Breasts,Asphalt,Kickball and Stilettos Don't Mix

I really don’t know what was going through the heads of the people who designed the playgrounds for the Los Angeles School District.  Bottlebrush does not constitute a shade tree.  Asphalt does not welcome a falling knee.  Drinking fountains should not be inaccessible

Ivanhoe Elementary had playgrounds that were divided by age.  The little kids had the upper yard and the big ones, the lower playground.  The lower field was dominated by two large handball structures.  Adjacent, were the rings.  It was here that I had my front tooth chipped by a girl named Hannah.  Rather large, she swung into me as I was shimmying up a pole and slammed my mouth into the pole.  She didn’t even get in trouble!

The rings and the monkey bars took effort and the slow build-up of calluses. I can’t tell you how many days I came home to Angus Street with blistered palms—desperately waiting for them to heal and toughen so I could excel on the bars.  The boys were the best at this, and the strongest.  Girls also had the disadvantage of showing their underwear when upside down.

One blistering day, the kind where the asphalt shimmered in the heat, a new teacher was on recess duty.  She walked over to the monkey bars and watched. Within minutes her stiletto heels sunk into the asphalt. When she finally extricated herself, there was a permanent rut. 

The games we played were sometimes cruel.  Dodge ball is not a kind game, no matter how you try to explain it. Picking teams could be ego shattering.  Kick ball is just like baseball, but with a large inflated red rubber ball and no bats. It left your hands covered in a layer of patterned dirt. It was my favorite game until a new girl joined our sixth grade class.  Jeanette was the Dolly Parton of Ivanhoe.  The boys looked at her in a way that was new to me.  I felt sorry for her.  When she ran the bases her breasts flip-flopped and heaved through her sweaters and the boys made fun of her. I was not looking forward to puberty.

Occasionally we weren’t allowed out for recess at all because the air quality was so poor.  These were smog days.  My lungs hurt when I breathed deeply and we were left to play games like Simon Says and something else that involved the phrase “heads down, thumbs up” while sitting at our desks. 

After school, the playground became a different place altogether.  A young college student would man the “ball box”, wear a whistle and be idolized.  The kids who stayed after school learned how to make lanyards from colorful plastic, weave potholders from elastic cotton bands and design pictures made out of kidney beans and lentils.

Ten years after ‘graduating” from Ivanhoe, I became the college student with the key to the ball box.

Ice, The Big Apple Motel and Aku Aku

My favorite thing in the world, besides Christmas, was our family vacations.  My father was the west coast salesman for his company and every summer we would make our way from Silver Lake up to Seattle where we would spend time with my mother's best friend and her three sons.

We usually left as soon as school got out.  The night before our departure my father would disappear into the garage and load the musty smelling four-person tent, the Coleman stove, pots and pans, food and our suitcases into the back of the Chevrolet station wagon. He took great care stowing everything so it was nice and flat.  Then he covered it with two soft layers of flannel sleeping bags.  The nest was where my sister and I would stretch out and sleep. This was also before seatbelts.

Because my mother could not tolerate heat, and our first day's drive inevitably took us through Bakersfield and the Central Valley, we left well before sun up.  My sister and I crawled into the "nest" and fell back to sleep listening to the muted tones of our parents' conversation and quiet sounds of the night highway.

One year, a particularly hot one, we could not avoid the Bakersfield heat.  My father pulled into a gas station and disappeared for a moment.  When he returned, he was carrying a huge block of ice.  He set it on the floor in front of my mother, opened the air vent and declared that we had "air conditioning."

These trips were a working vacation for my father.  My mother kept a careful log of all mileage and expenditures.  Some nights the four of us would share a room in roadside motels with names like The Big Apple or The Blue Lantern. These places were not the sort to have miniature "amenities" in the bathroom. One tiny bar of soap was all that was on offer.  I was in Heaven when our night's stop included an overly chlorinated swimming pool. 

 Breakfasts would be in coffee shops that served little boxes of cold cereal that you could pour the milk right into.  Lunches were often picnics in public parks where we'd play while my father made his business "calls." 

