Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Ring


 My grandfather was a Christian minister.  In the early years of the last century he went to China as a missionary, leaving his wife behind in Seattle.   Having just returned from a week in Beijing, I can’t begin to imagine what a culture shock that was for a young man originally from Nebraska. Named after a former president—and a good one—Cleveland bought a small piece of jade and two pearls.  I’m not quite sure whether or not the actual ring was made in China or the United States, but I think it is the latter. The jade and pearls became a ring for my grandmother. They formed a gift for his much loved wife who would die in 1929, leaving a twelve year old daughter and nineteen year old son.  They were wrapped in gold and a tiny gold flower—a cherry blossom-- sat next to the jade.

After her mother’s death, the ring passed to my mother.  I don’t recall ever seeing her without the jade ring. My mother wore the ring daily and took it off daily.  She had little dishes by her sinks to hold the ring while she washed dishes and pots and pans.

My mother was not a big jewelry person.  She had a few special and meaningful pieces.  One was the jade ring and one was her wedding ring.  The wedding ring was a re-mixed creation of the stones from her first marriage and her second.  Her first marriage ended when her husband, stationed in Long Beach during World War Two, died suddenly of polio. In the late 1960’s my mother combined the sapphires and diamonds of both her engagement rings into one ring.

When my mother was in her 80’s she decided to “put her house in order.”  She wanted to ensure that her things went where she wanted them to go.  One day my sister and I were presented with two small boxes.  She said, “I hope I’ve made the right choice.”

I took a deep breath and hoped that she had as well. I had always felt that the rings were a little too much for my taste.  But, I had always loved the tiny cherry blossom on the jade ring and history that the ring represented.

Mom made the right choice.  I was given the jade ring.

Last week I was packing for a trip to Beijing and for some reason I felt compelled to put on the jade ring.  I don’t wear it often.  I thought it would nice to return the ring to its origin.  So I put on the ring and wore it through the many time zones and airports to China. 

The ring did not go un-noticed. Sitting at one of the large, round dinner tables on the campus of Peking University, someone asked about my ring. I was proud to tell them the story. The jade and pearls had returned home.

I tend to be rather cavalier about jewelry and figure if I’m wearing it, it better stay the course. I don’t feel that about the jade ring.  I take it off when I shower or wash dishes.  The former is much more frequent than the latter.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Catalogs



When I was a child we would, occasionally, get a thick catalog from Sears and Roebuck.  They had a competitor named Montgomery Ward.  My dad always referred to the two of them as Sears and Sawbuck and Monkey Ward.  When he was growing up in the rural areas of southeast Arizona, these catalogs were his only view to the outside world. Sometimes their pages were turned into toilet paper.  Today we’d call it recycling.

For a while J.C. Penny entered the catalog fray. Hickory Farms joined in and then Harry and David, who sold pears and fruit,.  Despite this, catalog purchases waned during the 60’s and 70’s.  Monkey Ward went out of business and Roebuck disappeared. 

When it came, I would purloin the Sears catalog and head straight to my room.  I knew I was safe because my mother thought Sears was “cheap” and she would never be looking for the catalog.  The first place I turned was the toy section. Today a Toys R Us catalog contains a plethora of electronic, digital and video toys.  There are life-like battery operated cars and SUVs that rich kids drive around their yards, and video games killing cops and contributing to childhood obesity.

In the catalogs I read were pictures of blonde girls with pageboy hair styles –always wearing pink clothing-- and Brylcreemed boys wearing plaid or striped shirts who consistently played with some form of sports equipment.  In my day, sitting on my white chenille bedspread—or sometimes on the toilet—I would peruse the pages and dream of what it would be like to have my own miniature oven that would make cupcakes or a bike that had a headlight. Or better yet, a cowboy outfit. I had the good sense to know that I would never be, nor look like, those pink, blonde girls. 

Those catalogs—which came only once a year—unlike the deluge today—offered a glimpse at the possibilities of childhoods that would never be mine.  Believe me, I wasn’t complaining. But cupcakes in your own bedroom…. well that's something to covet. 

Then, sometime in the late 1960’s, we no longer got the Sears catalog.  Just like we no longer got mail delivered twice a day during the Christmas season.  Catalogs became a thing of the past.

