light turned green, I depressed the clutch and put into first gear and eased it out. When it accelerated to shifting speed, I clutched and put it in second gear. That’s when the accelerator pedal stuck to the floor and it just kept going faster! I panicked and started kicking the pedal, then hit the clutch which just made it rev hard.

Terror ensued!

Meanwhile, when the car bolted, Hedy thought I was just taking the opportunity to open her up and thought little of it, picking up her pace to keep up with me. One of her many talents was she was an experienced race car driver.

Somehow I got it out of gear and got the accelerator pedal unstuck by the time we got to the next light which already had stopped cars. My heart was pounding as I looked in my rear view mirror. Hedy was right behind me and her face remained impassive, so I figured the episode wasn’t obvious.

While I wondered what had happened and whether I should do something, the light changed. I waited for the car ahead of me to get well into the intersection before I eased it into first. She shot off again, the pedal stuck to the floor, only now in first, barreling toward a slower car! I pulled it out of gear, jerked up on pedal with my toe, and it just fell back to the floor, useless, engine still racing with a boastful roar. I yanked it into the K-Mart parking lot and coasted to a stop in a space near the street, clicked off the ignition, and climbed out to face Hedy.

She was completely understanding, gratefully, and we set to solving the dilemma. It was clear that we weren’t going to make it to the dealer before they closed, so Hedy found a phone (pre cell phone days) and called the dealer and then arranged for a tow to bring it back to her place on the hill in Arcadia until better transport arrangements could be made.

Unfortunately a flat bed tow truck wasn’t available, just one that lifted the front, rolling the towed car on its back wheels. But the Maserati had a fiberglass body and a brand-new paint job, and it was tiny, light, and very low slung. At first the guy was afraid to attempt it, but we COULDN’T just leave it in the K-Mart parking lot overnight! No way! So he was SO careful, putting a blanket for protection, and raising it a little and running back, climbing under to see to make sure nothing was dragging. I rode with him as we followed Hedy back to her place. She cleverly chose the route to avoid traffic and dips and we slowly wound our way up into the tony foothills of Arcadia to her house, the tow guy taking great pains not to bounce the delicate carriage.

She brought us the back way so we would approach her house from the uphill side, on the opposite side of the street. Her house had a shallow circular driveway serving the entrance, but at the downhill side of the house, the driveway to the garage was a straight shot up a steep hill. Too steep for the tow truck to deliver the car to the safety of the garage. Her plan was to coast the car down the hill, swing into the circle, then a hard left into the garage.

The guy was dubious but carefully detached the precious car, proud to have delivered it unscathed. Hedy confidently climbed into the drivers seat, clicked on the seat belt, and released the handbrake. (In my mind, I could see her snapping on the chinstrap to her imaginary crash helmet.) Then she discovered that the steering wheel was locked and turned on the key to the ignition to free it. But the car just sat there.

Funny, seemed steep enough.

So we two gave her a good, strong push downhill.

That’s when we discovered that it didn’t roll freely because it also had been in first gear, and we actually push-started her, downhill, in first, with the accelerator still stuck on full!

She lurched down the hill, but skillfully yanked it out of gear and turned off the engine, coasting deftly into the driveway and whipping around the corner into the garage. The guy and I just stood there with our mouths open. We walked down the hill toward her house, and, as I began to boast that she had been a race car driver, we saw her rush to the corner of the garage and fiddle with something and then run back.

Then we saw a gushing river of water come roaring down the driveway and splashing down the street.

Rushing to the scene, we found the treasured car impaled on the pool pump, water spraying everywhere, and the front end caved in!

The back of the garage was built open to the backyard and the retaining wall of the hillside swimming pool. When Hedy turned off the engine, it also turned off the brakes and she had plowed into the pump full force, causing the deluge and totaling the car. Luckily the pump was there, or it might have been the retaining wall and the whole pool crashing down on her. The seat belt habit served her well and she was unscathed, just shaken.

I AM SO GLAD SHE OFFERED TO DRIVE IT INTO THE GARAGE HERSELF!

So was the tow guy, though he was bummed, after all his careful work, to see it destroyed so comically.

I moved on from the job sometime after that for unrelated reasons so I never did hear what the outcome was. But I imagine it had to be heavily insured to be lent out as it was, and it may have been repairable. I’m still walking free, though, sooo……..

Never got to drive another one again, though, but that’s OK.
The first time was exciting enough, thank you.

Andy

“Well, howdy there, pahdnuh.” he greeted me as I made my way down the steps into the waist-deep water.

“Hi!” I replied, “Ahhh…this is more like it.” I sighed as I sank down onto the submerged concrete bench. “It’s chilly tonight.”

“Well, boy, I tell ya, I sure am glad fer these here waters. It sure takes the winter stiffness out of the old bones.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I replied.

The sound of water splashing onto the rocks in the overflow basin echoed loudly off the concrete walls as we sat naked, chest-deep in the healing, natural hot spring. Across the room from the concrete bench we shared were hand rails made of steel pipe mounted waist high, and a small transom window over the overflow basin which admitted some light and fresh, desert air.

“My name is Dave.” I offered my dripping hand. It seems polite to introduce yourself when you sit down naked next to another naked total stranger.

“Well, my name’s Andy! Good to know ya!” He responded with a broad grin, enthusiastically, grabbing my hand with a gnarled, sturdy hand, and shaking it properly. Sparkling, alert blue eyes shone from his weathered face, belying his age.

“Are you staying here for the winter?” I asked. This time of year the tiny, remote settlement was teeming with snowbirds, grateful for the county maintained campground and hot springs.

“Well, no, I live here now. For now anyway.” He got a far away look in his eyes and fell silent for a moment. “You?”, he returned.

“No, I live over in Vegas. I’m just heading home after a job in LA. I like to stop in here on the way back and recuperate.”

Again we just sat and listened to the splashing water, lost in our own thoughts.

After awhile, I stood up to cool off a little and crossed to the basin to look in. The outflow for the springs was so generous that the water from the two soaking pools was constantly cycling through, keeping it fresh, and splashing into the runoff basin which is then piped to a lovely, marshy pond across the road which capably supports local wildlife.

Turning to face him, I held onto the railing and sank down to my chin, doing subtle pull-ups in the buoyant water, stretching out the stiffness.

Andy sat quietly soaking, eyes closed, lost in meditation. He looked to be in his eighties and his pale body bore testament to a lifetime of use and abuse. A broken cheek bone and flattened nose showed his face had been re-arranged in the past, possibly more than once. A long scar extended from just above the pubic bone to his neck, with a particularly ugly knot of tender purple scar tissue over his heart from apparent heart surgery. He was adorned with several time-blurred purplish tattoos, now reduced to the appearance of bruises. His right forearm featured the most discernible one, a sketch of a topless beauty in a grass skirt, probably a remnant from some drunken night during WWII.

After awhile, Andy stood up to stretch and cool off a bit. He was visibly hobbling and winced occasionally, though he never complained.

“Boy, I tell ya, this cold weather sure does get me ta hurtin’. Makes it hard to sleep. Glad the pool is open all the time.”

“You OK? Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, just gettin’ old I guess. All the old injuries come back all achy. Well, I’ll be glad as soon as I get ta feelin’ better.” he replied.

“You know, I’m a massage therapist and Reiki Master. I even went to school for it, about five years ago. Maybe I can help you.” I offered. “For free!” I added quickly, “I just hate to see people hurting, you know.”

Andy brightened when I mentioned my skills and excitedly intoned, “Me, too! Well, I didn’t go to school for it, but I do massage, and spinal adjustments, and Chi Gong. Do you know what that is?” He asked, suddenly charged with enthusiasm for exchange and finding a fellow hands-on therapist.

“Isn’t that a Chinese martial Art.”

“Yeah, but it’s really about working with the body’s energies. Have you ever heard of ‘Chi’?”, he asked.

“Yes!” I responded, brightening, “That’s the “Ki” in Reiki. Only Reiki is a Japanese system for healing, working with chakras and meridians, like acupuncture, only with energy. It’s like the “laying on of hands” in the Bible.” I added, gushing with the opportunity to share.

Both of us paused, looking at each other with fresh eyes, pondering the connection, the “namaste”.

Our newfound commonality opened the floodgates and we began sharing and comparing notes from our respective journeys down the healer path.

“My wife Vera and I planned to move here awhile back, for retirement. It’s just too cold back in Iowa in the winter. We was a-gonna do healer work together here. Anyways, before we could settle, she got sick and passed.” he finished with a tightness in his throat and paused to to wipe water from his shaved head and face, though I wasn’t sure all the water on his face was from the pool. After a moment he continued, “I buried her ashes in that little cemetery up in the Heights.” he concluded.

I nodded in acknowledgement, both of the cemetery and his pain.

“Well, sir, I jus’ decided I was a gonna keep on a-doin’ what we was gonna do. So I decided to stay.” He said with forced optimism, a deep-seated trait, I was to discover. “So, I’m staying in a little trailer over here until I figure it out. It belongs to some friends but I got electricity and a phone, so I’m a-doin’ OK.” he declared.

I was still recovering from a decade of grief and loss myself, and felt for the lonesome, old guy, bravely trying to re-invent himself in the middle of nowhere, choosing optimism rather than to languish in self-pity. Admirable!

After sharing more about our lives, we exchanged phone numbers and promised to stay in touch, and I headed back to my home in Las Vegas.

Andy and I became good friends after that, though the 70 miles between us allowed only occasional visits. The next couple of years brought radical change to my life and, after selling the house, I found myself working in San Francisco on a temporary job for a year. The proceeds of the house sale had gone to the purchase of land in Northern New Mexico for my retirement project, an off-grid homestead. Unfortunately the the job in SF ended just as winter began and, since there was nothing to live in there yet, winter quarters were necessary.

By this time, Andy had found a little two room shack in The Heights to rent and had taken in Cora, another resident whose husband had died, and she had grown too blind and deaf to live alone anymore. She had been staying in an old converted school bus near the springs, but now shared “Andy’s Shack”, as he called it on the outgoing message of his answering machine, so the bus sat unused at the side of the house. I offered to rent it from her for the winter to which she happily agreed, glad for the extra income.

It was quite comfortable with a seating area in the front, a little kitchenette in the middle, and a bedroom/closet in the back. The little toilet was unusable as the tank had rusted out. It already had a power cord strung out to it and so we ran a phone extension cord out to it so I could go online with a dial-up service. (This was at the turn of the century and there was no cell service in this remote region near Death Valley yet.)