My father always enjoyed educating us through the real world. We toured the Tillamook cheese factory, the Birdseye pea plant, and numerous national parks and museums.  When my mother wanted to nap, I would crawl over the seat, be handed the map and become the navigator.

To make the driving time pass more easily my mother would read to all of us.  "Born Free" and "Living Free” were my favorites.  My father loved "Kon Tiki" and "Aku Aku”--- maybe because as he piloted the Chevy through the roads and highways of the West he felt an affinity with Thor Heyerdahl.

I remember fewer restaurants than I should but there were about four that made a lasting impression.

At the top of the list is The Tam O’Shanter. Little did I know during Sunday post church visits that one day I would live in Scotland, read the works of Robert Burns and marry a Scotsman who would return to the Tam with his own tartan to be added to the wall that collected them. The Tam provided all Silverlake-ites with a touch of the real thing. Disney must have had a thing for Scotland because Grey Friar’s Bobby was also a highlight of my childhood—and of the years that I lived in Edinburgh.

As my parents’ finances eased a bit, they took to going to brunch at The Tam O’Shanter—designed by Disney people and still an icon. My favorite dish was the cold slaw with peanuts—which is still on the menu today and still in my cooking repertoire—albeit not with all the Lawry’s seasoning stuff. Going to the Tam O’Shanter was like entering a completely different world. I visit it every time I return to Los Angeles—even if I’ve just come from the real thing.

Second on the list of restaurants was Conrad’s. Today it is called Astro’s –with good cause. It had a space-aged sign and shape and was, basically, a coffee shop out of the Jetson’s. Once my mother went back to work, dinners were harder to pull together. And, on the evenings when we went to Conrad’s, she could relax. Many years later she told me what a joy it was to be able to afford to go out.

Conrad’s had a long Formica counter that bordered the kitchen, friendly waitresses with name tags and a menu that appealed to all the family. My favorite dish was The Captain’s Plate—deep fried scallops and shrimp and fries. There was probably some fish in there as well. I thought Tartar sauce was a food group.

Conrad’s was where I was tutored in the Americana of salad dressing choices: blue cheese (my preference) Italian, Green Goddess, Thousand Island (when did you hear that on an modern restaurant selection) and that sweet red Russian dressing that has also faded from menus—and not without cause. Balsamic vinegar apparently didn’t exist.

The third restaurant of memory was Blum’s. It was on the top floor of I.Magnin’s on Wilshire Boulevard and it was strictly a ladies place. This was often where we would meet my grandmother. It was pink and black and had padded booths that went around the semi circle of the restaurant. The food I have no memory of, but the desserts are another matter. I am not one to covet sweets. I can say “no” to chocolate without effort. But the Blum’s Crunch Cakes were a different matter. They came in two flavors: lemon and coffee. Coffee was by far the best. I would eat a big slice with iced coffee (feeling that iced coffee was far more sophisticated than iced tea.) I still think of that cake. I found a recipe for it on the internet and some day I will attempt to re-create those ladies’ lunches at Blum's.

Van De Kamp’s was both a drive in and a sit in restaurant. This was as close to Holland as I ever got until I was in my late twenties. The colors were blue and white and the food had absolutely nothing to do with the Netherlands. My two favorite dishes were the overly battered fish and chips (with tartar sauce) and the cheese enchiladas. After a dinner here, my father often drove to the car to a neighboring Foster Freeze where we would watch in wonderment as the vanilla cones were dipped into the hot, paraffin-like chocolate coating.

No one had ever heard about cholesterol in those days.

Dinner Redux

Once we got a television, it didn’t take long for my family to acquire the de rigueur TV trays. My sister and I were in heaven when we could spread open the hollow metal poles, place the black patterned tray—much prone to rust—into the recess and await a formerly frozen meal. The irony of this now is almost too much to bear. I believe my mother rationed these evenings carefully because they didn’t fit with her vision of what a mother should do.

The thrill of my parents’ social life was transfered to us in the form of Swanson Chicken Pot Pies or the full-blown Swanson “dinner.”

As I remember it, the dessert was always a mushy form of apple crisp. The vegetable was always diced carrots and peas and the main part was usually a drumstick surrounded by never enough mashed potatoes. I preferred the potpies with the buttery crust which was probably pure lard. But that was until something happened.