Catalogs began their revival in the 1980’s, and remain one of my favorite things to get in the mail. One of the most memorable catalogs was the  J. Peterman—parodied on Seinfeld.  Through its descriptions and hand drawn illustrations, you could image yourself in the Australian bush or a Moroccan Kasbah. They sold a dream as well as overpriced clothing and leather messenger bags.

I know that my mother latterly saw catalogs as a shopping blessing.  With two daughters on either side of the nation, a catalog provided an easy, effective way to “take care of Christmas.”

As well as my elderly mother’s gifts for me, my sister and the grandchildren, I have received a blanket lovingly sent from my hundred-year-old Sunday school teacher, baklava from my childhood best friend and other gifts that only a catalog could provide.

When my mother passed away and my sister and I went go through her mail, catalogs were in abundance.

But I fear for them.  The Internet is the catalog enemy.  So are the environmentalists.  Between the un-p.c.-ness of using too much paper and the convenience of shopping online, I predict the demise of my old friends.  I will miss them when they go as much as  I welcome them when they come. 

Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Fireplace

The center of any home is either the kitchen or the fireplace or both.  I now live in Hawaii and fireplaces weren’t high on the list of architechtects, contractors and builders.  I think they are now, though.  Because a fireplace brings gravitas to a home. Even if it’s 84 degrees, having a living room with a fireplace makes a home seem more substantial.

So at Angus Street, we loved our fireplace.  We didn’t have one of those huge kitchens with eat-in counters of granite and bar stools.  The kitchen was the kitchen.  That was it. But we had a fireplace.  It wasn’t an ornate Adams; it was made of simple brick tile.

I remember when I learned that the fireplace could be turned on without wood. Gas would do the trick.  There was a small key on the left side of the grate and if turned and lit with a match “(close lid before striking”), flames would appear.

I was very careful when I lit a match and turned it on.  My dad would trim our fruit trees—plum, apricot, white peach—which met its demise when my dad built us a life-sized playhouse—and, who knows, maybe even the grapefruit tree contributed to our fires.  In the “winter” (this was Los Angeles) we enjoyed wood fires.  My mother taught us how to put orange peels into the flames and watch the oil from the skins turn into blue lights. It was, by far, my favorite thing to watch, Hey—and this was even when we had a TV.

Of course, a mantle and fireplace are a big deal at Christmas.  Our German advent calendar with sparkling glitter sat on the mantle and became the focus of our pre-Christmas mornings.  Closer to the 24t th of December, our stockings would appear.

My own son, raised in Hawaii, has never celebrated a Christmas with a mantle-hung stocking.  He had to do with cabinet knobs and door handles.  But, in a few years, he will have his mantle-- when we move.

My very favorite days were when it rained.  It rained heavily on one of my birthdays when I was at Ivanhoe Elementary School and I felt like my birthday wish was fulfilled.
When I was older, and we had a rainy day, I would come home, put on the fireplace—using the gas, not wood-- and head to the kitchen.  It was cinnamon toast time.  My mother, home from the Burbank School District, my sister and I would sit on the floor around a rather odd coffee table that fronted the fireplace and eat cinnamon toast cut into strips. 

I miss a fireplace and I am so sorry that my son doesn’t have any fireplace memories.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Unrequited Toy




I watched a lot of Westerns.  Roy, Rex, Rowdie, Gil Favor, Sky King, Tonto, John Wayne, Little Joe and on and on. I loved them all.   Once I saw one of them—not one of the above mentioned—sunbathing on my mom’s beach.  Leathery but in shape and obviously waiting for his agent’s call.  It wasn’t going to happen.

Sometimes, when these shows were shown at kid viewing time, i.e. Saturdays, there would be commercials that crept into our vulnerable brains.  Tony the Tiger, Bosco, Nestlé’s Quik, Malto-Meal and Ovaltine.

My favorite ad for something that I really, really wanted was from Mattel.  They made a tooled Western belt with a buckle.  The buckle featured a small derringer; the same gun that killed Abraham Lincoln.  The gun was “real”—in that it could fire a small plastic bullet and maybe a cap.  I’m not sure, because I never got one.

