CASAMURPHY

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

2012-01-27T15:25:00.001-08:00

Spuds has a long wait for a Pasadena bus that takes him to the Goldline station where he boards the first of two trains he takes to arrive at my office. We have a quick lunch and then I drive him to his tutoring job. His evenings consists of dinner and homework ,which is interrupted when I need him to help me operate the remote for the television. He calls, a few blocks away from the office, and asks if I can pick him up. There's a guy following him and swearing at him. He reports that he was already creeped out because there had been a man leering and muttering at him on the train. Spuds will be eligible to get his driver's license in April which will spare him a bit from life on the street but open a new floodgate of maternal worries including encounters with mentally ill folks driving automobiles. I also have nightmares about being unable to operate the television when he goes off to college next year.

Himself, on route to a lunch meeting with his boss, manages to drop his tie in the driveway. It is raining hard when he pulls into the school parking lot. A car backing out of a space hits Himself's car on the driver's side and completely thrashes the door. The driver is threatening and belligerent, and accuses Himself, who even sans tie appears professorial to a nearly cliché extent, of being drunk. The insurance company immediately establishes that the other driver is at fault but the confrontation is so icky that being deemed inculpable is inadequate recompense. Plus the tie is a sodden goner.

I wage a long battle with a homeless man who sleeps and relieves himself on the porch of my office and after failing to get a social service agency to help the guy, I finally capitulate and install a locked chain linked fence to keep him out. It used to be much easier to take the mentally ill off the streets. The laws, in the spirit of humanitarianism, changed in the 1970s but it hasn't really panned out and there is an ocean of lost souls who'd be better off if they were collected and sent for care. I'm not talking about the old school insane asylums of horror movies, just clean safe places where physical and mental health needs are met and folks can be evaluated and indoctrinated about remembering to take their meds. Now the only legal recourse for dealing with the mentally incapacitated is a 72 hour hold. This means usually that a paramedic or police officer has to lay hands on and transport the afflicted which is often so repugnant that most authorities look the other way when confronted with the mentally disturbed. Even if someone is placed in an inpatient mental health facility for three days the resources to implement any sort of meaningful long term treatment plan just don't exist. The more common outcome is a stint in jail where there are scant treatment resources and a great likelihood that mental problems will be exacerbated.

Rosalynn Carter has always been a proponent of destigmatizing mental illness and there were provisions made for expanded mental health treatment during Jimmy's administration. However, most of Carter's mental health legislation was decimated under Reagan. In addition to the dearth of services available for the mentally ill, current brain research challenges much of the current methodology and raises myriad ethical questions. Studies seems to substantiate more and more that the physiognomy of the brain is as important as environmental factors in influencing mental health outcomes.

Adrian Raine, a professor of criminology at Penn State led a study on the island of Mauritius with 1795 three-year-olds. The children were tested for skin responses to two different auditory tones. One tone was deep in pitch and not unpleasant and the other was shrill and loud. Skin conductance was measured and for most children the unpleasant tone resulted in sweat secretion which is the body's normal reaction to fear. A small percentage of children had no reaction to the unpleasant tones, indicating a lack of fear response. Records reveal that twenty years later a high percentage of the subjects in the study, who at age 3 exhibited little fear response, had been convicted of serious crimes.

Brain scans of people diagnosed with antisocial disorders are compared to those of a control group of people with no history of mental illness and reveal that the volume of the middle frontal gyrus and orbital frontal gyrus in the frontal lobe of the brain is smaller in those who suffer mental illness. A study published in 2009 compares 27 psychopaths to 32 non-psychopaths. Brain scans of psychopaths reveal that the outer layer of the amygdala, considered the brain's seat of emotion, shows an 18% reduction in volume. Current brain research tied to criminology and mental illness may provoke a panic about eugenics or fears that criminals will no longer be held responsible for their actions. Fortunately, research also reveals that if children who seem lacking in fear response--a sign that they will act out later in life--are nurtured and have their physical health and nutritional needs attended to they are much less likely to become involved in criminal or antisocial behaviors. Just like obesity or heart failure, with monitoring and coaching to prevent a predisposed illness, diagnoses based on brain composition can be used preemptively.

It would be nice to think about Spuds traveling by public transportation or on the freeways and feeling less vulnerable to scary unbalanced folks. But it's not just certifiably mentally disordered people who make navigating the universe seem more threatening than it did when I was a kid. I have only vague memories of the genteel fifties, but it seems that since then more and more people you couldn't plug into a specific Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders category feel are disposed to behave like lunatics. Perhaps for the guy who smashed Himself's car going off was an aberration or maybe his typical response to any unpleasant situation is to spew venom. Nevertheless, folks becoming unglued is commonplace. I've even heard a number of one sided profane battles waged in public locations by people on cellphones.

I watch a lot of reality shows and while I realize that contestants are goaded for the sake of good TV drama, there is certainly a lot of shrieking into people's faces compared with the uber polite Ozzie and Harriet that I grew up with. Indulgent parenting and the decay of educational standards may be culpable for the decline of civility but I think it's something more pernicious, as even people who ostensibly hold themselves to the highest standards are prone to violent outburst. There have been a number of politicians I've vehemently disliked but to witness Jan Brewer, the Governor of Arizona, scream and shake her finger at the President of the United States, while on camera, makes me wistful for the uptight 50s.

I really wouldn't want to turn back the clock. Scientific and technological research and the Civil Rights movement lead a long list of things that have generally improved our quality of life. Perhaps people's manners were better but as a film archivist when I'm asked for images for a montage that will quickly read “1950s” polio wards and the McCarthy hearings are the first things that come to mind. I have to remind myself that for all the screaming and squawking, more Americans are opposed to the death penalty than ever before. 53% of Americans are in favor of legalizing gay marriage. Polio, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist and after the plague of the 1980s, the AIDS virus is now medically manageable. There is a selfishness and lack of compassion that saddens me but when I think of how the world has changed so much for the better in my lifetime, it bolsters my optimism that mental illness will gain parity with physical illness and treatment for all will be available and that civility will eventually come back into fashion. In the meantime maybe I should cool it with the reality shows and chill with reruns of 50s sitcoms.

In Lak'Ech

2012-01-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

It seems like I've stepped out of the time machine into another century. Slate links to a bunch of actual Facebook postings dated Martin Luther King Jr's birthday that proclaim “Happy Nigger Day.” The state school board of Arizona has pulled the plug on all Chicano Studies coursework. Tucson schools, despite a student population that is around 60% Hispanic, are forced to convert their Chicano History courses to “American” History classes. Books like Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuna and many others are removed from classrooms. Arizona State School Superintendent Tom Horne rationalizes the ban on ethnic studies courses stating that “they promote divisiveness, they separate kids of color and they teach kids that they are oppressed.” Newt Gingrich states, “We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."

Mitt Romney, the least odious of the possible candidates won't release his income tax records but states that most of his income is generated by dividends that are taxed at only 15%. He added that he has also earned a very small sum from speaking engagements. $347,000 in honorariums, which alone catapults him into the top 1% of American earners, is just chump change to Mr. Romney. (Obama, who's been a real let down in many ways, at least has consistently favored revamping the tax structure so that dividends are taxed comparably to wages.) So, while it looks like the most moderate Republican in the running will be chosen, the presumptive nominee is staggeringly out of touch with our nation's economic inequities. While his position on social issues is slightly more progressive than the competition's, Romney's probable two steps backwards, instead of his opponents' colossal flying leap into the dark ages, is still frighteningly retrogressive.

The Republican primary has become a “Who's a better Christian?” competition. November 2012 heralds the 10^th time I've voted in a presidential election and I don't ever remember so much discourse and decisiveness pertinent to religion. When asked point blank about his position on America's financial inequality Romney responds “When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

There is actually a precedent for the happy marriage of capitalism to Christianity that was established well before I was born. The American Liberty League was formed as corporate America's effort to deflect its culpability for the Great Depression and to discredit Franklin D. Roosevelt and combat the threat of socialism. The organization's motives were too transparent to merit any credibility until a light bulb went off and the businessmen started lining the pockets of Christian clergymen like Reverend James W. Fifield, the pastor of First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Fifield, once beholden to the Liberty League, began to preach that “the blessings of capitalism come from God” and imply that the New Deal social programs were anti-Christian.

How awful these times can seem, as xenophobia is rampant and the greedy and the power gropers have co-opted faith to rationalize inequity. My dark cloud lightens though after a talk at the downtown library by writer Luis Rodriquez and Jesuit Father Gregory Boyle. Rodriquez, has won a Sandberg Prize and numerous other writing awards. He is also, coincidentally, the author of the memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A, one of the books that is now banned in Arizona schools. Greg Boyle is an old school liberation theologist and is known for helping gang members extricate themselves from La Vida Loca. Boyle is the founder of the successful Homeboy Industries, whose motto is “Jobs, Not Jail” which is the umbrella agency for a bakery, snack food manufacterer, restaurant and silkscreen shop.

Father Boyle performs his good works under the aegis of the Catholic Church and Rodriguez has adapted a more free form faith, incorporating ancient Mayan traditions and admitting to atheistic instincts. Despite his apparently lapsed Catholocism, Rodriquez is in agreement with Father Boyle that it is unrealistic to expect a life that's free of struggle. Rodriquez speaks of his hard existance as a gang member and enduring an addiction to heroin and he adds that while all of that is behind him, he is still not free of burden. Instead of struggling to best a rival gang in a turf war, Rodgriquez and Boyle encourage gang bangers to take on more daunting challenges, like being a good parent or kicking drugs. The difference is making certain that our inevitable suffering is for the sake of something beautiful and substantial. The devisive Blue State/Red State, Christian nation, class warfare jabber quiets in my head. All of the labels we assign to ourselves, or that others apply, diminish and hobble us. Father Boyle beams when Rodriquez translates the ancient Mayan concept “In Lak'Ech.” “You are the other me. I am the other you.”

Agida

2012-01-13T16:05:00.001-08:00

My dad used to hang out with guys who subsisted by selling items out of the trunks of old Buicks. One of these creepolas, who disappeared from the scene, probably due to money owed, calls the office. He rail thin and ashen with dyed auburn hair. The employees used to call him “Dracula” and he'd have lunch with Dad and instruct me that if his girlfriend called I shouldn't say where he was. The paramour rang frequently and would grill me harshly and even though my lips were sealed, she'd, either by dint of intuition or process of elimination, show up at the restaurant and make a scene. Apparently Dracula was more of a man than his appearance belied because he was involved with another dame as well. Lady Number Two was in the business of manufacturing industrial sized batches of what my parents called “goyishe” bagels and Dracula would bring us giant 10 dozen bags of the Wonder Bread-like things. He is more surprised to hear that I am running the business than he is of my dad's death. I converse as patiently as I can manage until the doorbell rings and I end the conversation a bit abruptly.

I rush from my back office to the door to find a homeless man I don't recall seeing before. Snot glistens from his nostrils. He assumes a familiarity and confides, “I have a problem. I drank too much last night,” he continues, “and now I need some money for the bus.” “I don't have any money,” I respond, which isn't exactly true although I do have less than usual. Plus this would mean walking to and from my office in the back. “I just need a couple of dollars,” he importunes and I tell him I'm sorry and close the door in his face. While I don't want my dad's old acquaintance to call again or particularly stop by, as he's threatened nor to have the confessed drunk come knocking for more coin, having blown them both off stirs up a dissonance I find difficult to shake.

Joe College, after much socializing, is returning to school. Our washer breaks and I buy a replacement hastily from a local used appliance purveyor, who I strong arm into immediate delivery, so I can send the boy back with clean clothes. He loads up our former records and stereo equipment and crispy folded laundry and says goodbye. The first semester he finds excuses to come home just about every weekend but now he seems to have made the adjustment and some social connections so I suspect his visits will be less frequent. I hug him goodbye and even through we talk or text just about every day and he's only an hour from home I start to weep. Spuds slumps on the couch and mutters under his breath, “Oh Jesus. She's crying.”

I've sworn off the Food Network for New Years and find that Hoarders and Intervention are safer viewing if I am to remain on my diet. A younger brother notes tearfully, during an intervention, that his alcoholic brother and the attenuate drama always suck up all of his parents' attention. “I relate to that,” I say, remembering my parents in full throttle agitation over one of my sister's myriad crises. “Me too,” adds Spuds and I practically pounce on him. “Just kidding,” he winks, but there is a tiny grain of truth. My older son likes to stir things up, a trait Himself frequently notes is inherited from my side of the family. Our kids are not us but inevitably we see a number of our own traits in them, some biological and some acquired by osmosis. Spuds is more self contained than his brother and often opts for the role of wry observer as opposed to direct participant. I see a little more of myself in the older boy and more of Himself in the newer model and like their parents, they've used their contrasts to forge a deep connection. My boys squabble and have their jealousies but I know that their bond to each other will endure years longer than I will.

The older boy has come and gone with such frequency that we still haven't adapted to the rhythm. He returns to school after Winter Break and Himself too goes back to school after a two month sabbatical and I am on edge all week. There are irritations at the office with the bank and a transfer facility. My dad's old crony calls and I turn away I beggar. I plan to write about three abusers of power I've reported on before. There is meaty news about Clarence Thomas, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Sheldon Adelson this week.

I take notes on a recent Supreme Court decision on which Thomas is the only dissenter. Oddly, this is the second case where Thomas has sided with New Orleans prosecutor Harry Connick Sr. (yes...the dad) who it seems, at least twice, has played fast and loose in the courtroom. In the recent case all the other justices agree that the only witness to identify a murderer gave inconsistent statements but Thomas writes a long winded dissent to the effect that this is irrelevant to the conviction. The infamous Sheriff Arpaio, is going at it with the Feds and it seems perhaps is on the verge of comeuppance. The lesser known, but no less scandalous, Sheldon Adelson, who introduces himself as the richest Jew in the world, has given five million dollars of his ill gotten lucre to Newt Gingrich, apparently for calling Palestinians an invented people.

But even people I love to hate can't get me on track for any writing of gravitas this week. It all comes out pretentious blather. When I realize I can't make a piece out of the hate update I am at sea, frustrated and ineffectual. Little things have gotten to me and instead I end up filling yet another page with my feelings and what my eldest refers to as my “white lady” problems. Maybe someday I'll write something of earth shattering substance and not be distracted by my greedy bank, flaky callers and assertive beggars. It turns out Joe College is actually coming home for the weekend because his closest friends are still in L.A. for a few days before they return to more far flung schools. I'll make a special shabbat meal because college food has made him better appreciate my cooking. I know we'll have fewer Friday nights with him and soon we'll be shipping off his little brother too.

R Kelly's insipid “I Believe I Can Fly” wafts into my head. When they were very tiny the boys sang it together, arm in arm, and the cloying song melted my heart. They slept in our bed, far longer than they should have, the two of the curled together between us. The kids are more sparing these days with blatant reminders of how dear they are. I am not at my best this week but I will sign off here and tonight we will light the candles as we've done every week of our boys' lives. My sweet babies are nearly men. They will rush through the prayers and tear brutally into the Shabbat challah. During this ritual, for these few minutes, even after a lousy week, I am again reminded of what I truly treasure.

The Land of the Fat

2012-01-06T15:40:00.000-08:00

The link to a recent (and excellent) article “The Fat Trap” by Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times was posted on Facebook with a snarky comment implying that the author, who admitted that she herself is some 60 pounds overweight, lacks credibility. Ironically, the gist of the essay is that most obese people have a different genetic configuration than those who are naturally thin. My own biased opinion is that a fat author is way more trustworthy than a thin person who would probably maintain that despite all the current scientific research that concludes otherwise, fatness is due primarily to a lack of self control and will power. The article points out that any sort of food deprivation, causes a brain chemistry change that, to put it very simply, makes the brain send out a message to eat as much as possible henceforward. There are stories about orphans who've endured famine who are adopted into homes where food is plentiful that hoard and hide food. This apparently is the natural response to deprivation and unfortunately, a single episode of food restriction triggers a chemical change which is permanent. Diets make people fatter because of how we're wired and not because, as I grew up believing and still often have to fight myself not to believe, we're weak willed or lacking in character.

There is a big campaign against childhood obesity in the state of Georgia. At the website http://www.Strong4life.com/ there are stark black and white videos of fat kids. One fat boy sits on a stool facing his fat mother. He asks her, “why am I fat?” and her only response is to drop her head in shame. Other kids stare at the camera and say they hate going to school because they are teased. WTF? Fat kids already know that other kids treat them like shit. Overweight people have plenty of shame without a huge media campaign to ratchet it up. What kind of positive change could this possible affect? I presume that there were medical consultants involved with the Georgia project yet the tone seems to completely fly in the face of current medical wisdom. Obesity, like diabetes or epilepsy, is an incurable disease. It would be outrageous try to induce guilt in an epileptic for being weak willed or lazy or to ascribe parental blame. The state of Georgia's war on obesity may be laudable for intent but the end product is pathetically counterproductive.

It is also agreed that it is more healthful to maintain a high weight and eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly than to do the lose/gain yo-yo thing. Tara Parker-Pope's piece notes the extreme unlikelihood of an obese person maintaining a substantial weight loss. The article chronicles a retired couple, both of whom have kept off over a one hundred pounds for more than six years. Both exercise for over two hours a day 6 to 7 days a week and stick to a highly restricted eating regime. They weigh themselves daily and scrupulously keep a diary of every bite they eat. This is what is required for them to treat a disease for which there is no cure and both indicate how nearly impossible it would be to devote the time required to maintaining their weight loss if they weren't retired.

I have struggled with this disease for as long as I can remember and will always bear the emotional scars of being fat in a world that ostracizes fat people and the map on my torso of jagged scars, from bariatric surgery and a number of subsequent operations required to treat resultant complications and remove loose flesh. Ultimately I lost over 150 lbs but found myself unable to discontinue strong pain medications in the ginormous doses necessitated by the malsorption that is consequence of my Roux-en-Y procedure. For about a year after my last surgery I purchased Norco-an opiate that is preferred by addicts because it doesn't contain Tylenol, which causes kidney damage-from scurrilous online purveyors. I weaned myself from opiates about five years ago but I still get calls from drug peddlers a couple times a month, another reminder of the pain and degradation I've endured in my quest to be thin.

And, I am still not cured. People are amazed that I still struggle with my weight after “taking the easy way out” and “having my stomach stapled.” But ten years after bariatric surgery, the salubrious effects have substantially diminished and at the beginning of the summer my clothes were getting snug. I realized I'd gained 20 pounds in addition to the other 30 I'd never managed to shed post-surgically. I knew I needed more than good intentions and I corralled two girlfriends to join Weight Watchers with me. I like the meetings and the plan is realistic. Foods are ascribed a point value and it's a good way to get a handle on portion control. I do better when I write down everything I eat. I started walking for an hour in the hills five days a week and now I walk 3 ½ miles every week day and five on Saturday and Sunday. I feel good physically and sleep well but lose weight excruciatingly slowly. The realization of the extent to which I will need to restrict my eating and the level of exercise I will have to maintain for the rest of my life is a bitter pill. But it is proven that formerly fat people have to consume less and exercise more, than do people who have never been fat, to maintain a normal weight.

My two Weight Watchers friends are both self-assured professional women with successful lives yet we all agonize over getting the scale to drop a pound or two. Even if it's freezing we wear the lightest clothing we own to the meetings where we're weighed. We e-mail each other lists and photos of everything we eat and give each other pep talks all through the week. It is extraordinary how much planning and emotional energy this weight loss thing requires when we are so competent and self confident in just about every other facet of our lives.

So, having been a fat kid and a fat adult I think I am qualified to judge that much of the public health approach to combat the scourge of childhood obesity as mean-spirited and dangerous. This is not to say that the government should bow out on health and nutrition issues. Based on irrefutable scientific findings Congress went after the tobacco industry and via a public awareness campaign and a heavy tax on cigarettes the smoking rate in the U.S. has declined from about 43% in the 1940s to about 19% now. Even thin people have negative health outcomes exacerbated by the consumption of crappy food but whenever there is mention of a public information campaign or taxing sugary or high fat foods there is squawking about government interference and personal choice, fomented I'm sure by food and beverage industry lobbyists. Naturally slender people also suffer health consequences from a sedentary lifestyle so instead of singling out the fat, a more apt message would be to encourage people of shapes and sizes to strive for lifestyle that incorporates a sensible diet and exercise.

The Georgia campaign implies that fat kids and their parents are themselves to blame for the ridicule and cruelty they endure. Too bad we can't just encourage people of all ages to enhance body and spirit by getting off their butts, eating less crap and treating others with respect and compassion. Fat chance.

Lucky Genes

2011-12-30T16:07:00.001-08:00

My sister Sheri, fourteen years my elder, gave birth to a baby girl when she was 19 years old. Sheri was unprepared to parent and the child was given up for adoption. My sister named her baby Erica but this was changed to Carolyn by her adoptive family. When she was about 18 Carolyn, called Cari, initiated contact with her birth-mother, my sister. My sister's daughter has been a part of my life for over twenty five years now. I hope my love for her atones, on behalf of my family, for the childhood she spent questioning.

Cari tested positive, several years ago, for a gene mutation that effects the body's ability to fend off tumors and is often found in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. It is generally agreed that women who suffer from the mutation (BRCA 1 & 2) are about 87% more likely than the rest of the population to contract breast and/or ovarian cancer. My niece was advised to undergo a prophylactic mastectomy, which, I think, she postponed because other medical issues arose. This year Cari is diagnosed with a malignant tumor and undergoes a mastectomy and will soon begin a regime of chemotherapy. She suggests that I undergo the blood-test for the mutation myself and my first response is that I'd rather not know. I mention this to my general practitioner and he seems surprised that I'd want to remain in the dark but he respects my wishes and doesn't push.

I tell Dr. Connie, my OB that my niece has tested positive and that there was a high incidence of breast cancer in the rest of my family and, never a master of delicacy, she responds “Fuck!” Dr. Connie has no patience for stupidity and when she tells me to take the test it is pointless to argue. My niece, within five minutes of my request, faxes me a copy of her own test results which save me the expense of a full panel and my OB arranges to test me only for the same single mutation.

If the result is positive I will schedule a prophylactic mastectomy immediately and while I'm not jumping for joy, I know that if this is indeed the case I will have greatly reduced the probability of contracting breast cancer. I realize that if my niece hadn't had the courage to seek out her birth mother or had lacked the motivation to stick around after doing so, I would not have the opportunity to preempt breast cancer. I have two close friends who've undergone mastectomies and ravaging chemotherapy. They are both eager to hear my test results.

I give the employees time off but go into the office myself over the holiday weeks, mainly for peace and quiet. I arrive on Boxing Day and my voicemail light is on. Customers seldom call and communicate mainly by e-mail. I assume it is a sales call or bill collector and decide not to play the message until after the holidays. The red light starts to get on my nerves though so I push play and hear Dr. Connie announce that my test for the BRCA mutation is negative. The same doctor who announces me free of genetic mutation also informed me seventeen years ago that I didn't have uterine cancer. “You're pregnant, you idiot.” Now she tells me I don't have the breast cancer gene. My breath quickens and I go a little shaky. The enormous relief is clouded by the clobber of some huge karmic debt and a twinge of sheepishness about telling my niece and my two breast cancer survivor friends that, for God knows what reason, I've been spared. Also, given my faith in irony and movies, upon learning that I don't have the Ashkenazi breast cancer mutation it seems inevitable that I will shortly be decapitated in a fiery crash or, while waiting in line to buy stamps, caught by a bullet sprayed by disgruntled postal worker.

Enough time is passed so that my sudden death wouldn't be the ironic denouement of genetic good news. But, my chronic wrestling with karmic obligation and mortality is still ratcheted up a bit. My college son is home and for a few weeks we are four again, but next week back to three, and before I know it, two. Things are so light at work that it's easy to knock off early and I make special dinners or take afternoon jaunts.

Spuds and I are taken with the L.A. art extravaganza Pacific Standard Time. We attend the California Design exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There is a Barbie Dreamhouse with a real closet, gift-boxes from Joseph Magnin and a Studebaker Avanti. I am in heaven and vindicated for my dogged California boosterism. It is thrilling to look, with my son, at things that were beautiful to me when I was a child and still are. Spuds is polite but withholding as I incessantly point out objects that resemble things in my own horde. He knows I am fishing for, “Yes, mom. Your taste is museum worthy cool.” He does not bite. Nevertheless we are both overwhelmed by the dazzling display of furniture, fabric, floor-plans and ephemera that gives perspective to the Golden State's enrichment of the mid-century design canon.

I envision a leisurely weekday visit to the Getty Center but all hell has broken out there. Fortunately Spuds has the book Everything is Illuminated and I am listening to Philip Roth's Nemesis on CD so the hour from Getty Drive to a narrow parking place on level 6 passes not unpleasantly immersed in Jewish-American literature. The wait for the tram up the hill is estimated to be 30 minutes. We walk, which I am thankful about when the restaurant server informs me that the powdery substance with the distinctive taste that I'd inhaled from the edges of my spartan lunch entree is the molecular gastronomic creation “dried butter.” We take pictures of each other in the garden and Spuds notes my ineptitude with my Iphone as I inadvertently capture on video, for several minutes, my own feet.

The photography represented for Pacific Standard Time feels skimpy but there are scads of big important oils by heavy hitter painters. There is a small exhibit in the Research Center Gallery that traces the paper trail of 1960s L.A. artists. There are postcards with 6 cent stamps, posters, publications and Polaroids. I spent hours, in the 60's spirit of craftsmanship and generosity, on handmade correspondence. I find in my own box of adolescent memorabilia, thick bundles of hand written or typed cards and letters, many bearing decoration. The only correspondence in my childrens' memory boxes are birthday cards from grandparents. The folks who were making all the 60's stuff that seemed so magic were all older than I was. I was frustrated at being too young to make something new and beautiful and important. Now I am too old to operate an Iphone.

The wait for the tram back down the hill is long. We take the footpath. The clouds glow hot pink over the ocean as the sun sets. The traffic is light and we make good time home. I throw together dinner and all four of us sit at the table then, after the three clean up inadequately, we watch a documentary. This is the last work day of a year when one friend died too young and another friend's robust mother died in a freak accident. There was a time in my life when I felt too young to be relevant and now suddenly I am too old. But my family is near and my home has objects that please me and although I'm the only one who gives a rat's ass, some are of museum quality. I've dodged the bullet on the Jewish gene. It would be a slap in the face to those who were not as fortunate to waste a moment immobilized by looming eventualities or wanting anything more than what I have right now.

Eat, Fry, Love

2011-12-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

About five months ago I joined Weight Watchers with two of my girlfriends. It takes us a while to find a compatible meeting but we've settled in now with a group of Sunday morning regulars moderated by a sardonic woman a few years our senior. She's been at the gig so long that she trains other lecturers and doesn't necessarily ascribe to the party line. The home office sends out a weekly topic and guidelines for discussion. Our current leader may brush on the proscribed theme but mainly she free styles and it is a smart group and a number of salient subjects usually arise. I've been at this weight loss game for as long as I can remember and it surprises me when there's a fresh revelation or insight.

We arrive for a meeting with one of the less experienced leaders and there is a post-it note on each chair. We were divided into groups and instructed to brainstorm about social activities that don't involve food. My African American girlfriend rolls her eyes and I mutter, “this is bullshit,” a complete cultural anathema for either of us. Why would you even bother hosting or attending a social event without food? Years ago I attended an early afternoon birthday party for one of the kid's classmates at the Jewish Community Center Nursery School. While many non-swarthy types buy into the advantages of Jewish pre-school education (potty training is not requisite for admission) this family was waspy to Nordic proportions. There was punch and white wine and baby carrots and I huddled with a group of my coreligionists on the patio noting that it was about time for the host to get that barbecue firing. The Costco cake appeared and the party bags were distributed and after this bum's rush a few of us repaired to a coffee shop to marvel, over patty melts, at disparate cultural social mores.

After losing about twenty pounds in around three months I've hit a long plateau. Even when I'm fastidious about what I eat and walk the hills for an hour each morning I seldom lose more half a pound in a week. Weight Watchers works on a point system that's designed just like a financial budget. There are weekly bonus points in addition to the daily allotment plus extra points for activity. But the few weeks that I've actually availed myself of the extras I've gained weight. I don't mind the long slog. There are absolutely no forbidden foods but I'm getting a real education in portion control. This feels different than my usual lifelong state of either being “on a diet” or “not on a diet” and the psyche of “not on a diet” was conditioned by a lifetime of deprivation and long fasts. I have also developed a taste for whole grain pasta and breadstuffs so along with getting a grip with regard to serving sizes there are some healthful changes of habit. I feel that there's a good likelihood that I'll reach my goal and for the first time in my life I think I have a realistic notion of what it will take to maintain it. I'm in no hurry. My weekly meetings are followed by breakfast with the girls. Perhaps it attests to the staggering dullness of my life, but Sunday morning Weight Watchers is the high point of my week. Which brings me to the Festival of Fried Foods.

The big holidays on Fulton Avenue were Thanksgiving and Christmas and I loved the smell of sage and pie spice. I held the turkey (always a hen, never frozen) in my arms and waltzed around the kitchen. The bird was basted with real butter every twenty minutes. The cranberries were fresh and the mashed potatoes oozed butter and warm heavy cream. This is one of my least complicated memories of my mother's love.

Latkes and particularly homemade donuts don't figure prominently in my catalog of childhood food memories but I've made up for lost time. The family expects, and I know it is fully my own damn fault for starting the tradition, a minimum of two meals with latkes and donuts on the menu during the 8 nights of observance. I am aproned at the stove, testing the temperature of the oil. I throw in a few shreds of potato and there is a sizzle and the foreboding of how the house is going to stink for a week. I make applesauce with a bit of agave to replace brown sugar and it tastes fine. I will not stoop so low as to purchase non-fat sour cream and go for the real stuff. This meal requires that I man the stove until the last latke is fried and the family is told that they should go ahead and start eating, as I undoubtedly will catch up.

I apologize in advance to faithful readers who will groan at the repetition of this self aggrandizing anecdote. My firstborn returned from a playdate with another nursery school chum, and full of wonder, asked me if I knew that you could get soup in a can. The kids do get sick of my cooking, as I do myself. The truth though is what they get from my kitchen, given their budgets, might be a mite better than the grub they scrounge up elsewhere. Several weeks ago, too lazy to cook, I set an array of leftovers on the table with instructions for the family to fill and nuke their own plates. There are about eight small containers of stuff I'd made and a Styrofoam box containing a very bland and dry “chicken fajitas light” leftover from a restaurant meal. Spuds, bored by Mom's palette, opts for the doggie bag.

The Chanukah meal makes them all forget how tired they are in they are of my weeknight dinners. The three of them polish off a dozen latkes and then a dozen donuts and they are unstinting in their praise of the meal. I fail so much with all of them given our complicated relationships, baggage, ego. We misread signals or ignore them all together. It was mostly just me and Mom growing up and that was fraught enough but we are four four people living in one house together and are often conflicted by personal needs vs. the good of the family unit. The clearest and purest memories I have of Mom's love hark back to holiday meals. She was at her most effective and at her happiest. I flip the latkes in the hot oil and, with no tinge of the relief I felt when she died and I was no longer burdened by the ravages of Alzheimer’s, I miss her. I watch my own family eat and I hope that for the rest of their lives that smell of Hanukah foods frying will evoke, purely and without complication, Mom's love.

Fence

2011-12-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

A homeless man sleeps on the front step of my office. If this is the most comfortable lodging arrangement he can find I don't begrudge him as long as he doesn't arrive until the office is closed and then disappears before opening. He is compliant for a while. I don't know what made me expect that a person who has no better sleeping option than to pass out on my step would have the wherewithal to follow my rules and I guess I shouldn't be surprised when the guy who opens the office reports, with sufficient ire to eschew the politically correct term “homeless person” which I prefer, that he's had to struggle to wake “the bum” and shoo him away and then hose down the urine covered concrete.

Sometimes other habituates of the street use our step during the day. Merely opening the door and letting Rover peek out scares some folks off pronto but others are nonplussed by him and pet him and the dumb traitor wags his tail and I get a “See, your dog likes me” smirk of satisfaction. While our regular tenant grows more and more likely to sleep through the snooze button he is relatively conscientious about stowing his gear discreetly behind a shrub. One morning it looks like he's had to beat it fast because his bedclothes are strewn over the sidewalk. The sky is clouding up and a cold storm is predicted. I put on rubber gloves and stash the filthy blankets and pillows into a trash bag and leave them in his usual spot. I explain that I cannot bear the thought of letting the man's bedding get soaked but the guys at the office tell me I've made a big mistake.

Our step-sleeper does indeed interpret my gesture as an open invitation. I am miffed that he has exploited my generosity but apparently he is in the dark with regard to a number of social conventions. Customers call from the parking lot to report that our entrance is obstructed. I cannot open the door to get out myself. I yell at him but he doesn't budge and I have to leave through the back door. I call the police. They yell at him. When I am unable to wake him up sometimes I call the fire department paramedics. They yell at him. No one wants to touch him. If he rides in a patrol car it will require fumigation. The paramedics are squeamish. Excretions even more repulsive than urine begin to befoul the step. I contact my city councilman and ask if there's any way to get the guy some services. An LAPD community relations officer stops by. He says that my only recourse is to sign a complaint. I hire a security company to patrol at night. Yellow reports noting that the patrolman yelled at the homeless man are issued nightly. They are slipped through the mail slot and I find them on the floor when I step over the bum in the morning as I unlock the front door. I, myself, have even started to refer to the homeless man as a bum. Unfortunately, he is my bum.

My only alternative now is seal off his sleeping area. I want to install a handsome redwood fence but it would be a very expensive graffiti canvas so I go with chain link which looks not unlike the gated entrance to the prison visiting area. The step is sparkling clean and odor free when we arrive now in the morning. The bell rings one afternoon and I find a tall man, strangely regal in his filthy clothes. He speaks almost aristocratically, noting that the porch has been fenced. I explain that the decision had not been an easy one. He says that it's my perfect right as a business owner and I should not feel the least bit guilty but he adds that it had been a nice place to sleep. He says he sometimes slept there but that he always used the bathroom at the McDonalds and that he had never made a mess on my step. I thank him and he tells me that it had been a very good place to sleep and he'd just needed to ventilate. He asks for forty five cents and I give him a dollar.

My mother reported to me that once when she was leaving a fancy restaurant with her affluent brother a beggar approached her for a handout and she said, “I need some charity myself. I'm unemployed and disabled.” I will add that while this might technically have been true, my mother had most likely hectored a physician to classify her as “disabled” so she could qualify to receive a much venerated handicapped parking placard. Mom was retired with a pension, lived in a large home that she loved very much, had a sumptuous wardrobe and visited most of Europe and the Middle East traveling first-class with frequent flier miles that she feverishly collected. My mother went on to say that the mendicant, at learning of her plight, reached into his pocket and handed her a fistful of crumpled bills. She says her brother threw his hand up so she couldn't take him. I will add also that this was related to me at about the time that the first signs of dementia were becoming evident, but, as a truth or a an imaging the story is equally salient.

My mother was disdainful of anyone who asked for anything and pointed out always that she herself was needier than anyone on the planet. She frequently reminded me that she never asked for anything herself. This was pretty true but she was a master of the fine art of wheedling, or in the Hebraic vernacular, “schnoring.” Mom would once in a while make a showy charitable gesture and bestow some needy person with something like a wool sweater that was accidentally run through the washer, (“It's still fine. It's just small.”) or something homemade with Oleo and the Myer lemons that grew abundantly in her yard. She would report back to me and either the recipient showed appropriate appreciation (She looked like I'd given her a million dollars!) or was guilty of inadequate groveling thankfulness. (See! No good deed goes unpunished.”) My dad was conspicuously generous too. He did genuinely have a soft heart but he liked it when the unfortunate looked up to him and when has peers noted that he was a good guy.

While I did have to fence out our bum, I do try to act in small ways to assist the less fortunate. I get very uncomfortable when there is acknowledgment of this as it makes me feel dorky and self righteous. This is not to say I've reached a state of pure selflessness. I do feel for the troubled and destitute but my outreach is also fueled by a sort of narcissism. I like the idea of being a person who responds to the world's sorrows thoughtfully and I am afraid that perhaps tweaking my own self image is a stronger motivator than altruism.

I know that my own acts of charity are ego feeders and I try to elevate these “in the real world” experiences out of intellectual realm and into the place of soul and spirit. In Jeffrey Eugenides, “The Marriage Plot” one of the main characters, on a spiritual quest, journeys to Calcutta to work at one of Mother Teresa's missions. Instead of coming closer to God, the experience of bearing real witness to dire suffering yields irrefutable proof of a Godless universe. Perhaps this is why I protect my spirit and keep my forays into making the world a better place in an intellectual realm. The belief in a compassionate God is so precious and sustaining I remain distant from anything that poses a threat. Mother Teresa's own letters would not merit high marks for punctuation prowess but do reveal that her work among the untouchables led ultimately to her own loss of faith.

I call, I cling, I want ... and there is no One to answer ... no One on Whom I can cling ... no, No One. Alone ... Where is my Faith ... even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness ... My God ... how painful is this unknown pain ... I have no Faith ... I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart ... & make me suffer untold agony—Mother Teresa

Christopher Hitchens, atheism's poster boy,who savaged Mother Teresa in print and on film has died as I write this. Hitchen's went as far as to testify at the Vatican in opposition to Mother Teresa's beatification, “representing the Devil, pro bono” as he put it. Ultimately, Hitchens, like his tiny Albanian nemesis, presumably died with no expectation of ascending to an eternal loving embrace. Their paths diverged but Hitchen's intellect and Mother Teresa's experience ironically led them both to a place of non-belief. I turned my head and erected a fence to deprive a pathetic creature a covered concrete slab to sleep on. It is hard for me to reckon with the hardness of the world and I keep it at bay as I cling to the comfort of belief.

It's the Inequality Stupid!

2011-12-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

After breaking down the concessions area after the final weekend of children's theater I make my way home through Skid Row. I've visited the Flower Market for decades and seen lines in front of the Midnight Mission, people crashed in doorways and I've been hit up for change. The desperate and the destitute have congregated here for as long as I can remember but now the visage is a dystopian post apocalypse tableau, as block after block are lined with tents and the streets teem with men and women who have nowhere else to go.