Andy had become a popular fixture in the little community by then and his reputation as a healer and all-around nice guy was well established. There were no businesses so the springs were the local social center. County maintained (then, anyway) they offered two soaking pools, hot showers and flush toilets. Separate men’s and women’s bath houses were monitored and kept clean by local volunteers and were popular day and night as the literal local watering hole. Though non-potable, the flow was steady and abundant.

The desert can be pretty cold at night in the winter. Sometimes in the evenings, if there wasn’t any wind, Andy would build a little campfire in a stone ring out away from the house, and we would sit by it and stare into the flames, swapping stories under a vast sky of stars. You could see the lights of Las Vegas 70 miles away, but here near Death Valley the darkness was complete. Cora wasn’t much of an outdoors person, preferring to stay in the well lit house and do her crocheting, so it was usually just Andy and me.

“I’m sorry. I forget. Where did you say you moved here from?” I asked him one evening.

“Vera and I moved here from Iowa awhile back. Well, I’ve lived all over, but started in Iowa. My grandfather brought my grandmother from back east and they was a travelin’ west when they got to Utah, and they was lookin’ to settle down. ‘Course, it was all Mormon then, and so then he told my grandmother that the Mormons expected him to take another wife or two and asked her how she felt about that.” he chuckled, “Well, she didn’t much like it at all, and so they packed up and moved right back east to Iowa!” he finished, both of us laughing.

“I was born in Michigan but my folks moved me to LA when I was six. I’m glad now that I didn’t have to grow up with all those winters. The desert suits me better. You weren’t always in Iowa? You said you lived all over?”

“I used to ride the rails back in the thirties. You know it was the depression and everybody was broke, but I got to see lots of places for free.”

“Wow! That’s so cool. But wasn’t it scary? How did you know where the trains were going?” I asked, intrigued at the old time notion of riding the rails like the proverbial hobo.

“Yeah, sometimes it was scary. I just went wherever the train was a-goin’. Sometimes there was others ridin’ in the same car and they wasn’t always so nice. You always had to watch your back. I used to be a real scrapper, though. I could fight ‘em off if I had ta.” he concluded with bravado. His scars and facial deviations supported his claim.

“I liked the refrigerator cars the best. It was cooler. Boxcars are hot and stuffy. And there was always food and water.” He paused to stir the fire and reflect.

“One time they caught me though and they put me off the train in the middle of nowhere. I had to walk for a day just to get to a town, and then had to try to hitch a ride to get home.” he said with a chuckle.

“Is that how you got those scars?”, I asked, pointing to his face, half joking.

“No. That came when I was in the Air Force in WWII.” He said with a scowl, reminded of the incident. “I didn’t like my C. O. A real sonofabitch!”, he spat, “Pardon my French. He used to push me around, actin’ like he owned me or somethin’. Used to get right in my face and shout orders, and give me the worst jobs, and then always complained that I done it wrong. I’d-a done anything if he’d a-asked me but I wasn’t a-gonna do it if he just ordered me around! Well, one day I’d had enough and I told him… I told that guy that I wasn’t a-gonna do it! And HE said you BETTER do it if you know what’s good for you! So I decked him, hard. Well, the next thing I knowed, the MPs were hittin’ me and kickin’ me!” he growled, indicating his broken cheekbone and the scar across his eye.

“I spent some time in the stockade and then got a court martial and a dishonorable discharge, so I couldn’t get no vets benefits.”, he concluded with a scowl. But always the deliberate optimist, he added, “Well, that don’ta matter to me none. I didn’t want to be in the Air Force nohow anyhow. A lotta guys never come home from the war at all. Maybe it was the old guy upstairs just lookin’ out fer me.”

“What did you do after that?”

“Well, I came home and got a job. I used to drive a delivery truck for a long time, until I was plumb wore out. Boy, I tell ya.”

And so the evening went, the two of us swapping stories and watching the sparks rise to join the timeless stars.

Cora     

“Daddy was a Volner and Mama was a Smart.” Cora began, spoken in a sing-song manner that suggested that it was the family saying, or joke, and that she had told the story many times over the years.

I had just gotten my first computer and was beginning to put down some of my stories, pounding away on my laptop out in the old converted school bus here in the quiet middle of nowhere. Upon learning of my writing, she asked if maybe I could write down some of her stories. She had given a 200 page handwritten stack of notes to her niece to assemble into her biography, but feared that she had not done anything with it and maybe wouldn’t. I gladly assented and one evening we sat down at the kitchen table in the little shack to begin. She made us tall glasses of iced tea made from precious bottled water brought from town 40 miles away, in the next state, and I turned on my little tape recorder so I could give her my full attention.

“Mama and daddy got married in 1900, when she was only sixteen and daddy was thirty-two. They had eleven children.”, and she proceeded to name every one with their birth and death dates. Alfred, Oma Heart, Emma Louise, Harvey Lon and Hervey Don, (the twins “borned” ten minutes apart) Jim, then Cora, the seventh, then more twins, Opal and Orval, (born when Cora was six) Faye, and Annabelle.

“I was named for my Aunt Cora Woods. There was Aunt Cora and Uncle Charlie Woods and Uncle Henry and Aunt Hattie McCall. They was our closest relatives.”

“Grandpa Smart had a still and everybody knowed about it. He used to drink a lot and sometimes, secretly, Mama liked to join him. Grandpa didn’t trust daddy because he didn’t drink!”, she confided with a snicker.

“I started havin’ to cook breakfast for daddy when I was seven, ‘cuz mama was real sick, then Mama died when I was fourteen and so I had to mother the four young ’uns. Then two years later I walked twenty miles in the hot summer sun with the family to go see Grandma Smart before she died from her cancer. I remember I got twenty yards of printed muslin and made new dresses for all of us.”

“Daddy never went to school and didn’t never learn to read until after Mama passed away… he liked to read the Bible and didn’t have nobody to read to him.
Sometimes he’d spell out words and ask me to pronounce them. I’d lay down, I was so tired, and I’d fall asleep sometimes….I was just a little bitty thing. I didn’t weigh more’n 65 pounds. It’s hard to know how to say ’em when he’d just spell them to me. It’s easier if you can look at the words. I didn’t get to go to school, anyway, so there are a lot of words I don’t know, anyway.”

And so the evening went as she told me the details of her life, her various jobs, her husbands, her children, until it grew late and we called it a night.

A few days later, Cora came out to the bus, carefully picking her way across the uneven ground, proudly carrying an oval tray made from a cross section of a tree, bark intact, upon which was a tottering scene of only partially glued down figures of a Conestoga wagon with assorted plastic horses and cows and buckets that someone had created for her to commemorate her trip in a covered wagon when she was a little girl. Curiously, as she examines her memories, she slips into the phrasing and cadence of a little girl giving a recitation. Clearly, she’s told the story many times before.
(I recorded the next part so it accurately expresses her dialect)

“Daddy got the wagon in Arkansas for only $35. We took that thing through Nebraska and on the Oregon Trail. I remember it so well,…” she began with a girlish glee tickling her memory, “ …it had a white cloth cover and Daddy had a team of mules,.. no, wait the mules came later. He had a team of those big horses then and he loaded us all up in it and we headed out. I was four then. That was in 1920. There wasn’t much work then, you know, and Daddy was travelin’ around lookin’ for work on the farms. That was about the only thing he knew how to do. There was seven of us kids then: Alfred was the oldest, and then there was Oma, and Ema and the twins, Harvey and Hervey and then Jim and me. Then later on there was the other twins, Opal and Orville. And then there was Fay and then Annabelle.”

“Hervey and Harvey was sleepin’ under the wagon one time and in the night Hervey woke up and could hear a bear gruntin’ and a snufflin’ and it was pitch dark so he couldn’t see nuthin’. Pretty soon he could feel that old bear breathin’ on his face and he just lay there and played dead until it went away.”

“Another time I was sleepin’ in the back of the wagon and I was dreamin’ and rolled out and landed in the mud.”

“Well we got as far as Nebraska and he had hisself a accident. We was goin’ along and we come to a deep canyon. It was so deep that when I saw a train down in there I thought it was a little bitty toy train, that’s how deep it was! Well, Daddy was tryin’ to help the horses around this curve on the edge of the canyon and the one horse reared up and throwed Daddy down and the wagon run over him. He was hurt real bad. His back was broke and there was a lot of blood.”
“These two men came by in their car, their Model A, I think, or T? Whichever one was the oldest… there wasn’t many cars in those days. Their names were Barney and Hayes. They took him to town to a house in town. They was with the railroad and they was real nice to us and told us we could stay as long as we needed to until Daddy was better and don’t worry about the bills right now.
“But then later the doctor came out and looked at him and said that he had blood poisoning in his back where he had a deep cut, just a skin’s thickness from his intestines, and there was nothing they could do, that he was gonna die by the next day.”
“After the doctor left, Daddy wanted some water so my sister Oma and I went out to the spring to get it. Then Oma got to thinking, …and she knew that dogs, when they got an infection, would roll around in the mud and so she went to the riverbank and dug out some clay from behind the spring and then went home and made a poultice and put it on his back and when it would get hot, she would change it, and she did that all night. She and Mama prayed all night and what do you know if Daddy didn’t live. When the doctors asked what they did, Mama and Oma never told.”

“Daddy got a job there working for the railroad later for twenty-five cents an hour.”

I stayed with Andy and Cora until May and then went back to New Mexico to continue with my project. I only saw them once more after that during a brief visit. Andy had contracted brain cancer and, though alert and mobile, was in pain.

“You take care now. I’ll try to come back for another visit soon. I said as I left “Andy’s shack” for the last time.

“Well, I’ll be glad as soon as I get ta feelin’ better.” was his usual reply, waving. “‘Bye now.”

I could see by his expression that we both knew that this would be our last time together.

He succumbed to his cancer shortly after that. I suspect that his ashes are buried next to Vera up in the Heights. Cora couldn’t afford to stay in the shack with only one Social Security check and had to move back to the county park in her school bus. Her dead husband’s brother was recently widowed and moved in with her to take care of her, until he died too, and she was moved up north to a nursing facility. I doubt that she is still alive, but if she was, she’d be 101 today.

All I have left of her is a crocheted afghan she made for me, and her story.

I have pages of details of her life that I don’t know what to do with now, just as I have pages of notes from my own life, telling the story of one who lived and worked and loved and died, to be forgotten as blowing dust.

Here is an excerpt of the notes I made 15 years ago from the tape (now lost) referencing her stories, the details of which I have now sadly forgotten. All of them represent the life of one little girl born in 1916, who traveled to Arkansas in a covered wagon to pick cotton. A little girl who had a horse named Old Pet and a milk cow named Daisy, who grew up and had (and lost) children of her own. A little girl who wanted her story to be told before it died with her.