The deal was that a kid could load his gun—note that I’m not saying “her” because I was supposed to be wanting Barbie accessories—walk around confidently and then thrust out his stomach muscles to trigger the derringer which would swing out and “fire.”   I had never seen anything cooler in my entire life:  baring Dick Tracy’s watch.

I wanted one.  I never got one.   They are on EBAY.  The prices are going up and the belt wouldn’t fit me.  I do think I could fit the buckle. 

Sunday, October 3, 2010

The New Room


Why, where or exactly when, I do not know.  But at some point my parents decided to expand our Angus Street house.  I have pretty much no memory of the porch which was over the garage. I do remember the construction to enclose it into a room and excitement that followed.

Thus was born “the new room.”   A decade later, the space was still called “the new room.”  I’m certain that the people who now live there and paid a heck of a lot more than the $10,000 my mother paid using her widow’s insurance from the death of her first husband, would not be calling that space the “new room.”  Everything about that house is now old. But for my family, it was always the “new room.”

Whether my dad had building permits, which I highly doubt, don’t know.  But what I remember was the new beams and sitting astride them.  Our neighbors, Cece and Bernice, didn’t think it was safe.  But they also didn’t think my dad should be feeding us those yellow hot chilies in a jar.  Neither had lasting a lasting negative impact.

Once the porch was enclosed into a room, the floor was laid.  Cork.  Then my dad built bookshelves and electrical outlets.  On one side of the room the shelves housed the World Book Encyclopedia and all the National Geographics that we’d ever received.  On the other side of the opening, were all of my parents’ record albums.  Pattie Page, Leonard Bernstein, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Smetana, Ferde Grove, Harry Belafonte and more. There was also an album by a woman who specialized in singing off key for humor’s sake.  I was told that this was something that was quite difficult.

 These were the days of Sing Along with Mitch.  Folk music was about to hit its acme.
My father had each album ordered and labeled. This is also where my parents’ guitars and banjo were stored.

Then my parents bought an L-shaped couch.  I guess it was pretty modern for the time.  It had some odd plastic cover that always felt cold. White with colored piping.  The backrest came off, making the seat into a bed.  On the opposite side of the room was a business-like desk and chair. 

To separate the living room from the “new room” my parents put up a sliding, accordion door that we rarely used.  The only time I can remember using it was when a young man came to door.  I had worked with him and we’d gone out on one date.  Smitten, I was not.  He arrived unannounced and upon seeing him coming up the stairs to the front door, I solicited my sister.  Her job was to answer the door and say I wasn’t home.  My job was to escape quickly to the “new room," shut the accordion door and hide.  Unfortunately, he decided to wait a while for me to “come home.”  I was inches away from him and was worried that he could see my feet under the door.  Needless to say, we never went out again.

Many years later, a boyfriend came to stay during the holidays.  My mother didn’t like him—and in the long run neither did I.  But he was put on the cold, white plastic couch.  The only good thing my mother could find to say about him was that he made his bed and returned the backrest to the couch.

I have learned that making the bed is not all that important. 







Monday, September 27, 2010

On Being Kinda Scottish



I was a pretty naïve kid.  Leave it to Beaver was right up my alley. My favorite episode was the one where he climbs into the giant, “steaming”  cup of coffee on a billboard. The most frightening program I ever watched was an episode of Wagon Train.  The crusty cook was buried alive and the shot of his hand clawing through the rocks and rubble of his grave scared me for months. 

So it was that I was not as literate as I might have been.  The fact that I grew up in a neighborhood laden with Scottish names and references went right over my head. The main thoroughfares of youth were Hyperion and Rowena.  I lived on Angus Street and went to Ivanhoe Elementary.  I just decided these were rather odd names and gave them no further thought.  I was too busy practicing the flute, watching Lon Chaney Jr. slog through fake fog as the Wolfman and wondering why Jane bothered to wear a dress in the jungle while she was with Tarzan.

Then one day my family went on a trip.  Where we were going, I don’t know.  But on the way we stopped in Carmel, California.  I vividly remember a street sloping towards the sea that had interesting shops on either side.  One of those stores specialized in things Scottish.  Without realizing it, I was hooked.

Why I was attracted to the shop, I have no idea, nor do I know why I was fascinated by a broach that I can still picture.  It was the claw of a bird—a real one--, a purple stone encased in silver and a feather.  Pretty disgusting.  But I wanted it.  I think I was 10 or 11.