The missions can only accommodate a small percentage of the needy and many who live on the street are so far gone psychiatrically that it's unsafe to house them in an overcrowded dormitory. Some of the homeless end up in jail and may even receive a psychological evaluation but even if a mental disorder is identified there are virtually no services available. Further cuts to California mental health programs are announced this week. 587 million has been slashed over the last few years from a program that was already tragically inadequate. It is estimated that 8% of the population suffer from some form of mental illness but the medieval notion that psychological disorders are rooted in a lack of character seems to persist and treatment has always been a low priority.

I'd had the impression that most of L.A.'s homeless had gravitated to Occupy L.A. where there was free food and medical care but driving down Central Avenue, there is an ocean so vast it couldn't possibly be contained on the steps of the City Hall. I presume that most of the street people who found refuge at Occupy L.A. did make their way back to Skid Row before police raids of the encampment.

Patrick Meighan, a writer for Family Guy describes his arrest at Occupy L.A. in a disturbing piece http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/?mid=5490 He is able to make bail but many of the other arrestees are still in jail. The bail is set at $5000 for those arrested at Occupy. Bail in cases of violent crime and serious felony is often much lower. Meighan describes watching from behind the cyclone fence that was erected at City Hall the tents and other possessions of the occupiers being tossed by hazmat clad workers into dump trucks. The windstorm whips through Los Angeles the night after the police action. Clothing, tents and medical supplies are destined for a landfill while thousands, exposed on dirty downtown streets, brave the wicked Santa Anas.

Meighan also points out that while peaceful protestors at Occupy L.A. are treated more harshly than hardcore felons, the former CEO of Citigroup, Charles Prince, maintains a lifestyle worthy of his regal moniker. In reference to the firm's dangerously leveraged lending practices, Prince said, “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've to get up and dance. We're still dancing.” Under Prince's stewardship the market value of Citigroup declined by $64 billion. Instead of an lengthy incarceration Prince receives $68 million from stock and options, an exit bonus of $12.5 million, a $1.7 million pension, and an office, car and driver for five years.

The streets abound with crackheads and folks who have gone off their meds but the ranks have swollen as more and more of the working class lose jobs, homes and health coverage. The kick in the balls to the middle class is a direct result of the callous manipulation of the world's finances by the big banks and instead of exacting penalties from the major players, we set bail at $5000 for those who have the temerity to call the bankers out.

I cannot say that our finances have flourished in the last few years but we are blessed with work, a home and health insurance. Our policy, like most, has scant provisions for mental health and only slightly better for physical health. I receive frequent calls from a collection agency all year when our insurer fails to pay a provider for a clearly covered expense. This is resolved after I write over a dozen letters and finally enlist the help of the State Insurance Commissioner but I imagine that many don't clearly understand their coverage or are cowed and frightened by collection agency calls and simply capitulate.

The OB who delivered both of my kids has an office in Beverly Hills. She does not accept insurance and my carrier only reimburses me for a small portion of her fees but she has always charged me fairly and reasonably. There is usually a bit of a wait but I never feel rushed as I often do when seeing other physicians who are preferred providers and have to squeeze in a ton of patients. The examination gowns are made of flimsy pink paper but while the décor is not to my taste, efforts have been made to make it as comfortable and homey as a room with a focal point of metal stirrups can be. Due to my family history my doctor prescribes a genetic test. She advises me to pay cash for the test and not to use my real name. She feels that what's left of a nationalized heathcare plan is sure to go by the wayside and it's best to have no record of a pre-exisiting condition.

I have a few hours between medical assignations in Beverly Hills and being in weight loss mode I take lunch at the macrobiotic joint M Chaya. If I lie on my bed and flail a bit I can triumph over pair of size 12 jeans and it is worth the impossibility of sitting or breathing. I will note here that my current weight is approximately 150 lbs lower than my highest and yet, I have never felt as fat and cumbersome in my life as I do in Beverly Hills at M Chaya. I rattle the table of two regulars attempting to finesse myself into the tiny booth. I am not only ginormous, I am wearing a red sweater in room full of black clad, Alexander McQueen boot wearing, health food eaters. The women at the next table note my reading of Jeffrey Eugenides “The Marriage Plot” and say they'd read it in their book club and really liked it. The book parodies post modern criticism and quotes Derrida and Barthes extensively and it seems impossible to me that anyone wearing size 0 skin tight Lycra leggings and toting a Birkin handbag around Beverly Hills could possibly have really liked it. Nevertheless, they do not expound and continue their conversation about a new diet. “I eat three ounces of protein in the morning and then only fruit and vegetables the rest of the day, but I still haven't lost any weight.”

My appointment at the Beverly Hills Women's Center follows my spartan lunch. I made a big fuss about the mammography place I was sent to in Burbank being a pit and have been sent now “over the hill.” This place makes the crappy place in Burbank look like the most exclusive Baden-Baden spa. I call a few days before my appointment to confirm that my primary physician has submitted a referral and after endless muzak and three different annoyed workers I am assured that he has. The waiting room has the ambiance of a Greyhound depot except for a number of the Georgia O'Keefe prints which must be included free with the purchase of specula or mammography equipment. I am called to the desk three times and grilled about the referral from my physician and I indicate that I have confirmed its arrival. “Oh yeah. Go sit back down.” A woman in a wheelchair is parked in the middle of the room. She stares into space and chews. Old women hobble down the hall with walkers and a young woman directs, in Spanish, three small children to sit quietly. An obese bleached blonde argues in Russian with her diminutive husband, conspicuously the only man in the room. Westside matrons, in their discomfiture at being marooned among the proletariat glower and pester the girls at the desk about the long wait.

Women are called in groups of two or three and shown to changing rooms with doors that have taken so much abuse they don't close fully and issued pink ( apparently the AMA mandated color for all accessories pertinent to women's healthcare) smocks. The lockers have no locks and we are commanded to carry our bras, blouses and other belongs while we wait our turn, standing in a hall, for a mammographer. I've had a variety of laboratory tests over the years and it's always like being on the peoplemover but the mammography clinic is the most degrading. The technician is obstreperous and refuses to refer me for the ultrasound that my physician prescribes. I hover near over-the-top in my campaign make them provide the services for which I've been referred. I am told the ultrasound technician has gone home for the day and I ratchet up the assertiveness to a point that in retrospect I feel a bit sheepish about. Somehow a technician and even a radiologist materialize. What happens to patients who don't understand what tests have been ordered or lack language skills or the nerve to speak up?

Near the clinic is a trendy bakery filled with fashionable tweens who scarf down $7 red velvet or carrot mascarpone cupcakes. It is dark and the crosstown streets are jammed. I make my way down 3^rd and notice Short Order, the new restaurant that serves $18 hamburgers that just opened next to the Dupar's at the Farmer's Market. I reach Hancock Park and notice that the dozens of David statues that once graced the front yard of a stark white 60s house have been removed. The owners of the nearby mansions must be relieved. Past Western there are Hispanic shops and salons, brightly painted and glowing eerie with fluorescent light. Women, who probably feed big families each day on less then the price of a Beverly Hills cupcake, wait in line for tortillas. A mile or so east thousands of homeless people huddle in tents. The steps of City Hall are empty now but many of the 99% trudge on hoping, if they still have the wherewithal to hope, that the Occupy Movement is a catalyst for change.

Disoccupied

2011-12-02T16:18:00.001-08:00

We are promised another night of fearsome winds but all is still. Waiting for the shake and squeal that doesn't happen is almost as eerie as enduring it the night before when we are fortunate to make out the sound of gushing water through all the wail and din. The branch of a pepper tree thuds again and again to activate a spigot on our deck despite our efforts to secure it. The wind blasts us as we fumble with the errant pepper. Himself, Ph.D and all, makes some suggestions towards correcting the problem that are so staggeringly stupid I attribute the lapse to some sort of Santa Ana phenomena related aberration. He is relieved when I have the presence of mind to suggest bungee cords.

I double my morning walk to compensate for a day skipped due to the storm and make a giant circle through Mount Washington. Most of the power is restored and the streets are largely unobstructed but for a giant fallen elm on Quail Way, which having crushed a car and someone's living room, still blocks the narrow road. Fallen branches that carpet the steep streets emit a sweet aroma and dawn breaks to reveal an electric blue sky.

From the top of Kite Hill City Hall is still illuminated and glowing at sunrise. Occupy LA is broken up by the LAPD the night before the deathly Santa Ana's. I hope that the energies harnessed here are a catalyst for good but if nothing else, candidates in the next election are now obliged to address the issue of economic disparity. The message is articulated most effectively with the coinage of the phrase “the 99%.” Occupy L.A.'s mission was complicated by its attractiveness to a large number of substance abusers, mentally ill and just plain homeless folks. This is a voiceless segment of 99% and while their presence at the Occupation isn't particularly photogenic, people sleeping in boxes in the shadows of the opulent offices of hugely profitable but tax exempt corporations is just as salient to the movement as the thousands of unemployed graduates with no means to pay off their college loans. Inevitably any assembly will attract its share of crazies as is evidenced by wacko Tea Party signage that's nearly as popular on Facebook as kitten videos. But the far reaching impact, of what I would have dismissed as a mobilization of right-wing crackpots, is impressive, viz a viz, the Congress. Perhaps there will be a formidable Occupy ticket in the 2012 election.

Spuds visits Occupy L.A. with us a number of times but while a large group of students from his college are regular participants, our elder son is dismissive. Number One Son is the kid who attributes his lack of enthusiasm for moving away to college to the happy childhood he was provided and his distaste for involvement in shaping his future is perhaps another attempt to postpone the encroaching demise of carefree youth. Sixteen year old Spuds takes a bus and two trains daily to my office so I can drive him to his tutoring job which is a bit off the public transportation grid. He arrives late, having made solo a detour to City Hall where a cyclone fence has been erected and we watches while former occupiers fruitlessly plead with the police to enter and prevent their possessions from being loaded onto huge dump trucks by workers clad in hazmat suits. Spuds muses whether in three years anyone will remember what happened here but I think O.W.S. will have traction. I look at iconic images daily as I search for footage, and even though I've seen them all a million times, frames from the 60s, of little black girls in church dresses being fire hosed in Selma and college students being shot down at Kent State, I am always gobsmacked by how much of the positive change that I've witnessed is fostered by protest. I suspect that old pictures of the tent city on the steps of City Hall and students in Davis being pepper sprayed will evoke the same awe for Spuds and his big brother too some day.

I have vivid memories of civil rights and peace protests only via photos and film but Spuds has taken part and himself delivered food and medical supplies. He discounts his energies but still I think his involvement entitles him to really own a bit of any salubrious results. It's this “at least did more than nothing” self satisfaction that makes me particularly ebullient about Hillary Clinton's trip to Burma, even though the press still uses the name Myanmar, a name coined by despotic leadership in an effort to completely denude the nation of its heritage. It isn't like I am single-handedly responsible for freeing Aung San Suu Kyi but I did give her a nice birthday party which unfortunately, due to her house arrest, she was unable to attend. Some monies were raised for the cause and the handful of people who slog through my rantings here week in and week out were informed a bit about the ruling military which seems recently to have loosened its grip. There is still a long way to go but the image of the recently free Aung San Suu Kyi dining with Hillary Clinton and the documented release of other political prisoners is reason for cautious optimism. The U.S. Campaign for Burma and similar organizations in other nations doggedly kept the dictatorship on the radar and I think, this group, of which I am a card carrying member, is entitled to take a little credit for the current shift in the right direction.

I have also written here extensively about the plight of inmates incarcerated in California prisons and shameful overcrowding and inhumane conditions. I wish I could say, that like signs of hope emanating from Burma, there has been progress on this other issue that is important to me. The state is complying with a federal court mandate to reduce prison overcrowding by sentencing non-violent offenders to county instead of state facilities. This is just a cynical numbers game but given the current political clout of the guard's union and the continued hacking away at the already pathetically miniscule budget devoted to rehabilitative programs in penal facilities this truly might be the only way to comply with the order to reduce the prison population. The bottom line is that nearly nothing is being done in prisons, county jails or aftercare to prevent recidivism and the guards union is well aware that a high census preserves hefty salaries and pensions and to them the cycle is more cash cow than vicious. I would love to add the issue of California prisons to the short list of things I've ranted about that have actually gotten better but unfortunately it seems the rush to comply with the Federal court bodes only to make the situation far worse but I am a lowly blogger and for a number of reasons, prison reform just isn't very sexy right now. My sense of impotence is dually exacerbated and diminished by correspondence I maintain with three Jewish California inmates.

Two of my pen pals are lifers. One has been incarcerated near San Diego for many years and another, after stints at Mule Creek and Pleasant Valley (!) is now at the same facility. Both of these men are smart and funny. They probably find my letters vaguely amusing but look forward most to the ones that contain legal pads or stamps which, except for paperback books sent directly from Amazon, is all that can be sent to a prisoner. I have no details about their crimes. I don't ask and they don' t tell. I feel no strong connection to either and suspect too that neither is a paragon of honesty. I know that in some odd way the human contact I maintain with them is important and it takes me very little time to dash off a letter once a week.

The man moved recently to San Diego is wheelchair bound now due to a neurological condition. He reports that the move to San Diego is scheduled after he is hospitalized for a week. He returns from the hospital to find his possessions all packed in preparation for his transfer. He is kept in a holding cell for several days without even shoes or a toothbrush. He is awakened at 3 am to board the van and the officer in charge instructs him to walk from the wheelchair. The prisoner indicates he is unsure whether he is strong enough to ambulate. The guard says he'd seen the inmate walking on the yard within the last few days and turns a deaf ear when the prisoner explains that this is impossible as he'd been hospitalized. It is determined that another vehicle will be necessary to transport him in a wheelchair but the irritated guard refuses to remove the man's belongings from the van so he is left without his bundle until a wheelchair equipped van can be engaged. It takes a week for the transport to be arranged and then after he arrives in San Diego it is several days until he sees his stuff. I am aware at this population's propensity for exaggeration and the prescient inmate includes with his letter a copy of a prison generated report that seems to corroborate this story.

I wish this were an isolated instance of petty-assed punitiveness but the third inmate I correspond with, and the one I consider a lifelong friend and not a mitzvah project commends a number of prison staffers for being professional and compassionate but notes too that bad-assed power tripping is rampant and seldom checked. The right is tough on crime and the left is reluctant to take a stand in opposition of any union, even CCPOA, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Officers have the option of choosing a badge that says Dept of Corrections or one that says Dept of Corrections and Rehabilitation and almost all opt for the former, at least honest about their lack of motivation to rehabilitate anyone.

The L.A. Occupiers have been dispersed through the city. Perhaps some of the more effectual members of the movement will be a voice for not only underemployed college graduates but also for the very bottom rung of the 99% who eke out a survival on the streets or languish in prisons due a society that values tax loopholes for the wealthy more than providing the most basic services for the destitute and mentally ill. The world is watching Burma for signs of genuine change and proof that Clinton's visit and other gestures towards improving international relations are not just a grab for more foreign monies. We are promised another severe bout of merciless wind and yet the air is still. Sometimes human goodness prevails and sometimes storms that we expect just don't arrive.

New Day Rising

2011-11-25T14:36:00.001-08:00

The spawn endure another concert seated next to me when I spring for “See a Little Light: Celebration of the Music and Legacy of Bob Mould,” at Disney Hall. Number one son suggests that the music is better suited for Al's Bar but to me Mould's three decades of work merit the grand setting. For once, I am not conspicuously old. It's the kids who are conspicuously young at this tribute to the front man for the seminal punk band Husker Dü. I saw the band in the 80s at the Variety Arts Center and was happy to find standing room close to the stage. It was only when the show started that I realized that I'd planted myself directly in front of a speaker the size of a double-wide. About ten minutes into the concert the sound took on a muffled quality and everything has been a bit muffled for me ever since. Whenever anyone screams at me for having music or the tv on too loud I think “Husker Dü.” I will note that while the band was loud, it was not particularly animated and my stageside vantage afforded the disappointing view of the trio attaining impressive volume while remaing completely motionless, like stiffs. The band busted up and Mould went on the form the band Sugar and later to craft a number of praiseworthy solo albums. Mould has recently published an autobiography and Himself will here paste a link to his review of the "See a Little Light" as well as to his reviews of a book about "the noise-pop band that changed modern rock" and a collection of essays “This Band Could Change Your Life” that has an excellent piece about Husker Dü written by the co-writer of Mould's autobiography.

A number of artists perform a variety of songs spanning Mould's career which results in some mind blowing interpretations and a shamelessly gushy love fest. When I see Margaret Cho's name on the roster I presume she is slated to master the ceremonies but instead she effuses a bit about the succor Mould's music afforded during her years as a teenage misfit. Cho is joined by Grant Lee Phillips for a version of the Sugar tune “Your Favorite Thing.” Her pure passion for Mould's oeuvre overshadows any limitations she may have as a singer. My kids hate Craig Finn of The Hold Steady and sneer that Darby Crash, who made the mistake of committing showy suicide on the same day as John Lennon's murder, did it first. While Finn's herkey jerky physicality bears some similarity to Mr. Crash's, Finn is less a nihilistic punker than a teenage fan letting every nuance of a song take deep root in his soul. His performances evoke the most nerdulent kid in high school letting it rip in front of his bedroom mirror. Finn's performance of Mould's "Real World" and "A Good Idea" is as exciting as his interpretations of his own smart moody songs.

My kids turn me on to the spectacular No Age, a ubiquitous rag tag local duo. They are as ebullient as any performers I've ever seen as they play with Mould and the elder statesman makes it clear that the love and respect is mutual. The burning question of the evening is “Where have you been all my life Dave Grohl?” I was never a big Nirvana fan and may be the only person in the universe who doesn't own Never Mind, which apparently at one point Bob Mould had been slated to produce. Grohl's next project, The Foo Fighters, can be credited with some good commercial songs but have a sound I imagine appeals mostly to teenage girls. When Grohl accompanies Mould on a couple of tunes I am fearful that the 51 year old Mould is going to keel over with a heart attack trying to keep up. Mould, however, holds his own and it is remarkable to see two performers so thoroughly bring out the best in each other. Grohl takes over on drums for New Day Rising and the result was so blistering that even my “came only to see No Age on Mom's dime” companions are on their feet.

Ryan Adams, a singer song writer is the only performer at the tribute to perform Mould's songs acoustically. An old friend who attends the tribute only to hear Ryan Adams, is almost 60. He says that the six year difference in our ages is the reason why none of Mould's music is familiar to him. He complains too that the show seems to be a commercial for Mould's book, which indeed is being sold in the lobby. Britt Daniel of Spoon opens the performance with the confession, “I have the book but I haven't read it yet.” I am in the same boat, although I did read Himself's excellent review (see link above) and Himself boinks himself on the head quite smartingly when he goes to retrieve the tome from the garage at my behest,

The autobiography “See a Little Light” recounts Mould's father's alcoholism and his own struggles with substance abuse. He details the perils of the music industry and his personal difficulties navigating it as a gay man At the end of the show I am elated to see that after over thirty years in rock Mould is respected and adored not only by his peers but by a younger generation as well. Mould admits he is not much of a speaker but also recognizes that the occasion requires a few words. He steps up to the mike and notes that his book chronicles the struggle with his ordinary mindset of alternating between rehashing the past and agonizing about the future. “I have some trouble being in the present,” he goes on and then is silent. He stands in the footlights, looks out to the crowd and drinks in that 2000 people are blissfully in the now with him. A now I am delighted to have shared with my boys, who for all of tsuris they cause me, need music like oxygen and doughnuts. Maybe someday they will tell their children that Grandma has partial hearing loss due to a band called Husker Dü.

Day Trip

2011-11-18T14:46:00.001-08:00

We make a pilgrimage to Johnston College which is now known as Johnston Center for Integrative Studies but that's too much of a mouthful. Himself has yet to visit number one son at the institution of higher learning and Uncle Richard comes along for the ride. The familiar landmarks on the 10 evoke my own college days although the big blue barn painted with, “Colton-Hub of Industry, Center of Progress” is gone. Sometimes in the middle of the night we'd visit the Terminal Inn truck stop at the Waterman off-ramp. We'd swill burnt coffee and send the boys into the men's room to verify that there really was a machine that sold French ticklers. We marched in braless in our hippie garb and whispered about what pigs the truckers were when they ogled us. Thirty five years later the truck stop is gone. The kids at Johnston seem to have fallen into a time warp and my own college wardrobe would fit right in. There was recently a “slutwalk” on the University of Redlands campus. I get it that women should be able to wear whatever they want and not be subjected to male sexual aggression but I get the heebie jeebies when I see girls done up like slatterns. Naturally, anyone should be able to dress as they choose and not be victimized by predators but girls wearing slutwalk appropriate garb seem to be demeaning themselves. I'm glad I have boys.

We call our college boy and wake him when we are about fifteen minutes away. When he admits us to the dorm his hair is wet from showering and he is barefoot. “You'll get athlete's foot,” I warn him. He says, “we all go barefoot,” and I stop myself from explaining that's all the more reason for him to wear shoes. I realize that as the parent of a college freshman I have lost my clout with regard to informing his behavior. The little that I had. We arrive at about 12:30 and the dorm is dark and silent. Roommate is still in bed when we enter the cluttered room. I start to say that if I were expecting visitors I would at least have made my bed and ask what's become of the top sheet but remember that I am even more impotent now than when his bed was under my own roof.. It is decided that Roommate will join us for lunch and we agree to wait while he gets himself ready. Himself, who cannot abide waiting for anything, rolls his eyes, but our freshman placates him by proffering that the lobby holds many books.

The lobby is a sea of clutter, including a half eaten cake that has been sitting out so long the pathogens are visible by naked eye. I wonder what is so difficult about putting books neatly on a shelf rather than cramming them in willy nilly stacks although there are a few titles interesting enough to keep Himself from complaining about killing time waiting for Roommate and the inevitability of paying for his lunch. By one pm there are a few more lights on in the halls and a few students in boxer shorts pad drowsily to the coed bathrooms. Barefoot. We are informed that few students rise before noon and Roommate notes that our own scion is a campus sleeping champion, often logging fourteen consecutive hours.

When I arrived on campus with the boy back in September, Roommate, from a private school in the hoity toity part of Pasadena was clean shaven with a fresh haircut. He wore a pastel polo shirt, freshly ironed khakis, Bass Weejuns and something I'd not seen in ages, a ginormous class ring. Fewer than three months have transpired but Roommate's gone native with hair grown out to near Angela Davis proportions. He has a full beard and sports tattered cut off sweat pants and rubber flip flops and he's bagged the class ring. He is, as obviously as my own progeny, hungover. My college boy reports that Roommate's sheltered high school years included few parties. After imbibing from what is described an awesome sized bong in a neighboring room Roommate awakens my own sophisticate at four in the morning in an apoplectic panic as he is unable to feel his tongue.

We set out for a coffee shop in Mentone. I point out a few vestigial orange groves that have somehow survived the epidemic of endless cul de sacs crammed with huge brown stucco houses. I remember distinctly that the street behind the campus runs directly into Mentone Blvd but we wind up at a tiny airport I didn't even know existed. I see Himself's eyes flashing daggers in the rear view mirror. He hates wasting gas as much as he does having his six foot frame jammed into the back seat. Roommate's Iphone navigates us to the restaurant and I note that a number of charming field-stone houses still line Mentone Blvd. We arrive at an old school diner and are seated next to a group of adipose tattooed locals in Valvoline caps and wifebeaters. I posit, as I face them from behind that it might be a back fat convention. Uncle Richard is included in the field trip not only because he is cheerful and keeps Himself on good behavior but also because he shares with Roommate a common interest in the Academy Awards and an intense discussion ensues. Our neighbors glance our way when Roommate squeals loudly “It's gonna be Meryl Streep in Iron Lady” and Himself gives me the stinkeye, like it's my fault.

I've eaten in my share of coffee shops and I know that it is foolhardy in these establishments to order any food that is available in canned form. Himself and I are happy with toast and an omelet. Mr. College asks for 2 sides. Corned beef hash and home fried potatoes. The waitress brings two plates of hash and a third with a plate of undercooked spuds and we are puzzled. I start to say that the boy had wanted two separate side orders, not two of corned beef, but Uncle Richard takes the waitress' side that it sounded indeed like two orders of hash had been requested. I wonder if he would have defended her if he'd intended to pick up the check himself but alas, this is something we will never know.

The hash is definitely of the Dinty Moore variety and is uneaten, as is Roommate's homemade biscuit which drowns in a thick beige gravy of the same provenance as the hash. My boy comments that the hash tastes like store brand cat food and I say that I'd expected a canned product. “Why didn't you tell me not to order it?!” “You don't like it when I tell you what to do,” I reply. He can't argue with this but shrinks a bit, realizing how many more shitty meals he is condemned to.

We continue up the mountain to the apple growing area of Oak Glen. It is a tourist trap with petting zoos and tractor rides but there are fresh apples and cider presses. The air is clean and thin and there are maples and oaks gone autumny red and orange. The boy has come home almost every weekend and rarely leaves the campus during the week. After a lunch among the meth lab haircuts and a short ride to mountain orchards 5000 feet above sea level, it dawns on him that where he lives now is someplace else.

We return to campus and he takes us to the library and checks out a book on Buddhism for Himself to borrow. He treats us to a coffee at the student union and we meet a number of his friends and an instructor and Mr. College is poised and friendly and obviously well liked. We leave him chatting with a group of pals and head back on the 10. The kid is 19 now. I wish he'd wear shoes and keep his bed clean and take it easy with the partying. I no longer have the power of enforcement but I hope what we taught him while he was with us will serve him well. My 19 year old accepts more and more that he lives now in another place. I know sometimes he feels like there is no net but with every passing week this grows less frightening. He is settled in and I am proud and maybe seeing only three place settings at the dinner table someday won't make me weep. Someday.

Siri, My New BFFL

2011-11-11T14:02:00.000-08:00

I noted the one year anniversary of my mother's death a couple weeks ago. This week would have been her 91^st birthday. My dad would be 93. My imaginings of my parents' lives before I was born are in black and white. Airplanes and automobiles were newfangled contraptions when my parents were children. My father told my children about barnstormers or waiting in line at the Madrona Theater in Seattle to watch a talkie for the first time. Dad, after reminiscing for the boys, added, wistfully, “I wonder what you'll see.” The “after I'm dead” part was tacit. When I was six I found a giant appliance carton and painted dials and lights on it and precociously was a computer for Halloween. Later, at Grant High School only boys were in the Computer Science class and they made impressive pictures of Alfred E. Newman or Keep on Truckin' dot matrix printed on green and white fanfold paper.

I bought my mother her first computer which she used to play solitaire and to write e-mails to me. She pushed send and then called me to report that she'd sent me an e-mail and relate the information it contained. I was required frequently to “fix” the computer for her which usually meant plugging in the mouse or opening a window she'd closed inadvertently. My dad was suspicious when I purchased a $4000 Tandy for the office in 1988 and doggedly refused to learn to use a computer. He grew to appreciate the rapidity with which I could alphabetize lists and later the steep prices commanded for16mm films we sold on what he referred to as the“The Ebay.”

My children tease me about my stalwart allegiance to AOL and my slower than molasses, indecipherable texting. Spuds patiently teaches me the bare rudiments of my new I-phone and I know he's thinking about how wasted the sleek device is in my feeble hands. Himself is more than a little miffed when I take advantage of my cellphone upgrade eligibility and trade my Droid for what is my first Apple product, except for a used computer untouched by me but used at the office to operate Final Cut Pro. Himself is also apoplectic when I purchase a $20 dustpan that has a built in brush to clean the broom from the neat inventor's website Quirky.com. I silence him by pointing out his own lack of investment or participation in house cleaning. I have no retort for his remonstrance about the new phone because my rationale for buying it is purely covetousness of cool. Himself glowers at the sight of the new phone and notes derisively that the screen is smaller than a Droid's, but I permit him to hold it. Upon examination he discovers that there are many more Irish language (!) applications available for Apple products. I haven't even shown him the Shazaam gizmo that identifies music...in case I fall in love with a song being piped in at the Gelson's. For all of his grousing about my extravagance I suspect his Droid too will be put out to pasture in a few months when his own upgrade eligibly rolls around.

My friend Richard and I struggle to remember the name “Christopher Guest” although we can list his complete filmography. I finally consult my new friend Siri who came into my life when I activated my I-phone. She names the director instantly. She has some trouble later with “Pollo Loco” (had a coupon) and she admits that she can't find it but adds, “Layne, I'm terribly sorry.” I wonder if Siri will help me conceal signs of dementia longer than my mother was able to mask her own intellectual decline.

I have an hour to kill while Spuds rehearses and decide to visit the Big Lots on Vine which sometimes carries a tea that Himself likes. I drive through Hollywood for the first time in a while. I spent many childhood hours with my father walking the Boulevard. Dad would quiz me on the stars and we'd visit Pickwick Books and Burt Wheeler's Magic store. Now there are slick new buildings and businesses and whole blocks that are totally unfamiliar and I am at sea as to what was there before. The Big Lots is not where I remember it on Vine, near the Greyhound Station. The bus station closed years ago. I would sometimes go there with my dad to send off a film bound for Stockton or San Ysidro, and stowed in the luggage compartment of a big silver bus. Now the Big Lots appears gone as well and Siri confirms that the closest branch to my location is in Burbank. My Hollywood has been desecrated and I feel, irrationally, disrespected and unimportant.

I trod valley cul de sacs in my refrigerator box ENIAC and I guess I sensed what the future held. I have Siri now to guide me through Hollywood but so much of what is natural to my kids baffles me. The city will grow and change and there will be new inventions the likes of which I can't imagine. More and more I get a sense that things are passing me by. My parents too felt like they couldn't keep pace and now they are ashes and the world stumbles on without them. My children will be adults in a world I wouldn't recognize but through them and their children, my parents and I will always be a part of it.

Shabbat Shalom.

The Brat Race

2011-11-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't taken a writing breather for about three years but last week, in a well-lived-in cabin nestled in the Redwoods of Mount Hermon, I give myself permission to slack off. Reading, fortunately, is essential to good writing, or at least my (whatever you think of it) writing. While not writing, I finish two novels and a collection of short stories and bask in a lot of graceful prose and permit myself to feel smug about some that is pretty clunky. I devour Jennifer Egan's sly and subtle Visit from the Goon Squad which nails the 80s and 90s and flows from a free form La Ronde to a dazzlingly effective PowerPoint presentation. A collection of stories, The Empty Family by Irish writer Colm Toibin is harrowing, exquisite and rich with elegant sentences. Toibin is a master at evoking heartbreaking bleakness of loneliness counter-parted by quiet, tender redemption.

Steve Job's sister Mona Simpson's latest novel, My Hollywood has a few trenchant observations about children but is hard to follow as characters appear out of nowhere and then recede abruptly, never having furthered the plot. The novel is praised for Simpson's bold stab at capturing the inner-life of a Filipina nanny but I am consistently aware that a privileged white woman is doing the channeling. The plotting is plodding and it is remarkable that an editor didn't note that two separate episodes of children drowning might make an already iffy plot line even less credible. In interviews Simpson admits that her work is chock-a-block with autobiographical elements and perhaps consequently there is distinct quality of self righteousness, bordering on hubris, in her heroines.

Unlike Himself, I am no book reviewer and there are many astute reviews of these three popular works so I won't go into any more depth about my vacation reading, except to note it, lest you think my time was completely frittered away watching Storage Wars and working crossword puzzles. Which is not to say that I completely abstain from the latter two activities. Were I to fully embrace the avocation of critic I would laud the works of Jennifer Egan and Colm Toibin and further excoriate Mona Simpson but I would also have to give my highest praise to the Herculon recliner from which I do most of my reading, watching and puzzling.

Those familiar with the dynamics of Casamurphy are aware that for the most part, Spuds is the family member who best approximates an actualized human being. I remind readers of this in case anyone is tempted to contact the authorities as I confess that Himself and I head north for over a week, and leave Spuds with his brother home from college only on the weekends, a drawer full of cash, a fridge full of food, a written list of instructions and a bus pass. That we leave for our trip on the morning of Joe College's 19^th birthday, having underwhelmingly regaled him with a Groupon dinner the night before, is a further example of parental neglect, approaching malfeasance.

The birthday boy asks if he can host a small soiree in his own honor during our absence and I relent, knowing that, as I will be 400 miles away, my verdict is likely irrelevant. Himself paces and growls on the day of the party. I am asked to make many calls and remind our budding entertainers to insure that the dogs don't escape and that the garage where Himself has secreted our liquor remains closed. Himself logs on to Facebook at the onset off the gala and notices immediately that Spuds has posted a picture of two boys roughhousing in front of the open garage. I am on the phone immediately and that I'd discovered the open door freaks the host out so thoroughly that I break down and disabuse him of the fear that we've engaged professional surveillance.

When we return from the north the house looks OK nevertheless. There are a couple of beer bottles (a brand so cheap that Himself wouldn't consider serving to company he dislikes) in the recycling bin so they are ecologically responsible and never figure out where our own liquor is hidden. I learn later from other parents, arriving to fetch their own progeny, that there is quite a crowd, replete with scantily clad teenage girls slugging Colt 45 stumbling in the street. I am pleased that number one son has inherited his mother's social inclinations but, despite no police presence, irate calls from neighbors nor breakage as of yet discovered, it will be a while before we put our facilities as his disposal again.

Spuds survives a week of parental abandonment, feeds himself, takes care of the pets and attends school and play rehearsals and reports for his tutoring job with a better on-time record than his mother/chauffeur usually attains. Spuds inherits from a college bound friend a position tutoring a set of twins who like him about as much as he likes them. Not very. We never employed tutors until a middle school geometry crisis and both of our boys always completed school assignments without supervision or anyone hovering over them. The fourth graders are tutored daily for two hours in order to keep up on their homework which Spuds says really should require no more than a half hour a day. The twins mother is single and holds an extremely prestigious position at a local university. I have never met her but we have a complicated relationship.

My own development was arrested and it took me longer than many of my contemporaries to transition to true adulthood, the point at which I stopped blaming my parents. This perhaps contributes to my strong desire to think of myself as a particularly good mother and I have always pumped my kids for dirt about their friend's moms, hungry for choice examples of mothering inferior to my own. Having recently, for example, left a sixteen year old essentially alone for over a week and consented to an unsupervised teenage party, the pickins' are usually quite slim. With Spud's employer, my contempt fomented by my jealousy at her professional position, I've hit pay dirt.

Spuds is typically greeted by the boys running away from him as rapidly as they can. I proffer diagnoses. Autism. Aspergers. Dyslexia. Aphasia. Spuds rolls his eyes and says that their resistance to completing homework is attributable only to their hostility for their control freak mother who arrives at their school, where Spuds works with them, and interrogates Spuds fiercely about the completion of every speck of homework. The kids have no video games or television so it seems to Spuds that a little homework might even break the tedium of home but if Twinmom's regular backpack excavation reveals a stray assignment Spuds receives a strongly worded text.

Spuds requests an afternoon off to catch up on his own homework, and offers to put in some extra time the next day. He reads me Twinmom's snippy response stating that the boys have homework due every day but we agree it it might be ill-advised to send the response: “I have homework due every day too. BITCH!” Spud's does go to tutor the boys and stays up late to complete his own work. He knows from listening to his dad gripe and hanging out at mom's office that often in the course of earning a living we have to kowtow to people who in real life we would assiduously avoid. Plus, Spuds has decided that he prefers the garments of Urban Outfitters to the Target store brands and sibling hand-me-downs that his mother provides.

Spuds texts Twinmom that he has to leave for a rehearsal and that one of the boys will need to spend a few minutes on an incomplete assignment when he gets home. Twinmom texts back furiously that this is impossible because after dinner the children have to play with their kitten. Spuds screams at his cell phone and I note that some psychiatrist will probably name a yacht after this family...”but,” I start to add. Spuds interrupts me by holding his palm in “halt” position. He finishes my sentence. “Take the money.”

Back Next Week

2011-10-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Seeds of Change

2011-10-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

I wrote lots here about ceaseless visits to the Department of Motor Vehicles with number one son, who like his mother, encountered some hurdles on the path to becoming a licensed driver. Now it seems like the boy has been driving forever and when he leaves for college I am demoted back to chauffeur duty for Spuds who it seems has an inordinate number of places to go. When it is determined that proximity to my office is insufficient reason for him to remain at the behemoth and miserable Marshall High School Spuds is told that he can return to the far flung charter in Pasadena with the proviso that he become self transporting as soon as possible.

I hadn't hustled Spuds off to the DMV when he is first eligible for a learning permit at age 15 ½, thinking he'd be at school near my office. He is fully 16, plus three weeks, on the day of his appointment. I navigate the Lincoln Heights office like a pro. I know the short cut and the location of street parking. I have our documents in perfect order. I quiz Spuds on the sample test and he seems to have mastered the material. I am chill and thinking maybe that history won't repeat itself. Spud's number is called and the clerk is astoundingly spaced out and wearing the tightest pair of black spandex pants I have ever seen. I presume that processing a learner's permit is not outside of the usual parvenu of clerical functions but our lady is utterly stymied and asks other employees for assistance, which is provided, albeit noticeably grudgingly, several times. She remonstrates me and says I shouldn't let Spuds drive until he is eighteen and asks for payment twice and glares at me suspiciously when I tell her that I've already paid.

The application is finally complete and Spuds is sent to be photographed and tested. His hair is sticking up and I feel bad that he'll be stuck indefinitely with this photo but I keep my mouth shut. He passes the exam and is issued a permit. He notices his name is spelled incorrectly and returns to the window. The application is voided and then corrected and he is photographed again before I get a chance to address the cowlick. We are almost home when he notices that his permit indicates that he is a female. We return to the DMV. The original clerk chastises Spuds, who being stressed out about the pending test, did not check the application for errors, She tells Spuds he'll have to return another day and begin the whole application process again but a supervisor steps in and helps a different clerk override the archaic software. They spend about forty five minutes processing the application manually during which time I am able to discreetly smooth Spud's hair with some spit. He notices himself that the third photograph is far superior.