One night, happily ensconced in front of the TV and the TV trays with our babysitter Janice Hing, a Swanson Chicken Pie in front, I bit into what still remains-almost- the worst thing to venture into my gullet. It was a bumpy slab of chicken skin covered in the thin sauce of the pie. When I pulled it out of my mouth, I could feel each bump. From that day forward, I insisted that my mother buy me the Swanson Beef Pie.

I have written of our Sunday dinners, but my favorite meal of the week was Sunday night. My sister and I would bathe and dress in our Lenz flannel nightgowns, make our packed lunch—wrapping carefully in the wax paper. Then my family would adjourn to the living room and watch a series of programs that for me meant joy, adventure and love.

With a bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup in front of us—placed carefully on the TV tray—we first watched Lassie. Then came Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. And, as we grew a bit older and could stay up later, Bonanza. Occasionally Rawhide would slip into the mix.

I think I loved those Sunday nights more than any huge meal my mother made. It was cozy and comfortable and we all cuddled on the overly nubbly fabric of the couch. To make the Sunday night exquisite would be a long distant phone call from my mother’s best friend in Seattle.

Dinners

Food was a big deal in my family.  We always had “sit down” family dinners.

On Sunday we would go to church because we had to.  My grandfather was the minister. My cheeks would be pinched by childless old ladies wearing stoles made from dead animals, who, most probably, had unrequited crushes on my grandfather. I would sing songs about people in faraway lands that had words like “bosom” in them.  On the drive along Franklin Avenue to the Hollywood church, there would occasionally be a man selling fresh lilacs at the corner of  Hillhurst. My father would stop the car and buy a small bouquet for my mother to pin to her jacket.

And afterwards, once home and back into comfortable clothes, we would have a big dinner. It never crossed my mind how much work this must have been for my mother. There would be pot roast with carrots and onions, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, roast lamb covered with crispy strips of bacon, pork chops with applesauce or those red colored cinnamon infused apples cut into slices and green beans with bacon made in a pressure cooker that always frightened me.

We also had liver and zucchini.  These I did not like.  I developed the skill of shifting the limp sections of squash around the plate, into my lap and into a recession under the table.  When my parents finally bought a new dining room table and the old on was being carted out, petrified zucchini rained down onto the carpet.

As we ate during the midweek repasts, we learned that if we asked a question my parents did not know the answer to, my father would leap up and go to the newly purchased set of World Books. We also learned to never ask for salt on our food.  “I have seasoned it in the kitchen.”

My two favorite meals were spaghetti and chili.  The spaghetti was made from a Lawry’s powdered packet mixed with tomato sauce.  The chili was very much the same, and only made if my father was doing the cooking. These dishes were deemed “fattening” and we rarely had them.

As the 50’s became the 60’s, my mother’s cooking changed and expanded. Chafing dishes and beef Stroganoff replaced the fried chicken, aided by the invention of Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken.  My mother practically beatified him. We were introduced to cream cheese and words like “frappe”. Shish kebabs, bulgur wheat, red snapper, ratatouille, Armenian “pizzas” and freshly made string cheese were added to the mix. We were taken to Niesi-town in downtown Los Angles to try tempura and to Chinatown to sample hom boa. Because my mother’s brother had traveled to India, we now were eating prawn curry, albeit very mild and very unauthentic. Chopped hard-boiled eggs, sliced green onions and peanuts were the condiments, along with Major Grey chutney, which seemed quite exotic. And salads now contained mandarin orange slices from a can.  Surely, there were still Tater-Tots and Sarah Lee in the freezer, but things were a changing.

My parents enjoyed entertaining.  At a dinner party, my mother produced one of the most captivating dishes I had ever seen.  She hollowed out the core of a purple cabbage and put “canned heat” into the center. She skewered “Little Smokies” onto bamboo sticks, lit the flame (which perfectly matched the color of the cabbage), and each guest got to cook their own sausages.  Another food introduction during this time was “rumaki.”  My parents would spend the afternoon stuffing dates with water chestnuts and wrapping them carefully in bacon secured with a toothpick, where they would await the grill pan. 

But during the week, there was the new thrill of Chung King dried noodles in a can.