Whodathunkit that many years later I would live in Scotland and walk regularly past Sir Walter Scott’s house on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.  And whodathunkit that I would fall in love with a Scotsman who knew that Hyperion and Rowena and Ivanhoe were not just odd names in Silverlake.

The next step was the tartan.  I couldn’t be involved with someone who had one of those orange and yellow plaids that look like the floor of a pub after the last call.   My man had a great one.  It is green and navy, a thin stripe of red and another of yellow. Very close to Hunting Stuart.

The coup de gras came when marriage was on the horizon.  I could “keep my name” as was the fashion or I could “take my husband’s name.”  He didn’t care.  But I did.

My “maiden” name was hellacious for anyone with a lisp.  You try it:  Kristie Smithson.  See.

The chance to have a “Mc” name was too hard to resist. No disrespect to my parents, but my new name just sounds better.


Sunday, September 26, 2010

Tiny Dancer


My mother’s mother died when she was twelve.  Even a long train trip from Seattle to the Mayo Clinic, halfway across the country, did not result in finding a cure for my elegant grandmother. 

Back in Seattle, her grandmother told my mother that the frail woman she loved had passed away in an upstairs bedroom.  The year was 1929; an all around horrible year for the entire country, not just my mother.

Her father, my grandfather, chose to lose himself in his work as the minister of the new church in the university district.  My mother’s brother, seven years older, dealt with the death in a way that was of no help to a twelve year old.  Philipino houseboys were hired to take care of the house, and the grandmother and her elderly friends tended to my mother. 

Fast forward to 1960 in Los Angeles, California.  My mother was now raising two daughters, and doing so without the benefit of maternal advice and care.  As a result, my mother opted to become Super mom.

Thus it was that I, being the eldest, was presented with a variety of mostly unwanted lessons.   Swimming lessons were fine.  I loved them and I am a damned good swimmer. But every other lesson given with the intention of making me into a well-rounded and successful woman went down the proverbial drain.  Ballet was an utter bust. “ First position, second…” To be honest, my only memory of those ballet lessons taught by the side of Echo Lake was a dead pigeon hanging from a palm tree  that we saw on the way to the car.

There followed piano lessons.  I was informed that these lessons would make me popular at parties.  Even as a kid I didn’t buy it.  Long gone were the Bing Crosby movies where everyone stood around a piano and crooned.  The 60’s weren’t about crooning, but my mother didn’t know that.

Then came probably the most ill gotten of all lessons:  cotillion dancing.  Somewhere near the golf course and horse stables that abutted Griffith Park on Loz Feliz Blvd was a hall that became the personal hell of many a Silverlake pre-teen.

One woman played the piano, one woman gave directions.   And a slew of Silverlakites were suddenly thrust into a dance hall.  Sweaty, pimply boys in suits and ties and girls in frou-frou dresses were ordered to move their feet to the rhythm of the fox trot and the cha cha cha.  This had absolutely no relevance to our real life…and never would have. 

The stress of not being picked to dance was equaled with the angst of dealing with the odors and damp fluids emitted by teenaged boys. The closest this came to having any meaning was when I watched the Sound of Music and knew that, if the odd happenstance occurred and  I would need to do the waltz surrounded by my seven children—I would be able to do it.   This is not something most people pay for.

I know parents do things with the best of intentions, but cotillion dancing was not something that I have ever used.   Once, when my son was at an un-named school, they asked parents to come in and talk.  I was sorely tempted to come in and tell the kids that algebra was of utterly no use.   But I have a few friends who are math teachers and thought the better of it.  Cotillion is right up there with algebra.










Thursday, August 5, 2010

Things I Learned From Teachers That They Never Intended to Teach

Telling a class that if you had a daughter you would name her “Inertia” doesn’t ingratiate yourself to 13 year olds.

Remarks uttered “sotto voce” are much more threatening than outright defiance.

If you ask, you will be told “no.”  Just do it and don’t ask.  Half the time they won’t even notice.

If you are called on in class, just don’t answer.  The teacher will quickly move on to another kid.