We are encouraged to fill in a complaint form and I get the impression that there have been other issues with the befuddled clerk. I describe her incompetence but do not mention the camel toe. I request an additional form to file a compliment for the two employees who take it upon themselves to rectify the problem and commend their courtesy and professionalism. It seems labor unions make it just as difficult to acknowledge a superior employee as to fire an incompetent one. Unions still play the proletarian card and have concertedly maintained visibility within the Occupy Movement. The embrace of the Occupy Movement may just be a smokescreen to conceal organized labor's culpability for the number of politicians who are beholden to union coffers. Still, there is a ton of documentation, particularly in the food service industry, that workers who are not protected by a union are exploited appallingly. It is unfortunate that the funds and energy that are expended ostensibly for the protection of selected groups of workers can't be spread equally to insure the protection of all employees. I am unsure about the future of organized labor in this country but I do know with great certainty that lessening government regulation of business does not bode well at all for union members and non-members alike.

Finally, Spuds has a legitimate and accurate learner's permit and the ramifications of this start to sink in. I love it that his older brother can drive and I have availed myself of this as much as possible often as shamelessly as “Go pick up a gallon of milk so I can remain prone on the sofa watching Teen Mom.” My mother admonished me to drive safely even when she no longer remembered my name. I doubt I will ever be at perfect peace when I know that one of my sons is behind the wheel of a car. I remember squeezing the shoulder harness strap until I lost feeling in my hand while practicing with my previous student driver and here I am again. I do love the freedom of not having to transport them hither and yon but I dread hours in the passenger seat training another new driver and the doubling of the “kid out driving among the potentially insane” angst after he gets his license.

Joe College returns for the celebration of his 19th birthday for which we will use a Groupon and not buy his preferred Baskin Robbins Ice cream cake because the icing has the mouth feel of Crisco. I still can't get used to the table set with only three places. When Spuds starts motoring the house will be even emptier and I won't be able to beg him as frequently to neglect his homework and watch TV with me. While I am a prime candidate for major maladjustment to empty nest it does warm me to witness the satisfaction and increased self confidence they reap from their growing independence. When I dropped the boy at college I was elated but felt also an undercurrent of fear about what will await him in four years. I envisioned him returning defeated, with a degree, debt and no prospects, to Casamurphy like so many of my friends' kids who have ended up back at home post-graduation. Now I'm a bit more sanguine as it seems the world is waking up to what's really wrong. The message widely disseminated and is apparently sinking in, proving that Facebook is good for more than stalking ex-boyfriends and looking at cute pet tricks.

The boy's birthday present is a contraption that will play the hundreds of our old vinyl records that he rescued from our garage sale and transfer them to his I-Pod. The boy is cynical about the newly burgeoning protest movement and while he is mad about vinyl he is unsentimental about schlepping back to Redlands crates of the same records I dragged there when I started college myself. I don't really miss albums. They scratch and warp and take up a lot of space although I did gift a comedian friend with the observation that it is difficult to clean a lid on an MP3. I hauled my records and stereo to college in 1974. The Vietnam War had just ended, largely due to a grassroots protest movement similar in origin and spirit to the Occupiers. We met every Wednesday at Johnston College for community meetings. We'd ended a war. Well, in truth it was folks a bit older than I was, although having co-opted their fashion sense and music so I thought I could take credit for the war too. We thought we could do anything and that what we said was important. During the eighties I was embarrassed by this hubris but having a kid who feels ineffectual and hopeless I guess it wasn't really so bad to feel that way. I hope my son's sense of possibility is kindled. I've tried talking to him about the significance of the Occupy movement and how genuine change could brighten his own future but as a parent I have no credibility. Maybe some of my old Dylan and Phil Ochs albums will do the trick. If nothing else he'll make the discovery that marijuana used to come with seeds.

Pre-Occupied

2011-10-14T13:55:00.001-07:00

I visit Occupy L.A.and while the message is muddled, the assembled masses and the mastery of social media give me a major rush. The closest occupiers come to a unifying issue is disgust with banks but a virtually unregulated financial industry is the consequence of the repeal, in 1999, during the Clinton administration, of the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act which prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. This enabled the greedy money brokers who crashed the mortgage industry. Conservative pundits on Fox News shrilly demand less government regulation. It's no wonder as this has certainly paid off for them. Fox News itself exists and is able to disseminate disinformation due to the deregulating Telecommunications Act of 1996, passed under the aegis of Bill Clinton, which allowed for cross media ownership. Because there is no limit to the number of media outlets that a single corporation can control, most Americans now get news that's skewed and filtered to serve the interests of a corporate behemoth. Last year the Supreme Court gave another huge boost to corporate hegemony by ruling in favor of the Koch Brother's PAC Citizen's United, agreeing that restricting corporate political contributions is a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. An article in the New Yorker “State for Sale” http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer is a wonderful and sickening illustration of how this has played out in North Carolina.

The Occupy movement has been more peaceful than the antecedent civil rights and anti-war movements. The Los Angeles City Council passed, unanimously, a proclamation supporting the demonstration and a number of unions have a big presence. It is certainly favorable to have this support but I can't help but question the sincerity. Maybe the politicians and unionistas are just bet hedging as a buffer from scrutiny, as it appears that the times may finally be a changin.' Political and union participation in the Occupy movement might indeed stifle any discussion of publicly funded elections, which based on where we are now, seem to be an essential ingredient for a true democracy. The legislative and executive branches stand, if the civil rights and anti-war movements are any example, to be altered by the seeds the Occupy Movement are propagating but the judicial arm is (almost) forever. The court as a whole is among of the most conservative in American history and also one of the youngest; the average age of the current justices is 53 so probably, unless there's some sort of global pandemic, there isn't going to be a lot of turnover.

Twenty years ago this week we toured the Gold Rush Country in a rental car listening to the unprecedented senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas which inspired several seasons of Long Dong Silver Jokes on SNL. Despite Anita's Hill's testimony, Thomas was confirmed. Joe Biden led the confirmation committee and he elected not to call witnesses who were willing to corroborate Hill's claims that Thomas was a sleazy perv. Thomas, who has always been virulently opposed to Affirmative Action and has often expressed his contempt for Yale Law School, claiming his admission there was mere tokenism, played the black card and responded, “...from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.” However perhaps he made an even bigger footprint on the landscape by claiming to have no opinion about Roe vs. Wade and other controversial issues that boded for the court. Thomas set a new precedent for court nominees, “taking the 5^th”on inquiries regarding judicial philosophy during confirmation hearings.

Thomas was nominated by Bush the Elder to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the only African-American justice on the Court. Thomas was considered the only viable conservative black candidate even though he had never written a legal book or article and had served as a judge for only sixteen months . The American Bar rating of Thomas was the least favorable of any confirmed nominee since the Eisenhower era. Candidates are almost always rated “well qualified” but Thomas was rated only “qualified” by a 13 to 2 vote.

Thomas is considered to be one of the most conservative justices in the history of the court, an “originist” who sees that his responsibilty is only to literally interpret the Consititution regardless of the relevancy, and feels strongly that the court should play no role in the creation of social policy. Thomas' opinion on whether lethal injection consitutes cruel and unusual punishment reads, as Jeffrey Toobin refers to it, “like a slasher movie.” Thomas states that the provision must be “understood in light of the historical practices that led the Framers to include it in the Bill of Rights.” He cites all manner of 18^th century execution methods like burning at the stake, gibbeting, and “embowelling alive” as being what the framers meant by “cruel and unusual” and implying that our modern methods of execution are quite civilized.

Justices Thomas and fellow ultra-conservative Antonin Scalia appear to be in the pocket of the Koch brothers. Thomas denied his affiliation with their Federalist Society but his financial report reveals that they reimbursed him for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of a retreat. Justices are free to lecture and attend seminars but they are prohibited from engaging in partisan activities. The Koch shindig in Palm Springs, also attended by Scalia, and billed as “an opportunity to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it,” doesn't sound very non-partisan.

Clarence Thomas's integrity is also questionable in other areas. He neglected to report income his wife Jinni earned as a lobbyist for the conservative Heritage Foundation. Between 2003 and 2007, Ginni earned $686,589 and Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled "none" for "spousal non-investment income." He did file amended disclosures but it is puzzling that 689k would slip his ostensibly great mind. Jinni Thomas is now campaigning fervently against President Obama's national heath care plan and there is pressure on Thomas to recuse himself from the pending case although he has indicated he doesn't consider hearing the case a conflict of interests.

If the Occupy Movement sows a more compassionate government and is a catalyst for a more equitable tax structure and reform of the financial industry it will have conquered a lot. I hope the dialogue branches out to include our scanty regulation of giant corporations and the beholdeness of our politicians to them. The Supreme Court is quite an obstacle however. A justice can be removed from the court for a criminal offense but it has never happened. In 1804 an attempt was made to impeach Justice Samuel Chase, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence for his “Federalist leanings” but he was acquitted and continued to serve. In 1957, at the peak of McCarthyism, there was a movement that emanated from the South to impeach Earl Warren, Hugo Black and other liberal justices on the grounds that they were communist sympathizers but this never amounted to much more than a few billboards.

It is unlikely the Clarence Thomas, or any other member of the Court will be found guilty of a crime severe enough to provoke an impeachment hearing so we may be condemned for decades to a one of the most conservative courts in history. This is particularly distressing when this year's docket includes cases not only pertinent to national healthcare coverage but also the right to marriage and immigration enforcement. Anthony Kennedy is considered a swing voter, although more often than not his decisions reflect a conservative sensibility. The Supreme Court may be a genuine impediment to the return to a government that is truly for the people but there are tent cities all over the country that I hope herald the end of apathy and feelings of hopelessness. The Judicial Branch is probably beyond the realm of possibility but there are other channels. Let's hope the occupiers get the message that Wall Street is just the tip of the iceberg.

Shabbat Shalom

Cheap Spate

2011-10-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

My mother was a coupon fanatic. Before they were bar-coded she would sneak coupons that had expired or for products she hadn't purchased into the giant stack she foisted over to the checker at the Ralph's (double coupons!). On April Fool's Day once I had a friend call her pretending to be the Ralph's manager and ordering her to cease and desist with the coupon shenanigans. She hung up in his face and took her business to Von's. Mom always kept a special stack of things she accumulated waiting for me on Fulton Ave. There were samples, junk mail and coupons which I'd sneak around the side of her house and dump in the recycling. I knew that my parents thrifty habits were a result of coming up during the depression. Up until a couple of years ago our income increased a bit each year and we assumed that this would always be the case. We discovered with a big bang that it is not. The new frugality has become tres chic but for us it's a necessity.

While I don't clip coupons from the newspaper I get a thrill when Fresh & Easy and Costco coupons arrive in the mail. I'm an avid user of Groupons and the similar Amazon connected program called Living Social. I pick up ten buck Groupons for a lot of neighborhood ethnic places which are great for the kids to use. I also purchase Groupons for a few sit down restaurants for family outings. I snatch a Groupon to an Indian restaurant in Pasadena after confusing the name with one we'd been to before and liked but it turns out to be a different one. Why are there so many Indian restaurants in Pasadena?

Spuds and I head to Akbar in Old Town on the day the Groupon expires. I suspect a crowd on the last day the coupon's good so we arrive before 6 p.m. and snag the last table in the house. The lady at the next table starts talking about the death of Steve Jobs and says she is waiting for her son and seeing Spuds says that it must be a mother-son dinner night which conjures the “Motherboy” episode of Arrested Development. Her son arrives, a big blond brute, much older than Spuds and he demands vegetarian food prepared without onions and not hot. He orders, “mango milk” and when the waitress suggests he means “mango lassi,” he snarls, “whatever.” When the food arrives he asks if there's some sort of sauce for it, maybe curry but not spicy,” and becomes sulky when the waitress says that they only have chutney which has chile. I think I got the better deal in the son department. By the time we finish eating there is a long line out the door. It was obvious that the staff is slammed and it takes quite a long time to get the food, which is edible but average. I paid $20.00 for a $45.00 Groupon. From what I understand, Groupon gets about half of that so the restaurant take is about $10.00. The staff works their tails off and the till is probably empty at evenings' end.

Groupon is one of the fastest growing companies in history and a spectacular IPO was anticipated. I would be very surprised, now that the data is in, if the stock offering actually comes to pass. I have picked up a few Groupons for places I know and like and would return to regardless. Most of the others were for restaurants that have decent reviews on Chowhound or Yelp. I purchased one for a natural foods market that I found to have grossly inflated prices and complained to Groupon and promptly got a full refund. With regard to the untried restaurants, I enjoy the cheap meals but have no incentive to return and pay full price when I can just use another Groupon for another new place. I think a lot of merchants participating in these coupon offers aren't building from them the loyal following they'd expected. Research shows that Grouponers also tend to be Yelpers. Perhaps it's due to mediocrity, or maybe the surge of customers a Groupon creates overwhelms a restaurant and food and service fall apart, but there is a definite correlation between Groupon offers and negative Yelp reviews.

I'm not sure how long Groupon, at least as it is now, will last but to my kids Groupons are more familiar tender than the green stuff. I was derisive about my mother's use of coupons but my own kids are accustomed to relying on Groupons and it is normal to be thrust one when they ask for clothes, shoes, electronic and food items. They are also used to helping me split orders at the Fresh & Easy so I can make use of additional $10.00 coupons for $50.00 purchases. There are usually union representatives in front of the Eagle Rock store. Fresh & Easy is owned by the huge British conglomerate Tesco. The union states that they have an employee majority in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Union but Fresh & Easy claims their workers are happy and has one standing in a kelly green Fresh & Easy shirt at the door, right next to the union organizers, handing out $5 coupons. While my parents were paragons of thrift, neither would ever cross a picket line. They were pretty apolitical but I think the legend of the Triangle fire and other labor horror stories recounted by their elders insured that their generation of Jews were unquestioning union sympathizers.

Unfortunately, I am able to stretch my own food budget by shopping pretty exclusively at non-union purveyors because the prices are dramatically lower. I feel guilty to some extent but I also can't ascribe to my parents' blind obeisance because it has become clear that the efficacy of unions is now suspect as they wield, and frequently abuse, so much political power. That said, I wish all workers in the U.S. had the same protection that most unions afford their members.

My sister and I resented my parents parsimony and our attitudes about money were definitely shaped by this. The economy ebbed and flowed while I was growing up but my dad's business seemed to improve continually and my mom got a raise once or twice a year so it seemed silly that they'd drive an extra mile to save a penny a gallon on gas or rush to arrive in time for early bird specials. My own kids weigh even the smallest expenditure. They've seen their dad become a wreck as his employer downsizes personnel and relentlessly heaps more and more work on the remaining staff. They've seen me lay off employees who've been with me for decades and are as close as family. They are well aware that we are more fortunate than most but after witnessing our insecurity over the last few years there's nothing to make them believe that it's going to get better.

The conservative press has made light of the Occupy Wall Street protests and nationwide spin-offs, blowing the movement off as a rudderless pothead blip on the radar. Joe College indicates that some of his fellow students will be camping out over this holiday weekend at City Hall and I ask if he's going himself. He says those things never do any good and I tell him that those things stopped a war and while he didn't rush out to the garage for his sleeping bag, at least he chewed that around some.

It is Erev Yom Kippur and the beginning of my annual 24 hours without coffee draws nigh. I will attend services, perhaps accompanied by grumbling members of my family or perhaps as a solo agent. This is the day when if we come clean, and not just about our own shortcomings but on behalf of the whole community, we get sealed in the Book of Life for another year. In the middle of the whole shebang there is a Yitzkor service when we remember the souls of the dead. I'll try to catch the sermons and reflect on my many shortcomings as well as society's but this year, as part of the 99% and the mother of cynical children, the figurative beating of my breast feels inadequate. I live in a country where 1% of the population control more than 38% of the wealth and the chasm bodes only to grow larger as health, education and other social welfare programs are decimated. I will go to services, more than likely alone, but I hope my prayers and meditations are a springboard for some action that will counter my children's cynicism. This seems like a more fitting way to honor the dead than reading names off a memorial board and chanting the Kaddish. I'll break the fast with a cup of coffee so big I'll have to take a Xanax before bed. Then I'll join my work weary husband and my soon to be less cynical children for a break-the-fast meal. Thank God I have a Groupon.

L'Shanah Tova, Shabbat Shalom and Power to the People

Name That Tune

2011-09-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

It is the first anniversary of my mother's death. Her material bequest to me is a few pieces of 50s furniture that Himself hates and a mountain of ephemera I culled down to a couple boxes of correspondence and photos strongboxed in the garage. I am finishing a manuscript about my childhood and this is what I consider my mother's true legacy to me. Mom doesn't come off too well sometimes in my description of my life before college and a lot of the response I've gotten to the writing is of the “Gosh, I never knew you had it so hard” variety. For me, with the telling of the story, it has become way less hard to think about those years and also clearer that my mother loved me fiercely.

Mom never really knew what it was she wanted or how to go about getting what she thought she wanted. She yearned to be admired and resented that her beauty was not the key to the kingdom. Some of her conduct was so outrageous that it's laughable and there are parts of the book she definitely wouldn't like very much. But I think too that she would glean from between the lines my gratitude at having had a mother who was able to fend off mortal blows by cracking wise. Having inherited Mom's mordant humor, I take delicious delight in chronicling her bad behavior. Throughout my life my mother was bitter that she wasn't a fairy princess and this was exacerbated by my own lack of the characteristics that she thought would insure me a life of ease. My failure to fulfill her archaic expectations broke her heart but she never gave up on me and scrupulously saved every word I wrote to her and many boxes of my childhood artifacts.

Joe College came home the first few weekends to assuage his culture shock. I think now he would be fine spending a weekend on campus but there are holidays and social obligations that will require his presence home just about every weekend for the next few months. This coming and going is hard on me as it seems like every Monday I have to get used to him being gone all over again. Again, I remember how clueless my own parents usually were to what made me tick, but his transition to college isn't, from my own vantage point, what I'd anticipated. I'd expected, after attending small charter schools that sometimes weren't as challenging as they could have been, that he might find the coursework a bit overwhelming but it seems that he is stimulated, working hard and doing well. I'd also assumed that having been a popular, outgoing theater kid for as long as he can remember that he'd immediately ferret out suitable friend candidates and be surrounded by a genial posse as he's been at home. He has reports about interesting students but doesn't seem to have really clicked with anyone yet.

I floundered myself the first year and pretty much felt like a loser but I pretty much was a loser when I arrived at college and my son has always been more adept at forging and nurturing friendships. After barely seeing him for five minutes the whole summer he calls frequently now about inconsequential things and I don't think I'm imagining a neediness. Part of me wants to say, “We were wrong. You aren't ready for this. I'm not ready for this. Come home.” But, when he is at home there is a maturity and reasonableness about him and I guess, unlike his mother, he is realistic in knowing that starting college is inevitably a challenging transition and he's confident that he will get through it.

I take the boys and their friend who persists in calling me “Mrs. Murphy” even though I've told him that this is kiss-ass, to the Hollywood Bowl for a five band concert featuring TV on the Radio. I fancy myself the hip parent at these things but there are a number of soul patched, balding dads in Hawaiian shirts. One of the rare moms sports a spray-on tan, ratted hair and a ripply butt crammed in Forever 21 leggings. I suppose my gray frizz and $7 prescription glasses make my own oldness just as conspicuous. The opening band, Smith Western plays pleasant Beatlesque tunes. They are very young and the Bowl is nearly empty for their set but they play earnestly and energetically. The next band, Warpaint, is the revelation of the evening. I presumed that the all female band was British because they remind me of another sophisticated girl band “Electrelene” but it turns out they're from L.A. It pains me, that while there female classical performers, women are under-represented in rock'n'roll. The members of Electrelene are all trained classical musicians and it shows in rock that has a discipline, elegance and is distinctly feminine. Testosterone seems to be a key ingredient in “below the waist”music and I guess it's tougher to tap the feminine counterpart. Warpoint isn't sugary but a satisfying sweetness rises from the darkness they fearlessly embrace.

The next act is Panda Bear—Noah Lennox, also a founder of Animal Collective. The sound is sacred/ electronic-meandering but intense. The yearning in Lennox's voice is raw and moving. Half of the crowd is entranced and the other half are waiting for the Arctic Monkeys. This hugely successful British band is the odd man out of this lineup and disruptive to the flow. In Britain people of all ages dance in pubs to pleasant but non-edgy pop like Elton John and Rod Stewart. The Arctic Monkeys are a good workaday and dance in the pub band but seem outclassed by the other acts. The portion of the crowd that is there only to see the Arctic Monkeys grow frenzied, evoking comparisons to Beatle and Biebermania, and then leave en masse after the set. The band is tight but the songs are predictable and the affected pugnacity of the lead singer is grating.

Tunde Adebimpe, the front man of TV on the Radio was born in Nigeria but raised near Pittsburgh. He worked as an animator at MTV and acted and sang in the film Rachel Getting Married. Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel are obvious influences but the layered music is a hybrid born of lots of eclectic listening and not public radio bland eclectic. The best songs have a driving urgency that builds you up to near bursting. I am very self conscious about embarrassing my children when I appear with them in public so I have always refrained from dancing at concerts but the boys leap out of their seats for the particularly infectious song “Wolf Like Me” and soon we are all moving with the music and there are no dirty looks.

Emboldened by having danced without incurring censure or vomit I start a conversation with strangers which is usually even more taboo than sending food back at a restaurant. We are filing out of the Bowl and there is a promo for an upcoming Bob Mould tribute and a cute girl asks her friend who Bob Mould is and I snap “Husker Du! Seminal punk band,” and some wiseguy behind me corrects my use of a short “u” in Husker. Spuds does admit subsequently to being the pedant who corrected my pronunciation of Husker Du. I blame his father. The girls are sweet, adorable and say they loved the show but that they thought the Arctic Monkeys played too long and I say that any Arctic Monkeys are too many in my book and they interrogate me about what I do like. Mr. College, instead of finding a rock to crawl under joins in the conversation and doesn't even give me the stinkeye when I ask their ages. They are 28 and too old for the boy but both weigh in positively as to his cuteness. I realize that now I am really able only to accurately estimate the age of people who are my age or older. The girls tell my sons their mom is cool and my jaw drops when the boys agree. One girl reports that her mom listens to the Mamas and the Papas. I proffer that I'm sure she has other good qualities and bask in a rare moment when my own kids recognize one of mine.

Spud's father will read here for the first time that in the anxiety of the big school change, Spud's IPod Nano-the size of a postage stamp-has gone missing. Fortunately a bit of manipulation of cell phone upgrade eligibility and some financial contributions by wage earner Spuds will rectify the problem when the new IPhone model is released in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we make the long drive to Pasadena with my Droid and we take turns choosing tunes. He shares the upbeat electronica of Biblio and I play him some Sparklehorse and we are stunned by the shimmering beauty of the music, even more poignant as frontman Mark Linkous took his own life last year.

I've saved a small box of the kids artwork and letters but I am nowhere near the archivist my own mother was. I figure that an edited collection of well chosen items will suffice. I think the kids will be glad I'm not leaving them a mountain of crap to sort through like my mom left me. After I'm gone I'm sure they'll tell funny stories about my myriad neuroses that I wouldn't find particularly amusing but I know too that every so often they'll hear a glimmer of some music that we shared and be reminded for a moment of their mother's fierce love.

Shabbat Shalom and L'Shana Tova

Roll Models

2011-09-23T14:35:00.001-07:00

My elementary school best friend and I connect on Facebook. I haven't seen her in nearly 40 years. She lives on the Westside, which is like Katmandu to me but we have surprisingly common interests and plan on meeting in person, midway, in the near future. I later happen on the Facebook page for my class at Grant High School. I left after eleventh grade to attend college and the administrator of the group is suspicious because I hadn't graduated but finally condescends to let me join. I scan the list of members and look at some reunion photos of remarkably old people, none of whom bear even the slightest resemblance to my former classmates. There are birthday greetings and Jethro Tull tickets being sold. I am friended by a couple old pals but make no connection other than a few messages back and forth. I find a thick stack of letters from an old high school friend while cleaning out the garage a few weeks ago and remember how sustaining this relationship had been at a pretty crappy time. I send a friendly note, of the type I would be thrilled to receive, and there is no response. There are a couple of other people in the group who I wouldn't mind catching up with but I guess not enough to take the initiative. Similarly, I've kept only a handful of college friends and while the Johnston College Facebook discourse isn't as banal as the Grant pages I suspect I've drifted away from more high school and college friends than a lot of other people.

I was however close to a number of high school teachers and college professors and have remained in touch with a number, including Rosemary, my International Affairs professor at Johnston. The truth is I don't remember what class I took with her but that she let me crash in her office when I was too wasted to make the ride to the cabin I rented off campus in Forest Falls. I took her shopping once in Century City and was gobsmacked, this must have been 1975, when she spent $125 on a pair of jeans but the message that being smart didn't preclude dressing cute was more important probably than the content of the course I can't remember. Once my mom went off at me particularly viciously and I was sobbing in the passenger seat as my boyfriend drove back to Redlands. Rosemary rode in the backseat but she leaned forward and kept her hand on my shoulder all the way home.

Rosemary's lived in England now for decades but is here on a whirlwind tour. In e-mails she described herself as having aged and being less mobile so I am astounded when I pick her up at the airport and she looks exactly the same as when I saw her about eight years ago when we met up in Hungary. Despite living quietly alone and toiling at research for long hours at the Oxford Library she is a good sport about our hubbub, incorrigible dogs and the basement futon she's been relegated to. We decide on mass at our Lady of Angels, the downtown cathedral that replaced St. Vibiana's. I still refer to it as “the new cathedral” although it's almost a decade old and mass with Rosemary is my first visit. Not too long ago Rosemary's preoccupation with free parking would have gotten on my nerves but now I am just as ardent as she is about making sure we are validated.

Because I am perhaps the last Angeleno not to have visited, it is probably unnecessary to note the beauty of cathedral which is even graced with “The Jerusalem Fountain,”donated by the Jewish community to celebrate the ties between Judaism and Catholicism. The wall of donors is filled with the names of powerful players like Doheny, Hilton, Murdoch, Riordan and former centenarians Bob and Dolores Hope, too good an opportunity for the Jews to pass up I suppose. Arnold Schwarzenegger is also listed on the high roller board which, now faced with contentious divorce, he may rue.

We've chosen a Spanish mass and Rosemary races to a front row seat where I am relieved that there is no prie dieu so my not kneeling is inconspicuous. The man seated next to us sports several heavy jeweled rings on each stubby finger and thumb. He wears iridescent gold shoes with taps. I can't help looking at his hands during the boring parts, drawn like a magpie I suppose to shiny objects. There are a few other characters but it's mostly families and I guess it's good they feel comfortable in church. I am always struck by the casualness of Catholic worship attire and even at the Cathedral short shorts, wife beaters and a type of footwear the slang for which is so vulgar that I cannot bring myself to use it in a paragraph discussing the church, are de rigueur.

The only revelation gleaned from the Spanish homily is that while I was pretty fluent during college, my Spanish now totally sucks and I could only make out a few words. I've been to mass enough times to know that it is time for us to go in peace and then clear out but the priest takes the mike and explains about the Cathedral's outreach to the poor and then presents an Asian priest who reads from a script. Spuds completed one year of Spanish on-line and admits he felt stupid completing the oral practice with the computer so he skipped a lot of it. I was trying to help him with his homework and made him read aloud which he did phonetically like he was just deciphering gibberish. The Asian priest reads similarly and pretty much repeating what the other priest just said. This is followed by a second offering which I think it is safe to say is expected from many people for whom it was a struggle to make even the first. But still there are crumpled bills and coins in the basket when it comes around the second time. The Catholic Church is too easy a target and the stance on birth control and the failure to deal with widespread child abuse are well trodden territory. Nevertheless, the things that are wrong about the Church are human in origin and partaking of the ancient liturgy in a sacred space is ineffable.

Spuds has transferred from the airy fairy charter school in far flung Pasadena to the gigantic Marshall High School which is closer to my office. At the charter Spuds completed AP classes via independent study and has heard great things about the School of Advanced Studies at Marshall and now that his chauffeur is off at college not having to make the drive to Pasadena certainly is a factor when I encourage him to apply there. He has his sights on Columbia or NYU and knows that Marshall grads have a great track record with admission to these schools. There were fifty kids in most of the classes and for the first time in his life, he is so intimidated by the harried teachers that he doesn't dare ask for help. He does connect with a lot of kids he knows and indicates that the social scene is a big improvement. We decide to give Marshall five weeks, after which, if necessary, he could return to the charter school and recover from any less than stellar grades.

On the way to school I see a Volkswagen wrapped around a lamp post so completely that it is unlikely that a driver or any passengers could possibly have survived. I gasp and when Spuds turns to look I cover his eyes and tell him that there will be plenty of horrible things for him to see in his life and that he shouldn't go out of his way looking for them. The Glendale Blvd. off ramp of the Golden State freeway has always given me the heebie jeebies because a curve obstructs the view of oncoming traffic. I pull out very hesitantly and have twice before been spooked by an oncoming car and braked suddenly to be rear-ended. The picture of the Volkswagen remains vivid when I creep into the intersection, see a car coming at me and slam on the brakes. I am hit hard by a little car which follows me for a few blocks until we can pull over safely. I bolt from the car as does a frantic young woman. “I'm sorry!” we both wail simultaneously. I know that the rear-ender is always the guilty party but I feel that I had braked so abruptly it was impossible for her to anticipate it. We look at my car and then hers. We are both holding back tears but we agree that there is no damage to either vehicle. I notice an infant in a car-seat in the back of her tiny Prism and he smiles when I wave at him. We stand there for a moment, and while I am far from being a touchy feely type, I find myself in a tight embrace with her and we both sob. Our boys are safe. This time.

Spuds calls and says he doesn't feel well and isn't going to his tutoring job. I pick him up from school and ask if he's having allergies but he reports having failed three tests and goes on that he's concluded now that he's not very smart at all and has no hope of getting into college. I remind him that he passed the college level advanced placement English Literature test completely on his own but he is inconsolable and more beaten down than I'd ever seen him. I ask if he wants to return to the charter school right way rather than sticking with the five week plan and he agrees immediately. I am able to reach the principal by phone instantly and before I am able to finish the question he tells me emphatically that Spuds is welcome to return. When he hears, Spuds transforms almost magically and sits breathing in deeply the air of his liberation from the overwhelming school. For the first time since his enrollment at Marshall there isn't four hours of homework so we go see “Contagion” which features Anna Jacoby Herron, a good friend of the boys, playing Matt Damon's daughter and we marvel at how good she is and the size of her role. After, we go out for dinner Spuds even eats fish without complaint and I wonder if ever again I'll be able to make a single phone call that will transport my boy from deep despair to elation.

One of Spud's six teachers at Marshall High calls him by his middle name, Gabriel, once but other than that, in three weeks he has not heard his name except during roll call when he doesn't even bother to correct the mispronunciation. Spuds indicates through that if the classes weren't so crowded the teachers may have been more accessible. He says that if he'd started, like most kids, as a ninth grader, instead of a junior, he might have acclimated. We go to check out and Spuds has to go to from class to class and have his teachers sign a form. One teacher wishes him well, the others barely speak. He leaves his books with the teachers, returns to the office, and is told that the books must be returned to the book room. He has to circumnavigate the giant campus again to collect the books, astonished that no one had bothered to apprise him of the checkout procedure. We arrive at the charter school and the gym teacher calls him the “prodigal son” and he is welcomed back with gusto and hugged by students and teachers alike. The English instructor who lives in Silver Lake volunteers to drive Spuds to his tutoring job after school and Spuds passes on to me many of the teacher's excellent music suggestions.

Before Spuds starts Marshall he accompanies me to Redlands for his brother's enrollment at Johnston. We drop his sibling and walk the graceful old quad at magic hour. I think Mr. Columbia or NYU might appreciate the beauty of the small campus and begin to ask him if he might consider it but he cuts me off mid-sentence and says firmly, “No way.” Rosemary stays with us a couple days and I think our incessant yapping gets on everyone's nerves but I've explained how grateful I am to her and the family recognize her as one of a couple teachers who helped propel me forward and how indebted I feel. Spuds is asked if he, like his sibling, will attend Johnston College. “No,” he says, “but only because my brother is there. I definitely want to go some place small.”

Shabbat Shalom

Plaster Perfect

2011-09-16T16:30:00.001-07:00

The half empty nest isn't what I expected. I knew an adriftness would come after listing parenting as the number one item of my job description for nearly nineteen years but I didn't anticipate the exultation I would feel at the boy attending the same hippie college that I did or alternatively the bereftness that would overcome me padding through the house now so quiet without him. I didn't see much of my college bound son this summer although there were emanations and blasting music when he was home. There was dirty laundry left on the washer and I texted him a couple times to chew him about about gasoline bills that suggested he had driven to Abu Dhabi. He applied for a couple jobs but his blank resume yielded, not surprisingly, no results. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of him arriving home as I was leaving for my pre-dawn constitutional. Himself was sitting on a chair, wrapped in my fluffy bathrobe organizing the refrigerator and yelling at me like he always does about buying too much food and a fetching female overnight guest of my cusp-of-college son appeared at the breakfast table. The young lady wore the cutest shortie pj’s and when I realized she was actually dressed for her job at a retail clothier I was glad again I didn't have girls.

Joe College started school about a week later than most of his friends and during his last days he was bored and cranky, perhaps feeling neglected by the group of kids who had nothing to do but hang out and cultivate their connoisseurship of taco trucks all summer but were now too busy for him, settling into dorms and focusing on new friends. The boy gravitated between mopey, sullen and insolent and I knew on an intellectual level that he was experiencing separation anxiety but a byproduct was that one of the separatees grew more and more eager than anxious herself with regard to getting him the hell out.

This will be the first weekend he's not returning home and he sounds happy about having the time to hang with new friends. The first weekend with us he was still a bit agitated and whiny but the second visit he was chill and made us laugh to the point of tears imitating his roommate Skyping with his grandma and speaking in the Puerto Rican accented voice of Salty, a guide dog whose owner released him from his harness so that he could save himself as they wound down the stairwell of the World Trade Center on 9/11. The dog, according to his owner in a taped interview, remained steadfastly by this master's side until they were able to exit safely.The entire interview was from Salty's point of view. We all blubbered watching it, particularly when we learned that Salty is now in doggie heaven, but only the collegian picked on the deliciousness of the golden retriever's thoughts channeled through the heavily accented blind man. “We are together in this. I will not leave djew”. After Sunday dinner the boy packs up his laundry and says “It's time for me to head home.” I stop myself from blurting “This is your home,” because I know we both need to get used to the idea that it is less so.

Now big brother is back at college and Spuds asks wistfully if I'm even going to bother making dinner. The table looks absurdly unbalanced with only three place mats. Spud's bedroom is in its usual crime scene state but his brother's bed is always made and his dirty underwear I assume is flung on the floor in an altogether different county. His closet is empty but for white socks he no longer favors and size 11 shoes he's outgrown. On my dresser are the plaster footprints both boys made in nursery school when they were still in diapers and slept cocooned between us. Being needed is so exhausting that I seldom caught my breath for long enough to appreciate this time and I am grateful to whoever thought to memorialize their tiny feet.

As is often the case with siblings, my sons have different personalities and Spuds is sometimes taciturn but he is unflappable and while I knew that his decision to transfer from a warm and fuzzy charter school filled with earnest people to one of the largest public high schools in the county would result in some culture shock , I foresaw no genuine turmoil. We were told after waiting five hours in line for processing at registration that the school had been hit hard and that nine clerical positions alone had been eliminated. We were warned that classes would be large but we were also reassured the school had one of best reputations of any school in the district and graduates landed at Berkeley, Stanford and a number of ivy leagues. We weren't prepared for classes with over 50 students and teachers spread so thin they are unable to help Spuds acclimate, given that his previous coursework doesn't dovetail with the current curriculum. Mr. Unflappable is flapped. I exchange e-mails with a nice but beaten down counselor who advises me that there is no flexibility to change a kid's schedule because they are short dozens of teachers. She also apologizes in case she hasn't addressed all of my points but explains that using the LAUSD e-mail system she is unable to have my note open on her screen to refer to it while she composes her response. Spuds and I, for the first time I can remember, raise our voices and argue. I explain that he will have to be assertive in this sort of environment and he bristles, too overwhelmed to even consider advocating for himself.

I stop at the cleaners and send Spuds over to Gelson's to get a drink and ask for a iced decaf for myself. I wait in the car and see an e-mail from a client and need to access a computer as soon as possible to subvert a problem. I phone Spuds to see what's taking so long and he says they're just finishing my latte. I scream that I don't want a latte, I must have decaf. Five minutes later I phone again and he says the drinks are still in progress. There is another frantic e-mail and I call Spuds and he says he's in line to pay. I scream that I don't give a damn about the coffee anymore and that no matter what we have to go NOW. He dumps my coffee and a bakery snack he'd chosen for himself in the garbage and runs to the car. I blather on to Spuds all the way home about feeling like an asshole and then feel like even more of an asshole for bothering him with my feelings at all.

We arrive home and there is a dead baby possum on a chair. I automatically expect stolid Spuds to take care of it, as I assume the oldest male present will deal with things on high shelves, trash emptying, car unloading and rodent removal. Spuds is reckoning with the decision about returning to his old school and just endured the decaf debacle. The carcass puts him over the edge. I grab my computer and sequester myself in the bedroom and hear him stomping and screaming and somehow ultimately disposing of the former possum. Later I bend his ear again apologizing for being over-reliant on him and failing once more to keep my emotions in check. Then I apologize for belaboring it and he just rolls his eyes and says he has a lot of homework.

One of my boys is even tempered and dependable and the other is impulsive and funny. But, my own mother died a year ago this week and I remember feeling she never had a sense of who I was. She expressed pride in me with regard to things about which I wasn't particularly proud and I felt she often denigrated some of my genuine accomplishments. Boxes of her stuff have moldered in my garage since she was institutionalized about five years ago. I forced myself to open them a couple weeks ago. There was, lots of spite stuff, as I had expected. She saved copies of numerous legal claims she made again my father and tons of other correspondence that inspires only bad memories. There was also a lot of hair. There was hair from my first hair cut and my sister's and some hair Mom clipped from my sister's daughter the day she was taken from us to her adoptive family. There was also a complete ponytail my mother had shed in the 1950s and her own mother's brush, with hair still in it. Both of these were intricately wrapped in tissue and then aluminum foil.