Covered Wagon trip to Kansas in 1920
Bluing down the well/feeding the cat lye
Cora’s near abduction in Kansas when she was four
Special relationship with Jim
Hervey vs. Harvey – Different twins
Keeping Pigeons – Cora’s trade, and feeding them salt.

Describe The log cabin they started in.
Describe the area incl. Daddy’s 160 acres and Grandma & Grandpa Volner’s adjacent 120 acres
The house burned down in 1929.
Alfred’s saddle pony
The milk cow, Old Daisy
Their work horse, Old Pet
The dogs, Old Ring and Old Rover, the red hunting dog
The cow ate the letter

The time the lady tried to buy one of the younger twins, O & O. Her mother said, “I wouldn’t give a cent for another one, but there isn’t enough money to buy one of them that I have”
Fixing breakfast for Daddy when she was 7, Mama was sick
The winter of the turnips, mom’s last
Mother died leaving Cora at 14 to mother Faye, Anna Orval and Opal
Special relationship with Oma

Cutting cordwood for cash; Alfred, Oma, Harvey and Hervey and Jim and Daddy, after he was better
Picking cotton in Arkansas
Harvey’s fight with the Bully
Hervey died in 1934 at 23 of a burst appendix, leaving a 6 mo. old baby.
The big white house in Marysville, Kansas
Mrs. Ferguson, the schoolteacher

Our stories are our legacy, our markers that show we were here. These stories reveal our connection and our commonality as people making our way through a harsh world, doing the best we can with what we are dealt.

So many lives…so many stories to tell.

What’s yours?

“We could call it Aunt Martha, Inc.”, John suggested.

“Great idea!” I agreed.

It was the seventies and I was enjoying the company of a quirky assortment of creative, imaginative people. One of the things we excelled at was our parties. Not satisfied to merely send out basic invitations to boring mixers, we threw theatrical extravaganzas.

It wasn’t just a Christmas party, it was an authentic Medieval winter fest. The invitations weren’t store-bought packs of eight or ten that came with matching little envelopes, but were weathered pages in Olde English script torn from an ancient history book telling the tale of the event. Ugly sweaters and Christmas cookies were supplanted by authentic period costumes, and turkey legs were flung.

It wasn’t just a Halloween party where an eyepatch and a fake plastic hook passed for a pirate, or a witch costume was a pointy hat and a hooked nose, and where everyone bobbed for apples. It was a treaty signing ceremony of the rebel alliance to be held on a distant, neutral planet, and everyone came dressed as delegates of their own planet, complete with backstory and native dishes. Instead of crepe paper streamers, there was a rear projection drop screen showing archival footage of the interstellar battles precipitating the treaty, before the entire “house” took off in a thunderous roar amid flashing lights to the rendezvous planet for the treaty signing. Guests were treated to a viewport of space and a special experience of the hull being rendered translucent, affording a floating view of the cosmos. After the formal signing ceremony and brief speeches, everyone withdrew to a reception in the cloud room. Fog crept across the floor and under the table at the end of the room which featured exotic dishes from across the galaxy, including green meat, black eggs, strangely colored gelatinous side dishes, and bizarre fruits, with glowing drinks dispensed from flexible spigots. The whole spectacle was enlivened by John Williams’ “Cantina” music.

Then there were the Gorn parties in the dark that involved finding and assembling hidden phaser components while being pursued by the Gorn on two decks connected by a transporter pad.

Given the complexity of our approach to parties and the cleverness of our friends, throwing a surprise party was a challenge. My friend John and I masterminded a few that were so successful that we considered starting a party service for the quirky rich and famous.

Aunt Martha, Inc

The name Aunt Martha, Inc. was inspired by one of our more elaborate surprise parties which involved weeks of advance preparation and an elaborate cover story to lure the unsuspecting birthday girl to an unlikely party location.

High school bonds seem fast and forever, but then after graduation, everyone scatters off to their various, sometimes remote, jobs and colleges and the opportunities for reunions become fewer and fewer. Betsie and Patti are an example. Activities such as theater had them together almost daily, but then Betsie went east to Cal State Fullerton, and Patti went west to U C Santa Barbara, placing them more than a hundred miles away from each other. Needless to say, they didn’t see much of each other after that. Though some of us went to school closer to home, our tight group was scattered and get-togethers were increasingly rare.

Betsie had a birthday coming up and we decided to throw a surprise party for her. But how to lure her home from Fullerton without arousing suspicion?

We had heard that Betsie had a new boyfriend, Jim, from college whom we had never met, and somehow someone had his number. (Maybe it was Patti?) We called him and set up an elaborate scenario.

I had someone write a letter in old lady scrawl to Jim, purportedly from his Aunt Martha who lived out of state, telling him of her anticipated arrival for a visit in a few weeks by train at Union Station in downtown LA, and would he please pick her up. Then we sent the letter to an out-of-state friend to re-mail to him so it would have an out-of-state postmark. (Success is in the details. We’re nothing if not thorough.) Then Jim showed Betsie the letter and asked if she would go with him to pick her up, to which she happily assented. Weeks later, they dutifully made the long drive to the train station to pick up Aunt Martha.

Now here’s the thing. There WAS no Aunt Martha. We made her up.

Then Patti secretly came in from Santa Barbara and on the “arrival” day, I went over to her house to transform her into Aunt Martha.

“I remember you coming to my house to do the make-up job.” Patti recalls, “I had dressed in what I thought at the time was an “old lady” outfit, a knit suit borrowed from my mom.  (Poor Mom, who was at that time still quite young and stylish, but old in our eyes!)”

John, Patti, Gail and I then all drove down to the train station. Union Station is a grand old building with spacious waiting rooms furnished with rows of deep, padded chairs with heavy wooden arms. The three of us all had newspapers with obvious eyeholes cut out of them (for fun) and sank down, obscured in the row of seats. The birthday cake with lit candles occupied one of the seats with its own newspaper propped up, sans eyeholes. (We waited for them to pass by before hastily lighting them).

There was one factor that made the whole set-up a challenge. None of us had met Jim yet, nor did he have any clue what Patti would look like.

It all hinged on Betsie.

“At the station, I spent my time hiding behind a post as Jim and Betsie strolled by, waiting for my train to ‘arrive’. When I emerged and met them and we stood conversing, though I know it was really only a minute before I was recognized, it seemed an eternity!”, Patti remembers, “The weirdest part of all was to be talking face to face with my best friend and have her treat me as a total stranger, acting as she would when just getting to know someone.”

She walked up to whatever guy was walking with Betsie and hugged him.

“Jimmy! Good to see you!”

“Aunt Martha!” He replied to this total stranger.

Then they both paused and looked at Betsie to see if there was any recognition.

Nothing.

“This is Betsie.” he introduced.

“Nice to meet you, dear.” Aunt Martha said.

“Nice to meet you, too.” Betsie replied, squinting a little as she had forgotten her glasses.

There was a slight awkward pause as the two looked at her to see if she had caught on yet.

Nothing.

“Here, let me get your suitcase.” Jim offered

“Thank you dear.”

“How was your trip?

“Fine, Just fine.”

Nothing.

“Um, so how is your mom?” Patti improvised.

“Fine. Fine. How have you been?” he replied awkwardly, stalling.

Again, the two stopped to look at Betsie.

Still nothing.

“Sooo…um.”

“PATTI?!” Betsie suddenly shrieked in recognition!

“She told me afterwards that even then she wasn’t certain and had a fleeting instant of panic that she was screaming another name at Jim’s “Aunt Martha”, Patti said, “But then came relief and laughter, and those watching behind the newspapers came out.”

Then we three stood up, discarded our newspapers, and brought out the cake, singing “Happy Birthday”.

“I then recall being in the women’s bathroom trying to wash off all that make up and latex wrinkles, and strangers who saw the reveal moment coming up to me to say how funny they thought it was.” Patti remembers.

Later Betsie told me, “I thought there was something strange, but all I could think is,’Gee, this woman wears a lot of makeup.’” My makeup experience was theatrical, normally seen from far away in harsh light. I guess I was a little heavy handed. Still worked for a second, though.

Afterwards we went for hot dogs at world famous Tommy’s in LA off of Rampart. The little place is a local landmark and is open 24/7. It is built open. They couldn’t close if they wanted to. Then, fortified, we went to The Gypsy Camp, a popular folk dance establishment, to celebrate the evening.

My Cousin’s Restaurant

It was Gail’s birthday and the cover story was that John had a cousin who was famous and had a fancy restaurant somewhere far from home. He wanted to surprise them so Gail and the other couple going had to wear blindfolds and promise not to peek. Once in the car, however, the couple removed their blindfolds, leaving the Gail the only one wearing one. Then they drove around and around to make it seem like the place was a long way off.

Meanwhile, a short distance away at her best friend’s house, everyone was gathering for the surprise. John and I had taken a research trip to a nice restaurant to observe just what a blindfolded person might experience. Armed with that knowledge, we proceeded to transform someones nice little house in a quiet neighborhood into a fancy restaurant for the comically blindfolded.

First we blasted the AC so entering would be a noticeable change. Then we rummaged around in the fridge and found some hamburger and onions, which we sautéed to add the intrigue of mysterious, cooking food. Dishes, flatware, and glasses were passed around to the twenty or so guests and we had a rehearsal to discover just the right amount of scraping and clinking you would hear in a large, upholstered restaurant. People spoke in hushed tones and subtly scraped forks on their plates, clinking glasses occasionally. It was an interesting exercise as everyone closed their eyes and imagined their roles, experimenting with sounds and how they worked with everyone else’s. The tendency was to be too loud and distinct, more like a diner, but eventually they got it. Quiet music was piped in to complete the effect.

Outside, we had volunteers man several cars to drive up and down the quiet street to give the impression of a business neighborhood and when they pulled in to the driveway, one pulled in behind their car and stood idling as the “valet” opened the ladies doors and helped them out.
Then they went up the walk and entered the house, the “patrons” from the car that pulled in behind them walking in behind them. The woman made audible whispered comments to her date that the blindfolded kids must be part of some fraternity initiation or something, lending credence to the ruse. People quietly scraped and clinked while they waited for the host to show them to their table. At some point, John instructed them (her) to remove their (her) blindfold(s).

The look on Gail’s face shifted from blinking at the light and trying to focus her eyes, to shock as several flashbulbs went off in the large crowd of smiling, familiar faces in a familiar living room, to greater shock and disorientation as her eyes didn’t match her mental picture, all punctuated with a mighty, “SURPRISE!”.