When your teacher claims that he is going to read everyone’s essay in class AND if there are any errors after having done it a second time, demerits will be given—he will not have time to complete the task.  If your last name starts with an “S” you will scoot through the test of fire knowing you won’t be caught. And knowing that you didn’t bother to re-write the paper. It’s his fault for making you sit in alphabetical order.

Wearing high heels is only to impress other teachers.

Teachers who scream and yell “shut up” only look weak.

It’s not a good idea to have kids deliver your love notes to another teacher.

Teachers with interesting rooms teach in many ways.

One of the worst incentives to coerce honesty from a class is to make them sit there waiting for someone to own up.

Referring to your wife as Mrs. (teacher’s last name) makes you sound stiff and weird.

When you are told something is going in your “permanent record” they really can’t be bothered to do it.

There are teachers who should not be teaching.

When a teacher says to you “How dare you question my authority…” YOU SHOULD.

Sharing your stories about doing LSD is not a good idea.

Don’t try to befriend students, phone them or meet them off campus.  It’s needy and gross.


Tuesday, August 3, 2010

John Marshall High School--Part One






I remember far more from elementary school than I do from high school.  Perhaps it’s because at Ivanhoe we were with the teachers all day long.  Perhaps it was the hormonal shifts that would later change my body. Or perhaps it was because Ivanhoe only had about a dozen teachers.  John Marshall High School was much different.

First of all, Marshall was one of the most beautiful public high schools in the city.  It still is. Its twin, L.A. High, had the architecture, but not the setting.  Marshall could have been the campus of a private and posh East coast college or prep school.  But, it was in Silverlake. It is such a good looking school that I see it frequently in car ads and remember the pride I felt when it was used in television’s “Mr. Novak” with James Franciscus and the movie “Grease.”

I think that at Ivanhoe I felt everyone was pretty much equal.  Except, that is, for Jesus who didn’t speak English and Keith Shepherd from England who had un-manly rosy cheeks, wore his pants too high and fainted in the sun.

By high school, this notion of egalitarianism was long gone.  Everything mattered in one way or another.  Your hairstyle—and how you parted your hair, your clothes, your car—if you had one, your skin, the way you carried your books, the music you liked; all defined you.  And that was just the beginning.  There were cliques and elite social clubs who would commandeer select parts of the campus at lunch. There were kids who had “gone all the way” and others who hadn’t. Confident, fast track students used words like “liaise” and wore ties to school and joined student government.  Judge Lance Ito was one of them…though I never heard him utter “liaise.”

Then there were the budding hippies, the cheerleaders who ended up pregnant or gay, and the jock guys (but not girls—this was WAY before Title IX).  Other sub-cultures consisted of the Jewish American Princesses who always had the latest clothes from trendy stores at Century City or the WASPs who read Glamour, Mademoiselle and Seventeen for every possible fashion and beauty tip. One group was into souped up Camaros, Cougars and Corvettes and raced on Riverside Drive on Saturday nights. Another did the school plays or played in bands. There were the druggies, the Nisei perfectionist kids who never talked and got straight A’s, the Hispanics and the Lebanese, Doves and Hawks and boys with pimples who ran the AV equipment.  I didn’t fit into any of these groups.  And I didn’t stand out in class either.

Sometimes I liked to hang out in the library during lunch.  It was cool, as in temperature, and the librarian was a nice lady who the mother of my sister’s best friend.  I remember Mrs. Fitzpatrick being impressed when I checked out a book about Indira Gandhi.

At one point, I decided that I would befriend the blind girl who ate lunch just outside the main hallway.  I will never forget my utter embarrassment when I concluded one of our conversations with the words:  “See you later.”

The school’s administration was made up of a trio of oddballs.  The principal wore his hair in the shortest of short buzz cuts in an era when everyone else was growing hair on head and face—and sometimes legs.  He was a humorless man who today would probably be a neo-Nazi.  He was totally unprepared for the generation that would neither respect him nor listen to him.  He saw the peace sign as a personal threat. Mr. R could have been a poster child for the term “Generation Gap.”

The “Girl’s Vice Principal” was someone who, even I, at the age of 15, could tell lacked “life experience.” She was staid, double-chinned, single and out of touch with her charges.  I have no memories of the “Boy’s Vice Principal,” other than his Italian name and bad suits.