I confess to trashing the brush and ponytail. There was also though another box of my mom's with every letter I had ever written to her, each report card and neat clippings of all my publications, despite her having criticized my writing at the time. There was a package wrapped thickly in newspaper and bound meticulously in thick tape. I muttered to myself, wondering what piece of shit is this that I'm going to have to get up and get a scissors to open. I attacked it and unpeeled the layers of paper to find a plaster cast made in kindergarten of my tiny hand. I guess they were too uptight in the early sixties to have kindergarteners remove their shoes and stick their feet in gush. I wonder if Mom knew when she was wrapping it that I would open it after she was gone and she wanted me to know how she'd cherished the time when I was tiny and our relationship uncomplicated. I put my tiny hand next to the tiny feet of my sons. I will not claim to fully understand who my boys have become since they stuck their tiny feet in squishy plaster but even when their feet were impossibly tiny I felt the essence of who they are. It still makes me sad that my mother never seemed to get the me I thought she should be proud of. I know I have some skewed assumptions with regard to my own children that they too would find off base. I do hope that the chasm between who I need them to be and who they really are is narrower with me and my kids than with me and my own mom. Should I be unable myself when the time comes, I hope that plaster hands and feet are wrapped for transport with exquisite care.

Shabbat Shalom.

Back to Now

2011-09-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

When I am annoying Himself or the sprats and someone mutters, “You're just like your mother," I am devastated. Perhaps even more withering is when I dare to object to a family unit member's transgression and “Oh, go write about it in your blog” is spat back at me derisively. I changed up my usual “this is the week that was” writing habit at the first of the year and began a memoir of my early years. I am deeply embarrassed to use the phrase “my memoir” and perhaps it seems coy but it is so nausea inducing to write those words that I will refer for now to the opus as “the other thing.” I don't know if it is ickier or more narcissistic to expect readers to slog through my “here and now” or relive my appearance on the Engineer Bill Show. I have posted some writing every Friday for about five years now and it is typically my final gesture of the week and usually followed by a shabbat dinner. Even at the end of seven crappy days there is a feeling of satisfaction knowing that for another week I have given my writing ambition more than just lip service and with this I feel entitled to chill at the sabbath table. I am excited to get compliments but even though I wasn't raised, like my (still, for all intents and purposes) Papist husband, there is a “sin of pride” related shame that accompanies any whiff of self promotion.

The last nine months writing the other thing has meant more than just addressing the past instead of the present. I have been less focused on mining every experience as a potential writing opportunity. There were peak times like an outstanding family trip to New York, my young adult son's torturous college application ordeal, tacky graduation and subsequent enrollment at my beloved alma mater and my month without Spuds, who attended a writing program at Cal Arts. Himself has been spared my acid observations about his failure to even feign enthusiasm during my comprehensive/insane efforts to clear Casamurphy of the detritus we'd accumulated via our parents, children and selves. There are memories from the last nine months that will be hazier than some from when I was writing about the current week but perhaps “be here now” in many ways enriched the hiatus.

With regard to the other thing, it took on a life of its own. I am elated to have completed it but also sort of tuckered out. A pattern formed very early in the writing. There were a number painful memories that were so salient that I knew I had to include them but I dreaded the writing. I ticked off each one I tackled with enormous relief but almost immediately started to dread the next one to be endured. I let myself off the hook and left a few things out but I wrote about a lot of things I assiduously avoided remembering and now I am less bothered by them. I always thought the notion of catharsis was sort of idealistic and hippie dippy but there is a palpable lightness that comes when that stuff is faced and filtered though fifty plus years. Now that it's done. For just about every week since taking on writing the other thing there is an undercurrent of panic on Monday and Tuesday that the previous chapter was just a fluke and the well was dry. Wednesday morning was typically the lowest depths but usually by the afternoon there was a glimmer of an idea although I was seldom able to peck out more than a hundred words or so. Thursday was the wildcard day. Sometimes I produced only a paragraph or two but other times I had a piece nearly finished but for a little tweaking on Friday. Most typically I had about half a piece done and usually there were periods of flow where a thousand or so words would seem to come out of nowhere and at the risk of going Hallmark, it felt like a gift. The high of publishing a piece and getting reader reactions sustained me through every weekend until the inevitable Monday return to paralysis.

Most memoirs run about 150 pages and at the onset I presumed that mine would extend to the present but it became clear quite soon that leaving for college was the logical ending. It turned out that the week I wrote the final chapter which described packing up my Dodge Dart and heading out on the 10 Freeway to Johnston College coincided with getting my son settled in a dorm at the same school.

Thirty seven years ago, almost to the day, I moved into West Hall by myself, I follow my son, who has his little brother riding shotgun, to Redlands. I was in a very unlovely sixties dorm called West Hall. It has been renamed Stevenson now and seemed unfamiliar sans murals and the aroma of marijuana. Johnston College is now the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies and occupies Holt and Bekins Halls. Bekins Hall, was the first dormitory built on the campus of The University of Redlands, sprung for by Mr. and Mrs. Martin Bekins, as in Bekins Moving. Daughter, Ruth Bekins, class of 1913, wielded the shovel for groundbreaking on Feb. 9, 1910. The interiors have been modernized but the building is regal and charming and evokes plaid skirted sorority sisters getting pinned. My young adult son skitters up the steps with his laptop, cell phone and IPod. I moved into West Hall, think 60s airport waiting room, with an orange crate full of records, a turn-table and guitar that I finally accepted by the end of my freshman year, I could not play.

A Johnston history display case in the Bekin's lobby has the Getting In/Getting Out catalog I described in the last chapter of the other thing, an old t-shirt and pictures, circa 1974 of the faculty. I am shocked that my professors were so much younger than I am now. The combination of sweet nostalgia and the excitement that my boy will experience this strange and wonderful place has me worked into the kind of froth that makes the kids want to strangle me. I blather to the student dorm workers about my arrival 37 years ago and they smile politely at least but are as indifferent as my own spawn. My memories are irrelevant to them and their own sure take on the world is all that really matters. I shut my trap but the refrain from Dylan's My Back Pages sticks in my brain, “I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.”

The afternoon begins with a Welcome Circle of about forty new students, their parents, most of the faculty and administration. We go around the room and everyone in the circle gets to share, a typical Johnston exercise in tolerance of those who, despite knowing that everyone in the group is going to take the mike, and there are snacks being served when it is finally over, insist on nattering on. Fortunately a number of pithy or interesting terse observations make it less excruciating and there is an open bar at the parent gathering that follows. Two of my professors are there and having presented my gray haired AARP eligible self to them at a reunion two years ago, both recognize me. I recently excavated a box of old stuff from my college days and am feeling particularly sheepish to have given so many college offerings short shrift to social and romantic aspirations. I am desperate and gawky and anxious to prove how smart I am to my old instructors. They were most likely on to my artifice three decades ago but probably didn't give a rat's ass then and most certainly do not now. Still I strive to mention as many high brow books as possible in a minute or two of chit chat. I am glad my son is elsewhere as he would undoubtedly out me for the hours I spend watching Hoarders, Toddlers and Tiaras and Cupcake Wars.

I read yet another essay about helicopter parents and am concerned that in my desperation for my child to be happy I have fomented in him unrealistic expectations. My coddling is not only motivated by my love for him but like most of my generation and to a markedly lesser extent my parent's generation, I have self-worth issues that hinge on my children's contentedness. The article cites a common problem among universities is that on freshman arrival it is difficult to get their parents to leave. One desperate institution engages an ensemble of bagpipers to impart the message. I have mentioned a zillion times that I drove to college myself. I will add, that most of the other students arrived in parentis absentus too. I don't even consider letting my son arrive unescorted but I worry now about lingering too long. I e-mail the college director politely asking what time I should plan on leaving if I didn't want to appear indifferent and self absorbed but neither to be chased out by bagpipers.

Our college student has come home twice in so many weeks and is alternately enthusiastic about college and negative and mopey. I was more eager to leave home than he was but my escape to college was not the panacea I'd expected. The first few months were particularly difficult and I went home on many weekends. My boy arrives with a load of laundry and a big appetite. He describes a few stressful issues and we give him our good and sage advice which he tells us quite emphatically he has no intention of following. I want the kid to get as much from college as I should have but my centuries of experience don't resonate with him. Himself, until he met a few of my former classmates who are much smarter than I, always thought Johnston College was airy fairy and unworthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as his own Jesuit alma mater. Now as his son describes learning contracts and tiny classes Himself is drooling jealous and ready to flay the kid for bitching about it. Like his mother though, my son doesn't know how good he's got it. Johnston's stated objective was to groom “life long learners,” which sounded vaguely cool and egalitarian. I went there though mainly because there were cute guys with long hair but when the mike was passed to me during the welcome circle I said that I made some appallingly stupid decisions in my teens and twenties but that attending Johnston so wasn't one of them. I don't know if in thirty five years my son will have written a book about his life before college but I hope he will consider his choice of schools a non-stupid decision.

Shabbat Shalom

Getting In/Getting Out

2011-09-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

I don't remember any particular big drama pertinent to my mercurial mother or Sheri coming and going but when the eleventh grade counselor, Mrs. Katz, asked me about college plans I said it was difficult for me to imagine remaining in high school for another year. I had a good circle of friends and liked my classes and teachers but I gave a big spiel about how soul sapping and spirit crushing high school was. This was totally party line and at the time there'd been a six month or so period of relative calm on Fulton Avenue. Sheri was back with her boyfriend Charlie and working for my dad. Perhaps I sensed at age seventeen that even during a lull, given the historic volatility, I would still be better off elsewhere. But, maybe it was just posturing and knee-jerk hippie rejection of any institution and if this was the case, Mrs. Katz called my bluff.

Mrs. Katz gave me a catalog from Johnston College in Redlands. It had a rough-hewn handmade paper cover. It was what is called a tête-bêche, a book that has two titles bound upside-down with respect to each other so there are two front covers and two texts. One cover said “Getting In” and when flipped, the other said “Getting Out.” The catalog was printed in sans serif type and there were lots of artsy sepia photos of girls in peasant blouses and guys with long hair. The small classes with students and bearded professors sitting on the floor of a living room or under a tree looked so much better than the sterile classrooms at Grant. The “Getting In “ part explained the whole admissions process which consisted mainly of an interview with a panel of students and faculty. The “Getting Out” part was the blueprint for a utopian community of life long learners and explained how Johnston students designed their own classes and curriculum. The bombshell was when Mrs. Katz told me that it was one of a handful of colleges that would consider admitting students who had only completed eleventh grade.

I made a toll call to the 714 area code and talked to the admissions counselor at Johnston and was invited to visit. I cut school and picked up a map from the Auto Club. There were two big modern ugly dorms but kids had built wooden lofts and painted murals all over. Out behind the school was a neglected garden and a geodesic dome that might have inspired Buckminster Fuller to open a vein. The dorms, including the bathrooms, were all coed and it was fine if a boy and girl lived together in a room. My guide, Cindy, was an open faced girl with long braids wearing a thrift store dress. She showed me around both of the dorms and introduced me to a lot of kids. We listened to the new James Lee Stanley album with Sally, Cindy's best friend. Sally and Jake, her old man. They had moved out the single beds and a big waterbed filled the room. I impressed them by describing seeing Stanley in concert at McCabe's. Sally said we had to go because Jake had a big boil on his tailbone and she was going to lance it. Cindy asked if we could watch and Sally said no. Cats and dogs ran freely through the hall and the custodians had this absorbent foam stuff, like they use when someone pukes at Disneyland, in case of accidents. Vegetarian food and herb tea was served in the dining room and there were ashtrays on every table and almost everyone smoked. I was interviewed by a group of students and faculty and said that I didn't want to be turned into a public high school automaton and they all nodded knowingly. I was given a single room to sleep in that had an Indian bedspread and smelled like grass. I would have stayed forever.

Sheri moved back again in the spring, this time emotionally devastated but at least physically unharmed. Her boyfriend Charlie was staying away from home and had written her a couple notes asking her to move out. She thought that if she could just talk to him in person it would remind him of how much he loved her. Then he brought a date home and introduced my sister as the ex-girlfriend who was too dumb to get the message and Sheri finally wised up. I helped her move back to Fulton Avenue. Sometimes when Sheri knew his shift at the firehouse was ending we'd go and follow Charlie and he always went to his new girlfriend's house and then Sheri would take me someplace good to eat.

I learned to cook by watching my mother and sister and pouring over cookbooks. It was decades before I figured out how to clean as I went along and to put things back in the right place. I had an ongoing battle with mom with regard to the state of the kitchen and there was frequent screaming and many ultimatums. I thought my mom was an uptight fascist and that her demand for kitchen order stifled my culinary creativity. I made an elaborate quiche recipe from my favorite Ranch House cookbook and left the sink stacked high with dishes and the floor covered with flour. I also put one of my great great grandmothers cast iron pans in the dishwasher leaving it a rusty mess. Before I left for school I was instructed to clean up the damn kitchen and season the pan before mom returned from work.

I raced home from school every day hoping for word from Johnston College. I had lost a number of elections for school office and had endured the heartbreak of rejection from the teenage service program at my beloved Camp JCA. I thought that my chances of early college admission were extremely poor and was mostly eager to get the stab in the heart over with, knowing that with time it would subside and become just another dull ache. Finally the letter was in the box and I tore it open before I even went in the house. I was in. I dropped my books on the porch and ran inside to call friends. I was yacking away jubilantly and a couple of hours passed.

My mother arrived to find my stuff dumped on the porch and the kitchen completely untouched. She burst in and grabbed the phone from me and slammed it down on the cradle. The condition of my bedroom increased her ire and she got loud and shrill. Before I could insert that I'd been accepted to college, Sheri arrived home and immediately took up my mother's side. They both used adjectives like lazy, fat and unsanitary. My mother wailed about how hard she worked and how exhausted she was and I said how hard did she really work, being a civil servant and all and Sheri slapped me and said she was sick of me treating my mom like crap. I screamed that I'd just been accepted to college and that they'd ruined the best thing that ever happened to me. Sheri sneered about college and said how I thought I was so much better than she was and now I'd be even more of a stuck up bitch. My mother said that I'd better get my old man to spring for tuition.

I received a big scholarship for Johnston which covered all but about $1500 which they said could be paid every month. My dad said he thought it might be better to spend the money to go somewhere to lose weight and I said that weight could always be gained back and a college education was something I'd have forever. He agreed to pay the tuition but made me promise to go on a diet because I would never have a boyfriend or get married and after all, that was better than any college in the world.

I finished eleventh grade and all the kids signed my yearbook with phone numbers so I could keep in touch. I talked to a few friends over the summer but pretty soon most of them drifted away. The summer dragged by excruciatingly but at least there were no more big blowups. My mother was approved for a transfer from the VA to the Postal Service and now worked alone in an office with a male supervisor that she had immediately wrapped around her finger. She made her own hours and took care of all her personal business during the work day and she marveled at how the market and the bank were so much less crowded. There were no more long lunches at dark Brentwood restaurants with married psychiatrists and we were cut off from the pharmaceutical samples she'd pilfered from the VA. But, we continued to amass office supplies, and now, stamps.

Sheri had taken up with some fun girls she knew from high school and they'd bowl at Kirkwood and drink at the Ventura Club. My dad was enjoying his younger than my sister girlfriend who thought he was the smartest man on the planet and didn't mind being showered with expensive baubles either. His second acrimonious divorce had caused Dad a big financial setback but he was almost back on his feet, as film rentals were good and gray market film sales, were even better and transacted entirely in cash. My dad and mom and sister told everyone they knew that I was so smart that I was starting college a year early.

My dad got admission comped by a customer and Sheri took me toward the end of summer to Hollywood to see Pat Collins, the Hip Hypnotist. Pat, in her blonde bouffant asked for volunteers from the audience and assiduously avoided selecting me even though I practically dislodged my arm from its socket. The six subjects took a seat on stage. Pat explained that some people just won't be hypnotized and also that rarely there were audience members who were so susceptible they'd go under by merely paying attention to the action on the stage. I don't remember if Pat used a pendulum or not but, ever eager for attention, I was one of those unusual subjects that entered a hypnotic state by proxy. One of the women on the stage admitted that Pat hadn't clicked and I replaced her. Pat made haste with me by having me crow and go-go dance for a minute and then snapped her fingers for me to sit silently while she put her adult hypnotees through their paces, answering risque questions and striking suggestive poses.

Sheri asked me if I'd been faking and I said that I wasn't and even though I'm sure she didn't believe me she said I was funny. We went to C.C. Brown's for hot fudge sundaes and drove home over Laurel Canyon. It was out of the way but Sheri knew I liked it and I always hoped to see Joni Mitchell or Graham Nash. When I was by myself or with a friend I would always pick up the inevitable hitchhiker standing on Crescent Heights but even if it was the cutest boy with really long hair I knew better than to suggest this to Sheri.

Sheri insisted on eating full meals and was disgusted by my mothers grazing on cottage cheese, canned Kadota figs and ginger snaps. If there weren't the makings of a full meal in the fridge she'd insist we go out to the Hamburger Hamlet or Chris and Pitts. My mother tried to get her ample daughters to dine with her at Rikki's Inn to Be Thin but this was usually vetoed. Sheri got used to using swanky provisions from having worked at a gourmet seafood store for many years and later always found the best to be gotten at Hughes or Gelsons. My mother exploded when she saw the receipts she fished out of Sheri's shopping bags. Sheri and I made a list of things I needed to eat before leaving for college and to my mother's disgust, put it up on the refrigerator. We ticked everything off the list and I had to rush out for new jeans to take to school.

Jocelyn had a summer job at the Children's Bootery which she hated and even if it were a sin, she said she was getting her tubes tied because she never wanted to see another kid or particularly a kid's feet, ever again in her life. On the weekend we'd sometimes go the the Bla-Bla Cafe in Studio City which we said was much too hip for the valley. They had omelets which in the 70s was sort of like pork belly is now. At nights they'd have performers, usually singer songwriters with long hair that we flirted with, usually to little avail. We'd sometimes go over the hill to the deliciously French and sophisticated La Poubelle on Franklin where the abusive service made it even more romantic. We saw Welcome to LA at the nearby Los Feliz Theater and were puzzled at all the sex our fellow denizens seemed to be having.

My mom and I spent a few days in Carmel that summer and she bought me some lace up espadrilles from a little boutique. We took my little poodle Gladys to a double feature at a drive-in overlooking the Pacific and saw The Straw Dogs and Dog Day Afternoon and we both laughed about that for years. I showed her the linens I'd picked out for college and she gave me an afghan her aunt had made to put on my bed. She reminded me never to buy lotion or face soap because she had puh-lenty of samples.

It was exactly 37 years ago I packed up my Dodge Dart and made the trip to Johnston College by myself. The drive through West Covina, Montclair, Claremont and Rialto to the Inland Empire grew familiar. My dad had traded some cartoons for a cassette player for my car and I listened to bad recordings I'd made of Blue and Astral Weeks. My heart fluttered and I felt like it was the beginning of my life. I write this the day after another journey to Redlands, to help my own 18 year old son move into the dorm at Johnston College.

I stayed at a hotel in Redlands with lots of other parents gobsmacked by the shock at how eighteen years fly by. I have written now 160 pages about the first seventeen years of my life. My son is a year older than I was when I left home. It is incomprehensible to me that he might one day fill 160 pages with remembrances of his years before college because for me they passed so rapidly it takes my breath away. The feeling of joy I had when driving east thirty seven years ago is still remarkably vivid and “Getting In” and “Getting Out” panned out pretty well. The tête-bêche resonated far beyond a baccalaureate degree and long after college. I was overjoyed to slam the door on childhood but my own son is wistful. I describe the feeling of elation I felt navigating east, away from Hollywood, away from the valley, a few days before Labor Day so very many years ago. He shakes his head and says that maybe it's because he had such a happy childhood, implying that although I haven't told him all that much, he understands that my circumstances were not the same. Still, I am better for having risen to the challenge of loving, with all my heart, my parents and my sister and for never forgetting that in spite of everything, all three loved me in return.

Imposter

2011-08-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Sheri returned to Fulton Avenue several times during my high school years. She had a teddy bear hamster phase and the hirsute rats would sit on her shoulder or root through her hair while we sat watching television. I have always been a pathetic fifties housewife standing in high heels on the formica dining table squealing “EEEK” when it comes to rodents. Mom got even more hysterical but Sheri just laughed. Sometimes Sheri put the hamster in one of those ventilated plastic balls and it would run through the house and once my mother kicked it and made good contact because it soared down the long hall until it hit a door with a forceful thwack.

Sheri still worked as a fish-cutter but the valley store had closed and she was transferred to a busy store on Larchmont in Hancock Park and found the blue blood clientele less amiable than the folksy valleyites. There were fewer clerks and the work pace of weighing and boning fish and poultry was intense, particularly scary given the uber sharp knives. Doc Benson's medical office was next door. Sheri and I called it Candyland because it was stacked floor to ceiling with samples of medication. Even the bathroom shelves were full of all manner of drugs and you could pretty much help yourself. He treated all of the employees of the fish store free of charge in exchange for clams and white wine and as a family member I got a good discount. He was closer than the Chatsworth doctor who traded drugs for films so I'd visit Sheri and stop by Dr. B. when I was low on diet pills or tranquilizers to offset their effect. The location of Benson's office next door to the fish store was serendipitous because he'd worked his way though medical school as a tailor. His main gig for many years was sewing up boxers at the LA Sports Arena. Sheri often sported Doc Benson's fastidious tiny stitches, and when they were removed there was barely any scar.

It was obvious that the fish store was starting to wear on Sheri and Dad gave her a job booking films and taking orders on the phone. Her printing was impeccable which was important in those days. I recently forced myself to go through an enormous box of letters, photos and ephemera from my childhood and teen years and I realize that my penmanship was not only completely illegible it could well connote deranged. My father's meticulous printing is all over the office and a row of features with his writing is the first thing I see every morning. Once in a while I'll happen on something from nearly thirty years ago written in Sheri's hand and am charmed by its tidy girlishness. The hamsters traveled to the office with her and one that escaped was found, several years later, far less decomposed than you'd think it would be, in a box of catalogs. The warehouse was kept cool by two huge air conditioning units that resembled the fuselage of a plane and I guess this decelerated the rot of hamster.

The schipperkee phase had the longest run and Sheri would drag us out to visit dog trainers who always lived way out in unincorporated area and invariably were afflicted with social and hygiene issues. Colette had schipperkees and I grew fond of the tailless weaselly things. Zoe was a champion although my mother and I hated the name so we called her Sophie and just ignored Sheri when she tried to correct us. The dog had several litters but once a single pup was stillborn. Apparently there was some sort of twilight bark thing for dog breeders back pre-Internet because a Samoyed bitch had died giving birth and within a few hours sleek black Sophie was nursing four white fur puffs. Within six weeks they were three times her size and knocked her over to nurse. My mother and sister shared enormous pleasure in this. They took rolls and rolls of pictures and cried bitterly when the puppies were weaned and returned to the breeder.

Sheri had landed on Fulton Avenue this time because she'd suffered a broken collarbone after being shoved down a flight of stairs by her drunken boyfriend. And there would be several more reconciliations followed by the inevitable return to Mom's before she was permanently extricated from the relationship. Sheri always had pets which she lavished with maternal tenderness but it seemed like a circumstance always arose and she'd find herself unable to care for a pet and it was given away or if it met my mom's criteria for appearance and behavior, taken in on Fulton Avenue. Sheri gave up her daughter for adoption and her maternal instincts were stymied by her instability again and again over the years with dogs, cats, chickens, horses, all manner of rodents and parakeets.

The kids I hung out with in junior high were high achievers and when I stalk them on Facebook most of them did end up graduating from a UC or an Ivy League college. When I arrived at the enormous high school I discovered that most of my friends had been programmed differently. We were all in “gifted classes” but I was put in a special section of smart kids whose achievement was less than what was expected. At the time I was miffed to be separated from so many of my friends but it was actually pretty cool because many of the others were bad kids and hard guys but smart and way more interesting than a lot of my “Harvard, Yale, Stanford or suicide” friends from Millikan. I had a number of teachers who went out of their way with my underachiever group and we were taken to films and theater and often invited to their homes for dinner. The teachers liked that we weren't the typical, smart sycophants they had in the usual gifted class. Some of us were just quirky and offbeat. We did stuff we preferred. which was usually enriching in its own right, rather than being insane about homework and the group of teachers we were assigned understood that and genuinely liked most of us. It seemed also that a lot of the kids in the smart but disappointing group had wound up there because of strife on the home front, the seventies having wreaked havoc on so many nuclear families.

From middle school through college I saw one friend after another have a mom or dad suddenly just drop out. Parents went to join communes in Oregon, fell in opposite or same sex love or took up with charismatic religious leaders. I'd spent my childhood in their homes, marveling at how the whole family sat down for dinner after a day of school and the office for the dad and housework for the mom. I was an anomaly and frequently questioned by children and their parents alike about the institution of divorce. I can still count ten friends who had parents split up during the 1970s and I realized that I was better off having had it happen so early because my memories of being a family together were so hazy. I saw a lot of friends completely immobilized when a parent went off to find him or herself and life familiar and presumed permanent went “poof.” I liked the frequent calls for advice although even after years of experience I didn't have many clues to making, what was then referred to as a broken home, more endurable.

I befriended Jocelyn Clark who had been in my class in elementary school but had been so shy and passive I had no memory of her. She attended Catholic elementary and junior high schools but her parents wanted her in the enriched program at Grant. Jocelyn’s dad was a pediatrician and Mrs. Clark volunteered in the church office a few hours a week and managed the household with military efficiency for Jocelyn and her two younger sisters. Like my cousin Beth, Jocelyn believed in her heart, despite not buying in intellectually, that certain behaviors led straight to hell. Jocelyn was uptight and I, whose family's ethos could be summed up by “don't get caught,” took it upon myself to loosen her up. We went to see Bob Dylan and the Band at the Forum after her dad gave us a long talk about boys, drugs and cigarettes, all based, he said, on his experiences in a pediatric emergency room. When we got home from the concert he pierced my ears which made my mother cry and say I looked like a gypsy.

Jocelyn's little sister Alexa was fifteen and she got a weird haircut and started wearing pancake make-up and black lipstick. She listened to David Bowie and Jocelyn and I both thought she was a total weirdo when she looked down her nose at Joni's “Court and Spark” and Jackson's “Running on Empty.” Alexa said we were pathetic wannabee hippies and that James Taylor made her puke. Jocelyn's was able to navigate under the radar a bit because Dr. and Mrs. Clark were so preoccupied with her punk little sister and she'd fudge curfew and read Portnoy's Complaint and The Sensuous Woman by J and feel positively wicked.

My mother didn't care if much if I ditched school as long as I didn't eat too much. She'd write an excuse note if the refrigerator hadn't been too decimated. Otherwise, I typed it myself and traced her signature. I always gave “cramps” as a reason, knowing that even if it was a suspected forgery the merest suggestion of menstruation made it very unlikely anyone would investigate. Sometimes I'd manage to show up for homeroom which was the only time teachers really bothered to take attendance. I ran into Jocelyn in the hall on my way to first period and asked her if she wanted to take off. She turned white and got all spazzy. It would be the worst thing she had ever done in her whole life. I said I was sure that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had ditched school in order to engage in more meaningful activities. Jocelyn said yes. We stopped at Ralph's and got some Jiffy Pop and brownie mix and spent the day in the rumpus room running movies. We watched Women in Love, Isadora and Klute. Jocelyn said it was the best day of her life. Mrs. Clark went berserk and quite correctly blamed me more than Jocelyn, a landmark in the annals of parental justice. She cut me off when I suggested that at least we'd watched edifying movies but suggested that a few cheap cartons of Tarrytons from the VA canteen would grease the wheels of forgiveness.

Jocelyn started sleeping over at my house a lot. My mother kissed her ass because her father was a doctor and Sheri remained on good behavior. Jocelyn stayed for days at a time and I was surprised that Mrs. Clark wasn't trying to track her down. Jocelyn said that things were weird at home. Her dad had been sleeping on the couch. Alexa dyed her hair electric blue and no one batted an eyelash. When the girl's vice principal from Millikan called to complain Mrs. Clark said she'd get around to getting it dyed back blonde when she got around to it. I drove Jocelyn over to fetch some clothes and Mrs. Clark was sitting on the couch watching Adam 12 and chugging Scotch. I asked her if she needed more cigarettes and she said that would be good.

Dr. Clark moved out and Jocelyn started staying at home to keep an eye on her mom and make sure Alexis didn't slash her veins or head out for school in Doc Martens and thrashed fishnets. Dr. Clark stayed in the dormitory of the hospital for a while and then he moved in with a twenty year old who'd been his waitress at The Aware Inn. There was a problematic experience with psilocybin and Dr. Clark was whisked off by his associates to a Catholic sanitarium in New Mexico. He was gone for most of a year. He never returned to Mrs. Clark but was able to resume his practice and ended up living on a houseboat in the marina with another girl about two years older than Jocelyn.

I found an old issue of the Odyssey Newspaper. The school was actually Ulysses S. Grant but I guess they thought it better to evoke Homer than one of the most corrupt and ineffectual presidents in history. There was a full page article that told you what to do if you got busted for grass. I think that there was some freedom of the press buzz around the time and the paper was being handled with kid gloves but the science department hadn't picked up that the times they were a changin'. Biology was a graduation requirement and there was absolutely no flexibility with regard to cutting up a frog and the piece de resistance was watching the instructor dissect a cat. Many of my opinions in those days were formed based on the amount of popularity they would garner me but the animal thing was one thing I was actually sincere about. I told Mrs. Katz, the guidance counselor that even if it meant not graduating and waiting tables in orthopedic shoes and a hankie in my pocket at the Dupar's there was no way I was going to cut up anything that had a face.

There was a summer Marine Biology class at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley. Poly students had first preference but Mrs. Katz plead my humanitarian case and a place was made for me. Poly was only about five miles from Grant but the demographic was completely different. I had always had some non-Jewish classmates but the preponderance were of the Hebraic persuasion. And, just like everyone in New York sounds like a Jew, everyone in my part of the valley SEEMED like one. Even Jocelyn's mother, Mrs. Clark, who had a big portrait of the Pope in the den and was a daily communicant, waited in line at Weby's for fresh bagels and told us that we should stop kvetching when we whined. Sun Valley had a totally different vibe and the hippie types were more into pot and harder music with less enthusiasm for political claptrap and singer songwriters than my group at Grant. The girls wore make-up and the boys Iron Butterfly t-shirts.

There was only one other Jewish kid in the class. He had long hair but rather than the usual Jewfro frizz, it formed soft ringlets, evoking Shirley Temple. He wore cut-offs like a lot of the other kids but his were cut from what must have been a pair of his dad's brown polyester pants. He had an adenoidal voice and wore an Israeli flag pin on his jacket and sported a big silver Mogen David on a chain around his neck. His name was Shalom. This was the first time in my life that I decided it might be prudent to try “to pass,” as my mother referred to it, evoking images of Lana Turner in Imitation of Life.

The teacher was Mr. Spivak. He was very young, tanned and good-looking but had a ton of kids. We copied diagrams of seaweed and went to the Cabrillo Marine Museum. I started going with some kids to have lunch after class ended and in order to impress them I probably made clear in my first sentence that I was able to get weed, which I was through a classmate's older brother. The culmination of the six week class was a two night camp out and tide pool exploration at Leo Carillo State Beach. Gidget had been filmed there in the 1960s but we had no interest in surfing or go go dancing like Moon Doggie and the other beach bums. The entire campground would be monitored by Mr. and Mrs. Spivak but we knew that with all their kids we assumed there would be infrequent patrols.

Shalom stubbornly refused to accept that no one was interested in being his pal and as we stood around in groups looking at seawater through a microscope he'd try to join in conversations. He sneaked up behind me and a couple of other kids and heard us talking about getting high on the beach and he squealed, “You better not use that stuff because it will make you cuckoo.” We all started giggling and one of the boys told him to scram. Red headed Jeff was the cutest of what passed for a freak at Poly and it would have been hard to distinguish his brain from one of the amoebas we had to diagram. Jeff kept saying he thought my black hair was neat and I didn't even correct him that it is actually very dark brown and that no one is born with hair that is actually jet black. He said he could roll joints real well, another manual skill I was never able to master, and even offered to supply the papers for the camp out, if I supplied the grass.

When we got to the beach the first thing Mr. Spivak did was lay a rope perpendicular with the water and showed us which side was for boys and which was restricted to the girls. Then he went chasing after a couple of toddlers while the hugely pregnant Mrs. Spivak waddled behind. We cooked hot dogs and s'mores and then Mr. Spivak said we had to go to sleep and he stood with his flashlight directing the traffic to the appropriate side of the rope. As soon as he zipped up his tent some boys dragged the rope down to the ocean where it washed away. We all moved our sleeping bags. Shalom demonstrated his super strong flashlight which was Israeli military issue. He speculated may have been used in the 6 Day War and I just rolled my eyes like the other kids and didn't blow my cover and say I knew what that was.

Jeff came and said he knew a cove down the beach where it would be easy to get a joint lit and about six of us followed him. He did indeed roll a lovely doobie and all the kids said the pot I brought was really good. One of the kids had a bottle of vodka and we mixed it with Coke and Jeff kept accidentally brushing against me and touching my hand for an extra beat when we passed the joint. Suddenly we were hit with a powerful beam of light. The joint was dropped and we squinted at Shalom lumbering towards us. “I was just wondering where you guys were.”

“Get the fuck out of here you narc!” scream Jeff. He and the other boys shoved him a few times and then he ran back to the campsite. When we got back to our sleeping bags Shalom's was right next to Jeff's and he was either asleep or pretending to be. Jeff kicked the bag and when Shalom opened his eyes Jeff told him to move the fuck away. Shalom crawled out of the bag and Jeff grabbed it from him and ran with it, dragging it through the water and then dumping it soaking wet onto Shalom's backpack. The other kids thought it was hilarious. The next day all of the kids were calling Shalom “Narc.” I kept quiet but when Jeff asked me if I had anymore pot I said that I didn't. I moved my sleeping bag near a bunch of girls and before turning in I sat for a while in my car and smoked a few hits from a pipe. Shalom was abused because he was an annoying little twerp and there was no trace of antisemitism. I wondered if I would have come to his defense if there had been. Nevertheless, just like Sheri never felt right working in Hancock Park, I was glad that I attended Grant and not Poly.

Smoke Rings and Stardust

2011-08-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

My father's friend Nestor remarried and his new wife owned a home in the hills of Studio City, south of Ventura that was tied up in a divorce squabble and became my dad's swingin' bachelor pad. The sprawling ranch house was 60s splendor gone to seed and had a pool that didn’t look that murky by night if the moon wasn't full. Dad entertained and poured cocktails for guests who wore leisure suits and psychedelic polyester shirts and lined the fifteen foot floral print sectional. The sunken living room was huge and having lived in apartments since leaving his beloved screening room and my not so beloved mother, Dad was thrilled to have a long enough throw to run movies and no shared walls so he could enjoy his hi-fi.

Dad's divorce #2 was a financial setback but film programs were springing up at colleges all over the country and rentals were in big demand. Many of his competitors junked old films and distributed only newer titles and teased him about the old crap he persisted in listing in his catalog. Suddenly slapstick comedies, silent dramas and old cartoons were wildly popular. I noted the big increase in bookings when I spent my Saturdays at the office and lobbied so relentlessly that Dad capitulated and traded thirty b-westerns for a 1967 Dodge Dart. About two years later when I was in Mexico and an abscessed tooth flared up and I called collect for some money. Dad said he couldn't talk at the moment because he was in the middle of an FBI raid. If I'd known how much cash he'd been pocketing in addition to the legit profits I might have held out for a newer car. The Dart came from a cowboy wannabee mechanic in West Covina who told me to get off at the Puente off-ramp and pronounced it PEW-ENTY. Dad sighed that now that I had a car I wouldn’t bother with my old daddy anymore and I assured him that this wasn’t the case and he’d still see me every Saturday but actually, his prediction was pretty accurate.

My car was white with red upholstery and a working a.m. radio set in a dashboard with lots of chrome. I said that for the sake of the planet I would continue to ride my bike to school but I had to drive it once to show my friends and the next day I was running late. Six months later I realized my bike had been stolen from our storage room and I had no idea how long it had been gone. My mother said my dad was an asshole to get me a car when she was having trouble paying for groceries but she grudgingly agreed to pick up the gas and insurance. Both parents made it clear though that with the car and the attenuate expenses covered I should not to expect a single red cent in cash.

I did a little babysitting but didn’t have a lot of repeat business, probably because I set the clocks ahead to get my charges into bed early and partook too heavily of the refrigerator. I scanned the Green Sheet for job possibilities and there were very few opportunities for a sixteen year old girl whose only special talents were running a projector and embroidering nicely. One of my friends told me about a market research firm on Van Nuys Blvd that hired teenagers to take surveys. I applied and was called in the next day to start. I was assigned to a tobacco study. The subject had to be a smoker and was asked a series of questions regarding cigarette ads and smoking habits. Participants were given a carton of cigarettes and interviewed again a week later. The interviews each took about ten minutes and we were paid an unprecedented $12 for each one we completed. We were encouraged to recruit subjects by setting up a card table in front of a market or liquor store and offer a free carton of cigarettes but I did fine for weeks and weeks just hitting up my friends' parents.

I kept at the surveys for a couple of months and when I ran out of parents I simply started just filling them out, inventing names, addresses and phone numbers and smoking the cigarettes myself. My mom thought that smoking might help me lose some weight so she brought out all the ashtrays she'd stashed away when she'd quit herself. The manager from the survey company called and said that my surveys weren't checking out. It had never occurred to me that they would be verified. I hung up the phone on her. Fortunately my mother had access to the Veteran's Hospital canteen where cigarettes were only $2 a carton and she wouldn't begrudge me what she considered a medical necessity.

We all went to Dr. Mengers out in Chatsworth because he was a film buff and would just take what he could get from our insurance. He gave Sheri and I shopping bags filled with samples of Pondimin so we could lose weight and not have to waste time sleeping. I gave up vegetarianism and went on the Stillman diet which forbid fruits, vegetables and for months I ate only lean meat, fish, poultry, eggs and non-fat cottage cheese. I smoked like crazy, begged Librium from my mother and skipped school to try and sleep but I lost a lot of weight. Both of my parents took me shopping for clothes and told me how relieved they were and I should just put up with being a little jittery because I'd been such a disgusting fat cow.