U-Haul

John was going to be a hard one, being a mastermind for so many surprise parties, he would spot a set up a mile away. So rather than leave the day blank, his girlfriend, Suzanne, set up a date for the day, with the intention of scuttling it at the right moment to re-direct the day.

“We went to Japanese Village and Deer Park in Buena Park. We were playing Pachinko when I had my “asthma attack”. John was terribly disappointed but took me home like a trouper. (I had, of course, been ducking into the ladies room to take puffs of my inhaler as needed.) We went home, I “found” my inhaler, and told him I felt well enough to go to dinner at the Shrimp Boat on Rosemead Blvd. for our planned birthday dinner.”

Meanwhile, I had rented a large U-Haul moving van and we decorated inside the back with streamers and balloons and a sign. Then we met all of the party guests at Temple City park, not far from the Shrimp Boat, so their cars wouldn’t be parked at Suzanne’s, and so the drive would be short.

We loaded everyone into the back, and headed to the restaurant. On the way, I left the dome lights on in the windowless back of the van, partly so one of the guests, a deaf man, could see to communicate. Leaving the light on in the back also left the dome light on in the cab. Everyone was chattering in the back when we came to a red light. Naturally, a police car pulled up next to us at that moment, waiting at the light. I suspect there is some kind of rule about having the cab light on and definitely about hauling passengers like cattle in the back of a moving van so I panicked and flashed the dome lights and then off, hoping that everyone would get the signal and be still. I kept my eyes forward so I don’t know if the cop heard the deaf guy say in a loud voice, “Hey! What happened to the lights?! I can’t see! What? WHAT?” I was mortified, but the light changed and the cops drove on. We parked in a way that blocked John’s car and then waited. And waited.

“John and I had a lovely dinner. When we came out, the U-Haul was parked next to John’s car. He saw somebody sneaking around the truck and he immediately went into “don’t mess with me” mode, told me to stay back, and went to investigate, tough guy that he was…IS!”

It was me, watching for them to come back. When he approached the van, annoyed that it was blocking him in and instantly suspicious, I signaled the party in the back and the doors flew open and everyone yelled “SURPRISE!”

John was seriously startled, fearing he had stumbled on a “coyote” transporting illegals. Afterward we went to Suzanne’s house to have a proper party. (I think)

These and many other parties and gatherings were such creative and satisfying times and they serve as time capsule for me, connecting me to a rare moment in time and group of friends that I miss. The freedom and unbridled creativity of your twenties coupled with the solid framework and security of a tribe of likeminded friends is what made it nonpareil.

The harsh polar wind surged through the streets, breathing mist from the river, and clawed through her flimsy windbreaker. She started shivering uncontrollably and I crowded her into the shallow recess of a doorway, trying to shield her with my coat and looking up and down the street for a better solution.

“What do you want to do?” I asked, feeling helpless.

“Let’s just go someplace else.” she responded through chattering teeth.

I searched up and down the street for a cab but none were in sight. What a bizarre moment. She was in real danger of hypothermia just a few paces from the head of the milling entrance line to MARS, a popular dance club on the lower west side of Manhattan, with the line stretching down the block. We had walked past the crowd to the head of the unmoving line to see what the situation was and noticed that only the “beautiful people” were getting past the knuckle-dragger in the tight suit and heavy overcoat at the door. He certainly wasn’t letting two underdressed oldsters in the door, anyway. The other less comely hopefuls huddled together in the long line, hugging the wall in a useless attempt to get out of the biting wind while they clamored to be granted entrance. Sadly, clubwear is not noted for its insulative qualities.

“There aren’t any cabs!” I announced the obvious.

“Let’s walk over to Tenth. There should be more traffic there.” she said, setting a quick pace for warmth, both of us hurrying through the darkness in silence feeling cold and vulnerable.

We had started the evening in sublime comfort in her room at the Waldorf Astoria where Mattel had put us up for Toy Fair. It was mid-January and we had only just arrived from our respective cities. There was never any time to do anything social once the work began, so we rushed to get in some NYC clubbing.

Alison had a dilemma. There had been no room in her suitcase for a proper winter coat. She’d packed for a long work stint, intending to layer for warmth, and then purchase whatever she might need additionally after she arrived. Her impulsive decision to bring the long fur coat was prompted both by the Denver winter and the promised prestige of the Waldorf, and so she wore the bulky thing on the plane.

“Where are we going tonight? What did you find?” I asked when I arrived, trusting her previous experience with the city.

“There’s this new place that got a great review called the World.”

“What’s it like?”

“I don’t know. Supposed to be Hip Hop and House tonight.” she replied. “The problem is it’s in Alphabet City and I don’t feel safe wearing the fur.” she said, holding up the calf- length fur on a hanger.

“Where’s that? Why, isn’t it safe?” I asked a little warily.

“Well, it’s on the lower east side, in the East Village, where the numbered streets change to the alphabet. Anyway, it’s a little iffy there.”

“What else do you have to wear?”

“Just this.” she lamented, holding up a bright lime green windbreaker in her other hand, weighing the two like a scale.

The only real option was the windbreaker. She wasn’t about to dance in the fur and leaving it unattended wasn’t realistic either. At least the windbreaker was long and stylish. Skimpily club-clad underneath, at least she did have the advantage of being a seasoned Coloradan, and so she figured we’d jump out of the cab and go right into the club before getting chilled. I, on the other hand, a seasoned Southern Californian, thought the choice a mad folly, and I was plumped out with several layers.

The doorman hurried to hold the door of the cab sitting at the front of the line as we emerged from the prestigious hotel and charged down Fifth Avenue, weaving our way through a traffic swarm, heading downtown. We arrived at our destination and opened the door to step out. As I paid the cab driver, we could hear loud gangsta rap coming from the club, saw the thug types lurking about, and decided not to stay, glad to not have lost the cab.

Alison knew of another popular place on the lower west side called MARS and so we made our way across town, grateful that the cab driver knew where all the clubs are. This time, however, we had lost the cab, leading to our predicament.

After a long, bracing walk, we lucked into another cab without too much trouble once we got to Tenth.

“Limelight!” she commanded as we tumbled shivering into the cab. The Limelight was a club we’d been to before, in a renovated old stone church on Sixth Avenue, only a block from where we were working. We scarcely had time to warm up before we pulled up in front of the brightly lit historic stone edifice, thumping from within. Alison dashed for the door while I paid for the cab. Standing at the door were two guys, one in a suit and one in muscles. As Alison made for the door, the thug opened it for her and she bounded by him, her long, curly hair bouncing behind her. The suit did a double take at me, then at her retreating hair, then back to me, stumbling to get the other guy’s attention.

“Here. Here. Give these guys tickets to the VIP lounge!” he ordered the other guy, who hastened to hand me two tickets and then held the door for me.

Stunned and perplexed, I thanked him and continued in after Alison. As I passed him, the suit coyly asked, “Say, did anyone ever tell you you look like Steven Spielberg?”

Bang! It hit me. Yes, I had been told that before, but this guy thought I was Steven Spielberg! From behind, Alison could have easily passed for Amy Irving at the time. Without skipping a beat I nodded, winked, and held my finger to my lips. He was beaming with pride, and probably had his tip hand out, as I dashed to find Alison to tell her the story. The VIP lounge was upstairs in the back in what had been a library and was quite posh. Score!

It’s all about attitude and comportment. People expect to see celebrities in places like that. They want to believe they are touching the stars. Why should I correct them? Especially if it gets me into the VIP club. Right?

As an avid dancer, I have deliberately sought out dance clubs wherever I go. Well, the term club is perhaps inadequate, as the venues are so diverse.

When I first turned 21, my regular hangout was a Scottish pub which had bagpipers, an Irish folk band, and traditional dancing…and lots and lots of beer. A favorite “clubbing” experience for us in those days was dancing at Disneyland, and then hopping the Monorail to the Disneyland Hotel, having cocktails at the station bar, and then going back to the park, feeling slightly naughty and ready to dance even more.

When the disco craze kicked in, perhaps the most popular club in LA was Studio One in West Hollywood. It was set in a spacious warehouse that was used for military manufacturing during WWI which had been renovated to house a large dance floor, a separate lounge, and an exceptional performance venue called The Backlot where celebrities came to dinner shows featuring an astonishing array of performers such as Grace Jones, Peggy Lee, Patti LaBelle, Liza Minelli, Rosie O’ Donnell, Bernadette Peters, Kathy Griffin, Sylvester, Thelma Houston, Eartha Kitt, Debbie Reynolds, The Village People, Sandra Bernhard, and Divine. The list goes on and on.

The dance floor was spacious, the sound system engulfing, and innovative, state-of-the-art light shows made the whole experience an exciting event. Unfortunately it was far enough from home and pricey enough that my times there were few, though memorable.

I was curious to compare what the center of the country was offering, and so my buddy, named Buddy, took me to some clubs in St. Louis when I went for a visit for a week around the New Year. I don’t remember the names of the places, but they were fun, crowded, and contemporary. Of course it was the holiday season. The thing I remember most was the peculiar tradition of driving to the next state when the bars closed at two AM. St. Louis is in Missouri but just across the Mississippi River is East St. Louis in Illinois and they stay open until Four! Every night, the bridge would get busy as everyone dashed to new venues in a crazy drunken migration across the river.

House music opened a whole new devotion to dancing for me. Around the turn of the century I went to Burning Man in Black Rock City, NV, and wandered into a towering disco dome tent pumping with exciting light shows and dance inducing music. I was hooked! I couldn’t get enough. I’d been waiting for this sound, this energy, since the sixties. Dancing in the fresh air and kicking up the dust under warm starry skies is incomparable.

Later, an extended stay in the Bay Area gave me the opportunity to explore the great house music scene there and dancing became a primary pastime, serving my recreational, social, and cardio-vascular needs, and I was going two or three times a week.

My primary base was The Endup, a world renowned after-hours club and San Francisco tradition for more than forty years, and host to some of the best DJs and House Music. I did some pro bono redecorating work for them which included some special metallic faux finishes and in gratitude they put me on their permanent guest list, helpful, considering the cover charge and my regularity. One of their long time events, and a favorite of mine, is the T-Dance, Sunday daytime event. The rock waterfall splashes onto the green mosses and dangling fuschia, music pulses, and the new deck under the tall trees is packed with happy partiers, many of whom are still at it from the night before.