Geriatric women who wore eyeglasses on chains and beaded cardigan sweaters staffed the main office. Off the main office were smaller cubicles for the counselors. My college counselor had a large wart protruding through his thinning hair and counseled not. It would have been nice to know that one could practice for the SAT or take it multiple times. 

As a teacher, I am well aware graduating seniors depart taking mostly memories of their recent teachers. Their elementary and middle school teachers are long gone relics of a past they pretend no longer matters. So it seems that the higher the grade level taught by a teacher, the more they are remembered.

Ah…but this is not the case for me.  I can remember only two or three teachers—okay, maybe four—from my three years at John Marshall High.  Actually, I just remembered a few more.  But not clearly, and not in a way that implies they made any impact on my life or education.

As for John Marshall teachers, they were an odd lot.  They ran the gamut of age, style and popularity.

 There were the de rigueur lesbian P.E. teachers, one who informed us that she always bought her socks at Sears because if they wore out, Sears would replace them free. Another wore green contact lenses. A third taught health as well as PE, showed us “Reefer Madness” and advised lemon juice as a salad dressing. And a fourth was supposed to have been in the Marines.

The math department was completely forgettable.  My only memory is a sad joke about a polygon being a dead parrot and a teacher who wore the same suit everyday for a semester and then switched to a second suit that he wore everyday from then on. He always reminded me of Barney Fife.

There was a teacher who called me “Kathy Simpson” instead of Kristie Smithson and gave a test to determine the careers to which we would be best suited. Because I was naïve in the ways tests can be skewed, I answered that I wouldn’t mind working outdoors.  The test concluded that I was aptly qualified to pursue work as a deckhand on a ship. A life as a longshoreman was something I had not contemplated.  That teacher’s daughter went to the school and I instinctively felt sorry for her.

The teachers were part-time actors, a former professional football player, a Czech, a German, a Brit and a music teacher who was rumored to keep a bottle of Scotch in her desk. There was a nameless/faceless science teacher that made us de-frost fetal pigs in the girl’s bathroom before we could dissect them. My run of French teachers was made up of a grouchy old man with a thick Eastern European accent and a demeanor that made no attempt to hide his boredom, an interesting Eurpopean woman that made me wonder why she was there, and finally, a young woman with ties to Greece who spent a lot of time in French class informing us about the overthrow of King Constantine and the new socialist government.  At least she prepared me well for seeing the movie “Z’ with my aunt and uncle at a Westwood theater.

In my 12th grade physiology class, a personal favorite, we were allowed the unusual privilege to do “take home” tests.  It was in this class that I learned, prompted by A.S.’s question, the meaning of the word “sodomy.”  Clearly A.S. was the teacher’s favorite, so much so that she would lend him her Volvo to drive two blocks to the Duncan Do-Nut store and bring back supplies.  Mrs. Sesma came to our 20th reunion. 

But I think the teacher that made the most impact on me was a young English teacher.  That’s another story.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Trigger For Sale


I watched Roy Rogers and Dale Evans a lot.  I’ll admit right now that I always thought Dale was a waste of time.

One Christmas, my parents gave my sister and me life like action figures.  I got Roy and my sister got Tonto. No Lone Ranger in sight. Nor much logic in the choice of toys.

 I got the plastic palomino, Trigger, the molded hat that fit onto Roy’s head and Roy’s thighs splayed in a giant U.  I think my sister felt gypped.

This week I heard that the taxidemied Trigger was up for sale.  Of course I knew that he’d been stuffed and was a star attraction in Apple Valley and then, later, in Branson, Missouri.  Roy and Dale are long gone. I think, Roy Jr. must have needed some money and so Trigger went on the market.

They said Trigger was estimated to go for somewhere between $100 and $200 thousand.  I will admit it here that there was a tiny iota of me that wanted to buy him.  How the hell a stuffed horse would fit in my living room and survive the UV rays of the Hawaiian sun, I don’t know.  Sometimes, you just want something that isn’t possible.  I didn’t share this dream with anyone, just tucked it away with my unrequited desire to get the Mattel belt buckle with a derringer that shot caps. 

Trigger went up—stuffed and mounted—for bid at a Christie’s auction.  The selling pricing was $266,500 to someone in Nebraska. I hope they appreciate him. Roy did. And I did.

He MIGHT have fit in the living room. 