I started to hang around with Dale, a nice guy from my English class. He had a little circle of friends who were all girls and he was easy to be around. His hair was long and he wore Levis and Earth Shoes. I'd spun so many yarns for so many years that by the time I was sixteen I would have had several dozen boyfriends, including two out of four of the Monkees. In truth, I had never even been kissed. My dad moved into his girlfriend Aliki's one-bedroom apartment on Gramercy because it was closer to the office but the Studio City house was vacant and they used it on weekends. When they took a vacation to Acapulco I asked if I could use the house for a little party. Dale only had his permit so I picked him up a few hours early to help me set up.

I brought up The Point and a bunch of shorts and cartoons all mounted together on big reels. Tons of kids showed up and I didn't discourage anyone from helping themselves from the bar, as I did myself. Most of us hadn't done a lot of drinking. We mixed stuff together willy nilly and chugged it down in tumblers. When the party was over Dale and I weren't in driving condition and we ended up making out on the enormous couch.

Erma was my dad's bookkeeper and had been best friends with wife number two. For years Erma kept a careful watch on things at Esther's behest. But my dad got Erma in the divorce. When she learned that Esther had been fooling around, Erma's fierce loyalty shifted from her to my dad. Erma always thought I was no good with regard to the interests of either father or stepmother. Unbidden she made a little spy trip all the way from her apartment in West LA to Studio City to check out the state of things after my party. Apparently someone had barfed in the pool house which was the one place I hadn't checked and Erna made sure my dad knew this the moment he stepped off the plane from vacation. Dad was pretty pissed off, although the worst I pulled was so minor compared to Sheri's teenage antics, they never gave me too hard a time. It didn't matter anyway, I had a boyfriend.

For all the momentousness of having a real, instead of an imaginary boyfriend, I don't remember that much about this relationship. Even though he only had a permit, no one seemed to care that Dale drove my car home late each night and then picked me up for school in the morning. I'd pose in bed for him to awaken me, wearing something scanty and feigning sleep. I'm not sure what the point of this was because my mother was applying makeup in the adjacent bathroom. I spent hours embroidering an elaborate light blue denim work-shirt for Dale. It was displayed at a school crafts fair and a lot of people said it was really good. I remember thinking Dale hadn't appreciated the embroidered shirt enough but I don't remember breaking up with him or even whether it was before or after I finished the shirt.

Sheri always loved Las Vegas and my dad rented films to a talent agent who could get comps at the Stardust. A flu bug hit the fire station and Sheri's boyfriend Charlie had to work at the last minute so Sheri invited me and my mom to go with her instead. We set out in my mom's behemoth Pontiac because it had FM radio and sometimes the air conditioning worked. Sheri and I both doubled up on our Pondimin dose so we wouldn't have to waste time stopping to eat but my mom couldn't hold out so we stopped in Victorville for her but Sheri and I just washed down more Pondimin with Tabs. My mom noticed that my father hadn't a big enough macher to land us in the new wing of the Stardust but the room was free and Sheri and I certainly didn't plan on spending much time there.

The hotel, like most on the Strip, was financed with union pension funds and run by Midwest crime families. It was discovered later in the 1970s that between $7 and $15 million dollars had been siphoned off in the Stardust Casino by using rigged scales, the biggest skimming operation ever exposed in the U.S. The giant hotel was imploded in 2007 to make way for Echelon Place and was said to be the first structurally sound skyscraper to ever be destroyed. Construction on Echelon was suspended in 2008 and has never resumed.

I'm sure it's different now but at age 16 in 1973 I gambled, drank and attended shows freely in Vegas. My dad had given us each, even my mother, $50 for gambling which mom said was very nice of him and that he must be doing really well, despite the ordinary room. My sister, having fruitlessly tried to teach me blackjack and poker, instructed me to stay on the slots or keno. My mother would require defibrillation if she lost so much as a dollar so she stuck to the bar area, getting men to buy her drinks. She had a very strong resemblance to Joan Rivers and when people asked if she was the comedienne, Mom said she was Joan's younger and sweeter sister. We had comps for the Lido de Paris and the girls wore epaulets with their bare boobs for a rendition of Abba's “Waterloo” and did a little martial arts number to “Kung Fu Fighting.” My mother said that all the girls had silicone implants and that she was glad that me and Sheri wouldn't need that. She often grabbed my chin and looked at me in profile to count her blessings I hadn't needed a nose job either, like Sheri had. Mom added that at least Sheri's had been a good one and that she had NOT had one herself. It was only a DEVIATED SEPTUM.

My Uncle Martin had been a fairly well know magician known as Kismet and had been close friends with Harry Houdini. He was in his eighties and his hands were too unsteady to perform magic but he was an expert card player. He spent three months a year playing Blackjack in Vegas and had honed keeping his card counting discrete enough and his winnings sufficiently modest to avoid being barred from the Downtown casinos. He hated The Strip and would never play there. The rest of the year he spent in a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin, coming out of retirement occasionally to do a show for seniors on a tourist riverboat.

He stayed at the cheapest motel he could find and used coupons for all of his meals. We met him downtown and he said he'd treat us to dinner at the Apache. It was billed as a buffet and Martin shelled out a quarter and a coupon for each of us. We were given a chicken leg, two dozen kernels of corn and a tablespoon of reconstituted mashed potatoes on a cardboard tray. My mother adored anything free and Sheri and I were taking so much Pondimin it didn't matter although Martin seemed miffed that we insisted on getting Tabs which were fifteen cents extra. The Strip wasn't exactly teeming with with genteel society but Downtown made its denizens look positively patrician. Drunks and reprobates were tossed with regularity out of dingy casinos and onto neon Fremont Street.

Uncle Martin offered to give me and my mom a coupon for a free ice cream cone at the Boulder Club so he and Sheri could play a few rounds of Blackjack but we had to get back to see Siegfried and Roy because we had free tickets and Sheri was apeshit about anything that had to do with animals. I was bored senseless and the handful of Pondimin made it an ordeal to sit still. My mother said that the two feigeles were cute but they reminded her of Nazis. Sheri wondered how much it would cost to get a tiger.

Sheri hit the tables right after the show. I played the nickel slots and hit a $50 jackpot which I cashed out and put in my wallet. I kept playing with the $20 I had left and was keeping pretty even. My mother had a couple of drinks and tried to round us up to hit the sack early. We discovered Sheri at a $25 a hand table. Mom stifled a scream and then noticed that Sheri had a huge tower of $100 chips. It looked like about $7000 and we just stood there silent and dumbfounded. Sheri had a few more good hands but my mom, on the verge of seizure finally screamed for her to STOP!

Sheri tried to brush Mom away but she started to make a scene so Sheri capitulated. She'd won over ten grand. There was something about taxes so you could only cash out so many chips at a time and we each got $500. We were all giddy and Sheri enumerated all the presents she was going to get for us. My mom was dying for a microwave oven and I wanted a cassette player for my car and Sheri guaranteed us the top of the line. My mother put all of the cash and chips in the room safe and hid the key in her glass case while Sheri was in the bathroom. Mom slathered her face in cold cream and covered her toilet paper wrapped hair with a sleeping net and told us to settle down because she wanted to get an early start to miss the traffic and having had a number of cocktails she soon passed out. Sheri shook me a few minutes later and asked me if I wanted to go back down to the casino. She still had about $20 that my mom hadn't confiscated and I had $70 in my wallet. We took a couple more Pondamins and went downstairs. Sheri had no interest in playing the tables. She said we'd just play the slots a little until we got tired enough to sleep.

We played the nickel slots and I hit a fifty dollar jackpot and Sheri lost her $20 fast but I gave her a big bucket of nickels. When she lost those I let her run through the rest of my money. It was small potatoes and after all, she'd be getting me that cassette player from Madman Muntz right after we dropped Mom at home. Sheri said that a voice inside her had told her loudly and clearly to sit down at that table and she just knew she was going to win big. She said that if my mom hadn't created such a fuss she knew for sure she would have won twice as much and wouldn't it be neat if she could buy me a new Camero. I said I'd rather have a VW Bug and she said whatever. Sheri said for sure, deep in her bones, she knew that she was absolutely not finished at that table and did I see where my mom hid the key to the safe.

Sheri returned from the room and gave me a ten and I played the slots and lost it all fast and finally the Pondimin seemed to be wearing off a little. I went back to the room and took a Librium but even still heard Sheri creep in a couple of times and unlock the safe during the night. My mom woke me up in the morning and asked where my sister was and I said I didn't know. Mom opened the safe and found it empty and ran down to the casino in her nightgown and hairnet. She found Sheri at the five dollar table on the verge of losing her final hand. They didn't speak to each other as we packed to leave. We ate a wordless breakfast at the Stardust Coffee Shop and my mom realized that Sheri had taken all of the cash from her wallet. Mom paid with a credit card and we started the long silent drive through the desert. We didn't stop for a meal this time. I smoked a pack of cigarettes and I didn't even dare ask to turn on the radio.

My License

2011-08-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

Mr. Pratt favored white short sleeve shirts, and, decade after they were stylish and a decade before they became ironic, skinny ties. He taught Driver's Education in a classroom and actual driving too. My schedule was full so I only took the first period class that prepared you for the written DMV test and tried to scare the shit out of you with regard to drinking, drugs, picking up hitchhikers and malfunctioning brake lights. Four student drivers at a time would go out in the school car with Mr. Pratt. Behind-the-wheel students mostly agreed that this was real white knuckler and many prepared for the session with a toke or two in the abandoned garden left from the days of horticulture classes. When kids were waiting for a turn to drive they practiced with a driving simulator, pretty much unsupervised and usually playing a version of Death Race 2000. Mr. Pratt often sucked air through his teeth and emitted a shrill disgusted sound. Perhaps his malaise stemmed from being in his forties and living with his mother or from being driven around hour after hour by a bunch of kids who had never driven before and were most likely high on maryjane. He started every class recounting the horrors he'd encountered on the freeway on the morning commute from Glendale. There were tailgaters and coffee drinkers and a lady who applied mascara. Daylight Savings time was another one of his bugaboos because we no longer had a farm based economy and the driving conditions were much more dangerous when he had to leave home before dawn. He didn’t give a hairy hoot if kids got an extra hour of sunshine for outdoor play.

My second period class was Algebra One which I had dropped twice at Millikan and needed to pass if I didn't want to end up at Valley College, right next door. Valley was referred to as Grant High 13th and 14th Grade, or, UFO (University of Fulton and Oxnard) or Reject Tech. I took a guitar course there at the community extension program and even though I sucked and still couldn’t manage to tune a guitar the teacher Mark Kaplan liked me. Most of the students were bored when he wasted lesson time making us listen to Erik Satie but I was enchanted. I asked Mark what records I should buy and rode my bike to the record store the next day. Mark rhapsodized about Satie and told me stuff like he only washed with pumice, refused to speak during a meal and ate only white foods (sugar, shredded bones, turnips, animal fat, salt, coconut…). I stayed so late after class one night talking to Mark about the French composer that my mother showed up looking for me. Mark realized that I was in high school and didn't chat me up the next class and got on my case about being unable to tune a guitar, even with a pitch pipe, and I dropped out.

Algebra One was taught by Mr. Hyde who had just gotten out of the Peace Corps and had never taught anything except maybe some Gambians how to use a toilet. I'd had the first few weeks of Algebra One twice before so I managed score passing grades on the early tests which I suspect Mr. Hyde graded pretty casually anyway. After a few weeks I began to have trouble as the formulas grew more complicated. I was fine with all the letters and concepts but when I had to do computational arithmetic to solve for x, I fell apart. We were not permitted to use a calculator, which at the price of about $150 in 1974 was a rarity in high school anyway. I was left to sneak peeks at the times table in the back of a Pee-Chee folder. I've spent many hours drilling multiplication tables and I'm still iffy on the 7s and 8s and always thought the 12s were only for super over-achievers. One day Mr. Hyde didn’t show up. There were unsubstantiated rumors that his disappearance had something to do with peyote but that may have just been because he’d been seen reading Carlos Castaneda in the break room. We were taught for the rest of the year by a dozen or so substitutes who were never there long enough to really assess our progress. The final grades were based therefore on the first few tests given by Mr. Hyde and I managed to squeak through with C-minus.

I was assigned, as usual, to adaptive P.E., which like at Millikan, consisted mostly of sitting around on denim mats in the corrective room talking. The teachers at Millikan at least gave lip service to getting the fat and ill formed off of their butts but Mrs. Keeson didn't even bother staying in the room with us. She’d take roll and then wander over to the dance studio, as the lithe leotarded dancers were probably easier on the eye than the adaptive PE crowd. There was a girl who lost her arm right below the elbow to the propeller of a small airplane that was being piloted by her boyfriend. The accident was on the front page of the Green Sheet. They'd re-attached the arm but it just hung there and looked sort of like one of my homemaking sewing projects. Nevertheless, we were all jealous that she had a boyfriend who could fly a plane.

My mom took me to the DMV in Van Nuys on the day I turned 15 ½ and I easily passed the written test (which was much easier in those days) and issued a permit. My mom tried to teach me to drive using her car but my confusion of brake with accelerator took to great a toll on both of us. My dad had a brand new white Olds 98 and assiduously managed to avoid taking the bait when I hinted we practice.

Mr. Lampke of the Van Nuys driving school was engaged. He picked me up in his un-air conditioned Datsun, emblazoned with “Valley Driving School.” Perspiration caused his baby blue polyester shirt to adhere to his chest and accentuate his nipples. He spoke like a piece of his tongue was missing and had a short fuse. As far as he was concerned, I was hopeless. Three different DMV examiners arrived at the same conclusion. One tester asked if I were from England. I thought it was because I seemed sophisticated but it was just that I seemed to be driving on the left side of the street. I took the driving test for the fourth time with an examiner who had failed me before. I thought I had done pretty well, although I’d thought that on the three previous attempts too, but the examiner showed me that my score was two points short of passing. I burst into tears and couldn’t make myself stop crying. The examiner erased a couple of errors from my test page and I was issued a license.

My mother had a hideous Pontiac Catalina in olive drab which she purchased after a handsome used car dealer flirted with her. He never called her for the date he’d promised and the car broke down repeatedly and expensively. It was serviced by a mechanic who kept the two top buttons of his uniform unbuttoned and always referred to me when speaking to Mom as, “your sister.” My mom wasn’t crazy about letting me drive her car but I’d endured so much humiliation getting my license she’d relent once in a while. I cut a right turn sort of sharp and lost control and ended up on the curb where a fire hydrant stopped me from plowing through a storefront. My mom was suspicious when I told her that I’d returned to the parking lot and discovered the mashed-in passenger door. The insurance adjust ran his finger over a yellow gash and said, “Somebody hit a hydrant.” I expected her to go ballistic as soon as we were out of his earshot but the woman who’d threaten to throw you out onto the street if you forgot to wring out a washcloth let it slide.

I wrote long heartfelt letters to two boys in Long Beach that I knew from camp and filled the margins of the notebook paper and the envelope with abstract designs in bright marker,. Pete and Jonathan played guitar together and performed folk songs that Pete had written. I liked Pete more because he actually wrote the songs and had longer hair but Jonathan was nicer to me and I would happily have been his girlfriend. Pete answered my long heartfelt missives on postcards scribbled in pencil but Jonathan sent me elaborate notebook paper cutouts with drawings and deep observations in loopy script. Pete sent me a card and Jonathan sent me a long gushy letter to announce that they would be performing at the Troubadour.

My mom wouldn’t let me drive at night but having no intention of missing their first professional gig I was able to hitch a ride with a bunch of the older campers from JCA. It turned out that it was open mike night. Pete and Jonathan came on first, and except for their friends and parents, the rest of the crowd kept ordering drinks and talking like there was no one on the stage at all. Pete and Jonathan had debated on whether to do a political or romantic song and opted for the former thinking it would confer more gravitis for the sophisticated crowd. They did a song about Nixon and the chorus rhymed “doesn’t care about ecology” with “the stench of burning babies.” We were the only ones who applauded and the emcee said that Bob Dylan had nothing to worry about. On the way home we laughed about how so many philistines had shown up at a club as reputedly cool as the Troubadour.

I asked my mom, even though I’d never driven on the freeway, if I could go down to Long Beach to visit Jonathan and she said absolutely not. When she went to Santa Anita for the day with my sister Sheri I found the spare key she’d hidden. I would have loved to spend time with Pete but knew he was too tortured an artist to reciprocate my feelings so I called Jonathan and said I had an errand in Long Beach and thought I’d stop by. I managed to navigate the freeway where I noticed other drivers did an inordinate amount of honking. Jonathan’s mother came to the door and showed me to his room. We sat on an Indian rug on the floor and he showed me pictures of his new girlfriend and played me a song he’d written for her. The visit lasted about fifteen minutes.

My mother noticed the odometer on the car and said she knew I’d driven to Long Beach. Sheri said Mom should forbid me to ever drive the car again. Sheri had once taken my father’s car to Utah, where she was arrested, to see a boy she had a crush on. My mother noted that Sheri had driven a lot further than I had to see a boy who didn’t give a shit about her. I still wanted my own car.

When the Valley College guitar class went sour I asked a girl name Marge who I knew from Camp and the Jewish Center and was a year ahead of me at Grant, to give me lessons. She lived south of The Boulevard (Ventura) in a house with white carpeting, drapes and furniture and Frank Stellas on the wall. Marge confessed that everyone hated the big oils but someone had told her dad they were a good investment. The dad was a big lawyer at Universal and the mom had her name on just about every civic organization in the valley, at least the ones that held swanky affairs. Marge had studied guitar with a session man who owed her dad a favor and had gotten pretty good. Her teacher mainly taught her jazz tunes but she’d figured out most of the popular folk rock ballads of the day on her own and had a passable singing voice. She taught me “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down” and “City of New Orleans.” Marge showed me the dress her mom’s dressmaker had designed for her to wear when she went, as she did annually, as her dad’s date to the Academy Awards. One of the girls at school brought the list from the L.A. Times of all the nominees and read aloud the list of movies stars Marge would be seeing.

Marge got a new yellow Camero for her sixteenth birthday and flew off for long weekends staying at the St. Regis and eating at Elaine’s and Sardi’s but her depression child father insisted that attend public school and earn her own pocket money. Marge worked two evenings a week in a striped uniform with a pinafore at the Morrow’s Nut House in Laurel Plaza and she taught me guitar. After the lesson Marge showed me the high heels she’d picked out for the Oscars and showed me pictures of herself with Natalie Wood and Fred McMurray. I arrived at school the next day with a big announcement. It turned out that my mother’s ex-boyfriend, Jack Warner, had reconnected with Mom and had invited me to attend the Academy Awards. Of course Warner was so important we’d be up in the front rows and I’d probably not even be able to make out poor Marge up in nosebleed. Actually Warner had dropped my mother like a hot potato a number of years ago and there were few less likely callers.

I went on all week about the limo that would be picking us up and how my mom’s hairdresser would be coming over to the house along with a professional to apply our makeup. Marge finally snapped and told me to shut the fuck up and stop bragging about the Oscars. I went home and wrote a letter to Marge saying that she was spoiled because she got to go to the Academy Awards every year and how snobby it was of her to censure me for being excited about my very first opportunity.

I watched the Oscars in the den with my mom and Sheri. They both screamed at the set when Marlon Brando sent up poor Sacheen Littlefeather to reject his best actor award. Dressed in full regalia Littlefeather explained that she'd been forbidden to read Brando's long tract so she extemporized and said that Brando objected to the way American Indians were treated by the film industry in TV reruns. Half the audience broke into applause and the other half jeered. I suspected that if I had really gone with Jack Warner I would have been obliged to jeer or at least keep my mouth shut which given the recent events at Wounded Knee would have been immoral. I said that Brando was a courageous man of conscience and it was time that capitalist pig white males stop oppressing the Indians AND WOMEN. Sheri said I was stupid and full of shit and I skulked off to my room and watched the rest of the ceremony holding onto the foil wrapped rabbit ear on my tiny black and white set to improve the reception.

I waited for Marge on the day of my lesson but, as I’d pretty much expected, she didn’t show up. I called and she said that based on that letter I’d sent she’d assumed the lessons were history. I said that having honestly expressed my feelings I held no grudge and she said she’d think about it. She called me back and said she’d shown my letter to her dad and he said she shouldn’t waste her time with me anymore and he’d offered to supplement her loss of earnings. He also said that Jack Warner hadn’t even been at the Oscars.

The Summer of Our Discontent

2011-08-05T15:18:00.001-07:00

I went to the Jewish Camp JCA in Barton Flats for three weeks every summer and for five days during Christmas vacation. There was nothing I looked forward to more and, like the other campers, I yearned desperately to be admitted to the elite Teenage Service Corp for 10th graders. TASC was held the final session of every summer and comprised of twelve girls and twelve boys who would get special jackets with their names embroidered on them and participate in a camp improvement project like building a barbecue or a bench. There would be a wooden plaque erected with the name of every TASCer in a big ceremony at the end of the session.

Camp JCA was near Big Bear, at the foot of Mount San Gorgonio. The annual trek up San G. was a big deal and there was the regular route and for the real over-achievers, the fearsome “face.” For some of us the day of the big hike meant lolling about and doing crafts projects. There was usually snow at the winter session and some of the kids would ride on sleds or toboggans. Sometimes we'd have a Pooh party and wear our pajamas and eat graham crackers with canned frosting colored pink. But mostly we sat around and talked and listened to music. There was a group of kids who actually danced to rock music but for most of us, dancing to rock and roll was very uncool, although those who participated in folk dancing were not ostracized. This exception may have been because the father of Ben, one of the coolest kids, was a folk dance instructor. Father and son both moved gracefully and sported Greek fishermen caps. Possibly the Israeli dancers actually liked all the spinning and grape-vining but I found that difficult to imagine.

I tell my kids how much worse the air was back in the pre-smog check days. Through childhood I usually had a slight wheeze, as did most of my friends. I stepped off the bus in Barton Flats and inhaled deeply and was aware for the entire session of how nice it felt to breathe. The star filled sky would demonstrate the curve of the universe. When I spotted a shooting star I'd always wish that I'd make TASC.

I remember being aware at the time that it was a performance but I learned on Fulton Avenue that this was integral to any expression of emotion. It was the last night of winter camp and we were eating popcorn from big metal bowls and singing. I think I wanted a fix of oozy teenage girl love and I made myself start to cry and sob, “I don't want to leave,” I snarffled. The older girls immediately came to comfort me and I was warm in their embrace when Dave, the camp director intervened and shooed the girls away. He sat and put his arm around me and asked what was wrong. “I just want to stay here,” I sobbed. He asked what was so bad at home and the acuity of the question was like the houselights coming up suddenly in the middle of a scene and I broke character and muttered something about the clean air.

It was announced that the Jewish Centers Association had purchased another camp in the Malibu mountains. We were told that the original camp would continue to function simultaneously but it didn't and all operations moved to the Malibu site the following year. I volunteered helping the nursery school crafts teacher at the Jewish Center and came home covered with tiny gray papier-mache hand prints because volunteer work would look good on my TASC application. I rode my bike to the Comfort Care Rest Home after school three days a week to help out Mrs. Romney the occupational therapist to show the TASC selection committee even more public service. There was a room with craft supplies but most of the inhabitants lacked the agility or interest so I was just sent around to talk to people, most of whom were so out of it I might have been speaking in Klingon.

I'd started practicing guitar songs with Carla, a jewfroed girl who played and sang not much better than I but was better able to approximate a tuned guitar. We thought we'd get some practice at bar mitzvahs and weddings and then advance to coffee houses where we'd inevitably be discovered and become the next Joni Mitchells. Carla agreed to play with me at Comfort Care and Mrs. Romney set up snacks and wheeled in a few of the more able bodied and minded patients. I was used to the smell by then but Carla kept threatening to barf. We decided against Neil Young's Needle and the Damage Done and Joni's My Old Man and had practiced This Land is Your Land and You Are My Sunshine. Carla tuned her guitar and then tuned mine and we began hesitantly and not simultaneously and we never exceeded a dirge-like tempo. I hit a few wrong chords and an ancient man sprang from his wheelchair and grabbed my guitar. He laid into Toot Toot Tootsie and played like nobody's business and the audience clapped and stomped with miraculous enthusiasm. When the concert was over we drank punch and Carla called her mother to come pick her up and hurry.

I spent hours on my TASC application. I talked about world peace and the environment and the movies my dad would be happy to donate if I were accepted. I wrote the whole thing out in calligraphy and mounted it on an intricate collage and my mother scoffed at having to ship it off in an expensive large envelope with extra postage and marked “hand cancel.” There were two letters of recommendation required but I collected a dozen, from teachers, the staff at the Jewish Center and Mrs. Romney at Comfort Care. I even made my mom call a colleague of her late boyfriend who worked at Bonds for Israel and she got a psychiatrist at the Veteran's hospital to write another one for good measure.

The interview was in an activity room at the Jewish Center near my house. Dave the director was there along with two parents from the board of trustees. I rhapsodized about my love and devotion to Camp JCA. I said I was used to heavy labor because I helped my father hauling heavy films every Saturday, even though the heaviest 16mm print was about 20 lbs and I didn't really haul them, I just carried the ones I wanted to watch across the warehouse. I added that my father would be happy to donate films if indeed I was selected as a TASCer.

I raced home to the mail box every day until finally the Camp JCA letter arrived and announced that because the new camp in Malibu needed so much repair it had been determined that instead of the usual 24 TASCers, this summer there were to be 50. They had chosen 34 girls and 16 boys. I was number one on the waiting list. I was the only girl who applied and wasn't accepted. I'm still not positive why. I mulled over whether it was the sobbing at winter camp or maybe my mom had said something or acted weird when she went for the financial aid interview. I thought at the time, and still do, that it was probably because I was fat. Some of the girls who'd been accepted phoned gloating, ostensibly to tell me how super sorry they were.

Junior High graduation was a dreary affair. I wore the requisite granny dress with white sandals and my hair stuffed into a snood. The choir sang “We've Only Just Begun.” Both of my parents were eager to get back to work. We had a quick bite at the coffee shop at the Sportsman's Lodge. I guess the proximately to the fancy restaurant we were not going to gave the day a tinge of special occasion.

The summer before high school boded to be long and hot with no TASC to look forward to. I could have attended JCA as a regular camper but it would have been too humiliating so I was permitted to enroll at Every Woman's Village. This was a wildly popular bungalow court on Sepulveda that began as an “Up the Sandbox” enabler but expanded to offer a wide variety of artsy fartsy and self improvement classes. I have devoted many hours of my life to endeavors for which I have no aptitude but I don't think I was ever more out of my element than in a musical comedy workshop. The class was taught by Cindy Schway who said she'd hoofed on Broadway and whose ham-like calves did not belie this. The class was for teens and adults and there were five other teenage girls, a fourteen year old boy named Stephan whose mother Selma was also enrolled and called him “Stevie.” Lastly were the retired Bev and Wilbur, who had done some high school theatricals and were hoping to rekindle their latent talents. They were from Indiana, taking in Hollywood and spending the summer at a Reseda RV park.

Cindy taught us some basic dance steps and attempted to position the other students at a safe distance from me. We did exercises and sang “I love to sing” going up and down the scale and “Bring back the boys big brown blue baseball bats.” and “Sally saw Sylvester stacking silver saucers side by side.” The first assignment was the song “Getting to Know You” from the King and I, a song that is a favorite of bad singers because it requires practically no vocal range. Cindy taught us a simple (for all of the other students) dance step and then we broke into groups to practice.

My group was with Emily-one of the teenagers- and Selma and little Stevie. Selma took charge and placed herself and Stevie in the front row and ushered me and Emily to stand behind them. The dance pretty much eluded me but it was hard to screw up the singing part. Selma told me and Emily that we were singing too loud and when it came time to perform for the class I flubbed the dance so badly that I gave Stevie a flat tire. He tripped, his shoe went flying and Selma shot me the evil eye.

My mother was sick of paying to enroll me at Weight Watchers but heard of a doctor in Van Nuys that specialized in weight and would take our insurance. I walked in and saw that the office was all hippies and rainbows and thought I might be onto something. I was weighed and met the doctor who wore beads and a flowered shirt. He prescribed a three week fast with nothing but sugar free fruit juice concentrates from the health food store mixed with water and coffee ground colon cleanses. My mother saved up her coffee grounds every morning but I sneaked them into the trash. I managed with the fast even though I was light headed and had technicolor fantasies of food.

Cindy cast me to be Hodel, apparently the daughter who only sings on the choruses and stirs the big cauldron while the other two sisters dance in the song Matchmaker, Matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof. I worked on my costume and re-purposed my graduation dress with an afghan my mom had crocheted as a shawl. I found a Vera scarf for my modest head-covering and thought my hiking boots would best approximate shtetl footwear. The waspy older couple, Wilbur and Bev, were Tevye and Golde and two of the teenage girls were the other daughters. Cindy choreographed some dance steps during which I was to sway slightly as I stirred my pot and to sing in a sweet, and more importantly, very soft voice. Cindy's note to me after our rehearsal was “less sway, more soft.”

I lost eight pounds on the fast and was allowed to add three pieces for fruit and a single Wheatabix to my daily routine. I had no energy and lay on the couch and watched TV listening to my stomach grumble most of the week except for the musical workshop. Cindy gave us a flier to invite friends to our final performance and both of my parents and my sister agreed to come.

Janis Miller called and said that her aunt had invited her to go to Europe and as the first and only girl on the waiting list, I would get to go to TASC. I would have to miss my Matchmaker number and my mom was very concerned that I stay on my diet. Becky, the head counselor called to tell me that I could go to TASC and I said I was on a diet and had to have fresh fruit and she said that maybe I shouldn't come to camp. I said I'd work it out and she gave me the address of a pre-camp meeting. I had missed the first six meetings and all the other kids had grouped up and everyone knew I was a reject. They all got their cool jackets with their names and the Camp JCA logo. Becky said they'd order me a jacket. And it would come. Sometime.

I was the only TASCer on the bus without a jacket and I ended up sitting with a seventh grader who had drool on his headgear and wouldn't shut up about Night Gallery. We got to camp and I wolfed down lunch and then they showed us a spot where we would be building an ampitheatre. I didn't like Camp JCA Malibu as much as Barton Flats. There were rolling hills covered with chaparral and it was inland enough to be dry and hot. I'd packed huge bottles of fruit juice extract which leaked all over my footlocker and were never touched. After a summer of fasting, even the Kosher kitchen crap was ambrosia and I made quick work of regaining what I'd lost on the fast and then some.

The girls always walked arm in arm in lines but when I attached myself the chain seemed to break up. George, an old workman guy in a plaid shirt and overalls and never without a wheelbarrow was to supervise the work. We raked up twigs a couple of times and then the girls mostly stood around talking and watching George mix cement. I would find a place to sit under a tree until one of the counselors would come yell at me to go help. Once in a while George tried to teach one of the boys to do something with some tool but it always ended with George grabbing back the tool and muttering about long-haired sissy brats.

The cutest guy counselor was Nate, went to UCLA. I talked about movies with him. He said his favorite film was King of Hearts and I wrote my dad to send a print and all the kids really liked it and after the showing were a bit warmer. We had to have a one-to-one rap session with Becky on the last day and she said that all I did all session was try to get out of working and sit in my bunk like a lump and that I hadn't contributed much to TASC. I mentioned that I'd gotten the movie and she said she'd already seen it. My jacket finally arrived and my name, which was usually spelled incorrectly, was fine but it was too small and dug in to my armpits excruciatingly.

Even through Becky put me down, because of the film stuff, the kids started to warm up towards the end of camp. Someone wrapped an arm around me at the big closing ceremony and most of the kids asked me to sign their TASC photos. I wanted to have the first TASC reunion at my house and I wanted to show Harold and Maude. My dad didn't have this film but I reserved it for a $100 rental from Films Incorporated. At the time, the most expensive rentals in my dad's catalog (Laurence of Arabia and Funny Girl) ran $40 so this was real high roller. I sent an invite asking each kid to send $2 for the film rental but there was no response. I canceled the booking and wrote a note telling the kids how mad I was and how uncool it was for them to blow me off. I said that I'd forfeited the film rental although no charges were actually incurred. My mom xeroxed the missive at the VA. She sent a copy of it to Dave, the camp director with a note citing the inferior characters of the TASC kids who were chosen over me. She never got an answer.

The day after I mailed the poison pen letter the phone started to ring and everyone said they had just spaced out sending the two bucks but they were for sure coming to the party. I ran a bunch of Betty Boop cartoons and Harold Lloyd's The Freshman and the kids liked the films and were gaga over the décor of the rumpus room and the built-in projection booth. There were other reunion parties but I didn't go to them. Most of the kids went on to be counselors in training and then counselors but I didn't bother applying. During my last year of college I rented a cabin on an unpaved road in Forest Falls, a few miles from Barton Flats, the site of the original camp JCA and just like with camp I feel the memory of my cabin in the cool pine forest in my lungs . I didn't return to Camp JCA Malibu until thirty years later when I attended a Jewish family weekend and we were crammed with our toddler into an infirmary room with pitted walls and rusted cots. I went up to the site of amphitheater and found that the“TASC 1973” marker was still there but all the names had faded away.

Brace Yourself

2011-07-29T16:04:00.001-07:00

Both of the art teachers at Millikan Junior High were hippies and except for Mrs. Sable, the drama coach, whose husband was an artist and painted disturbing oils of dismembered dolls, the other teachers avoided the boho artists. Mrs. Garner taught ceramics and Ms. Arlen taught mixed media and was the first teacher at the school to use “Ms.” Ms. Arlen was actually a Mrs. but her husband had gone Hari Krishna and she was living with a boyfriend who she referred to as “my old man.” Ms. Arlen had thick hennaed curls almost to her waist and wore Indian print wrap-around skirts and lace up hiking boots. Ms. Arlen would let us go a minute early if we cleaned up fast but Miss Heinmiller, the girl's vice principal, caught an early dismissė in the hall and made a big stink and lingered outside the art room at the end of every period lest Ms. Arlen have any more subversive impulses. Miss Heinmiller's lower lip quivered involuntarily when she saw Ms. Arlen bustling through the halls toting art supplies. Ms. Arlen was enjoying some success as a collage artist and her name was always in the Green Sheet for art openings and exhibits. Whenever Ms. Arlen was mentioned in the newspaper the principal would congratulate her on the PA. although he stubbornly referred to her as “Mrs. Arlen.”

Ms. Arlen played Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Mott the Hoople's Young Dudes while we were working. She had us bring in cardboard cartons to make collage boxes and said the inside of the box was to represent our souls and the outside what we projected to the world. Ms. Arlen taught us some basic calligraphy and I added some ink blobbed quotes by Jerry Rubin and Kahlill Gibran and Joni Mitchell. I cut tiny pictures of album covers from a Columbia Record Club catalog and drew psychedelic designs that I colored in with a marker . I embroidered on scraps of faded denim. I spray-painted the inside of the box silver. I got an “A+” and my mother used it for years to store office supplies that she'd appropriated from the VA.

Mrs. Garner, the ceramics teacher showed us the basics: pinch pot, slab and coil and we had to do a project in each technique. My coils weren't uniform and my slabs never fit together evenly. My pinch pots weren't that bad but there is only so much you can do with a pinch pot. Nevertheless, I completed the projects and was enthusiastic and allowed to transfer to the advanced section the following semester when students switched from hand building to the potter's wheel. I couldn't even throw a blob of clay onto the wheel with enough force for it to adhere, so whenever I kicked the wheel, clay went flying everywhere, even unfortunately on Mrs. Garner herself on a day when she'd had a meeting and forgotten to put on her smock back on. Mrs. Garner decided it would be a good thing if I worked on a few projects that combined all three methods of hand building and she left me alone. I made a few rather graceful little sculptures in red clay and glazed them clear and Mrs. Garner couldn't conceal her surprise when she said they were charming. They were displayed in a school art show but my mother was befuddled as to their function when I brought them home and they languished under the bar with a set of copper enamel ashtrays my sister had made in Occupational Therapy at Woodview Psychiatric Hospital.

We'd been without a housekeeper for years but my mother was getting sick of my sloth and engaged a 15 year old girl named Luisa who we picked up from Pacoima to live-in and clean for six days a week for $25 plus meals which my mother carefully monitored. Sheri had one of her regular bust ups and ended back home and then Luisa had to sleep on a love seat in the rumpus room. Sheri had quit the fish store and there was a big fight with her boyfriend Charlie because he was pressuring her to get another job and so she returned to Fulton Avenue where she lolled around in a nightgown. I asked my mom if we could enroll Luisa at school. I thought we could be like sisters and how cool I would be helping the poor Mexican girl find her classes and learn English and everything. I knew we'd get invited to a lot of parties but Mom said it was much better for Luisa to learn to be a good housekeeper so she could help support her family.

I took Luisa up to Fashion Square and bought her a pair of bell bottom jeans with my allowance. Bellbottoms were out of style so they were on the sale rack but Luisa loved them and wore them everyday with the smock my mom had leftover from when she worked for a dermatologist. Sheri complained that Luisa had played the song “Angie” from my Goat's Head Soup album about a zillion times when Mom and I weren't home. I was vaguely miffed that it was now scratched and nearly unplayable but it was a rotten album and perhaps the worst Stones song ever. My mother decided that Luisa not only lacked musical taste she was lousy at cleaning too so she dropped her back in Pacoima with $5 severance and her new bellbottoms. I was mortified and embarrassed but I had hundreds of great albums and Luisa did lose a bit of credibility by falling in love with that particularly unbearable song. I guess it was for the best that she was fired because I think if she'd played “Angie” one more time Sheri would have eviscerated her.

There were three different social groups at Millikan. There were the real straight goody goody kids, some smart, some dumb, all square and naturally dead to me. Then, there were the hard guys and the hippies. Hard guys wore boots even when it was hot and hippies wore sandals even when it was cold. The hard guys listened to Led Zeppelin and The Who and the hippies listened to Bob Dylan and The Who. The hard guy girls wore mascara, eye liner and white lipstick and the hippie girls wore no make up and cultivated bushy eyebrows and armpits. The hippie kids ate lunch on the ninth grade lawn and the hard guys ate on an off-the-radar patch of concrete behind the boys gym. Both hard guys and hippies either engaged or aspired to engage in the smoking of marijuana., which among both circles was referred to as “weed” and never “pot.”