My favorite times were the open air events. Sunset parties are a Bay Area tradition hosting picnic-in-the-park style events which attract multi-generational ravers with blankets, coolers, and children. Hula hoops, balloons, bubbles, and beach balls add to the festival atmosphere, all trembling in the persistent house music. Dancing at such events is spontaneous and not restricted to a dance floor. While the resemblance of these to the love-ins of my day is compelling, I think it touches a broader, human experience stretching to the beginnings of human society. We need these community experiences to bond and accept each other as “tribe”. There have been enough generations now for this to be an adaptive trait in our DNA. We need to socially interact. Our current social adaptation to technology hampers that, I think. Talk don’t text. Go outside and play, kids!

Though I have been to clubs in most major US cities, including a particularly memorable one in the private Founder’s Club at the top of Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for my niece’s 21st birthday (a lucky set of connections won us that one), I am delighted also to have been to clubs in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Athens, Ios and Mykonos. While they don’t differ that much, there are some culturally influenced differences; in décor, lighting and music selection, for example.

Perhaps the loftiest club I’ve been to was Jimmy’z in Monte Carlo.

In the eighties, Mattel used to stage their International Toy Fair at the Lowes Monte Carlo Hotel (now named the Fairmont Monte Carlo) every year in November. We would stay in the same hotel where the show was to be held, and which was also where we were working, so we rarely left the premises except for the occasional necessary shopping trips for supplies. Of course, those were all day affairs as the nearest stores were in Nice,…in the next country! Talk about a schlep. You were careful with your shopping list because going back for the thing you forgot was no casual matter. One tended to overbuy, just to make sure you were covered; An unfortunate, shocking waste, as none of it could come back to the States with you and everything wound up in the dumpster at the end of the show.

A particularly memorable moment was an evening in a tiny Cliffside village in Eze, France, not far from Monaco. There is a wonderful little café accustomed to hosting groups and our crew along with a number of Mattel executives went, including the head of their European headquarters, and Mary Wilson of the Supremes, who had performed for an earlier banquet. She chose to hang out with our crew, being artistic and more fun, rather than the lecherous suits who wanted to monopolize her time. The place was elegant with massive live flower arrangements hanging from the ceiling and long bench tables extending into several rooms and alcoves.

Despite the exceptional fare and ambiance, the thing that set the place apart was the fancy dress party it devolved into at the end of the food service. Crazy hats, helmets and dresses were brought out, the music got wild, and before long, executives were literally dancing on the tables, at the management’s insistence, flouncing the skirts they had donned over their suits. I still have incriminating photos somewhere.

A short walking distance from our hotel, on Avenue Princesse Grace, which happens to be the most expensive street to live on in the world at about $70,000 per square foot, was Jimmy’z nightclub, located in the Monte Carlo Sporting Club. It was opened in 1971 by Regine Zylberberg, famous for turning the Whiskey a Go Go in Paris in 1953 into an exclusive property. Considered the originator of Discotheque, the self-dubbed “Queen of the Night” pioneered the use of two turntables, thus creating the seamless dance journey, added colored lights, and a linoleum dance floor. Within five years she was a celebrity, holding company with Europe’s royalty and elite, and, garnering the backing of the Rothschilds, she embarked on a wide range of ventures including fragrances, cafes, and a singing career. At one point she had 25 franchises on three continents and earned a half a billion a year.

Mme. Regine “invented” branding and exclusivity, attracting the world’s wealthy and elite by their snobbish avarice. Overcharge and only the very wealthy can participate. One of her tactics at the Whiskey a Go Go in Paris was to put out the velvet ropes on stanchions for weeks, pump up the music inside with no one there, and then lock the doors with a sign reading “Exclusive Party” or “Club at Capacity”. By the time she opened the doors for business for real, the demand was tremendous. Today, I understand a single cocktail at Jimmy’z costs $40.

I knew none of this, however, when I first went there. The first time, my crew was hosted by the VP over Creative Services so we were ushered in and the drinks were on his expense account. I was dazzled and couldn’t take it all in. Just the idea of it, clubbing in Monte Carlo! It wasn’t a large space nor was it very crowded but it reeked of wealth and class. The dancing was sparse and reserved, as I recall, but I had a good time.

The next time I went was to meet a couple of my associates after work for a drink in an adjacent lounge. I found them seated at a low cocktail/coffee table surrounded by a couch and some low, modern armchairs. There were several others seated with them who I didn’t know, including an exotic looking young woman in a chic turban. Music was playing and conversations were close and casual. The table was littered with champagne glasses and in the center stood an empty magnum bottle. A brief chat with a co-worker revealed that the woman was some kind of princess who was celebrating something and was wearing the turban as a result of recent chemotherapy for her cancer. (It strikes the lofty and humble alike.) After a short time, I decided to get a drink and went to the bar. In an insane moment of misguided generosity, I decided to bring back another bottle of champagne to share with the table.

Prudently ordering the smallest domestic bottle they had, (after all, French champagne IS domestic. It’s the California that’s the import.) I felt a little cheap as I knew it wouldn’t go very far at the table. Then he came back with it, showed me, (as though I knew the difference) and put it in a silver ice bucket. (and it probably was silver)

Then he handed me the bill.

$400 DOLLARS!!!!

That represented my per diem for the entire trip. The die was cast and I was too embarrassed to send it back so… Thank God they took Visa! (What’s the appropriate tip for a $400 bottle? Gulp.) I brought it back to the table stunned but determined to man up. Were I a gambler, I might have dropped that on one bet in the casino. Right?
There were a few surprised faces at the table, though I doubt that they realized the price tag, and it was poured around quickly.

So quickly, sadly, that I never even got a taste.

Oh, well. At least it makes for a good story.

It’s funny how some things like a number, in this case a year, can evoke so many emotions and memories, like opening a box from the attic and finding forgotten treasures.

There’s the bigger scene, the world scene that everybody remembers; the mods, hippies, and rockers, The Beatles and Doors, Vietnam, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, then your immediate scene, which, well, OK…, in this case, for me, growing up in LA, also involved hippies, The Doors and Bobby Kennedy. The Doors et al. hung out in the hippie haven of Sierra Madre Canyon, less than a mile from my house, within walking distance, and I was on the freeway only about a mile away from the Ambassador Hotel when we heard on the radio that Bobby was shot.

( I was heading home from a victory rally for Pat Paulsen, the comedian also running for president in ’68, held at the rock club Kaleidoscope on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood just before Hair opened there and they renamed it The Aquarius Theater. The Troggs played “Wild Thing” and their new (and last) hit and Tommy Smothers introduced Pat to the wildly cheering crowd amid a hail of confetti and a brass band…but I digress.)

Then there are the personal events, the personal eras, that spring forth at the cue.

For example I was 15 and a sophomore in high school when I won Best Actor of the Year award, primarily for being a dedicated trouper. Junior Jesters were doing four one acts that spring, in one of which I was cast. Thursday night during dress rehearsal, the day before the show was to open, one of the leads in another play was busted for drinking in the green room and suspended. That meant the original play, written by one of the students, would have to be cancelled. I had seen one of the rehearsals and approached Tom Payne, the teacher directing it, and offered to crash learn the part in time to open the next night. The character was onstage most of the time and had 35 lines, but after an emergency rehearsal and listening to a tape recording of the lines in my sleep, I somehow pulled it off.
That acknowledgement instantly installed me in the school hierarchy and gave me a raison d’être as theater consumed me.

1968 brought Billie and Judy. Mom had bought a sprawling 5 bedroom ranch style house on the hill in Arcadia to share with her also recently divorced friend Ardith, who then suddenly bailed and took her two kids back to Michigan when her father died. Mom was left with a big house payment and only a secretary’s income so she took in two foster girls to make better use of the space and to supplement the household income. (Dad never did pay any child support)

Billie was a 15 year old partial-quad in a power wheelchair who had spent much of her life as a resident at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, a rehab facility in Downey. She had undergone countless surgeries for her spinal cord injury and now had a spinal fusion with a rod up her back and, not surprisingly, an attitude to match. On Easter Sunday, during her third and final home visitation when we were to decide if she would “work out”, we got the news that her hopitalized mother had succumbed to her cancer. The die was cast. I had a new sister.
Then a month or so later came Judy, a 16 year old problem teen from a messed up family who kept running away from foster homes. She had straight hair, harshly bleached and parted in the middle exposing dark roots, which hung limply along her set jaw. Abused and abandoned, she had developed a hard defensive exterior which she armored with wannabe hippie attire, chewing gum, and attitude. Mom hoped we could give her another chance by offering her a stable environment.
She was relentlessly and determinedly optimistic that way.
“Sister” number two.

Summer came along and Mom decided that we should go on a road trip. Neither of the girls had ever been out of the state and Mom wanted to bring us all to Michigan to see the family. Her enthusiasm built to include an ambitious grand tour, traveling along the south via I-10, then up the east coast through Washington DC and New York, to Niagara Falls, across into Canada through Ontario to Detroit, and then back through Missouri to see Grandma Bateman before heading home in time for school in September. Did I mention that she was relentlessly determinedly optimistic?

Pokey Penny

Pokey Penny. That was what Mom named our old Volkswagen van we got when Billie came along. Well, actually, Polk-a-long Penelope is what I painted in big psychedelic letters on the side. Mom had found in a mail order catalog (Remember those? Before the Internet) a package of assorted stick-on polka dots in a variety of colors and sizes ranging from a couple of inches in diameter up to 18″ (the overly popular flower decals Rikki Tikki Stickies and their competitor Crazy Daisies were just too hip) and we stuck them all over the beat-up beige 1958 VW bus (the first year they had imported them to the US, and she had been well driven). I painted Pokey Penny on the back as a sort of apology for our sluggishness. You see, Penny had no first gear, requiring extensive clutch finesse, and a top speed of 40 MPH, even on the freeway, although, I confess that when Mom wasn’t around, I’d get her up to 45.

We needed a van to get Billie and her 350 pound wheelchair around and Uncle JC rigged a ramp for it with a pair of 7′ long aluminum I-beams with a bolt at one end that slotted into holes he drilled into the frame. They would clamp onto a rack he made on the roof over the doors. We took out the middle bench seat leaving a bench back seat and a bench front seat, rigged tie-downs behind the driver and Billie backed in, facing the doors which opened out, French-door style.
The interior was bare metal so we installed fiberglass insulation and skinned it with 1/4 inch particle board (way too heavy for the task) which deadened the sound of the struggling rear engine quite nicely. We painted everything beige and she finished off the look by covering the wrap around windows with small kitcheny curtains she made from some colorful polka-dotted sheets she found somewhere. The little air cooled engine in the back didn’t get enough flow given the load so we attached a pair of fiberglass air scoops on the sides at the back which rammed air into the engine compartment and made her look more racy. Well, sort of. On especially hot days we would tie the door to the engine compartment open and hang a wet towel in there swamp cooler style, but only for short runs around town, never the freeway. The windshield wipers didn’t work so we hitched them together and ran strings in through the wind wings where the passenger operated them manually, pulling on the strings reciprocally. I eventually installed a spring so they would self return and could be operated one handed by the driver in a pinch. Luckily we lived in Southern California so the need didn’t arise much, until The Trip that is.
Did I mention that it was 1968?