Friday, July 16, 2010

A Town That Rhymes with Diarrhea


One summer, on my family’s annual trip to the Northwest, we drove through Arizona and Utah.  Zion and Bryce were on the itinerary.  But my father had a hidden, and more personal, agenda.  As he steered the Chevrolet station wagon off the highway and onto a bumpy, potholed dirt road he told us that we were headed to a ghost town; a town with a name that rhymed with diarrhea.  That was not how he put it, but that was the way that we took it.

Paria was an unsuccessful Mormon settlement alongside the trickle of the Paria River.  This trickle, and a plethora of diseases that came with it, was why the settlement never made a go of it. My great grandfather had been sent by the church elders to settle a town known today as San Bernardino, California.  This task done, he returned to Utah and was ordered to do the same in Paria. The plan didn’t work.

Bouncing around in the back of the seatbelt-less station wagon my sister and I were excited about the prospects of seeing a real ghost town. Years of Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Roy Rogers, The Virginian and Rawhide had whetted our appetite for this Western phenomenon.  Perhaps my father had billed this excursion with a little touch of flair. But we were not prepared for the stark and desolate place that we found.

After several miles on the dirt road, we came to small cemetery.  We got out of the car and my parents looked at the names on the tombstones.  My sister and I weren’t as comfortable wandering around on top of the dead and stayed behind the small, iron fence.
My great grandfather’s grave was there.  And the graves of several children with our last name. And their mothers. These were all members of my dad’s family.

The name “Paria” became a joke in our family for a place no one wanted to go.

Twenty-five years later, my Scottish husband and I were spending our summer driving around the west. We found ourselves on the same dirt road. On this visit, I discovered a new development:  a movie set Western town was built along the road. “The Outlaw Josie Wales” was filmed there.  Our Honda Civic navigated the potholes until I was once again at the little cemetery. We parked the car and forded the river; which was not particularly difficult.

 The remaining structures and the cemetery had more meaning on this visit. I wanted to show my husband where my ancestors had lived and died. 

Eleven years ago, my husband, son and I took a family vacation to Nevada, Arizona and Utah.  And, yes, this time in a four wheel drive rented SUV, we took the dirt road to Paria.  We took pictures of my great grandfather’s grave, forded the “river” and climbed on the vermillion cliffs.  I took a bolt from one of the buildings that had yet to succumb to the elements.

That night, we checked into a small 1950’s style motel in the mostly Mormon town of Panquitch, Utah.  Across the street was a small museum run by one of the faithful.  My son and I took a tour of the relics, the old butter churns and dishes and went back to our air-conditioned room to settle in for the evening. We turned on the TV and went through the program guide by the side of the bed. “The Outlaw Josie Wales” was on.  The three of us watched Clint Eastwood ride through Paria.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The 4th of July at Angus Street




My family always did something special on the 4th.  We had friends or relatives around, we churned home-made ice cream, I made pickle and potato chip “sandwiches” and we had a very tame fireworks display.  All this was done in our back yard.


Before my mother met and married my father, she had been married to a man who died within one week of contracting polio.  He left her an insurance policy and she was smart enough to use it to buy a house.  3018 Angus Street.

When my father entered the scene, married and moved in, he took the back yard in under his able wing. I have no clue what it looked like before his arrival, but by the time my little memory was at work, it had three distinct levels.

The bottom tier was grass and raised flowerbeds with roses and agapanthus, and a small grapefruit tree.  In years to come it was transformed into “golf driving range”.  The next level was grass surrounded by flowerbeds, a concrete wishing well and a latticed love seat alcove. There was a plum tree with very scratchy bark and an apricot tree. When my father finally retired, he felt compelled to use every single piece of fruit from his land. We had apricot jam, plum jam, apricot “leather” until my mother could no longer stand coming home from work to a kitchen filled with sickly sweet smelling pots and pans.

Adjoining this lawn was a slate covered area with a built in bar-b–que, large redwood picnic table with benches and a bed of fuchsias.  In later years it would also be home to a wood rat that would appear during party dinners, much to the utter embarrassment of my mother.

The top level of the yard was where I spent most of my time.  It backed, for many years, onto an open lot. When the “open lot” was in the process of being built upon, my mother was horrified at the language of the workmen.  She complained to the boss.  I was enchanted by the forbidden words.