Brian, a hard guy, was in my Advanced Ceramics Class. He had actually mastered the wheel and with his skinny arms could pull a perfect pot from a mass of soggy clay in seconds. He glazed a delicate piece he'd thrown in a rich burnt orange and gave it to Mrs. Garner who kvelled a lot about its beauty. Apparently Ceramics was the only class Brian attended regularly and Mr. Bunyan, the Boys' Vice Principal tracked him down there to chew him out about ditching. Brian shrugged and chomped on a big wad of gum which Mr. Bunyan yelled for him to spit out. Brian spat the gum as forcefully as he threw a lump of clay on the wheel and it landed with a satisfying thwap in the wastebasket half way across the room. Even Mr. Bunyan was impressed.

I was carrying a note to the office and saw Brian and one of the other hard guys being taken away in handcuffs by a uniformed police officer. There was no official statement by the administration but the word on the street was that they had been busted for weed. This seems plausible and neither of the boys ever returned to Millikan. The sight of two rather slight fourteen year olds being led to a police car was disturbing but I went too far with it. Brian had said maybe two words to me but I wept to my mother about the horrible injustice of it all. I was so eager to co-opt this drama that I even telephoned a teen phone hotline that had fliers all over. I was answered by a young man who spoke softly and slowly. I imagined him with wire frame glasses and a beard. I unfolded the tale, throwing in a bit of police brutality for color. Then the man asked me if I ever prayed to Jesus and I hung up the phone.

My cousin Beth, who led a quiet life at an exclusive and meticulously well supervised private school, ate up the tale, which for her I inflated to include police copters and drawn weapons. I suggested to her that I only one who appreciated Brian's gentle artistic side and imagined how the vicissitudes of prison would beat it out of him. She helped me compose a letter to send if I could somehow track him down behind bars. “Dear Brian, You don't know me but I sat across from you in Ceramics. I just want you to know I think that what happened was wrong and that I hate the pigs and that if everyone smoked weed in the world there would be no crime or war. Your pottery is bitchin' too.” We knew that with this he'd realize that I was his soul-mate and find comfort in the lonely night. He'd get out prison and go straight to my house and we'd go off to live an art commune and grow weed and vegetables.

Most of the weed at Millikan was sold by Richard Fromm, a Grant High student who everyone called “Little Dickie.” His young sister Wendy was in my class and went to the Jewish Center too. Lots of people wanted to be her friend so they could connect with Dickie. Wendy, despite her cute clothes, was shrill and whiny and fussy about which kids she'd invite to hang out at their modern hillside Studio City home. The parents were architects but were usually off at some sort of therapy retreat or meditation weekend. Each of the three bedrooms had a mattress on the floor and a shelf. There was a kitchen table with a couple of chairs and some big pillows and the living room floor and that was all. Mr. and Mrs. Fromm didn't believe in furniture although they were particularly proud of the Volvo they'd purchased in Sweden, driven around Europe and imported to LA. Dickey kept his stash in the pool house and transactions were usually followed by a swim, and customers often dove in fully clothed, and, I heard rumors but never witnessed it myself, sometimes fully naked.

Scoliosis was, like polio in the 50s, I guess, something that was on everyone's mind in the 1970s and something you seldom hear about now. The treatment of curvature of the spine was either accomplished by surgery which was followed by about six months in a huge cast or about two years strapped into a steel back-brace. There were a handful of girls I knew who had to make the choice. I don't think it's a coincidence that all of them came from well-to-do families. Cousin Beth, who was already tragically self conscious about her splotchy skin which was caused by some rare genetic fluke, was diagnosed with scoliosis and petrified of surgery elected to go the back-brace route. The contraption was metal with leather straps and a chin rest. It dwarfed her tiny frame and chaffed her skin, even through layers and layers of undergarments. She was allowed to sit on a bench and read whatever she wanted during PE but even this was inadequate recompense.

Mom was finally getting the picture that screaming her head off and throwing stuff around had very little effect on my tidiness instincts. She decided on carrot and stick approach and promised me that if I didn't throw my clothes on the floor or leave dishes in the sink and made my bed every day for two weeks I could have a slumber party. There was a girl named Eileen from school who also wore a back-brace and she, like Beth, was one of those girls who didn't have a lot of self assurance before, and bottomed out after wearing the thing for a couple of months. I invited a big bunch of really fun girls and Beth and Eileen who would sleep in my bed while the rest of us slept in sleeping bags. My mother hadn't let me have a party for a while because the last one a girl sat on a glass table in the rumpus room and broke it and her father hung up on Mom when she called to request reimbursement. Because Beth, the daughter of her wealthy big brother, was on the guest list my mother went all out. She made pigs in a blanket and sloppy joe mixture stuffed into hollowed french rolls which were wrapped in foil and baked. She made lemonade from scratch and baked cupcakes from a mix but with a box of instant pudding added. There were pretty paper cups and plates and more than enough for the twenty girls I'd invited.

Beth came early so I could go through the yearbook and tell her about every girl on the guest list. Eileen showed up right on time but then no one else arrived. Eileen said that Wendy Fromm was having a big swim party. Wendy had even asked Eileen who demurred, being unable to swim with the brace. although she intimated how preferable the Fromm event was to my party,. Eileen and Beth did not hit it off like I'd hoped. They ate nothing and resisted my efforts at conversation. My mom was in a big snit about the bad manners of all the girls who blew me off. “I wish your old man would spring for a private school,” she sighed.

I watched a little TV with Beth and Eileen and then we got bored and went to bed. They slept stiff, flat on their backs, on my double bed and I went to sleep with my mom. I was dejected that my party had fallen so flat but mom said not to worry because there would be other parties and I should look for a better class of friends. I talked Sheri into driving me over to Luisa's in Pacoima with a big box of leftovers. My mom wasn't crazy about giving anything away but I guess she decided this was preferable to me eating it all myself. We found Luisa's family's apartment vacant. Sheri and I ate a couple of cupcakes and then she took the rest of the food to the fire station where her boyfriend was on duty. I was hoping that Wendy Fromm's pool party had gone badly. Maybe the police had shown up or someone drown. I heard at school on Monday that Wendy's party was a blast and a lot of the kids even skinny dipped. I guess for a fat girl and two in back braces a dull night on Fulton Avenue was really the better alternative.

Free Love. Not.

2011-07-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

My sister Sheri had her hair frosted by Ran Dee at one of those new Unisex hair places where she met a shampoo boy, a cross between Robert Mapplethorpe and Jim Carroll, who called himself “Cricket.” He changed the subject if you asked what was his real name. Cricket was over six feet and skinny and his pants were always either all bunched up around his belt or two inches above his ankles. He'd just turned eighteen and noted vaguely that he was from some place in the Midwest. His two older brothers used beat him up and call him a sissy and his dad would laugh and his mother looked the other way. He left the house for his first day of high school but instead hitchhiked to LA. He fell in and out with rough trade. He finally ended up crashed on Ran Dee's couch and sweeping up hair in the shop.

Sheri took me and Cricket to dinner at Chris and Pitt's Barbecue. I had read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, plus I noticed all the cool guys with long hair at health food places. I announced that I was a vegetarian and ate a lot of fries and onion rings washed down with root beer. Cricket sat real close to Sheri in the booth and they fussed with each others hair. Cricket went through Sheri's handbag and examined every item. “Wallet, keys, comb, Librium, Juicy Fruit, lipstick,” he chanted. We went to the La Reina Theater in Studio City to see What's Up, Doc and Cricket held Sheri's hand. It was so funny that we stayed to see it twice. Sheri said she thought Barbra Streisand's outfits were real cute but I didn't like them, especially her stupid oversized newsboy cap.

Sheri's fireman boyfriend Charlie worked five day shifts three or four times a month so Sheri would pal around with me and Cricket when he had to stay at the fire station. My dad seemed to like Charlie and said that his wife Esther thought he was very handsome. Sheri let it slip to Mom that she and Charlie had been to Dad's new Palisades condo. Mom hit the ceiling and when Sheri came to pick me up she got the silent treatment.

During this period in the early seventies it turns out that my stepmother Esther and my sister's boyfriend Charlie were both members of Elysium, the Topanga Canyon nudist resort and also, Sandstone, the Malibu sex retreat which was described in depth by writer Gay Talese in his Thy Neighbor's Wife. Talese, while researching the book, actually lived at Sandstone for several months and also had a stint managing a New York City massage parlor.

My dad never expressed any shame about being led by his wife into the swingin' sexual revolution but neither did he express any particular enthusiasm. Sandstone wasn't all that fun for him he said because the men got spent right away and the women were always on the prowl for new arrivals. By the time Viagra came on the market it was counter indicated for Dad because he was on nitrate drugs for his heart. He did inquire about this once when he was in his eighties. I took him for a consultation with a cardiologist and the first question he asked after shaking hands was if he could change his regime so he could take Viagra. The doctor indicated that this wasn't advisable and flashed me a look of pity.

Once Sheri (naked) bumped into our stepmother (naked and with an enormous port wine stain her her left breast) in the jacuzzi at Elysium but fortunately my dad was at work. Sheri told me years later how miserable she was going to the nudist camp but her boyfriend Charlie had pressured her. Sheri refused to visit the nudist camp again and absolutely put her foot down with regard to Sandstone and Charlie made it clear it was too bad she was so uptight and he intended to continue frequenting both facilities by himself. Apparently Sheri's boyfriend and our stepmother Esther crossed paths frequently at both venues.

My stepmother Esther believed in free love but real uptight eating. She kept a careful eye on my dad's consumption. Her friend Erma worked at his office during the week and monitored Dad's eating there. He had always looked forward to our Saturday lunch because he could eat whatever the hell he wanted until I swore off dead animals.

There was a hippie religious group called The S.O.U.R.C.E. The leader was Father Yod who drove a Rolls Royce, had fourteen wives and fronted the psychedelic band Ya Ho Wa 13. The cult owned a restaurant on the Sunset Strip and Dad traded films for meals. Dad didn't mind eating there because the price was right, although he always commented that the waitstaff, mainly comely young females, looked dirty.

I also dragged my dad the the Self Realization Fellowship vegetarian restaurant on Sunset where the servers were patrician white haired ladies in saris and to the little lunch counter at the Burbank Full of Life Health Food Market which served all manner of Loma Linda brand meat substitutes either canned or reconstituted. The town of Loma Linda, out near San Bernardino, was incorporated in 1970 after being known as Mound City. Loma Linda University and Medical Center were built under the aegis of Seventh Day Adventists who are caffeine eschewing vegetarians. While I was near there in college I shopped at their vegetarian supermarket which was chock full of the noxious Loma Linda brand of vegetarian foods which I'd subjected my poor corned beef deprived father to.

My mother, on the other hand, loved low calorie rabbit food and we'd often dined at Lindberg Nutrition where everything: uniforms, upholstery, walls, counters and even the toilet paper, was pink. There was a market and a lunch counter which offered a thousand different juice combos whirled up before your eyes in huge blenders and guaranteed to keep you in the pink.

My Aunt Norma was Mom's half sister and twenty years her senior. She lived with her fifth husband Johnny in a post war stucco tract on Denny Street in North Hollywood. There was a herculon sofa and a big recliner covered with plastic and a piano which was the center of Johnny's existence and the only topic on which he would converse. He had a thing for Roger Kelloway who performed the theme song for All in the Family. Delighted that his hero was a footnote in the annals of popular culture, Johnny would play the theme song on a record, and then play it by himself on the piano. Then Uncle Johnny played the record again in case we hadn't noticed how well he'd played the tune himself.

Crammed into the tiny living room was a huge old Singer treadle sewing machine that Norma had grabbed when sorting through my grandmother's things after her death. My grandmother had four children and my speculation is that she'd mentioned to all four that she'd wanted a new sewing machine and all four sent her the money to purchase one. I suspect she bought one sewing machine and pocketed the overage but after her death, although it was bulky and even if not in need of repair, of no use to any of them, the four siblings squabbled over it bitterly.

My mom always complained that Norma was a lousy cook but would occasionally accept a meal invitation. Norma was a beautiful woman, just as narcissistic but way more vapid than my mother. My mother usually wasn't overtly mean to Norma but she always posed and preened in front of her, flirting with Uncle Johnny and rubbing Norma's nose in their twenty year age difference. Mom had alerted Norma about my vegetarianism and I was served a casserole made with rice which was actually very good. I asked her how she'd made it and she said she'd used chicken broth and I hit the ceiling but Norma didn't understand why I was so bent out of shape because it wasn't MEAT. My mother told me to stop making a big deal about it and confided with me on the way home that Norma had settled for the stultifyingly boring Johnny because her looks had started to fade. In the 1920s Norma had her fifteen minutes as a candidate for Miss Arizona but apparently an asthma attack forced her to withdraw from the competition. Mom also noted, not for the first time, that she had paid for the goddam sewing machine that Norma spitefully flouted.

My dad liked Norma and Johnny and sometimes on Saturday we'd go over there and he'd talk about music with Uncle Johnny and I'd watch an old movie on TV with Aunt Norma. Even though my mother seldom had anything warm to say about Norma, she'd fly into a rage if I mentioned that my dad and I had visited her. Sheri liked Norma too and she and boyfriend Charlie took her and Johnny out for breakfast a few times. Norma called my mother to weigh in on Charlie's handsomeness. Sheri had betrayed my mom by consorting with my dad and his wife and now, with Norma. “I've had Sheri and Charlie over for dinner a dozen times and they never took me out for breakfast,” she whined.

Sheri took Cricket to sign up to get his beautician's certificate at Marinello School of Beauty on Van Nuys Blvd. The school was named after Giovanni Marinello, a 16^th century gynecologist who wrote the seminal “The Beautification of the Ladies.” Sheri dropped him at his evening class. My mom looked like she was smelling farts whenever she saw my sister, so instead of hanging out on Fulton while Cricket was at school Sheri took me to eat or to a movie, always watching the clock to be sure she picked him up on time. Cricket loved his classes but apparently living and working with Ran Dee was getting pretty grim. He was doing great in school and my mother's hairdresser, Mr. Al Lepré had just opened his own shop but Mom was pissed of by our treachery and was in no mood to consider exploiting her most treasured and sacred relationship on Cricket's behalf.

Sheri loved Disneyland. I did the obligatory college acid drop on the Monsanto ride but since then my only imperative for visiting the magic kingdom was to accompany children. My sister was fourteen years older than I was and although I did score the pot for her to use to bake brownies for her boyfriend and the crew at the fire station, she was too old and pathetically uncool to be a hippie. I remembered that Disneyland had turned away guys with long hair and to me it represented artificiality, greed, conservatism and THE MAN and only worth visiting to goof on, preferably with a chemically altered state of consciousness. For Sheri, Disneyland never lost the magic it had when it first opened and my parents took her in 1955, two years before I was born and what my parents always referred to as “Sheri's problems” began.

Sheri talked me into a Firefighter's Night at the Magic Kingdom and I was in line with her and Cricket before the park opened. We had big badges that said LAFD with a logo of a helmet and an ax. Cricket had never been there and was dumbstruck when we entered down Main Street. He and Sheri squealed on the Teacups and both teared up when Mr. Lincoln said the Gettysburg Address. Sheri was wearing a purple angora cardigan with dyed rabbit fur on the collar and cuffs and a tie with a huge fluffy pom pom. Cricket dabbed the pom pom over his face like he was applying loose powder, which he already had, having made use of all the cosmetics he could find in Sheri's purse on the ride to Anaheim.

Cricket and Sheri flew in the same Dumbo and blew kisses and waved like they were celebrities. We went on the Pirates of the Caribbean and had fake mint juleps at the Blue Bayou Restaurant. Cricket sidled up the Sheri. “I just love that sweater,” he purred. “Can I wear it?” Cricket's fake leather jacket was way too small for Sheri but she tied it around her waist as Cricket donned the sweater and admired his reflection in the water of the artificial swamp. We went on Small World and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and when we were in the Mad Hatter's shop in Sleeping Beauty's Castle he repositioned one of the mirrors to check out himself in the sweater again.

Cricket had turned a few heads in the purple cardigan but he was blissed out and oblivious. On the raft to Tom Sawyer's Island two beefy guys with crew cuts started snickering and began to sidle towards us. They wore he same LAFD badges that we did. Cricket didn't notice but Sheri and I did. Sheri turned a bit, out of Cricket's line of sight and made eye contact with the firemen. She drummed her fingers over her own LAFD badge and gave them the fiercest look I had ever seen. They retreated. Sheri was behind us on the barrel bridge and she jumped up and down as hard as she could and we screamed as it wobbled violently.

Cricket sat between us on the front seat and we drove home polishing of a bag of salt water taffy from the candy store on Main Street. We pulled up to Ran Dee's and Cricket started to take off Sheri's sweater but she said he should keep it. He said that he'd had the best day of his whole life and it was like Sheri was his big sister and I was the little one.

My dad picked me up on Saturday and was really quiet. He usually listened to the big band station and would quiz me about record labels and arrangers but the radio was off and he was totally distracted when I tried to make conversation. We got to work and he locked himself in his private office and I was sent to run movies for myself. He emerged around lunch time and locked up the building and over lunch at Burl's he told me that he and Esther had split. He wept when he told me he'd caught her with another guy and he was living now in Studio City. Dad had a friend, Nestor Kabakian, who was a big film collector and owned a dental lab we'd go to when we needed a crown or a bridge. Nestor had just married his girlfriend and she'd moved in with him. She had a big house in the hills of Studio City that she couldn't sell because of some issue with her ex-husband and they let my dad stay there.

Cricket finished top in his class at Marinello and was a bonafide stylist. Sheri and I were going to take him to Antonio's, the local Italian restaurant, to celebrate. My mom had been pissy to both of us but when I told her that Dad and Esther were splitsville it cheered her up so much she invited herself to join us at the restaurant. They got a big carafe of wine and my mother inhaled spaghetti Caruso with chicken livers and cream and then sucked on a big slab of bread she'd used to wipe up the sauce left on her plate. Sheri regaled my mom with the story of bumping into Esther at the nudist colony and my mom roared. Mom ordered a huge dish of spumoni with whipped cream and made a big dent in the cheesecake Sheri and I were sharing. When we got home she called Mr. Al Lepré right away and he said he had an empty chair and would give Cricket a chance. My mom brought out a box of See's candy she'd had hidden under her bed to share. I don't ever remember seeing her happier.

Norma called Mom a few weeks later to say that she and Johnny were moving to a mobile home in Chatsworth and did she want the sewing machine. It sat unused on Fulton Avenue for years. When I bought my first home Mom sent the big behemoth over and said I should have it because I liked antiques so much. I tolerated it for a couple years and finally sent it off to Goodwill, hoping perhaps that was the antidote to all the ill will it had always generated.

Left of the Dial

2011-07-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

My dad got pissed at me when I was snobby with the guys who hung out at the office on Saturday. Howie the manager had a group of ne'er-do-wells lingering about and tossing cigarette butts right on the office floor. Dad asked me to be more pleasant because, “Sometimes I make a few bucks off one of those assholes.” My dad himself was often acid tongued with Howie's hangers-on but managed not to antagonize them completely and thought it prudent to spare them the disrespect of a snotty fourteen year old. I had a vague sense that films were frequently bought and sold for cash or exchanged for merchandise like leather coats and tires and I knew that there was a rack of features in the back of the warehouse that were not a part of the library and that I shouldn't blab about.

My dad became more circumspect about his livelihood, probably because with go-getter Howie the company was becoming more and more entrenched in the gray-market of peddling prints plus he didn't want me to say anything to my mother about his increased prosperity. We would sometimes drive up to a big mansion in Beverly Hills or Hancock Park after lunch but he just said he was delivering some films to “a guy,” and I stayed in the car. Howie seemed to handle most of the non-rental transactions and my dad was only involved in the higher echelon film sales when Howie's slovenly appearance and unpolished manner might be an embarrassment.

With Howie's posse hanging around being creepy I'd sometimes take a walk around the neighborhood. The Silver Lake Junction, about three blocks from Dad's office, was starting to go hippie. The original Soap Plant was started by Billy Shire and featured gorgeous pottery made by his brother Peter. My mother had recently retired a set of the locally made Franciscan apple pattern dishware for unbreakable “Corelle.” I promised myself that when I had a home of my own I would fill the cupboards with Shire's lovely bright pieces. Peter went from selling mugs in his brother's emporium to exhibiting his work in museums all over the country. My cupboards aren't exactly full but I have a couple pieces of Peter Shire's work now, mainly purchased during the annual factory sale at his Echo Park Pottery. The Soap Plant moved to Hollywood and Vermont many years ago and is now known as Wacko. I believe Billy Shire is still the owner. There is a small gallery inside called Luz De Jesus that Billy curates that has shown works by Matt Groening, Reverand Howard Finster, Gary Panter, Manuel Ocampo and Gary Baseman. The Shire brothers were among the first to bring art to the neighborhood and certainly influenced me when I decided in the early 70s to get out of the valley as soon I could.

Across from the Soap Plant was a clothing store called Mehitabel that sold jewelery from Thailand and Bali and hand-made clothes from Mexico and India. I bought some colorful woven striped blouses with ornately embroidered necklines and a flap on one side that fastened with tiny hand-carved wood buttons. I bought natural yarn from another store called Creative Handweavers but my mom said it was stinky with lanolin and too stiff to crochet with and stuck with the pukey colored acrylic stuff she got on sale at the Super Yarn Mart. The Silver Lake Junction made the valley seem provincial and I loved shopping there even though most of the other girls I knew were content with Judy's at Fashion Square or the Gunny Sack on Riverside. I was teased about my hippie attire but I loved colorful one of a kind clothes and I knew what I wore was cool, even if no one else did.

I was confident that my clothes were lovely but could not dispute it when kids called me fat. Both of my parents were on my case constantly and by 8^th grade I'd bulked up so much that I was placed in a special PE class called Slim and Trim which mainly consisted of us ignoring Miss Kelso's admonitions that we exercise and lying on the denim exercise mats spread on the waxed wood floor of the adaptive PE room to gossip. We made a secret pact that all of us would fail in every category of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test that was administered every year. Miss Kelso threw a big shrieking fit but not meeting the minimum criteria on any portion of the test required no special effort on my part.

I ran for president of the student council. The kids made big gaudy posters full of hyperbole and word play. I took a sheet of electric blue poster-board and used a modern looking sans serif letter stencil I found at Aaron Brothers to paint in white paint on the lower right hand corner simply “Layne Drebin for President.” It was elegant, if perhaps prematurely post modern, and I lost the election. I ran then to be 8^th grade class representative and lost again. Mrs. Bell, the sponsor called me in and said that the faculty had decided that the council needed a member at large to represent girls' athletics. This would require me to join Miss Kelso's after school sports club which met three days a week. Student Council was pretty prestigious and I liked the thought of being at the center of action at the school so I accepted the offer.

There were only about ten girls in the after school sports program. They got all frothed up about running relay races and jumping over hurdles. Miss Kelso ragged on me constantly for staying on the sidelines and staring into space. Student Council was really fun and we even planned a big movie festival using films I was sure my dad would donate. I brought each of the kids a huge Budget Films catalog and they couldn't help but be impressed. The after school sports program became more and more unbearable though and I knew that the creation of the special student council seat was just a set up and that the faculty of my school, just like my parents, were feverishly plotting to make me lose weight.

My mother, fortunately was an advocate of self starvation, tobacco and an occasional self induced barf for weight control and had no affection for exercise. She objected to the outdoors as the sun wrecked your skin and thought perspiration was to be avoided at all costs. It was pretty easy to enlist her to thwart the faculty's campaign to slim me down. She had one of the many doctors she worked with at the V.A. Psychiatric Hospital write a note saying that I had a bad ankle and couldn't participate in PE. It seems odd that no one questioned that this diagnosis was rendered by a psychiatrist at a psychiatric hospital and submitted on Veteran's Administration letterhead.

Miss Kelso told me I had to write a report about women in sports and I sat on the bench during PE and ditched the after-school program entirely. I wasn't even kicked off student council because the movie nights were wildly popular and fattened the student activity coffers. I thought the research assignment was an unfair and punitive response to a debilitating (albeit, completely fabricated) infirmity. I got my mom on the injustice bandwagon and she typed a neat note on VA stationary indicating that I shouldn't be punished for my disability. I attached the letter to the last page of the report and turned it in. I asked Miss Kelso just about every day if she'd gotten around to reading it and she kept saying she hadn't had time. Towards the end of the semester she said she'd figured out why I'd been so eager for her to read the report. She gave it a B- and pretty much blew off my mom's note saying that the report could compensate for my complete lack of participation prior to my alleged ankle injury.

I was running a movie for the student council film night in the auditorium and a metal take-up reel got a bit bent and was making a grinding sound, scraping against the projector arm. I knew my dad would have a reel and he was only a couple blocks away. I called and got a message that the number had been changed. My dad picked me up the next day and I said his phone was screwed up and he said that he and Esther had moved from the valley and purchased a condominium in Pacific Palisades and to make sure I told my mother it was just a little apartment they were renting. He complained that the Palisades was ridiculously far from the office but Esther had insisted they move for the clean air because she said the valley was toxic. Dad grumbled that he was exhausted from spending two hours extra a day in bumper to bumper traffic traversing Westwood and Beverly Hills.

We went out to lunch with Dad's friend Wally Heider who was a recording engineer and worked with Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Credence Clearwater Revival and David Bowie. Wally had his own studio and was also a big film collector and high falutin' enough so that my dad, and not Howie, transacted with him. Heider, like my dad, was a stutterer. My dad had completed a big speech therapy program at USC in the 40s and almost never stuttered but whenever he was around Wally he was strangely re-afflicted. I tried to get Wally to talk about all the rock bands he knew but he and my dad were all McIntosh amplifiers and sub-woofers so even if there hadn't been stereo stammering, I would have been bored out of my mind.

I had a little brown vinyl covered record player with a built in monaural speaker and I could stack five albums but they might skip and be ruined if I nodded off. I'd often fall asleep instead to the radio. I kept the windows open on balmy valley nights and the dust was hard on turntable needles and LPs but a gardenia bush perfumed the room and I could spit my fruit pits right out the window so my mother wouldn't scream at me about leaving them in the wastebasket to attract bugs. A plum tree took root in the planter box outside my window but it had to be removed before it got big enough to undermine the foundation of the house.

KPPC was one of the first innovative rock stations and also first to air the satiric Credibility Gap which would probably be pretty lame now but in its day was quite in-your-face for the radio. Harry Shearer was a founding member. The comedy troupe's name came from a 60's expression referring to LBJ's dubious veracity regarding the War in Vietnam. I listened to DJs Jeff Gonzer, Outrageous Nevada, “The Obscene Steven Clean”, Barbara Birdfeather and Tom Donahue (who went on to KMET and is credited for masterminding the FM rock format that started in LA and San Francisco and spread through the country). KPPC played Country Joe and the Grateful Dead but also Phil Ochs and The Youngbloods. Kitsch-o-phile Dr. Demento was on every Sunday night and I loved the Pico and Sepulveda song and recognized a lot of the comic Spike Jones songs that my dad used to play.

KPPC, I believe, was the first to broadcast the apogee of cool Firesign Theatre. I made sure to buy all their albums and listen to them enough to memorize long bits about Porgy Tirebiter but I always had an emperor's new clothes suspicion and secretly never thought that they were very funny. In 1971 the entire airstaff of KPPC was fired and there was never another radio station that I loved as much. The station still played rock but it was less free form and the DJs were more slick and less hippie mellow. The station eventually morphed into KROQ.

One of my favorite DJs at KPPC, Jeff Gonzer moved to KMET and then to KLOS. He had a morning show. He played rock music and let people call in to chat. I'd been riding my bike and seemed safely in my lane and a car honked loudly at me and scared me so badly I fell off. I called Jeff Gonzer thinking that the hippie rock and roller would definitely empathize that big gas guzzlers should certainly not honk at eco-friendly bicycles but he just told me I should ride more carefully.

Some of the KPPC talent landed at KMET and KLOS but both seemed corporate and had commercials for banks and cars and I'd listen halfheartedly. I discovered the Pacifica station KPFK which aired a lot of political stuff I couldn't understand but I'd put on to impress certain guests with my gravitas. On Sunday night Roz and Howard Larman hosted Folk Scene and had guests like Rosalie Sorrels, Tom Paxton and John Prine. I was enchanted with the theme song which I believe was by John Fahey and I begged my guitar instructor to teach it to me and he agreed although not enthusiastically given that after over a year of lessons I was still unable to even tune a guitar.

I was smitten with a bluegrass quartet out of McCabes's called the Floating House Band that the Larmans played and bugged the crap out of my mother until she relented to drive me over the hill to purchase the album. I even made her go a bit east of McCabe's down Pico to the very ordinary intersection of Pico and Sepulveda but never did figure out what exactly inspired the song. When we played the “I have something wonderful and obscure that you've NEVER EVEN HEARD OF” game in college the Floating House Band was my secret weapon because no one really HAD ever heard of it and it was very good. I had a few other treasures from a hippie who set up citrus crates with pastel covered bootleg albums at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. I was thrilled to find the notorious and coveted “Ohio Wooden Nickel”, a recording of a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young performance at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur 1969. The record was lime green translucent vinyl and the album cover and the record label were rubber stamped in smeary purple ink. On the legitimate live CSNY album “4 Way Street” Stephen Stills quips, “Ohio Wooden Nickel? Never heard of it.” I explained this reference very pedantically to less informed listeners whenever I had the opportunity.

I went through a lot of needles on my record player and my dad took me to Wallach's Music City on Vine to replace them. I was waiting for my dad to pick me up on a Saturday but he called and said that the guys were coming to put in his new hi fi system and he'd see me next week. I told him about the phonograph needle and he said I'd have to bear up until next Saturday. My dad had drilled me to tell my mom that he and Esther had just moved to an apartment in the Palisades but I was furious that he was so cavalier about seeing me and particularly about the inoperative record player so I ratted him out and told my mother that Dad and Esther had purchased a huge new condo on a cliff. Mom was on the horn with her attorney first thing Monday morning.

Unfortunately, another court visit did not yield my mom an increase in child support. Mom claimed that my dad and Esther were salting money away in Canada where Esther had relatives. I thought this was pathologically paranoid but it came out several years later that these accounts did indeed exist, and later it would prove most unfortunate for my father that all were in Esther's maiden name. My dad said that Esther was furious that I'd told my mom that they'd purchased a condominium. I only visited the condo once several years later when I needed my dad to sign some forms and I stood on the porch and was not invited inside.

My dad took me to Wallach's Music City the next week and the clerk sold us what he said was the last needle they carried for my obsolete record player and said they probably wouldn't get anymore. My dad bought me the new Joan Baez album “Come from the Shadows.” It had what we all considered to be a deliciously smutty song “Love Song to a Stranger” and the very pretty “In the Quiet Morning” a tribute to Janice Joplin by Joan's sister Mimi Farina. I'd played the grooves out of “Memories” by Richard and Mimi Farina and their song “Pack Up Your Sorrows” is still a great favorite. Richard Farina also wrote the seminal novel “Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me.” Farina married Mimi when she was seventeen and Thomas Pynchon, who Farina knew from Cornell, was the best man. Richard Farina was killed in 1966 in motorcycle accident and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is dedicated to his memory. My dad hated with every fiber of his being all most all of the music I listened to but he said that Joan Baez had a pretty voice.

I tried to use my record player sparingly knowing that it might be impossible to replace the needle. I couldn't resist the new Joan Baez but carefully wiped it with a chamois record cloth and cleaned the needle with a toothbrush each time I played it. I noticed in the Free Press that Joan Baez was performing at the Hollywood Bowl and suggested to my dad that maybe he would take me. He said that Esther was still pretty mad at me and would probably make a big stink. I skulked around the office, avoiding Howie's scumbag friends and trying to find a film I hadn't seen. One of Howie's most odious buddies, the vampirish Cliff was hanging around. He always called my dad “boss” and always fished for a lunch invitation. To my disgust, my dad took the bait and I found myself smashed in a booth at Burl's Coffee Shop between Cliff and Howie. My dad picked up the check and told Cliff to go get “that package.” Cliff showed up with a brand new Pioneer Stereo and put it in Dad's trunk. Dad set it up in my room and told my mom that it was used. He looked through my crates of records and said the stereo was much too good for the shit I listened to. I spent the rest of the weekend playing just about every album I owned and hearing things I'd never heard before.

Wally Heider gave my dad two box seats to the Joan Baez concert at the Bowl and in that they were free and quite expensive Esther grudgingly agreed that Dad could take me. I made a picnic with his favorites like potato salad and chopped liver on rye with gobs of ketchup that Esther wouldn't let him eat. The sun set and the smell of pot filled the air. “Do you know what that is?” I asked my dad. He laughed and said, “Of course I know. That's reefer. I was a jazz musician. For God's sake I lived in San Diego, just minutes from Tijuana. You sure think your old dad is a real square.” Hoyt Axton opened and my dad glowered at me but when Joan Baez came on he leaned back in his chair, glanced at the stars and inhaled deeply the wafting marijuana. “This is nice,” he said.

Family Hold Back

2011-07-08T16:14:00.001-07:00

I picked up a good deal of Spanish from the score of Mexican housekeepers who undoubtedly became militant gringo haters after my mother got through with them. The other star scholar in Mrs. Smith's Spanish One was Richard Weinburg, whose mom was a Swiss war bride and made sure that he learned French. He'd also done heavy duty Hebrew school so he was adept at language learning. He was pretty straight, didn't listen to music and had short hair but he was wickedly funny and smart and we became united in our scorn for the dullards that habituated Spanish One. Richard's mom converted to Judaism and they were more religious than a lot of the families in the neighborhood. His dad was a doctor and my mom treated Richard much more differentially than the usual scions of riffraff I associated with. Richard wasn't my ideal boyfriend but just for the sake of having a boyfriend I would have relented had he made advances in this direction but he did not.

Richard and I shared the same political views but mine weren't much more than parroting the argot of people, mainly college student camp counselors, who I thought were cool. Richard however read a lot and his leftward leaning dad pointed him in the right direction and his political opinions, unlike mine, were well thought out and could be substantiated. Richard realized immediately how lost and full of shit I was but apparently didn't think I was completely hopeless. He taught me the basic Jewish prayers and even bought us a menorah which my mother regarded like alien scat. He showed me statistics about the unequal balance of power, the war in Vietnam and lots of icky stuff about Nixon whom he and his father held in about as much esteem as Hitler. We talked on the phone for hours and because Richard was the son of a doctor, my mother relented and got me a baby blue princess phone with my own number and instructed me to try and get the old man to spring for the additional $3 per month.

My mother's boyfriend Sumner died and she was scorned at his funeral and not mentioned in his will. My sister met a fireman named Charlie at a party and moved in with him about three days later. Like her previous paramour Charlie was about twenty years older than Sheri and was nasty (often) when drunk (frequently). Charlie had silver hair and the type of chiseled, almost porcine, looks (sort of like Patrick Swayze or Kurt Russell) that I've always found creepy but floated Sheri's boat. My mother recognized that Charlie was a big improvement over Sheri's last boyfriend, the parole violating Gino Mancini but “fireman” had little cache and prevented my mother from fully embracing the relationship. Although after the loss of Sumner and her subsequent humiliation, my sister could have married the Prince of Monaco and not gotten a rise out of my mother.

Sheri moved in with Charlie shortly after Sumner's death, and I was left there as the physical manifestation of everything that ailed my mom. She came home from work in a foul mood every night. Even the perquisites of working for the Veteran's Psychiatric Hospital, like doctors to take her to lunch, a completely unmonitored supply area, myriad bargains at the PX and little expectation that she actually work, the milieu and huge influx traumatized soldiers returning from Vietnam was starting to get to her. The pattern for as long as I remembered was that my mother would lash out viciously at me one day and then we'd merrily go shopping at Orbach's the next, but now she never seemed to snap out of it.

Mom stopped eating and started smoking again after having abstained from tobacco for several years. If I had a meal prepared for her when she returned from work it was either bad and I'd wasted expensive ingredients or I'd made a big mess or I had no business making such fattening food. I stopped making dinner and grazed surreptitiously on whatever I could find at home, supplemented by candy purchases made using the allowance my dad gave me or coins I filched from my mom's purse.

My friends were always curious about my dad “the movie guy” and often I would bring a friend with me on a Saturday. I had never invited my eccentric friend Jerry. My dad never quite learned that just because an idea pops into your head you don't necessarily have to utter it aloud and I felt protective of Jerry. Richard was more normal and because his dad, although a nice guy, wasn't exactly colorful, a day with my father in his film library had great allure and Richard happily accepted the invitation.

When we arrived at the office on Saturday I opened the mail by running it through a little machine that slit the top off the envelope. I screwed up a couple of times and sliced some checks in half so my dad had to carefully tape them back together. I matched up each check with the corresponding pink invoice. I pulled out all the files of customers who had mailed in orders. My dad used a calender to figure the shipping times and the films would be booked in pencil on a yellow calendar grid page assigned to each individual print and then an invoice would be typed. These yellow pages were in huge black leather binders that were mounted on tracks and too heavy for me to lift. The yellow copy of the invoice was stamped “confirmation” and mailed to the customer when the film was booked. Sometimes there was a big stack of green invoices. These represented films that had been returned and this had to be noted with a check mark on the yellow booking sheet.

Richard was helping me pull out customer files when Billy Dee Williams, who we'd just seen in Brian's Song, arrived to rent some Billie Holiday films. I whispered to my dad that he was a big star but Dad said I still had to go out to the parking lot and record the make, model and license number of his car and to guess on the year. Richard was extremely impressed at how calmly I showed Billy Dee Williams how to operate the projector. He co-starred the next year in Lady Sings the Blues which accounted for the Billie Holiday rentals.

Richard and I sat in the front seat of the giant Olds 88 while my dad locked up the office and turned on the alarm. Richard farted although in his family they called it “wootz” (in ours, the equally inane “boompse”) and he threatened to tell my dad that it had been me. We ate at the Nickodell next door to Paramount and Richard snickered at the portrait of a nude lady over the bar. My dad pointed out Peggy Rea. Richard was impressed because she'd appeared recently on All in the Family although the role I remembered best was as a member of Lucy's Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League. We recognized the distinctive voice of Sterling Holloway from the next booth. Holloway had appeared in films since the silent era but Richard's only frame of reference was Winnie the Pooh. My dad took us to see Klute at the Fox Theater on Hollywood Blvd but Richard made me promise to tell his parents we saw Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

My room was probably even messier than the average teen but it was my refuge from my clean-a-holic mother. When my dad dropped me home my mother sat silently on the loveseat in the den blowing smoke rings and didn't respond when I greeted her. I entered my room and all of my posters had been ripped down and the clothes strewn on the floor had been removed. On my bed, made for the first time in months, was a huge mound of candy wrappers, and a few very smutty pulp novels. There were also several plastic dyno-tape strips that I'd had no memory of making and had never affixed to anything but unfortunately read “I Hate Adele Drebin” and “Adele Drebin is a Bitch.”