The Trip

Epic adventures often begin with no suggestion of the impending calamities to follow. This one was the other kind. Well, for anyone who wasn’t relentlessly determinedly optimistic, anyway.
We had to wait until summer school was out so I could take driver’s training and get my license to share in the driving. By the time that school let out, I took my driving test, and the license came in the mail, it was mid-August already. The five of us packed into Penny and we set off for a great American adventure.
Picture it…………
Mom, 36, the year after her first stress related heart attack, heading out alone with her four teenage kids, two of whom were handicapped and two of whom she barely knew, on a 3000 plus mile trek in a rickety old hippie van loaded to the rafters, including a full roof rack, across the deserts of the southwest in August, armed only with a couple of hundred dollars, a cooler full of food, and a Union 76 credit card.
What could go wrong?

The plan was to sleep in the van most of the time to save money, only checking into a motel every few days to attend to Billie’s special needs. It had to be one that accepted our gas credit card but luckily we had a printed guide that showed all of the affiliates and we planned our itinerary accordingly. That’s right; five of us including the wheelchair and cooler all inside the stuffy little van. Billie’s chair would recline with the foot pedals up and Dhan could sleep on the floor alongside her. Judy would sleep on the back bench seat and Mom would sleep on the front bench seat. Then I made a hammock, more of a stretcher, really, using the I-beam ramps spanning the backs of the front and back seats with a tarp wrapped around them. (a boy scout emergency stretcher trick I had learned) We were stacked in like cordwood.
We tried to set out early with the intention of getting across the California desert before it got too hot but by the time we got loaded and on the road, and with a top speed of 40, we managed to hit the most desolate stretch before the California/Arizona border around the hottest part of midday, when suddenly the engine lost power and quit. We’d burned out a valve or two.

The nearest payphone was miles away in Needles so we just had to wait for a Highway Patrolman to come along and radio for a tow truck. (No cell phones yet and before the CB craze) We passed the time making and eating sandwiches, listening to the AM radio, and sweating. I remember hearing The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” for the first time, standing in the hot wind in the shade of the van in the middle of nowhere.

It was an exciting moment for me, partly because I had recognized who it was, never having heard it before. I must be getting hip! That crummy little radio draining our puny 6 volt battery was our connection to the civilized world, a lifeline to hope here in the searing wasteland.
“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better.”
“Buck-up lads” encouragement from the Fab Four all the way from England via the airwaves! Modern hope. (Judy, of course, was delighted to be personally addressed)

After our hot exile, Needles was an exquisite oasis, a vital outpost offering the primary necesities of modern life, such as air conditioning, ice, pop, auto repair, phones, toilets…..the list goes on. So much we take for granted!

Once we were on the road again our original enthusiasm reasserted itself and we resumed the mad adventure. Things were pretty uneventful for awhile and we did the typical tourist things, especially enjoying the newly installed rest stops on the newly installed Interstate highway system, visiting Tombstone and the Alamo and such but never stopping for long. It took more than three days to get across Texas.

One day as we drove across a featureless plain, a severe thunderstorm suddenly dumped so much water that the wipers proved to be useless, no matter how fast you pulled the strings, not to mention the bucketsful pouring through the open wind wings. Huge trucks roared past, inundating our struggling little top-heavy, 4 cylinder wagon with great tsunamis of blinding water. It was only our sheer weight that prevented us from being blown off the road and we were forced to hide under a freeway overpass, fearing floods or tornadoes. We were not alone under there as others had sought the same refuge and we felt an odd human bond as castaways huddled together for safety. I broke out the sterno stove and made our little troupe hot cocoa to cheer and distract us from the deafening thunder and sick yellow light heralding tornadoes.

Then, as is the case with such furies, the tempest ceased as abruptly as it had begun and a brilliant sun suspended a rainbow amid the towering white columns advancing to the east. Penny nosed her way out from her shelter and back onto the highway, puttering across a sparkling prairie.

Our first motel was in Arlington Texas, between Dallas and Ft.Worth. I spent most of the time in the pool and the air conditioned room, taking full advantage of the rare opportunity and relishing food that didn’t come from the, by now, smelly cooler. The next day we set out east on I-10, restored and confident, never dreaming………

Night of the Swamp

From Dallas, we cut south to Houston and then East to follow the gulf coast. The further east we went, the wetter and more humid it became, preventing the engine from cooling so we started doing the driving in the cooler hours of the night and selected lesser routes to accommodate our limited top speed and to encounter less traffic. The prairie transitioned to swampland and dense forests and the stench of rotting vegetation and mold increasingly aggravated my asthma and offended the nose.

Sometime in the middle of the night, while Mom napped, Judy pulled off the highway somewhere looking for a gas station that was open. I guess she had seen a billboard featuring a Skelly station someplace a few miles off the already-back-roads we were on. We were surrounded by swampland somewhere between Texas and Louisiana and the bugs were so thick, you had to pull the wipers just to see, occasionally stopping to throw water on the greasy mess

She must have missed the closed station in the dark, the windows being so streaky and the weary headlights barely penetrating the sodden night and so she sleepily just drove on and on. At some point Mom woke up and drowsily asked where we were. Judy’s “I don’t know but we’re almost out of gas.” reply woke her sharply and she sat up and dug out the map and the flashlight.

“Where did we leave the highway?” she asked, rustling the map open, “How long was I asleep?” she asked, her voice worried. “Pull over and show me.”

The road was lined with deep drainage ditches which served as barriers to the swampy forest beyond, the dark trees dripping with Spanish moss, and the channels looked even deeper in the gloom so Judy drove for awhile, headlights from the rear view mirrors blinding her, until she found an open space that looked safe to pull out and swung onto it quickly to allow the customary string of annoyed motorists to grumble by,… only to discover that it was not concrete, but, rather, someone’s lovely, manicured grass lawn. We slid to a halt and quickly looked at the map while cars sped by, headlights illuminating the colorful van mired in up to the hubcaps and the unfortunate muddy double track left by Penny’s tires plowing deeply through the soggy soil.
Since we didn’t know exactly where we were, our safest bet was to backtrack to the highway and hope to spot the gas station on the way. Luckily the house lights remained dark as we made our getaway, fishtailing our way in a second-gear clutch roar back to the road, heading back the way we had come, and fully expecting some Yosemite Sam character in half-buckled overalls to burst from the house with the hounds baying and chase us barefoot across his vandalized lawn, taking pot shots at us with his shotgun, and hollering “Damned Yankee hippies!”. (What images would you expect from a drama kid?)
Some miles back we found the closed station, a mildewed white wooden relic with an inadequate little awning over the two ancient pumps. The dark splotches on the walls turned out to be rusty old ad signs like Coca Cola and Pennzoil. With still no clear idea of where we were and, more importantly, where the next nearest gas station was, the wisest thing to do was to stay here in the lot until they opened in the morning and get gas and directions. We pulled her toward the back of the lot and got set up for the night. The long, long night.

I didn’t think that the doors were open that long, but we had to get Billie situated, the cooler out, and the ramps in. Then I had to fashion the “hammock” before anyone could get in, and we only had the flashlight and, of course, the little dome light. Anyway, once set up, everyone piled in and we shut off the lights, slid open the front door windows partway for ventilation, and settled down to try to sleep.

Let me set the scene:
Five of us, packed in like sweaty sardines in a psychedelic tin.
90 degrees, outside, and 90 percent humidity.
Just two small windows in the front, only partly open for fear of intruders.
Pitch black outside
No phone, we’re lost, nobody knows where we are.

As we quieted down inside, the din of crickets and frogs outside was the first thing you noticed. Then, while your eyes tried to focus in the blackness, your ears focused to hear a tiny, high pitched sound, almost like your ears were ringing, coming from inside the bus, followed by a quick slapping sound.
Oh no! Mosquitoes. You’d lie there in the absolute darkness and listen to them stalking you, buzzing closer and closer until the sudden, awful silence, followed immediately by another slap. This went on for awhile until finally some fool suggested that we turn on a light to see where they were.

The flashlight beam hit the ceiling, at first blinding our darkness dilated eyes until they adjusted to reveal a chaotic cloud of mosquitoes swarming inside the place. Aieeee! After a strong bout of the willies, we closed the windows and went on a killing spree. We had no bug spray ( luckily or we’d have probably all asphyxiated in the sealed can) so we smashed the little bastards, fat with our blood, leaving new dots all over the inside walls. I swear we got them all, but somehow they kept getting in. There was a sound that, at first we took to be water dripping from the trees onto the van and we wondered if it had started to rain until we realized that it was hitting the sides, too. It was the swarm of insects, trying to get in to us, pounding like the rain on the metal box all night long. It was a B movie nightmare!

The heat was oppressive. After trying different things, I found that a sheet dipped in meltwater from the cooler and pulled up over my head both cooled me a little and deterred the mosquitoes somewhat. We covered Billie the same way as she could neither feel nor swat the mosquitoes in her lower extremities. The night was interminable and I doubt that any of us slept.

The next morning when they opened, we used the bathroom, gassed up, and hit the road in a hurry, anxious to get out of the nightmare swamp. The daylight revealed Billie covered in mosquito bites. With no feeling from the chest down, she couldn’t feel them when they bit and they lingered and feasted. By the time we got to New Orleans, she had a raging fever and we had to find a clinic right away. I don’t know how they treated her but we were on the road again by evening, her fever subsided. Since they obviously wouldn’t accept Billie’s MediCal, Mom had inquired about selling a pint of her rare B negative blood to cover the medical costs, but her blood pressure was too low (surprisingly, given the stress) and they refused her, agreeing to send the bill to our home address to deal with when we got back. We drove down Bourbon Street after dark, just to see it, before driving out of the city to find a motel.