As soon as she figured I'd had enough time to drink it in, Mom stormed in screaming that she hated me and that I'd ruined her life and that Sumner would have married her and left her everything if I hadn't been such a fucking brat. She said that I should go live with my father. She shoved me out the front door and I got on my bike and rode to my dad's apartment on Oxnard. I'd been there so few times I had to look at the mailboxes to figure out the apartment number. I knocked and my stepmother Esther opened the door and with body language reading I was not to cross the threshold, she called for my father. I saw my dad and burst into tears and it was agreed I'd sleep on the fold out sofa for a few days until things got sorted out. My dad tried to call my mom to arrange to pick up some of my clothes but there was no answer. He asked Esther if I could borrow one of her nightgowns and she said I'd burst the seams. Fashion Square was closed so he took me to Quigley's and I got an old lady nightgown and underpants. My dad finally got in touch with my mom the next morning and she said she'd leave some clothes on the porch and that there was no way in hell I was ever coming back.

Esther tolerated me but measured my food onto a plate and told me to eat slowly because there would be no seconds. She drove me to school and picked me up in the afternoon. I got along really well with Miss Worthington, the home economics teacher because I was an enthusiastic and quite competent cook. Miss Worthington had planned for the cooking class to hold a mother's tea party. I invited my stepmother Esther to come and was surprised when she accepted. Miss Worthington had been drilling the girls for weeks on the menu she'd planned of finger sandwiches and tea cakes. There was a very small budget for food and she'd issued what I surmised was a Christian instruction: Family hold back. This would never have been necessary in a Jewish household. It was assumed that the purpose of the event was to showcase the girls' cooking abilities, but Miss Worthington didn't really trust the students with her scant provisions. She summoned me from homeroom and handed me an apron. There were sixty moms expected. Miss Worthington gave the other girls a writing assignment and we made dainty tea cakes with orange glaze and egg and tuna salad and little radish roses that opened when soaked in ice water.

Esther arrived in an appropriate frilly sundress with a matching hat and sipped a cup of tea. She refused to eat because white bread, mayonnaise and sugar were anathema to her. I'd worked straight through lunch and was hungry as Esther had served me a breakfast of yogurt with wheatgerm and grapefruit. I grabbed a sandwich for myself and one of the girls said with amplification that was remarkable for a human voice, “Layne! Family hold back!”

I was eating dinner with Esther and my dad and the door bell rang. A fat special delivery letter arrived and Esther sat at the table and opened it. I thought I was being discreet when I glanced in the direction of the correspondence. It was from a travel agency. My dad and Esther took international vacations several times a year and I had seen many slides of Esther in a bikini obscuring some exotic locale. Apparently Esther saw my eyes wander and exploded, “Mind your own Goddamn business.” I flew from the room hysterical and called my mom and asked if I could come home. She said she didn't give a shit and I started throwing my clothes in a pillowcase. My dad helped me and Esther yelled at me from the doorway that my weight was out of control and my eating habits were sickening. If I had stayed with them she said I would have to take off all my clothes so she could weigh me and then put me on a strict diet.

My dad helped me carry my stuff in and my mom sat silently. She didn't speak to me for a few days and just rolled her eyes whenever she saw me getting food from the kitchen. After a while she warmed up a bit and actually started to engage me in conversation but I mostly tried to stay out of her hair.

George McGovern was nominated to run for president on the democratic ticket. Richard was over the moon. McGovern had been one of the first politicians to speak out against the war in Vietnam and the only one to speak at the Moratorium. He was also committed to addressing world hunger and in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. I probably liked him because his daughter had been arrested for pot and Neil Young and Graham Nash had recorded a single (War Song) to benefit the campaign but I averred to Richard it was due to McGovern's decency. A McGovern headquarters opened in a storefront on Van Nuys Blvd and we rode our bikes over to volunteer. We were put to work immediately by the coordinator Phil Allan, a political science instructor at Valley College. We were 14 years old. We stuffed a lot of envelopes but we were actually given keys and ran the office and manned the phone by ourselves two nights a week. Perhaps this is an perhaps an indication of why McGovern's campaign was one of the biggest debacles in electoral history.

We hand addressed letters using precinct lists. Richard's Swiss mom brought us bread and chocolate, although Richard preferred his sandwiches with Nestle's Crunch and rejected the product of his mother's homeland. We were buoyant with doing good work and for all the responsibility we'd been given. We were sure McGovern would win the election although he was considered such a lost cause that he had trouble finding a running mate. He was turned down by Teddy Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie and Birch Bayh.

Senator Tom Eagleton of Missouri, an urbanite and Catholic, about as close to a Kennedy as McGovern could get, was chosen in desperation. Eagleton concealed that he suffered from mental illness by having Thorazine and other psychotropic drugs prescribed in his wife's name. When this came to light, possibly because his own daughter struggled with mental illness, McGovern was hesitant to remove Eagleton from the ticket. Eagleton's physician stated ultimately that the vice presidential candidate's mental health would pose a risk to national security should he ever become president. When it became clear that Eagleton was a horrible liability McGovern replaced him on the ticket with Kennedy in-law and former Peace Corp director Sargeant Shriver. Even starry eyed McGovern worshipers like us wondered, and still wonder, why Shriver hadn't been chosen in the first place.

My mother liked that I was being driven home by Dr. Weinberg and managed to slip into just about every conversation that her daughter was doing “political work.” She even ignored that I'd packed on another ten pounds from snacking at McGovern headquarters. After my experience with the 1972 election my mother volunteered herself on behalf of a lot of different politicians but mainly I think for the sake of social opportunity. The McGovern election was special though and struck a genuine chord for Mom because she was surrounded five days a week by some of the war's most tragic consequences.

Richard and I wore our McGovern 1972 t-shirts everywhere. I still have one. The polls were dispiriting but we bolstered each others spirits by discrediting the grim predictions. Unfortunately Nixon and Agnew won by a huge landslide and McGovern didn't even win in his home state of North Dakota. About half way though Nixon's second term bumper stickers started to appear that said “Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts, referring to the only state where McGovern received more votes than Nixon.

Richard and I were so bummed after the election that we stopped talking on the phone for two hours every night and sometimes sat desultorily on a bench during lunch instead of going to eat lunch in Mrs. Smith's classroom for the convivial practice of Spanish conversation. The school newspaper was holding a vote for class favorites. The administration forbade any negative categories but students voted on “nicest girl” “best athlete,” “brainiest” and “favorite teacher.” Richard and I were voted “best couple.” I was secretly thrilled but feigned horror when I got a gander at Richard's disgust and humiliation.

Cut off Levi shorts with a cuff rolled super high were the rage. My mother often asked me, “Don't you look in the mirror?” She sometimes made me stand sideways in front of the full length mirror and she would stand full front behind me to demonstrate that she was fully obscured by my girth. There are fat pictures of me from five different decades and for this reason the thousands of photographs in my garage continue to molder. When I accidentally happen on a fat picture though I never remember feeling anywhere near as fat as the photo irrefutably demonstrates I really was. I went to have lunch in Mrs. Smith's room but there was a note that she had a meeting and the room was empty. There was a crude cartoon filling the blackboard of a girl in Levi short shorts with her fat thighs hanging out and it said, “Elena (my Spanish name) tiene piernas muy gorda,” and I knew that Richard was the only kid whose Spanish was that good.

Mark Sanders was cute and had long hair and I knew him from the Jewish Center and camp. I wouldn't have rejected him as a boyfriend but he wasn't of an actively pursue caliber. Nevertheless upon hearing he'd undergone an emergency appendectomy, like a number of other opportunistic Jewish Center girls, I sprang into action. I spent hours designing a get well card that was the right combination of sarcastic and come hither and baked a batch of cookies. I pedaled over to deliver my get well offerings. Mark's sister opened the door and said I couldn't see him. She said he got so many calls at the hospital they had to block his phone. She added that she didn't know how they were eat all the stuff that girls were bringing over.

I felt a weird pain on my right side a couple weeks later. I knew that this was a symptom of appendicitis. I called my mom at work and she said with irritation it was just because I was thinking about that boy who never thanked me for the cookies. I even thought myself that it must be psychosomatic but when my mom got home it was clear to that this was more than an Oscar worthy performance.

It was indeed appendicitis. Sometime when I told the story I said that my appendix burst. My mother always dramatized her own medical travails and said in a grim voice that “peritonitis set in” after her emergency gallbladder surgery. Sometimes I said that my appendix ALMOST burst but I really don't recall a postoperative reference to any sort of bursting, near or actual.

I woke up in a childrens' ward at St. Joseph's Hospital. There was one sour girl who kept her face hidden behind a Nancy Drew book, and an eight year old in traction. My harrowed mother showed up with a ton of magazines as soon as I came to. The nurses were mean and would manhandle me and yank up my gown to check the incision without even bothering to close the drape around my bed. My mom had a new supervisor and it was harder for her to ditch work but she stayed with me as long as she could. My dad came during his lunch hour and tried to warm up the nurses a bit with some lame hospital jokes which fell flat. The most severe of the nurses went into a real huff when I said the water she was using for my sponge bath was ice cold and as she stomped across the room to replace it and I made a mental note to never wear white hosiery.

My cousin Beth called but they wouldn't let anyone under eighteen come see me. My sister came by but none of my friends from school called or sent cards. I was soaking some saltines in bland vegetable soup when Richard walked in. His dad was on the staff of the hospital so they couldn't kick him out. He brought me a baguette and the Swiss chocolate I preferred to Nestle's Crunch and a National Lampoon. Richard's dad came to pick him up and ask me how I was and the nurses kissed his butt pretty shamelessly. Paul taped up the poster with the hugely pregnant black lady that said “Nixon's the One” and his dad and I cracked up. I got the royal treatment for the rest of my hospital stay and while the nurses looked about to puke every time they saw the poster it stayed there for as long as I did.

My cousin Beth came to see me as soon as I got home and pestered me to let her see my scar but I would not. Richard came by every day until I returned to school several weeks later. We were close friends until I left for the college to which I was admitted by virtue of him getting me through Algebra. My mom treated me with kid gloves after the surgery and my dad told me how frightened they both had been and that my mom had admitted to him that she felt terrible for not believing me and making me wait several hours for treatment.

Two letters in Valley College envelopes arrived, one for me and one for my mom. They were from Phil Allan of the McGovern campaign. There was one letter from Phil personally thanking me for my participation and commitment and another that expressed a similar sentiment and was signed by Senator McGovern myself. Phil wrote a letter to my mom that said she should be very proud of me for my commitment to volunteer political work. He wrote he was ashamed that he'd been unable to engage many of his own students and that he was more optimistic about the future and the end of the ugly war knowing that there were young people like me. It is one of the few times that my mother was proud of me for something I was actually proud about myself.

First Snow, Last Breath

2011-07-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

I was lost in algebra and I doodled on my notebook and sang songs from Pinocchio with the cute boy who sat across from me. I wrote on the desk “X equals unbearable boredom” and the teacher Mr. Whitehead chewed me out the next day. I held up a pencil and said, “Look, it's in ink. I use pencil,” having fortuitously lost yet another pen. Mr. Whitehead didn't buy it for a second but I was being handled with kid gloves since my mother had sent a note saying I should be forgiven my trespasses because my stepfather, even though Sumner was hell bent against marriage, was terminally ill. Ultimately it was decided I should postpone the higher math requirements another year and I was transferred to typing.

The room was a sea of old black Underwoods. Mr. Gordon chanted “J, K, L, Semi for our right hands and “A.S,D, F “for our left. We had a book of typing exercises and an endless supply of newsprint. Mr. Gordon would spend a couple minutes teaching us new keys and then we were left to practice with the textbook but we mainly chatted or typed dirty words while Mr. Gordon worked a crossword puzzle..

Cissy, a bubbly girl, not as doggedly hippie as I was, but friendly and funny, sat next to me. We figured out that her sister Pam had babysat me a few times years before but I'd disliked her because she was sullen and had cystic acne. My friend Jerry had been asked to join the Madrigal singers, a privilege usually conferred only on ninth graders and seemed always busy practicing operatic pieces with complicated harmony. Cissy lived a block away in one of many cul de sacs of new homes crammed together that replaced sprawling old ranch houses and ancient walnut trees.

Intimacy in adult relationships usually comes gradually as the layers of the onion are peeled away. When kids connect though usually all the cards were laid on the table in the first blush of friendship. My parents were divorced. My mom had a boyfriend who was dying of cancer and she blamed me that he hadn't married her. My sister had given a baby, who had been raised until the age of three by my mother, up for adoption. My sister liked low class men. Sometimes she was nice. Sometimes she was terrible. My father had remarried and his wife disliked kids and I only saw him at his office.

On my first visit to Cissy 's house she showed me the separate bedrooms her parents slept in. She brought out an old photo album and pointed out a Sear's portraits of her brother who had died of leukemia at the age for four. The older sister who I'd disliked as a babysitter was in her twenties now and alternated between hysteria and black depression. Cissy's mom ignored us when we stomped into the kitchen after school. She was slumped against the wall talking on the phone. “Pam,” she sighed, “it doesn't sound like you're having a good day.” We took enormous bowls of ice cream and sat at the kitchen table. Cissy's mom got off the phone and started making dinner and when I went home several hours later she still hadn't acknowledged that I was there.

Jacob Mazer, who had the longest hair in the school, sat behind me and Cissy in typing. Most of the kids at Millikan were Jewish but there were a number of subgroups. I was part of the Jewish Center crowd merely because it was close to the house, cheap and required nothing of my mother There was on premises however a Yiddishkeit program that I didn't belong to called Kindershul that a lot of the Jewish Center kids had participated in since nursery school. They talked a lot about the Warsaw Ghetto but hardly ever about Israel except that kibbutzes were good. The parents were communists and labor organizers and the kids put on a production of Westside Story in Yiddish.

There was another group of kids who attended the reform synagogue, Beth Hillel. There were Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and the parents had the assurance that their kids would fraternize with other kids who weren't embarrassingly Jewish but from good families. There was also a Conservative synagogue called Valley Jewish Community Center although the name was later changed to Adat Ari El. This required a rigorous Hebrew school schedule and a command performance for Shabbat. Most of the parents of kids who went to VJCC were raised Orthodox and the conservative movement kept them in their comfort zone in terms of observance but also allowed for an inconspicuousness which was advantageous for navigating the secular community.

Jacob Mazer's family was of the VJCC Conservative persuasion. Cissy and I assumed that because he looked so cool with his flowing locks that the synagogue affiliation was by dint of parental oppression and he had some Stockholm syndrome thing happening and hadn't figured it out yet. It was impossible that, looking so delightfully freakish, he didn't get high. There were a couple of other boys who were much improved by advancing puberty and resistance to haircuts about whose inner-workings I was curious too.

Mr. and Mrs. Greenburg moved in next door. He managed a bank. His wife died of breast cancer and the second Mrs. Greenburg had been his secretary. Mr. Greenburg had a son named Gary from his first marriage who went to UC Santa Barbara. Gary wore t-shirts with in-your-face slogans and had long black hair and a scruffy beard. He stayed on a lounge in their yard smoking Marlboros, drinking Schlitz and reading Kant all summer. Sumner was very frail so my mom asked Gary to come over to change the light bulb in the kitchen fixture. I had the new Dylan playing and cranked it up as loud as I could without my mother going berserk when the cute college student walked in. He said it sounded good and I told him he could borrow it. He came over a few times and I played records for him. He confided that his dad and particularly his stepmother were hopeless bourgeois pigs. He said he'd been at the bombing of the Bank of America (although for sure he would have spelled it “Amerika”) in Isla Vista and I showed him my copy of “Steal this Book.”

I fantasized about making Gary elaborate vegetarian meals and sewing patches on his jeans when he came back from bomb making but I knew it was more realistic to set my sights on the boys at Millikan. My dad still picked me up every Saturday. I wrote descriptions of new films for the catalog or ran movies for myself. Saturday was a brisk film trading day and prints and cash passed back and forth all morning leaving me to my own devices. I had tried out the new IBM Selectric typewriter but jammed up the erasing ribbon and the repairman had to come and my dad said I had to use the old manual. Because I spent most of my typing class goofing around with Sissy and trying to engage the long-haired Jacob Mazer I typed about ten words with a dozen errors a minute. I struggled to type a “teen questionnaire” that looked legitimately collegiate but gave up and wrote the thing out by hand. My dad had no lined paper in the office so I wrote it on typing paper so the lines were wavy. I made six copies on new Minolta copier which was the size of a VW and used big rolls of coated paper.

I numbered each copy with a long elaborate code to guarantee anonymity. I said that my neighbor, who I was dating, was a sociology student in college and he needed frank responses to a completely anonymous survey about teenage social behavior. It had probing questions about drug and sexual habits. Cissy was to be my partner in insuring complete anonymity. I assured my subjects that Cissy had no idea of the content of the questions and that completed surveys were to be returned to a manilla envelope on Cissy's desk which would be sealed and handed off directly by her to my college student boyfriend. We could hardly wait until typing class was over to tear open the envelope. The anonymity codes ended in the numbers one though six so we only had to remember the order I handed them out in, although we probably would have recognized the handwriting anyway.

If this small sampling gave an accurate picture of the male denizens of Millikan Junior High. there was virtually no hanky panky or altering of consciousness. Cissy and I took on the task of liberating Jacob from his oppressively religious parents. We finagled an invite to the Mazer home but were told to please arrive after sunset on Saturday night. We were expecting to encounter the black coats we saw shuffling along Pico but the Mazer's, except for having two refrigerators and two stoves, seemed totally normal. We played the Beatles and Donovan and even The Who and his folks never told us to turn it down.

On Thursdays, Jacob wore a blue cotton shirt with a neckline that laced up through metal grommets. He said that he went to Hashomer that night and even though he went home before, the kids all wore their shirts to school on Thursdays. He asked me and Cissy if we wanted to go to a meeting with him and his mother picked us up and drove us over the hill to a ramshackle storefront of Fairfax, crammed with kids in their blue shirts. There was a defeaning call and response of “HASHOMER!” “HATZIAR!” followed by maniacal folkdancing. Cissy and I probably didn't conjure the word “cultish” but we got the heebie jeebies and gave up on Jacob Mazer . He began soon after to wear a yarmulke to school and was sent to Israel at the end of the school year. I was told several years later, in the same tone as if he'd been spotted turning tricks in Hollywood,, that he'd been spied at the Sav-on drugs on Ventura sporting a black suit and hat.

My parents never said outright that believers and practitioners of religion were naive and also vulnerable to the dog-eat-dog secular world but both would roll their eyes at any mention of organized faith. The Jewish Center and attendant camp JCA fulfilled my parents expectations that I not be brainwashed and to me, the emphasis on secular Judaism translated as an interpretation of hippie values, that perhaps not coincidentally, coincided with a lot of what I wasn't getting at home. Sumner was declining and his doctor checked him into Cedars. I was enrolled in a winter camp session at Camp JCA. My sister Sheri was outraged that I was considering going but both my mom and dad thought it was for the best.

The packing list for winter camp said to be prepared for snow but it didn't got quite cold enough so it mostly rained. The unused sleds and snow shoes remained stacked under the eaves of the big lodge. We stayed mostly inside in front of the huge fireplace and played games and listened to records. Lots of kids brought guitars and I even brought my own, a recent acquisition, on which I'd had a dozen lessons. I knew a few basic chords but never figured out how to tune the thing, which my mother always referred to snidely as a violin. I had the guitar strung upside down and played left-handed and could never play a borrowed guitar although it wouldn't really have sounded any worse than playing my own. I practiced Neil Young's Needle and the Damage Done and I don't know if I am more embarrassed by the memory of trying to play the song or my attempt to sing it. Pete and Jonathan, a guitar playing duo from Long Beach that I was smitten with were at camp. I proudly displayed my new guitar and played a couple of chords on the perpetually out of tune thing and the kids decided it would be fun to make popcorn balls.

My bunkmate was Denise Kaplan. She was from Long Island, the visiting cousin of a regular camper, Sam, a few cabins down. They'd both been sent off to camp when their parents decided last minute to make a pilgrimage to Vegas and Denise was pissed and thought we were all assholes to be praying for snow. She'd come to California with shifts and short sets and skimpy sandals and ended up borrowing winter clothes from Sam's mother, size fourteen stretch-pants and a golf themed acrylic sweater. I'd pestered Pete to write out the words and chords for one of his new songs and practiced it in my cabin, hoping I could join them when they performed around the fireplace. Denise asked me if I had a crush on Pete and I admitted that maybe I liked him a little. There was a girl in the next cabin who'd been in my summer group who was the same size as Denise and I arranged for the loan of a pair of bell bottomed jeans and a thrift store wool sweater.

Denise was freckled with thick curly blonde hair. She had big blue eyes and was about four inches taller and forty pounds lighter than I was with impressive, pointy boobs. She flirted with Jonathan and she told me that she'd let him kiss her and then she'd tell him to make Pete like me. She let him kiss her a lot but when I told Pete that I'd learned his new song and could play it with them at the fireplace on the last night he said he decided he hated the song and would never play it again. I motioned for Denise to meet me in the bathroom and she said that she'd told Jonathan again and again to tell Pete how nice I was but Jonathan said the Pete was stubborn and moody. Denise said because she was my friend first she wasn't going to kiss Jonathan anymore.

We sang the last song of the night, Shalom Chavirim, the “Goodnight Irene” of just about any Jewish function and bundled up to return to our cabins. We stepped outside and the air had dropped about twenty degrees and there was a light snow falling, illuminated by a full moon. I had never seen it snow before. The kids went crazy and ignored the counselors who were trying to get them to get back in their cabins before they got soaking wet. Some kids formed a big circle and we all joined hands and danced as the snow fell, circling faster and faster until we all fell on the ground laughing hysterically. I looked up and saw the falling snow in the moonlight and I knew that Sumner was dead. For years I told this story and said that this was at the exact moment when he died but I didn't really know what time it had been and I never asked my mother exactly what time Sumner had died. I went to camp knowing that there was a good chance that he would die while I was gone so I guess it was a story I just got used to telling although whenever I see it snowing I do remember the feeling of knowing with certainty that Sumner was gone.

I climbed onto the bus the next morning and went to sit next to Denise but she said she was sorry that she'd promised to sit with someone else. I assumed it was Jonathan until I saw him and his guitar sitting next to one of the girls from Long Beach. Most of the other seats were taken and I ended up next to Denise's cousin Sam. Pete and his guitar were among the last to board the bus and he plopped down next to Denise and they made out all the way from Barton Flats to Los Angeles. Sam whined all the way home that Denise had been given his bedroom and he was going to have to sleep on the couch for a week.

My mother was waiting at the bus. I raised my eyebrows inquiringly when I saw her and she shook her head, “yes.” We hugged each other and cried until the parking lot was mostly cleared out. We got home and my sister said I was a shit for not being there. The funeral was the next day. Sumner's daughters, brother and ex-wife had flown in from the East Coast although none had bothered to visit him during his decline. My mother was not invited to sit in the family room with them or included in the gathering after the funeral. The ex-wife's new husband was very wealthy and had purchased both of Sumner's adult daughters a home. Sumner owned some land in Massachusetts and Mom assumed he had substantial savings, having lived for years in a dinky furnished single apartment. Sumners entire estate was bequeathed to his daughters. My mother, who for all her schnorrer tendencies had devoted herself one hundred percent to Sumner during his last six months of life, was not mentioned in the will . Mom dated frequently during the forty years after Sumner's death but until she was in her eighties, institutionalized with dementia, and wooed by another patient, she never again had what could be referred to as a “boyfriend.”

The Overall Overhaul

2011-06-24T16:19:00.001-07:00

Mom's boyfriend Sumner always went to Boston to have Thanksgiving with his daughters and ex-wife which pissed my mother off more and more each year. Mom always beat around the bush about how she would love a vacation but Sumner never took the hint. Sumner announced that he was going back east in the middle of the spring to stay with his brother for a couple weeks. My mother hit the ceiling and swore that she was going to break up with him as soon as he got back. I think she controlled her impulse to dump him before he left town because she expected he'd return from the east with a gift.

Junior High was bearable because I bonded with a couple of other misfits and a number of the teachers found me amusing. There were still however a number of assholes so I had to keep on guard. I spent most evenings at the Jewish Community Center where the kids were all really nice and there was no one I had to duck into the bathroom to avoid. I even signed up for classes like modern dance which I had no interest in but got me out of the house. I did like however the leotards we wore which were then becoming fashionable as a everyday wear. I amassed them from the tiny dance store at Laurel Plaza in a dozen different colors, despite the complications the garment posed with regard to peeing.

Phyllis the chain-smoking receptionist at the Jewish Center reigned over an ancient switchboard, coated with a thin layer of ash. Her hair was hennaed, ala Lucille Ball, but thinning to reveal wide swaths of scalp. Apparently she applied pancake makeup with a trowel and her eyebrows were plucked to a fare-thee-well and penciled in with chalky black pencil. Whenever someone got a call her gravelly yell reverberated down the hall. We were never allowed to use her phone but she was a good sport about loaning us dimes to use a pay phone in an old-fashioned wooden booth in the lobby. We'd call the Jewish Center number and ask Phyllis for Jack Mehoff and she'd bellow down the hall, “Jack Mehoff! Jack Mehoff! Is Jack Mehoff here?” and she called us nudniks when we doubled over with laughter.

Sumner returned from the east and while his spirits didn't seem to have lifted, my mother started doting on him and just ignoring it when he snapped at her or refused the elaborate meals she'd taken to preparing for him. My sister Sheri seemed to be over Dale, the married man who'd wined and dined her until his wife showed up and smashed Sheri's windshield with a potted plant. Sheri still worked at the fish and poultry store and saw her old girlfriends from high school and took me out to eat and to the movies a lot. She never said anything but I know she felt bad about smacking me in front of my friend Jerry so she invited him to come too but he said that I was the only woman in the family he'd ever have anything to do with, but if I tried to get him to listen to Van Morrison one more time he'd even reconsider that.

My mom liked going to the Ontra Cafeteria on Van Nuys Blvd. where she'd take a couple of dainty sides like coleslaw and canned beets and a scoop of rice pudding or Dupar's for a cup of soup and an order of date-nut bread, half of which she'd wrap in a napkin to take home. Sheri preferred more substantial meals and she'd take me to the Moskva Cliffs for chicken kiev or The Old Heidelberg on Oxnard for some form of heavily sauced and/or fried pork and/or veal. Sometimes we went to Jean's Blue Room on Ventura where Edward Everett Horton took most of his meals all by himself at the same little table. The walls and china were blue, as were the checkered drapes and tablecloths. They served frog legs, rabbit, and the big crowd pleaser was crepes Suzette doused in brandy and theatrically ignited.

All of the kids at the Jewish Center went to two or three sessions of sleepaway camp at Camp JCA in Barton Flats, near Big Bear, and I begged to go. My mother cried the blues to the director and got a partial scholarship for me to attend a session. Then she called my dad and told him to call and offer free film rentals, which he did, so I could attend at no charge. My mother typed a neat list of things I was to bring. We went to the Army Navy Store and bought a footlocker, a sleeping bag and a metal canteen. We found the white blouse and navy shorts I needed for Shabbat at Fedco. I tried them on and Mom looked me up and down and asked if I thought they'd let me wear a skirt instead.

My mother was talking to Aunt Ann but lowered her voice when she saw me. I picked up the phone in the den and heard my mother say “it's inoperable ” and was so curious that at the risk of being chewed out for snooping I asked what was up. Mom crumpled and sobbed that Sumner had been at the Mayo Clinic and not his brother's. He'd been feeling shitty for months and he finally saw a doctor who'd diagnosed pancreatic cancer. He'd had an experimental treatment at the Mayo which wasn't a cure but would probably prolong his life a few months. I asked my mother if I should skip Camp JCA and she said I absolutely should not.

My mother packed my trunk meticulously and made separate bags with socks and underwear and a cute little flowered toiletry bag with soap and shampoo. She typed her address on stamped envelopes so I could write letters home easily. There was a carbon copy of my packing list for me to check off when I was getting ready to return home. Mom flirtatiously had someone's dad take my footlocker from the trunk when she dropped me at the Jewish Center parking lot. When I opened it the first time there was a note on a sheet of steno paper that said, “I love you. Have a wonderful time.”

I sat on the bus with the girls I knew from the Jewish Center, most of whom were older. There were counselors with guitars singing the songs of John Denver's “Rocky Mountain High” and Loggin's and Messina's “Danny's Song,”. We'd change the line following “In the morning when I rise” from “You bring a tear of joy to my eyes” to “I feel a tingle between my thighs.” Camp JCC assigned cabins based on age and all the girls I knew were in one cabin and I was placed in one where I knew no one. I started to cry but the counselor Karen hugged me and when the other girls saw how bad I felt they were really nice and even squabbled about who I'd share a bunk with.

Camp JCA was dense with old trees and had an ancient lodge with an enormous field stone fireplace. There was no glass on the cabin windows, just screens and the pine air wafted through as I drifted off on the cool nights. They gave us bug juice and graham crackers all the time and the scrambled eggs were reconstituted from powder and the meat was murky and slathered with something viscous. I liked the Israeli breakfast we had once a week with cucumber and hard boiled eggs and pita bread and sometimes at campfire we made s'mores but otherwise the kosher kitchen produced little worth eating.

I'd never been outdoorsy but I loved the smell of the air and the tall trees. I skipped the big hike up San Gorgonio but happily took many little strolls. I walked arm and arm with the girls from my cabin and we made each other beaded macrame bracelets. We tie dyed t-shirts and cast sand candles. We took a day trip into Big Bear riding in the back of a giant flat bed truck. One of the girls smuggled in a lurid magazine and read aloud a story about Betty being ravished by someone named Ladd, the name of a friend of a friend which always evokes that smutty story. The counselors said, “Bigot Bear” and everyone expected Hitler Youth goosestepping down the main street but no one seemed to treat us any worse than they would any loud, dirty teenager.

My mother wrote me every day on Veteran's Administration stationary, even mailing two letters on Monday. She sent me a couple of care packages which were verboten but that the counselor overlooked when I threw her a couple boxes of Cracker Jacks. Mom didn't mention Sumner at all, just the nuts at the VA psych ward where she worked and how my sister was eating too much and really blimping up. My dad wrote me a couple times a week on Budget Films letterhead in his neat printing and told me about the employees and new films he'd gotten and weird customers. I wrote him back at the office and my stepmother was not mentioned in any of our correspondence.

My friend Jerry wrote me desolate letters from the valley. His dad was a printer and Jerry was condemned to a summer of setting up racks of type and trying to bleach ink off his fingernails.. He'd print little cards for me with all sorts of mixed up letters like ransom notes that said things like, “Van Nuys is the arsehole of the universe,” Jerry being in a British affectation phase.

Sheri wrote me a few letters that arrived tinged with a slight fish order. She joked about how little my mom ate and how much how much time she spent putting on make-up and how pissed off she got if anyone used “her” bathroom. She described a buffet brunch offered at the new hotel in Universal City and said we'd go when I got back. Even Sumner sent me a letter on Bonds for Israel stationary saying he hoped I was having fun and learning some Hebrew.

My cousin Beth wrote me almost every day, eager for me to respond with exaggerated or more often completely fabricated, reports of my exploits. There were two ninth grade boys from Long Beach, Pete and Jonathan. They both played the guitar and sang. Pete's voice was kind of dissonant like Neil Young's and Jonathan's was sweet and high like Art Garfunkel's, although more than slightly off key. Pete wrote original songs, mainly protesting the war and pollution and stuff. I couldn't decide which boy I liked better although both were in agreement that they liked me not very much at all. Nevertheless I made up words to a romantic song that Pete had written for me and told Beth that they sang it at the campfire and before the last chorus they called me up to sit between them and harmonize. Of course we got a standing ovation.

The last campfire was very emotional and we didn't stop crying until we hit the Hollywood Freeway the next afternoon. We were given big tags with our names for our luggage so our parents could collect it from the big truck before we arrived on the bus. I wrote “I love you!” on the back of the tags. I found them affixed with yellow tape to the inside of the dish cabinet thirty years later when I broke down my mom's home on Fulton Avenue.

I got home from JCA a bit slimmed down from the constant walking and inedible food. I had nurtured, from the cool college girl counselors, a new fashion sensibility. I threw away all my makeup, grew my hair longer and stopped shaving my legs. I even conned my mom into buying me a pair of overalls, about which both my sister and Jerry were particularly derisive. Mom nixed the Earth Shoes, astounded that such stunningly ugly footwear could be so expensive but I found a pair of plastic knockoffs at Kinney's which made my feet sweat but unless closely examined, passed for the genuine article. There were still six weeks of summer when I came back from JCA and I rode my bike to Encino to hang out with new friends from camp. I was riding down Ventura Blvd and a guy opened his car door and knocked me off my bike. I got a little scraped up and my little purple girl's Huffy was a goner.

I can imagine my mother's interactions with the insurance adjuster and as soon as the check arrived she took me to Sherman Oaks Cyclery and said I could get any bike I chose. I assume that the check had been substantial because it seems her largesse would probably extend to no more than 10% of the settlement. I asked what the best ten-speed touring bike was. I'd tried a few friends' bikes and had never mastered the goat's horn racing handlebars. The salesman suggested a sleek, blue Italvega with a gorgeous leather seat and let me ride it on Ventura Blvd. It was about 50% lighter than the old Huffy and the gears shifted seamlessly and the brakes were remarkably smooth. Plus I would like saying, “Italvega” the way some of the big bike snobs at school said, “Peugeot.” Now I guess it's neat to say, “Schwinn” but it would been mortifying in 1971.

My mom had dated Sumner for many years and he had never spent that night at our house when I was there. Now my mom didn't want him to drive so he'd sleep in her king and she'd sleep on the love seat in the den. We were constantly running out to buy or dropping everything to prepare foods he craved and of which he'd take a single bite. He yelled at my mom when she insisted she drive his car for him to his apartment with Sheri following. He was sleeping in the arm chair with a boxing match on the TV. I changed the channel and he leaped up and changed it back and kicked the TV and told me to get the hell out. He had never been cross or angry with me before.

For the first time we were permitted to wear blue jeans to school. I returned in September in a short-sleeve Mexican peasant blouse. It was embroidered. and had little threads running through a casing so you could tie them in a bow to adjust the sleeves. This was topped with a pair of Wrangler overalls. I wore the ersatz Earth Shoes with argyle socks and carried an embroidered purse sewn out of the top of a pair of jeans with old neckties as a strap. I'd lost weight and my Jewfro reached my shoulders and curly hair was in so I didn't have to iron it anymore.

My fashion sense was informed by college girls and the overall/peasant blouse thing hadn't reached Millikan yet. There were a few outraged stares, particularly from the teachers, but, most of the girls slavered. Within a week, everyone was wearing overalls, often, with a leotard underneath, making it even harder to pee and overall straps often landed in the toilet. In my case, the metal hook of an overall strap got jammed in the bathroom door causing the door to slam and break my finger.

The other fashion innovation I brought to Millikan Junior High via Columbia and UC Santa Cruz was jeans patched in bright floral prints. The more patches the better, covering the knees and inner thighs. None of my jeans had worn through to holes but I pillaged my mother's rag bag and covered a pair with dozens of patches, sewn on with different bright shades of embroidery thread.

Needlework was all the rage and we made frequent trips to the Super Yarn Mart. I did a needle point series of cute animals that my mother through were brilliant, despite the big gaps where you could see the net. My mom had them framed and they hung in the den for long enough for my own kids to ask why in hell Grandma would put up such crap.

We also embroidered the pockets of denim work-shirts in floral patterns. I was the most adroit at embroidery and even mastered the french knot, probably my greatest accomplishment in the area of handicrafts. My mother was always working on some sort of crochet project, usually involving acrylic granny squares that were never exactly square. Nevertheless, she stitched them together into different colored ponchos and put on a long fringe. I wore them to school which led one of my teachers to remark that I was the worst dressed kid in the school.

The Italvega caused a big sensation at the bike racks. The boys advised me about sturdy locks and toe clips and took turns riding it down Magnolia. Mr. Eastman was a new social studies teacher, a young guy with horned rimmed glasses and obviously uncomfortable wearing a tie. He liked for us to rap about things and agreed he'd sponsor a conservation club. There were about twelve kids at the first meeting. There were mostly the boys who were real into bicycles and girls who were good at science. I was the only one who really had any sort of political awareness, albeit is was just catchphrases from the counselors at camp that I parroted. It was decided by consensus that I would serve as president.

Mr. E. saw a vacant lot between some low rent apartments on Tujunga. He said it would make a nice park for the poor children who lived in the dank complexes. He got a nursery to donate a small sapling and we made a big deal about planting it on the lot, as the first step towards creating a park. Mr. Eastman even alerted The Green Sheet and there was a photographer and my name, and “president” appeared in the caption on the first page of the second section. We'd hang out after school in Mr. E's classroom, even if there wasn't a meeting. He suggested I read Siddhartha and I gave him my copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and was disappointed that he wasn't very effusive about it.

We rode our bikes over to water the tiny tree every day the week after we planted it but then we started getting a bit lax. We were hanging out in Mr. E's room looking at his Whole Earth Catalog and someone asked if anyone had watered the little tree and everyone went sort of blank. Mr. E told us that he'd stopped by to check on the tree several weeks ago and had found it dead. I could tell he was disappointed with us and the Conservation Club fizzled away after that.

With my new summer camp sophistication, I was less interested in the boys at Millikan and pined away for Pete and Jonathan, the singing duo from JCA. They both lived in Long Beach. Pete was smarter and had longer hair and Jonathan was nicer. Jonathan usually had a girlfriend so I'd usually like Pete until Jonathan broke up with her and then I would like them both again. I agonized over letters to them, mostly about music and quoting, unusually without attribution, from the Rolling Stone. I noticed on the sleeve of a new Judy Collins album that Warner Music was offering several compilation albums with songs from various artists. I cut the ad out very carefully and sent it with a note to Pete indicating that, as my mother was an intimate of Jack Warner, I had access to these rarities from the vault and asked him which ones he would recommend. I got a one sentence note back from Pete that these were advertised on the sleeve of every Warner Music album and none of them were very good. Fortunately Jonathan was in-between girlfriends so I started liking him again.