We got an early start the next morning and pressed on eastward. By the time we got to Biloxi, Mississippi, we were pretty much over the enthusiasm of a cross-country adventure and more into a “let’s get this over with” mode. The only lodging in town that would take the Conoco affiliated card was an upscale resort hotel right on the beach. (There were no 76 stations now as we had passed into the south where the word “Union” surprisingly still caused some consternation, so we had to find affiliates such as Conoco and Skelly.) It was a sweet seaside village then with lots of Antebellum mansions overlooking the Gulf. We began with a meal in their restaurant while we discussed our situation. Solid, hot meals had been increasingly infrequent and we ate heartily, forestalling the inevitable “talk” until after dessert. Yes, we even had dessert. Something big was up.
The events of the trip had activated Mom’s survival genes, strong among her people, which overpowered her Scrubby Dutch, can-do, roll up your sleeves and tackle anything with, you guessed it, relentless determined optimism. We were about out of cash, the trip was taking longer than anticipated, and we still had a long way to go so we’d have to streamline our itinerary and hurry to the safe haven of Michigan. Up until now, the repair and hospital bills had either been charged to the card or invoiced by mail, but we’d have to sell the piano to pay the bills. What else could we do but agree and try to make the best of things. We’d had enough “fun” anyway. Mom splurged on a nice room for us, and then went to a pay phone and called Aunt Mary Ellen, collect, to have her sell the baby grand and wire us the money in Michigan. (I was the only one who played piano anyway, and theater had my attention now) The resolution fostered insouciance and, after showers all around and a good night’s rest, we once again set out, feeling refreshed and reoriented and re-determined.

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There was an intriguing side note to the Biloxi experience. Exactly a year later, on August 18, 1969, Hurricane Camille took out a long stretch of US Hwy 90, depositing a tanker across the road we’d traveled and washing away the hotel we’d stayed in, along with Biloxi and most of the coastline there. I happened to follow the same route yet another year later in August, 1970, and got to see the devastation first hand, by then mostly cleared of debris, but there were still vacant lots and battered trees everywhere. Completely unrecognizeable with no remaining landmarks, I had to really hunt to find the remains of the hotel, now just a foundation in the sand with a fabulous view of the gulf.

__________________________________________________________________

Everywhere we went, we got interesting responses from the locals. Given the psychedelic exterior and California plates, were often mistaken to be a traveling hippie band. Eventually we gave up denying it and let them indulge their fantasies. ” Yup. Ah amember seein’ that hippie band, the Pokeylong Penaloaps,… er somethin’, pass through heah way back in the late Sixties, warn’t it”. (The Partridge Family didn’t come along until 1970. Since we lived in LA, I always wondered if we inspired it? The story of Penny and this trip had been published in the Arcadia Tribune the next year, the week before I totaled her. Another story.) Occasionally we would get a peace sign flashed at us as people roared past us, although usually it was just one of the fingers. Sometimes we’d be putting along dark little roads at night and there would be long stretches through the swamps and bayous where there was nowhere to pull over and let the accumulating traffic pass. When we did find a place, people would sometimes roar by honking and shouting out the window. Judy used to flip them off right back, but it took until New York for Mom to pick up the habit. I think our record was a string of 23 cars that were stuck following us for miles until we could find a place to pull over.
We arrived in the Washington DC area late at night and decided to stay at a motel in nearby Virginia. My memories are vague, confusing them with the next trip two years later, (yet another story) but have a strange fragment of lifting Billie into a standing position at the top of the Washington Monument so she could look out, though, except for a vague memory of seeing the steps of the library of congress, and driving past the Smithsonian, I have only vague impressions of memories of the place today.

NEW YORK SHITTY…uh, CITY

Mom wisely decided that she should be the one to do the driving when we entered Manhattan. We had absolutely no intention of staying but felt that we had to at least see it. Boy, did we get to see it!
Penny lumbered through the Holland Tunnel probably around noon and we emerged, immediately lost in Manhattan. The heavy, chaotic traffic and abundance of one-way streets had Mom frazzled in no time. We hadn’t been there long when we found ourselves in the meat packing district around 13th on the west side stuck in a traffic jam while one of New York’s finest tried to flag out a jackknifed truck blocking the entire road.

You know how there are moments in life where one seemingly trivial decision can alter the course of history irretrievably? Turn right or left? Heads or tails? Condom, no condom. This was one of those moments.

We sat there for five, then ten minutes, waiting to move, stifling in the muggy Manhattan summer when Mom decided to turn off the overheating engine. Click.

The tumblers of fate locked into place with that click and even before the gasping little bus coughed to a stop, the truck suddenly pulled clear and Mom tried to re-start her. Click.

Nothing. Not even a “RrrrrRrrrrRrrrrr”. Dead.

At that instant every horn behind us for blocks began blaring. She turned it off and tried again and again in vain, when the cop stalked up to the driver’s window. We were momentarily relieved, expecting him to offer some assistance, but then just got the ass.

“Hey, lady! Move this fuckin’ piece of shit!” He hollered in her ear as she futilely clicked the starter again and again.

She was so startled at his harshness that she whirled on him.

“Damn it! Can’t you see I’m trying?! I turned it off and now it won’t start!”

“That was stupid! Why would you turn it off?” he shouted over the horns still complaining.

“You took so long with that truck it was overheating!” she shouted right back. “Are you going to help us or what?” she demanded, outraged at his brutish behavior and up for the challenge.

In reply he walked to the back of the van, motioned for the trucker behind us to help, and the two of them shoved us roughly off to the side, and then he just walked away as the traffic pushed past us, leaving us stranded with no idea where we were or what to do next.

We found a phone book somewhere and discovered where the one VW dealership was in Manhattan, somewhere in the middle twenties I think. Mom thought it wise for us to stay together (and she got no arguments on that point. This was a disturbing neighborhood even in the daylight.) so our courageous little band of five set out across Manhattan armed only with a AAA roadmap of New York state that had an inset for the city.

Billie’s power wheelchair hadn’t been charged since Virginia and steadily ran out of power as we made our way uptown on Seventh Avenue. This was in the days before curb cuts and we had to tip her chair way back, putting the front wheels on the curb, and then lifting/driving the back end up. Going down the curb, you had to go in reverse, back wheels down first, then front, then turn around and cross the street, and start again. While the batteries held, getting up the curbs was manageable, but in no time we had to disengage the motors and push the 350 pound chair (plus Billie’s weight) up the avenue, struggling up and down the curbs which seemed about a couple of feet tall by now.

It probably took the better part of an hour to trek to the dealership and when we finally got some service, a mechanic drove Mom and me in his tow truck back to the van. (we were relieved to see it was still there, intact)

He decided it was the starter switch and hot-wired it to get to get it going, avoiding a tow, and we followed him back to Dhan, Judy, and Billie, waiting at the shop. They didn’t have to wait long as it was a lot quicker when you weren’t pushing a dead wheelchair on foot. Being an old van, they didn’t have the part which would have to be brought from their supplier in New Jersey before they could fix it. That left us with nothing to do for a few hours so we decided to go for a little sightseeing while we waited. Lest it be snatched, we carefully hid Mom’s purse, with the vital credit card and the maybe ten or twenty bucks left in it, probably in the cooler with the last of our food, and brought the suitcases from the roof rack inside, but, leaving the key, were unable to lock it. The van was indoors in their shop so we hoped things would be safe and set out, heading up 5th Avenue, taking turns pushing Billie. At first Dhan had some macho thing to prove and did most of the pushing, though it took both of us on the curbs, but by the time we made it to 32nd street, he was ready to share. It was exciting to finally see the Empire State Building, especially to look up at it and get a sense of how tall it actually is, having only seen aerial shots of it from the side, like in King Kong. We had no money to go up to the top so we just stared at it for awhile and then headed back.

Again, our progress was slow and we arrived back at the dealership shortly after five to find it locked tight, lights off, and no information on the door other than the store hours indicating that it was closed until eight AM the next morning! No emergency number! Nothing! We pounded on the door but no one came.

Can you imagine the kind of superhuman strength it took for Mom to engage the relentlessly determined optimism at this point? But she did it!

The Night

What else could we do but tough it out? We decided to just keep moving and see the city as long as we were here. We were literally penniless. Not even a dime to call home. To whom anyway? What could Dad do from Long Beach? We walked back to Seventh Avenue, partly because the busy, well lit street seemed safer, and headed uptown toward Central Park. It was getting dark by the time we hit Times Square and the lights were already bright. Onward we pushed, by now like some kind of mindless migration, pushing and lifting the wheelchair ever northward until the road ended at the park. Still we pushed on, unthinking, entering the park around ten at night, well after dark. Being in a quieter green space brought us back to an easier pace and I was particularly glad that there were fewer curbs. We drank thirstily from the first drinking fountain we encountered, having neither eaten or drunk anything since breakfast and had sweated buckets in the muggy heat, laboring north. As we approached one of the pedestrian tunnels, we encountered a wave of hippies flowing out of the park from a love-in. (1968, remember?) It suddenly occurred to us that perhaps further passage might prove to be hazardous and that maybe Johnny Carson’s jokes about muggings in Central Park were founded in truth, so we withdrew to the edge of the park and collapsed on a park bench within sight of 59th street and the Essex House.

The next thing I knew Mom was rousing me from a sound sleep with a tense, panicked whisper.

“Quick! Get up! Don’t ask! Just walk! Hurry!”

Wha?

As we hustled out, I glanced back to see a few guys standing a short way off, facing each other conspiring, as Dhan and I together hurriedly pushed Billie up the walk, out of the gates and across the street. Only then did Mom and Judy explain that a small gang of maybe five guys had walked past us sprawled on the bench, then stopped to confer with each other off at a distance, shooting blatant surreptitious glances, obviously discussing us, and then split up to surround us.
Yikes!
They weren’t jokes!!
The adrenalin propelled us back to Times Square in a fraction of the time it had taken before. Well lit and still alive with pedestrians, we felt safer in the confusion. I think it was a Nathan’s hot dog restaurant whose doorstep we camped out on at Seventh and 42nd street. They were closed, by then being after midnight, but there were workers inside still cleaning for awhile and that somehow made us feel safer.

Maybe an hour or so into our vigil, I heard someone shouting around the corner and saw people gathering so I walked around to see what was going on, expecting some kind of performance or something. Up on the third floor, some guy was shouting, raving, out of a window at the growing crowd below. I couldn’t tell what he was saying and looked around for a clue in the faces of the blank faced gawkers when the tubby, sweaty little jerk with a greasy comb-over standing next to me took out the smelly, soggy end of the vile cigar poking from his ugly mouth and shouted, in a coarse, NY dialect,

“Shut the fuck up and just jump, already!”

I was appalled! On so many levels!

I dashed back to our little group huddled together on the doorstep of the Deli and relayed the story. And so we huddled some more.

With the exception of the cop and the service guy, we hadn’t been spoken to or even had eye contact with anyone the entire time we’d been there. We were, to their eyes I suppose, either tourists or trouble, (rightly so I guess) and they hurried by, intent with their own more important lives. Not a smile nor friendly glance received us to the city and we were alone and broke and thirsty and hungry in a city we didn’t know or like, where everybody had been cold and mean to us. And to top it off, now I had to go to the bathroom.

Shortly after two, a homeless bum, swaying from a three day bender, shuffled up to the corner and stood there for a long time, hovering around the lamp post and trash can, just staring at us. Not in a predatory way at all, but more of one confused by what he thinks he’s seeing, like flying pink elephants. Judy probably noticed him first, but Mom said to just ignore him. By now we had toughened. We’re nothing if not survivors and the “When in Rome” principle had brought us to a harder edge, if only to not stick out so much. Tough bravado, like chihuahuas up against boxers.

After awhile he staggered up to us, swaying slightly as he sized us up for a moment, and asked,

“What are you striking for?”

What? Not what we expected, and that struck us as so funny, because Johnny Carson, our New York authority, had been making jokes about the New York strikes, and this guy had just confirmed it. He seemed harmless enough and it seemed like he really meant what he asked, but still, we didn’t want to encourage him to stay, like feeding a stray cat, nor to betray our vulnerability, so Mom put on her best NYC attitude and said,

“None of your business! Go away!”

and then she turned her back on him and continued to pretend to have a conversation with us. He blinked, and then turned and slowly walked away down Seventh Avenue.

Whew, we thought, and continued to huddle quietly among ourselves.

A little while later, after we’d forgotten about him, he came back, almost timidly, and said,
” No, really. I mean it. What are you doing here?” and stood waiting for a reply.

His sincerity was disarming and he seemed just like a regular guy. His clothes were worn but clean enough and, except for the occasional whiff of alcohol on his breath, he didn’t have that bum stank.

This was the first person to speak to us. And with words of concern.

So we gushed, our story bursting out from our dammed up fear and frustration! As we all chimed in our parts of the story, he just stood there in stunned amazement. By the time we got to the part about Billie’s fever in the swamp, his eyes welled up with tears, and as we punctuated our tale of being exiled, hungry and destitute on the streets of a city that had abused us so much, with our disillusionment and contempt, we had won him over as our guardian angel and ambassador for NYC. Ironic, eh?

We talked for awhile, swapping histories, and the mood lightened a lot. He obviously hadn’t always been a bum, but had hit hard times, the details of which escape me now, and presently was coming off a three day bender about something or other. He had a daughter living in California and that instantly made us somehow connected. After chatting awhile, the exchange slowed and we went back to feeling slightly awkward, still waiting as we were, when he turned to us and said,

“Hey, kids. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah!! We haven’t eaten since breakfast this,… er, yesterday morning.” I lamented.

He got a far away look in his eyes, like he was reading a directory, and said,

“I’ll be back in a little while.” and disappeared into Times Square, still busy at three AM, but not so chaotic now.

We were all a little relieved that he’d left, but at the same time it felt a little lonely, too, like someone had just turned out the porch light. Maybe twenty minutes later, though, he came strolling proudly back, more sober now, and with a big grin on his face. He held out a white paper bag stuffed full of hot dogs! Ten of them! Two apiece! Wow!!

“Here.” he said proudly.

We were floored! “Where did you get these?” we intoned in unison as we tore through the bag, distributing the treasures around.

“A friend of mine owed me a favor.” was all he would say on the matter. We didn’t care, not even Mom, and we gobbled them down. The most delicious hot dogs ever! Not only because we were starved, but because he had done such an astounding thing for us, total strangers, completely shattering our conceptions about “those” people. The best, and shortest, meal ever enjoyed, dining al fresco with a new friend in Times Square on a hot summer night.

No longer “that bum”, he was just somebody else trying to get through the night and we were glad for his company,… and his connections.
But now, having eaten, I really needed that bathroom now, so I asked him what he could suggest. There was a bar around the corner was the best he had to offer, so I went to see if I could find it. Barely sixteen, I was afraid they’d throw me out, so I hurried in and followed the signs down the stairs, only to find that they were pay toilets. A nickel! What an outrage, charging your drinking customers to use the toilet! I didn’t have a nickel and I returned dejected and dancing.

“Can’t you just go in the alley?” he asked, somewhat impatiently.

Though, ordinarily, I might have risked it, not only did entering a dark alley alone seem foolhardy, by now, I needed more than a urinal.

He hesitated a moment before digging in his pocket for a nickel. Surprised and grateful, I thanked him profusely and hurried to my task.

While we waited for the long night to pass, he advised us about different resources, such as Traveler’s Aid, in case we needed to find an alternate way home. Maybe Mom just reminded him of his own daughter, but he treated us like family. I got the impression that he got the same outsider shunning that we had gotten, only every day, and that he was lonely and genuinely grateful to have people to care for and talk with.

” So, have you seen the city much?” he asked.

“No, we just walked up to the park and came back before we met you.”

“The park? After dark? Not a good idea.” he warned.

“Yeah, we know.” we said in unison and took turns relating the tale.

“You want to see some stuff while you’re waiting for the place to open in the morning?”

By now, having fed us strays, we were willing to follow him on a walking tour of midtown Manhattan by night. He’d proven his character to us and we trusted him, even more than the NYPD at that point.

So off we went on a walking tour of Manhattan after 4AM, led by our friendly Guardian Bum. Still pushing the wheelchair but buoyed by the hot dogs, we walked to a few sites, such as Central Library and the Empire State Building (again).

The sky was lightening as we settled for a rest in a small, triangular park surrounded by streets. There were several benches lining the walk and a big bronze statue of a man seated, a newspaper in his hand. Fifteen or twenty other homeless men were littered about on the benches and curbs, some of them also draped in newspaper, but luckily we were able to find a bench and collapsed, weary, but in that numb zone that offers transcendence.

There was a clock tower with a big bell on it which read 6:15 and by now it was fully light out, though the sun wouldn’t reach this artificial canyon until probably noon. I wandered over to look at the statue to pass the time. Growing up in LA I was unaccustomed to public statuary and stood for awhile studying it. The plaque said it was of Horace Greely, longtime editor of the New York Tribune which had been located across the street. I hadn’t heard of him before but the quote on the plaque seemed to be directed to me.

“Go West, young man, Go West …”

Sound advice that I planned to take as soon as possible.

Everyone sitting around kept looking up at the clock tower and more and more people shuffled in as the top of the hour approached. One fellow walked over to the granite drinking fountain, removed his shirt, and cheerily began to bathe. Laudable but disturbing.

Then, as if on cue, everyone wordlessly rose and headed toward the corner. Our guide hustled us along to join up in this strange migration and we found ourselves standing in a long line just as the bells all over the city rang seven. We felt out of place in that ragged assemblage until we noticed some “ordinary” people in line, too, even some in suits carrying briefcases. Bizarre! As we approached the head of the line, we could see a friar in brown robes tied with a rope belt, handing out day-old sandwiches from the automat. We received ours with a cheery “Good morning!” and went on our way humbled and grateful. As we boys tore into our sandwiches, our guide cried, “No, no. Wait! You save these for lunch. Now we go over to the Salvation Army by eight for breakfast. Really good!”, he enthused, ”You get your choice of meat and juice!” We were all caught up with the idea of a hot meal and considered going until Mom decided that maybe we should go back to the dealership and see if they were open yet. With that, he led us directly back to the dealership, luckily because by now we were quite lost.

As soon as they opened, Mom checked in while we waited. When she returned, he asked, “Is everything alright?” Once assured that we were covered, he went around and made brief goodbyes, a little reluctant to go. We thanked him profusely and, as he turned to go, he hesitated, turned back and said, “Oh, by the way, my name is Bob.” And with a warm smile, he shook Mom’s hand one last time and walked out onto the street walking east, never looking back. We never saw or heard of him again.

I wonder how he tells the story?

Mom laid it on thick with the service manager, who reminded me a little of the creep with the cigar in Times Square, threatening to send a letter to the Volkswagen of America corporate offices for casting a mother of handicapped children out into the streets of New York as they did. Needless to say, they were mortified when they heard the story, probably fearing a lawsuit more than concern for our ordeal. He sent someone out to get us a box of donuts and dug out his keys and opened the coke machine for us, saying, “There you go, kids, help yourselves. Take anything you want.” Then they took up a collection from the guys in the shop amounting to about fifty dollars, gave us a chit for a free tank of gas at a station downtown, and offered to send the invoice to the house, that we could pay whenever we could. We thanked them, still dazed from the whole experience, and after gassing up, hurried out of town and upstate in a dash for Michigan.

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New York Postscript:

As a result of my unpleasant introduction to NYC, I managed to avoid going back again until more than twenty years later when I secured a job with Mattel Toys setting up the gallery for the annual Toy Fair in February. The job was merciless, entailing daily long hours for several weeks with no days off. I was exhausted and blue, feeling a little sorry for myself for my unfortunate exile to this cold (in so many ways) place. I stayed at the Southgate Tower on Seventh Avenue, where I had a nice suite on the corner of the twentieth floor, kitty-corner from Penn Station. It boasted a separate bedroom with a balcony, two bathrooms, three closets, and a little kitchen overlooking 31st St. One dark morning, I was feeling glum and missing my own bed and the sunshine of LA. I sat at the little kitchen table, sipping my coffee, and gazed down at the street below, lost in thought, when my eyes finally focused on what I was seeing. In the middle of the block, across the street from my room, was the St. Francis Bookshop and standing at the gates was a monk in robes and a rope belt handing out sandwiches to a long line of homeless people stretching down the block! It was the very same line we’d stood in more than twenty years before! Suddenly realizing what I was looking at, I had the epiphany of perspective shift and burst into tears, chastened at my spoiled selfishness as I looked down from my tower at those who had much better reasons to be sad this morning.

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The remainder of the trip was rather uneventful, with the exception of almost losing Billie over Niagara Falls when her heavy chair started sliding in the misty slickness toward the edge. It took three of us to drag her back up the slope to safety. We easily crossed through Canada, re-entering the US through the Windsor Tunnel into Detroit. After a brief, restorative visit with family and collecting the wired cash, we made a direct push for home, driving day and night, and with no more mechanical problems or misadventures and arrived back to sunny So Cal in time to start my junior year in high school, tempered by the experience, a little more confident, and a lot wiser.