My mom asked me to ride my bike over to Jack's fish store, where my sister worked, after school to pick up some smoked whitefish because Sumner was craving it. I made it into a salad the way he liked with mayonnaise and chopped scallions and my mom stopped at Weby's on the way home for his favorite kaiser rolls. Sumner took one bite and said, “This isn't whitefish salad, this is crap.” My mother gestured for me to keep cool but I exploded about how we had all been his slaves for weeks and what an asshole he was being. He wasn't really supposed to drive but he grabbed his keys and drove himself back to his Hollywood apartment. My mother was crying and then she screamed at me about how cruel I was because he was dying.

My mom took a few weeks off to help Sumner and even though he was miserable she enjoyed playing housewife, cooking, ironing, flipping the mattresses and “airing out” everything that wasn't nailed down. I couldn't stand being around Sumner or around my mom when she was around Sumner so I forced myself to go to school with a cold coming on. By fifth period I had a high fever and my teacher insisted I go to the nurse's office. She called my mom and told me to wait on the bench in the hall for her.

Miss Heinmiller, the girl's vice principal peeked out of her office and then marched over to inspect me. I was wearing patched jeans. She asked me what kind of getup I had on and I lied and said my jeans had holes in them. Miss Heinmiller responded that there was no reason I couldn't sew a neat seam. The bell for sixth period rang and I was embarrassed to be seen being lectured by her as kids, including many girls with patched jeans, poured into the halls. My mother arrived and Miss Heinmiller asked her if she'd seen how I was done up that morning before I left for school. My mother felt my head which was fortunately very hot, and surveyed the decorated jeans parading through the hall and said that I was obviously sick and all the other girls were wearing the same thing and suggested that Miss Heinmiller, a public servant after all, could find something better to do with her time.

The Stage Stage

2011-06-17T15:43:00.001-07:00

I was called to the office during seventh period. My Aunt Ann was there waiting. I thought someone had died but it turned out that Jack Warner had invited my mother on a spur of the moment trip to New York. Aunt Ann took me home and waited impatiently while I packed to spend a week with her family in Encino. When we arrived at their home it was determined that my clothing was too wild, too short and too worn. Ann took me to Stardusters and bought me some below knee length dresses. I shortened them all as soon as I returned to Fulton Avenue.

I was mortified and disgraced to be plunked mid-school-week in the staid home of Uncle Harv and Aunt Ann. My cousin Beth expected me to regale her with colorful tales of slumming it in a public school. I'd told her that the adorable Paul Landsburg was my boyfriend. The phones in those days would buzz if left off the hook for too long so I called my home number, where I knew no one would answer and always in earshot of Beth. I kept up my end of a whispery, giggly conversation while the phone rang and rang at my empty house. Finally a neighbor with a key became concerned about the constantly ringing phone and entered to answer it right in the middle of my cooing adoration. I hung up immediately and told my cousin that Paul was on a trip and not available to call for a few days.

There was going to be a big party at the Jewish Center near my house and Ann was a good sport about driving me over there in one of my new catholic dresses. I rushed to the bathroom and changed into a short denim skirt I'd made by sewing a gusset of calico fabric into an old pair of jeans I'd cut down and, having been tutored by my friend Jerry, applied make-up so dazzling that everyone commented about how pretty I looked. It had to do with a particularly nice shade of silvery blue eye shadow and I tried for many years unsuccessfully to duplicate the effect. There was music played at these parties but my social set found dancing gauche and we just sat around and talked and ate stale kosher cookies. I washed my face and returned to my prim outfit before Ann returned to fetch me.

After a couple days in a household where my favorite show Laugh In was considered too risqué and there was no TV on school nights anyway, I began to crack. I managed to get through to the Sherry Netherland hotel in New York. The operator said there was no room in my mother’s name so I begged to speak with Jack Warner. The operator refused but I said that my mother was staying with him and that it was an emergency. She relented and put my call through and it was obvious that I’d awakened Warner. He was furious and screamed that my mother wasn’t there. She returned the next day, four days earlier than planned. I’m not sure if his disgust at my phone call was the catalyst for the change in plans. She never heard from him again and she raged for days at having to repay my aunt for the long distance call I’d made to New York. The sewing machine Jack Warner had given her was relegated to closet which was a good thing because I'd screwed up the bobbin so badly it was inoperable.

I spent most weeknights at the Jewish Center. I was in a girl's club and took drama classes and even folk dancing because some of the cool kids actually liked it. The teen director was named Mickey and he was going to law school. The big sign that towered over Burbank Blvd. read for a week “Mickey Passed the Bar!” and he was replaced by a younger guy named Joel who had beautiful skin and very prematurely silver thick, wavy hair. He wore soft blue denim workshirts that looked great with his hair and coloring and Levis with a woven belt from Mexico. We all thought Joel was dreamy although he was sort of wussy and instead of taking it on himself, he had the elderly Frieda, the social worker who was in charge of the Senior Sunshine program call me in and ask me what I was hiding behind all the make-up I wore. I responded that my mother and my sister both wore a lot of make up and that was the way it was and she said OK.

There was drama class at the Jewish Center and Phil the teacher arrived barefoot in a filthy tie dyed shirt. He made us lie down in a circle and breathe and then say who was sending us energy and who wasn't. He gave us fifteen mimeographed pages about nihilism and told us we had to read this before the next class or we would be unable to dig what he was all about. I struggled earnestly with the article because I thought Phil was sort of cute and that it might provide the missing link as to why I got so little love from Mrs. Sable, the drama teacher at Millikan Junior High, but I couldn't make heads or tails.

The next week we sat in a circle on the floor waiting for Phil and everyone admitted to not being able to make sense of the article. Victor Edelman said that his dad, who was a lawyer, had pronounced the whole thing bullshit. Phil was a no show and Joel paced the hall waiting for him. Phil finally arrived about forty five minutes late and Joel exploded and said he was high and fired him right on the spot in front of us. Phil said Joel was real uptight and had bad karma and he was going to make the kids uptight and compromise us in the karma department too. Joel told him to get the hell out and let us listen to Dylan and Joan Baez records on the big phonograph that was wheeled around the Jewish Center on a steel cart.

Shirley Shoenberg was hired to teach the drama class. Her son, Craig, went to Millikan and to the Jewish Center and Shirley had acted and directed small theatre productions for years. She was a big woman and wore a rainbow striped crocheted poncho and Birkenstocks. When the Jewish Center was being fumigated we had lessons at her house which was filled with African art and Navajo rugs. We played King Crimson's “In the Court of the Crimson King” for her and she thought it was far out. My mother never really cottoned to King Crimson and said the Shoenberg house was ugly and that Shirley was too old to dress like a hippie and that she should go on a diet and color her hair.

I attended a private evening drama class at Mrs. Sable's house in the Hollywood Hills too. I don't remember how I insinuated myself into the select small group that attended these sessions, for which my dad paid $20 monthly. There were three other girls. One of them is now a successful writer and director and the other a well known dancer and actress. Marci was the third girl and was probably the best actress of all. She was short and on the dumpy side if she didn't diet strenuously and even at age fourteen she had shockingly humongous boobs. Most of the Jewish girls just ironed our hair but Marci had hers professionally straightened somewhere in Beverly Hills. She returned from vacation and reported that she'd gotten a deep tan and worn a white bathing suit and felt just scrumptious. She intimated that she had a special relationship Mr. Kaplan, a popular biology teacher. There was a teacher strike and Marci brought Mr. Kaplan a thermos of coffee on the picket line. She wore a floor length black Victorian skirt with a bustle because she said it was “his favorite.”

Cliff Arnold was the only boy who was a regular at Mrs. Sable's private workshop. He was a tall handsome blonde with thick curly hair who unashamedly excelled in football and drama. He was so nice, handsome and smart that we considered him cool despite the football aberration. His mother drove the carpool up to Mrs. Sable's house in a big old Rambler Station wagon and even though he was much taller than any of us, Cliff was always a good sport about riding in the way back. We sang songs and told jokes and did imitations of our teachers and other students. Mrs. Arnold laughed her head off. She brought us cookies and sodas when she picked us up. She called us, “my movie stars.”

Mrs. Sable had a woodsy modern house way up in the hills. Her husband was an artist and there were huge creepy oil paintings of mutilated dolls all over . We did a lot of improv exercises and we were supposed to be working on an original monologue for a character we were to create. I came up with a cynical middle aged woman making herself up in the bathroom of a fancy restaurant and going on about how her date was going nowhere and how resentful she was that her beauty never seemed to pay off. I decided to make it more realistic and brought a pouch of make-up to apply while performing the monologue. I put on lipstick and mascara and emoted. I pulled out a little mirrored compact to add some powder and noticed that because I'd been making up with a pretend mirror, my lipstick was smeared. I fixed it and concluded on a bitter note about how far less attractive women had landed good providers. The kids thought it was pretty good but Mrs. Sable hated it and pointed out how I was supposed to be in a front of a big mirror and how stupid it looked when I corrected the bad lipstick based on the mirror in the compact. The kids on the ride home were great and said she'd been too hard.

The next day I approached Mrs. Sable at her desk in the drama room and lied saying my mother was considering enrolling me in different private dramatic instruction. I expected Mrs. Sable to say that she liked working with me and was sorry she'd been so harsh and beg me to stay but she said that my mother's idea was excellent. I really liked the kids and I loved watching them perform. I especially missed the genial car rides and the pleasure that Mrs. Arnold took in being around us.

I still had Shirley's class at the Jewish Center and while none of the kids, except for Shirley's son Craig, were as talented as the members of Mrs. Sable's elite crew, everyone was nice, Shirley was encouraging and the class was fun. We were preparing a program for the end of the semester and I was assigned to prepare a monologue. I looked at the monologue books at the library and they all seemed dorky and I didn't think the Lady Macbeth that my friend Jerry had helped me with would play well to the crowd.

My mom's boyfriend Sumner had given me copy of a script that Bonds of Israel had used for a program at one of the galas. There was a speech about Masada that had been read by Lorne Greene and it seemed maybe a tiny bit boring but I thought it would please the Jewish Center crowd and I'd get extra points for using something previously unpublished, plus flaunting my (tenuous) connection to Lorne Greene. Sumner had been really cranky and when I told my mom I was reading from the script he'd given me she was happy and asked him to come to the performance and he agreed. I was delighted. Sumner was a professional Jew and knew many of the people who worked at the Jewish Center and I assumed they'd be very impressed. Plus, he was handsome and erudite and he looked good beside my mother.

I read the dry speech to the class and Shirley suggested it might not be the best vehicle to showcase my talent. I only had a few days so I got one of those books of monologues for girls from the library and chose one called “First Date.” All I remember is, “It is NOT too low cut.” It wasn't Proust but I pulled it off and it seemed that the laughter was more than just polite. Even though no one was in awe of the renowned Bonds for Israel salesman, Sumner said I was funny and it was fine with him that I'd ditched the Lorne Greene speech.

I was still enrolled in Mrs. Sable's class at Millikan but when I stopped taking the private classes, she became even more indifferent to me. She announced auditions for a citywide drama competition. Jerry worked on something from Moliere's Tartuffe and being on a big Oscar Wilde kick, he decided that I would be perfect as Lady Bracknell in the Importance of Being Earnest. There was a little raised balcony in our rumpus room and we practiced on it, like it was a stage, for hours.

After several months of unemployment my mother passed a Civil Service test and was hired as a secretary at the psychiatric facility at the Wadsworth Veteran's Hospital. She no longer had to wear a uniform, only a blue smock and could even wear pants to work. She says the patients were pretty crazy but she felt real sorry for them and there are lots of thuggish orderlies that kept them from pawing at her. There was an abundance of doctors who, as government employees, had a lot of time on their hands for long lunches and other shenanigans. My mother also had access to the PX where she got hugely reduced prices on candy and cigarettes. Supervision of supply areas was minimal and we amassed cupboards full of pens, pencils, steno pads and sleeping pills.

Jerry liked being at my house when my mother was gone. He thought she was very beautiful but she gave him the heebie jeebies and reminded him of Gene Tierney in Heaven Can Wait. My sister had moved in again after her genuine final break with Gino Mancini when he left for an indefinite vacation at Folsom. Jerry liked Sheri because she was usually pretty friendly. She even took us to see MASH and bought us popcorn and Raisinettes. I'd suggested Woodstock but both of them looked at me like I was insane. Jerry and I practiced our monologues on the balcony and he'd slip out the back door when he heard my mother's car in the driveway.

Sheri met a guy named Dale at the bar at the Smokehouse in Burbank. He owned a ranch out in Lancaster but kept a little apartment in Glendale because he worked as a horse wrangler for films a lot. He wore a bolo tie, boots and a big cowboy hat. As soon as Dale and Sheri were out the door, we burst into laughter and my tone deaf mother broke into Happy Trails but you'd know it only by the words and not the melody.

Dale improved in my mother's opinion when Sheri started coming home with big bags of clothes from Bullocks and Robinson's. There was even a purse for my mother, the kind she liked with a detachable shoulder strap and a hidden zipper. Sheri left me doggie bags of lamb chops and lobster and she kept matchbooks from all the cool restaurants Dale took her to by her bed in a brandy snifter. She said that Dale didn't like her working at the fish store, and didn't think she should work at all and my mother asked if he had any friends.

Dale was picking up Sheri and they were in the den with my mother who was grilling Dale about other eligible bachelors he might be acquainted with. I didn't want to make chit chat so I went through the living room undetected for some juice. As I was crossing back I heard signs of departure and in order to avoid an encounter in the entry hall I ran through the living room, tripped and spilled a large glass of grape juice on the white carpeting. I pulled a chair over it and slipped into my bedroom, planning to work on the stain when I was alone.

The next day there was a commotion in the driveway. Sheri was locked in her car and there was a big blonde with a beehive in tight capris pounding on Sheri's windshield and screaming. I went inside and phoned the police. By the time I got back, the woman was gone but she had thrown a big pot of geraniums and cracked Sheri's windshield. Sheri called and canceled the police call and told me not to worry about it because it was just a crazy lady. When my mom got home I did some eavesdropping and found out that the rabid geranium thrower was Dale's wife.

My mom and Sheri were going to have a drink to drown their sorrows at the bar at the Sportman's Lodge so I told Jerry he should come over so we could practice our monologues. I heard my mother screaming in the living room. She'd moved a chair back to it's correct position and discovered the huge grape juice stain I'd completely forgotten about. I played dumb although my mother probably suspected it was me and Sheri knew I was trying to set her up. She raced to my room and extricated a number of dirty plates and of course the sticky purple juice glass. Both of them were yelling at me and I yelled back that they were both such bitches and it was no wonder that neither of them could land a man. My mom screamed that I was the one who had fouled things up with Jack Warner for her. The doorbell rang and I ran to answer it, Sheri on my tail. I opened it and there stood Jerry. Sheri caught me from behind and slapped me. She yelled for Jerry to go the hell away and slammed the door in his face.

They came home late from the Sportsman's and woke up late the next day and kept the drapes drawn. My mother worked on the living room carpet with bleach and a steel brush. Sheri made scrambled eggs and asked me if I wanted some. I walked over to Jerry's and we practiced. We smuggled out a copy of Portnoy's Complaint Jerry knew his mother had hidden in the Tupperware cupboard and sat out in the yard and took turns reading passages. Jerry's mother called us in for tuna sandwiches and Loud Mouth Lime Funny Face. Jerry never said a word about my sister smacking me and I didn't mention that he'd tweezed his eyebrows way too thin.

Mrs. Sable chose Jerry's Tartuffe for Millikan's entry for the boys' monologue. Jerry said my Lady Bracknell was a revelation but Mrs. Sable chose Marci bigtits who ironically was performing the First Date monologue I'd done at the Jewish Center. The Jewish Center drama teacher's son Craig was selected for the serious monologue with a speech from Inherit the Wind. I was allowed to ride on the bus to Venice High School and I stayed with Jerry for the first rounds. Jerry came in second and was pissy about not placing first which would have meant performing Tartuffe for the whole auditorium. Craig did come in first and his Clarence Darrow was riveting. He was cute with curly hair and freckles and all sorts of girls were hanging on him all day but he stayed with me and Jerry. It was no surprise when bodacious Marci won first place with the girl's comic monologue. She performed it, yanking up her top up over her huge bazooms, with, “It is NOT too low cut!” The crowd loved it but when she was done and stood posing for photos with her trophy, Craig whispered to me, “You did it so much better.”

The photographer from the school newspaper came into drama class to take pictures of Marci, Craig and Jerry with their trophies. Jerry had applied a bit of eyebrow pencil, kind of pointless for any photograph involving Marci's tits. Mrs. Turner the head counselor came in and asked Mrs. Sable to choose a student to write and recite a brief speech about Veteran's Day so that the kids would do more than have fun on the three day weekend. “My mother works at the Veteran's Hospital,” I squealed. The peace movement was cool and long hair conferred credibility. I was taking a big risk social status-wise referring to veterans and honoring crew-cutted automatons. But even the hardest core yippee wannabee would admit that the soldiers who fought against Hitler were righteous. Plus everyone had short hair during World War II. They just didn't know any better. This helped me rationalize sticking my hand in the air and whining like Horshak on Welcome Back Kotter to get the gig.

I went to the library and wrote down how many soldiers had died in each of the wars the U.S. had fought in and also mentioned all the POWS and MIAs in Vietnam, as they were somewhat more counter-culturally acceptable than soldiers on active duty. I concluded by saying that whether we believed in the current war or not we still were indebted to the brave men and women who had fought for our freedom. Mrs. Turner said I had to take out the women because women didn't really fight, they were more like secretaries and nurses, plus “whether we believe in the current war or not” had to go too and I had a lot of nerve to sully the honor of our brave soldiers with political propaganda. “I just want to tell people that even if they hate the war they shouldn't hate the soldiers,” I explained. She took the copy of my speech and blacked out the offending passages and said she was sure that there was another drama student who would be happy to read the tribute. I wish I could say I stood up for my beliefs. I read the piece as Mrs. Turner edited although no one could never make out a word of anything that came over the 50's era PA system at Millikan Jr. High.

Sew Fine

2011-06-10T15:34:00.001-07:00

My sister Sheri moved back with me and my mom to Fulton Avenue and stayed there when we were in Hawaii. Sheri's effort to bribe the neighbor Mrs. Nichols failed. Sheri brought the neighbor fish from the store where she worked and hinted that Mrs. Nichols shouldn't mention to my mom that Gino Mancini, who my mom detested and Sheri had promised to permanently extricate herself from, came around while we were gone. Mrs. Nichols thanked my mom for the can of macadamias left over from the Hilton gift basket and asked my mom if the nice fellow with the tattoos she'd seen around was a handyman. My mother placed a profane call to my father at the office and started throwing Sheri's stuff on the porch. Sheri and my mom were both hysterical and then Gino Mancini showed up and things escalated.

I took off on my bike to my friend Jerry's. He loathed having me there to witness how ordinary and middle class his home life was but when he learned there were flying objects he took pity on me. He did make me swear not to tell anyone they were watching The Wonderful World of Disney. I sat on the plastic wrapped couch between Jerry and his mom and we passed a bowl of popcorn back and forth. Mr. Wise reclined in his La-Z-Boy and excused himself for a couple of burps, explaining that they'd had cucumbers for dinner and they always repeated on him. My mom was sitting with a martini and a cigarette in the dark den when I got home and didn't even notice that I'd ridden my bike alone after dark. Sheri's stuff was gone and the shattered clay planters from the front porch were in the trash.

I had a new hippie type dayglow dress from Hawaii and I wore it to school with white sandals the first day back from the trip. No one made a big deal about it except Jerry kept calling me “wahine” and Miss Worthington the Home Economics teacher who taught cooking said it was cute. She liked me because I knew my way around the kitchen and was eager to learn more so I actually paid attention to her. Miss Worthington was a Lutheran from Nebraska but she was dating a Jewish guy. She asked me if I knew how to make a dumpling soup her boyfriend's mother had served her that she liked very much. I figured out she meant matzo balls which I'd seen my mother make a million times. We had a jar of schmaltz my sister brought home from the fish and poultry store that I carried it school along with some matzoh meal and parsley. I showed Miss Worthington how to mix egg yokes with the chicken fat and beat the egg whites separately until they were almost stiff and to chop the parsley very fine and use soda water instead of tap. I told her to refrigerate them overnight. She reported she'd made them for her boyfriend and he said they were even better than his mom's.

I had Miss Montgomery, a tall southern belle who wore wool suits and a sleek brown french twist, for sewing. The first project was a reversible gym bag and we were given a list of items to pick up at Quigley's that included two yards of contrasting fabric, matching thread, and two feet of soft thick rope. My mom came home from work and tore off her uniform and put on a raggedy housecoat and some ancient terrycloth slippers. I started to tell her that we needed to go to Quigley's and she started sobbing. I was able to glean that she would no longer be working at Dr. Weiner's and she said she just couldn't take it anymore and something about that horrible bitch Mrs. Weiner. She told me to tell my dad that she'd gotten fired and not quit because she would have to try to get more child support. Later she received state employment checks so I imagine she really was terminated and just too embarrassed to admit it to me. She wrote me a note to take to school that said she was an unemployed single mom and I would not be able to bring in the materials for the gym bag until Monday as I would have to purchase them with my father over the weekend.

Mom went to the state employment office to file a claim and on Wednesday her boyfriend Sumner came over for his usual week night dinner,this night scrambled eggs and onions, which to my mother's chagrin, Sumner added ketchup, and English muffins from the freezer. Between the latest blowout with Sheri and the loss of her job Mom was real needy but Sumner seemed cranky and almost indifferent. He picked at his food and refused the canned Kadota fig dessert and went home early.

I gave Miss Montgomery the note about the gym bag materials and she instructed me to help the other girls pin down the big square patterns and cut the fabric. There was something about cutting with grain that I couldn't figure out but other than that it seemed pretty easy and I just stood around chatting until the Miss Montgomery gave me a dirty look and I would feign pinning down one of the other girl's patterns with great concentration. My dad took me to Quigley's on Saturday to pick up the gym bag makings. I chose a bright turquoise and lime green cotton that I liked together. The total was about 80 cents and my dad complained that my mom was unbelievably petty and asked me if she was still visiting the beauty parlor every week. I had made the mistake of asking my mother this myself and was nearly throttled for my stupidity. “How the hell am I supposed to get a job if I don't look good?” I spared my father the tirade and said I wasn't sure.

By Monday when I came in with my supplies the other girls had cut out their gym bags and were being instructed by Miss Montgomery how to wind the bobbin on the sewing machine. I hurriedly cut out my pattern so I could catch up but Miss Montgomery said I had cut against the grain and ruined the fabric. Fortunately she found some in the cubby of a girl who left when she came down with appendicitis and appropriated it for me. The colors were sticky pink and baby blue but Miss Montgomery said I shouldn't be fussy and helped me pin the pattern and cut with the grain. She returned to the sewing machine lesson and I struggled with cutting out the pattern. I had to hold the scissors in my right hand and had so little control that I was unable to make a straight cut. In elementary school there had been a couple pairs of left handed scissors but in middle school I was on my own and knew better than to ask my parents to make any additional purchases.

Miss Montgomery rolled her eyes at my cutting job and said that being left handed shouldn't impair me from sewing a straight seam. All of the other girls had finished their gymbags and were looking through a Simplicity book at jumper patterns. Miss Montgomery pulled a waspy girl named Helen, who already sewed all of her own clothes and probably bailed hay and castrated bulls, away from the pattern book and told her to show me how to use the sewing machine. She did so quickly and without enthusiasm so she could return to choosing a jumper.

Because I was to be in 7^th grade for three semesters due to the school district dropping February enrollments, I had a ton of electives. I was enrolled in drama taught by Mrs. Sable in a classroom that had a tiny stage and even a curtain. The first day in class Mrs. Sable said we'd be starting with improv exercises and demonstrated this herself by stepping on the stage and morphing into a thumb sucking baby. The class found it hilarious that a teacher would perform in such a way but I found it embarrassing and vaguely disturbing.

The big deal was that Lisa DeCinces was in my drama class. She had played the role of Wednesday on the Adams Family using the stage name Lisa Loring. From information available on the Internet it seems things went precipitously south after the sit-com role and she was an unwed teen mother, had substance abuse problems and was involved, although apparently not as a performer, in the porn industry. There isn't much recent history but there are a few photos of her attending TV Fan Conventions and she looks attractive and has apparently conquered her demons.

Lisa was one of the better actresses in the class but there were a handful of other real standouts who have had successful Hollywood careers as writers, performers and directors. There were two city wide competitions each year for drama students. There was one in the fall where monologues and group scenes were performed and judged and in the spring there was a Shakespeare competition. The Pyramis and Thisbe scene from Midsummer Night's dream was chosen for the group scene, the opening scene from Richard III was the boy's monologue and Juliet's balcony monologue was the girl's. I auditioned but was not cast as Juliet or Thisbe or even the wall. Jerry was cast as Pyramis and was hilarious and he got permission from Mrs. Sable for me to ride on the bus to the competition. There were tons of kids from all over the city and lots of drama teachers and the attenuate theatrical elocution. There were pretty theater girls and handsome, chiseled theater boys. Jerry and I felt like we were from another planet but at least he got to perform and I did take vicarious pleasure in seeing how good he was. Jerry was wearing a blue velvet cape and Mrs. Sable cautioned him about the strict no costumes policy and he ignored her and tied the garment into something resembling a toga over his white turtleneck. Apparently this affectation was ignored and the group came in third although I heard some muttering that they would have won gold if not for stupid Jerry and his stupid cape.

I received a pity D+ on the gym bag and I think Miss Montgomery suspected that I was the one who screwed up the bobbin winding on one of the dozen classroom sewing machines and walked away leaving the thing inoperable with big hanks of tangled threads. I chose a cute pattern for a jumper and my dad took me to a fabric store near his office which had a much better selection than Quigley's. I found a navy blue worsted fabric with a faint gray pinstripe running through it that I fell in love with.

It took a few packs of Starburst but while still maintaining a superior attitude, Helen helped me line up the fabric so I didn't cut it against the grain and got the sewing machine set up for me. Miss Montgomery noticed my burgeoning dependence on Helen and told her to let me fend for myself so I spent a lot of time mastering the seam ripper. I could barely sew a seam on a sewing machine, even if it was all threaded for me and Miss Montgomery was already teaching the other girls about darts.

I was humiliated to be nearly flunking out on an elective and because my mom wasn't working and with my dad was grousing about money, having recently gotten my sister caught up on rent and car insurance, the thought of being able to make my own clothes was attractive. It seemed though that I couldn't do anything right. My mom told me that her friend Susie who lived in an unheated rickety cottage on a Studio City hillside was an expert seamstress.

I loved Susie and was happy to have my dad drop me there on Saturday. Susie and husband Arnie were well lubricated when I arrived and it took Susie quite a while to thread her ancient sewing machine. I told them that I'd auditioned to play Juliet and Susie got out an old Complete Shakespeare and prompted me a bit as I performed the monologue I'd unsuccessfully auditioned with. They applauded wildly and kept proposing toasts to my brilliance and beauty and several fifths of vodka later Susie embarked on my jumper. She had it done in nothing flat and to me it looked beautiful. Miss Montgomery examined the garment in disbelief on Monday and said, “These darts are lousy,” and gave me a C- on the jumper. I loved it anyway and wore it frequently even though one arm hole was substantially larger than the other.

My mother wasn't having good luck in the job market. She'd started two different shorthand classes—Gregg and Stenoscript at Valley College but had dropped out of both and she never scored well on dictation tests. She did over the years however fill a number of purloined stenopads with diaries written in shorthand which I found when I was clearing out her home many years later. I wonder if there's anyone still alive who could possibly read them. Sumner had been generally cranky for months but he took some pity on my mom and got her a new outfit, a beautiful long skirt and matching blouse made of a natural colored gray rayon knit with green stripes, from the little La Coquette store down the street and took her to a fancy Bonds for Israel banquet at The Beverly Hilton.

Mom met Jack Warner at this event and he asked her on a date. The next morning she was at Dutton's books when it opened to pick up a copy of Warner's autobiography My Hundred Years in Hollywood which she read in a single sitting before she took off for an emergency session with Mr. Al Lepré at Miss Carney's Salon. Warner was one of last of the big Hollywood moguls and about as widely reviled as any of them. He was married, and Anne his second wife overlooked his extracurricular activities and is said to have had an affair with Eddie Albert herself. Jack Warner cheated his own brothers out of huge profits and had such a feud with his brother Harry that he boycotted his funeral, although he did brag about the condolence letter he received from President Eisenhower.

Jack's son Jack Junior, by his first marriage was in charge of TV production. While Warner was a huge contributor to Wilshire Blvd. Temple, Bonds for Israel and other Jewish causes it is notable that in Jewish custom an offspring is named to honor a dead relative and never named after a living person, particularly a parent, Warner was in a serious car accident in Cannes and in a coma and seemed unlikely to survive, Jack Junior made a bedside remark that offended his father's second wife Ann. When Jack came out of the coma he immediately had Jack Junior fired and never spoke to him again, leaving him $200,000 in his will, presumably only to prevent him from contesting it.

Warners started making anti-Nazi films well before the war after a Jewish representative of the studio was brutally murdered by a mob in Berlin in 1936. Warner was accused then of provoking, what at the time was, a friendly country. Jack Warner supported The New Deal and even produced Mission to Moscow at Roosevelt's behest to ameliorate fears about the WWII alliance of the U.S with the USSR. This came back to bite Warner when he was called before the House Committee on Un-American activities after the war. Warner felt the studio's survival was in jeopardy and the Hollywood powers agreed that it was essential that there be a clear delineation between Jews and Communists. Warner personally provided the names of Alvah Bessie, Howard Koch, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Robert Rossen, Dalton Trumbo, Clifford Odets, and Irwin Shaw to the committee. Many were fellow landsmen and for many Warner's denunciation effectively ended their careers.

Warner picked up my mother in a big Lincoln and took her to a Senor Pico in Century City. There was a boutique in the restaurant and Jack bought Mom a long embroidered dress and a beautiful hand embroidered muslin blouse for me. The next day, a sewing machine arrived which she should have taken as a sign that ensconcing her in a life of luxury was not on his agenda.

My mother hadn't used a sewing machine since high school. Susie came and looked at it and said it was way too modern for her to figure out. My mom said to take the brochure to school and show Miss Montgomery the sewing teacher and ask if she would stop by and show us how to operate the beast. Miss Montgomery was all in a tizzy about seam binding but I showed Helen the brochure and she asked me about ten times if I were telling the truth about having the brand new top of the line Singer portable in my personal custody. I said she was welcome to come see it. She was waiting for me when the final bell rang. My mom was on a job interview which was just as well because I didn't expect that she and Helen would have much chemistry. I offered Helen a snack but she only wanted to get her hands on that Singer.

Helen got the new sewing machine operating in nothing flat and showed me how easily the automatic bobbin winder worked and how simple the thing was to thread. She switched in a special needle and made perfect button holes. She watched me sew a couple of practice seams and said I was fine and she had to get home or she'd get in trouble and that I was incredibly lucky to have such a fine machine. She said she'd help me more tomorrow if she could use the machine herself to finish a halter top. These blouses, made from either blue or red western bandanas, were absolutely verboten at Millikan Junior High and Miss Montgomery dealt harshly with a couple of girls she caught illicitly sewing them on the school machines.

The sewing machine was much easier to use than the models they had at school and I was able quickly to adjust a crooked shoulder seam on the pinstripe jumper I'd made. I couldn't quite get it even and I replaced one shoulder seam and then the other, never realizing that with each alteration the jumper got shorter. A group of ninth grade boys smirked at me and one said that there were a lot of girls he'd like to see in dresses that short but that I wasn't one of them.

Helen came over to finish her halter top the next day. She promised to show me how to wind the bobbin again but my mom got home and saw Helen at the machine and hit the ceiling. “Next you'll be letting your little friends drive my car!” she screamed as she slammed the door behind Helen. I tried to protest that she'd wanted someone to help with the machine but she shook her head in disgust with me and said she thought I had enough sense to know she'd meant an adult.

Millikan ended up winning the most awards of any junior high in the Shakespeare Festival and Mrs. Sable was asked to put on a Shakespeare Presentation for the whole school. The festival material was one ten minute scene and two monologues, a short program that would only draw a scant audience of the few performer's families. Mrs. Sable decided to flesh out the program a little. Jerry campaigned ceaselessly to portray Hamlet and Mrs. Sable relented. He helped me with a Lady Macbeth monologue and while Jerry said I was very good, Mrs. Sable thought otherwise although she chose a handful of untalented students who had “e”s in cooperation and work habits to present a number of sonnets. I was selected to perform Number 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day).

The sonnet boys were to wear black turtlenecks and black slacks but the girls were told to wear long dresses and it was OK if they were sort of renaissance-y. My mom still wasn't working and every Saturday when my dad picked me up I had a list of things my mother demanded that he buy me so a new dress was out of the question. One of the girls mom's made her a dress and she gave me the pattern and it was cute. It had an elasticized waist and neckline and puffed sleeves. I got up the nerve to not only ask my dad for the fabric and elastic but also to give up a weeknight at home with his wife to come see me read the sonnet. He bought me several yards of un-dyed rough muslin and said he'd make the show.

I laid the fabric out on the dining room table and managed to cut it out so that it looked pretty good. The pattern instructions were way more complicated than the gym bag or jumper because of the casings for the elastic and I got flustered. I tried to sew the facing on the neckline and sewed over my finger. I made a couple holes in the fabric ripping out the stitches and then the bobbin thread ran out and I had forgotten how Helen had shown me to fill it and it got jammed in the little compartment under the needle. I asked Helen the next day at school if she'd come help me but she said that unless I could produce my mother's death certificate, she had no interest.

The next day I brought the dress to school in a bag and showed Miss Montgomery. She said it was a big mess, beyond salvage, and that I should never have taken on such an advanced project. She suggested I try to borrow a dress and asked the girls in class if anyone had anything. “Not in her size,” yelled Helen and the girls snickered and I started to cry. The cooking classroom was separated from the sewing room by a tiny office and Miss Montgomery sent me there to pull myself together. Miss Worthington, the cooking teacher would often sneak in for a cigarette after she'd gotten the girls in their aprons and busy at the stove. She found me there disconsolate and was fine just letting me sit there while she smoked. She said I could stay as long as I wanted and even have my lunch there.

The bell rang and both Miss Montgomery and Miss Worthington came into the little office. Miss Worthington brought in some egg salad and lemonade. They both took their shoes off and put on Peds to pad around in. They smoked and Miss Worthington said she was having a lousy period and Miss Montgomery gave her some Midol and I felt just like one of the girls. Miss Worthington asked if I could make another batch of matzoh balls for her boyfriend because the ones she'd tried came out real rubbery. Miss Montgomery perked up at the mention of matzoh balls. She'd been raised in Savannah but there was a Jewish family that had been there for years next door and she loved the chicken soup they served. I rode my bike over to Jack's Fish and Poultry after school and my sister seemed happy to see me and gave me two big jars of schmaltz and a ton of parsley. I gave her an invitation to the Shakespeare program but she said it probably wouldn't be a good idea if my mom was going to be there.

I smuggled some matzoh meal and club soda from home and dropped the schmaltz and parsley in Miss Worthington's fridge before homeroom. When I got to sewing class Miss Montgomery told me to just go next door to Miss Worthington's. She got all the girls working on buttermilk biscuits but had a kitchen free for me to make matzoh balls. I made two dozen each for Miss Worthington and Miss Montgomery and admonished them to boil them separately in boiling water because they'd disintegrate if left too long in soup. Miss Montgomery told me to come by after school to finish a sewing project and I was miffed that she was making me stay after school after I'd made her all those matzoh balls.

I arrived and Worthington and Montgomery were smoking and scooting around in their Peds. Ms. Montgomery said she'd sent Helen to the vice principal's office because she caught her sewing a halter top and Miss Worthington said that Helen was a witch with a capital “B.” There was a green velvet gown on a dressmaker form which Ms. Montgomery removed and handed to me. “Go try this on so I can fit and hem it,” she'd said. She'd cut up an old drape to my pattern but instead of the elastic neckline and waist she'd added an embroidered collar cut from a vintage handkerchief and belted the waist.

Jerry said the dress was great and he made me practice my sonnet with him a million times and even got out the annotated Folger Library Shakespeare so we could figure out that it meant that being loved could confer immortality. Everyone was in a major agitation backstage. Jerry had importuned his mother to take him to Western Costume and was decked out in velvet pantaloons. He had his own makeup kit and while he applied his own Max Factor pancake with a heavy hand he just used a little powder on me and did my eyes and lips real well. The Floriculture class that I'd been so eager to ditch made all the girls wreaths with leaves and flowers with bright colored ribbons coming down like they sold at the Renaissance Faire. They made one for Mrs. Sable too and it looked a little odd with her leopard print caftan.

Mrs. Sable took the mike although she pro-jected pretty fine without it and yammered on a bit and then there were two flat renditions of sonnets. The Pyramis and Thisbe scene was well received and then there were two additional, inaudible sonnets. Juliet's monologue killed and the reciter of the next sonnet looked at her feet and the boy that followed her stood slumped with this fists in his pockets. Jerry made a grand entrance. He'd been unable to come up with a skull so he made do with plaster molds the orthodontist had made of his teeth. His Hamlet was fierce and agonized and the crowd was stunned and silent for a moment at the end before bursting into applause.

From the wings I could see my mom and dad uneasily sitting together and my sister, all by herself in the last row. Sonnet number 138 (When my love swears she was made of truth) was performed by a tiny boy with a crew cut who aced it until his voice cracked with the last line (And in our faults by lies we'd flattered be) and the audience cracked up. I took the stage with my wreath and velvet dress and made eye contact with someone in the second row like Jerry told me. I tried to really think about love and immortality while I was reciting and I could make out both of my parents and then my sister way in the back, smiling.

I took my bow and both Mrs. Sable and Jerry hugged me when I stepped off stage. My mom and dad met me at the door of the auditorium. Sheri ran over quick and kissed me and said I was great and ran off. My mother watched her go and sighed, “She still stinks like fish.” “At least she has a job,” noted my dad.