Along this upper level, my father made a small trail to a play area. At the opposite side was a large white peach tree.  The Babcock tree was later axed to make room for a playhouse constructed from our neighbor’s garage door. I have always thought of that tree. The play area changed over the years and saw a swing set swapped out for a ping-pong table.  And then, with my adolescence, the area fell into disuse.

But on the 4th of July, the backyard always came to life. 

Sparklers were always a big hit.  And once we discovered that you could “spell” with them in the night air, their lure grew stronger.  Hearts, initials, circles lasted just that few seconds longer than they should, and made them magical. We were never a family for the high-flyer type fireworks.  We kept everything close to the ground, always wary of fires and lawsuits, I suppose.  Nothing ever went higher than a foot. This may explain why my favorite “firework” of all time is THE WORM. 

The Worm was a slate gray pellet the size of a thumbnail.  We would put them on the bricks that lined the lawn:  the same bricks that my father had carefully laid when he took over the back yard of Angus Street and made it into a three tiered oasis.  When a match was put next to the worm it would start to grow and an ashen “worm” would grow into a curling, snaking shape.  It left permanent marks on the brick that would be a reminder of 4th of July for years to come.  I’ll bet they are still there.  

 

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Thomas Starr King Junior High Here I Come


When it came time to “graduate” from Ivanhoe Elementary School, things quickly began to change.  The assembly celebrating our passing was made up of our class singing the Doris Day hit “High Hopes.”  I guess I should have taken that as a harbinger of things to come.

Thomas Starr King Junior High pulled from a much wider and diverse catchment area than Ivanhoe. Frankly, I was nervous to be starting this new adventure and very jealous of my friends who were twins who could face the new challenges together, and my friends who had older brothers and sisters who had gone before.  I felt a bit like an explorer without an expeditionary force.

I think it’s ironic that I spent three years at a school named for someone I had never heard of and never was educated about. 

At King, life changed.  No longer was it important to kick a home run at recess or beat someone at handball.  Calluses earned from doing turns on the rings counted for naught. New words quickly joined my vocabulary:  Vato, Saint Christopher medal, Pendleton shirts, rat comb and scrub. It was now important how you held your blue notebook binder.  Girls to their chests and boys down at their side.  If this was not done correctly, one’s sexuality might be in question.

Wearing socks with your shoes made you a dork, hair spray was a must and suddenly deodorant became important.  The smell of Rite Guard Spray permeated the girl’s locker room as if it were the finest French perfume.

A year earlier, I had made a plea to the gods of bodily functions to PLEASE DON’T LET ME GET MY PERIOD IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.  This prayer was answered, but the onset was made no easier by the horrible contraptions designed to deal with our “curse” and the hall monitors who patrolled the bathrooms during break and lunch.  “Recess” was a long gone bittersweet memory.

I think one of the things that junior high, and the entire educational system, teaches is that LIFE lets you get to the top--just every now and then (6th grade, 12th grade for instance) and puts a most addicting and tiny taste of omnipotence onto your tongue. Then it pulls out the rug with a twisted twinkle of the eye and makes you start climbing the ladder all over again.

At King, we had to start at the bottom, and not with just our “Leave it To Beaver” Silverlakers.
 
When I first started to ask for a St. Christopher medal my very Protestant mother was a bit at a loss.  She was not to know that a shiny blue medal hanging from your neck made you a “Surfer” and not a “Vato.”  The Vatos were a group whose females wore their hair in huge beehives that had enough hairspray to support a skyscraper.  It was rumored that inside of those intricately backcombed styles were razor blades and cigarettes.

On my family summer travels we had passed through Pendleton, Oregon and I was well aware of the fame of its woolen blankets and shirts. At King, I was to learn that a Pendleton was also a badge that said you were a “surfer.”  Those pseudo tartans were worn by boys who cultivated long, blond—often bleached-- bangs hanging just over their eyes. A Pendleton and a St. Christopher medal was all it took to be a “surfer.”  Think Beachboys.




Surfers



One summer when I was about 14, my uncle and aunt went off on a freighter to parts unremembered by me.  They offered their new beach house to my mother who scooped up the offer of a free vacation locale with relish. 

My family moved in for a week, maybe three, watching the waves and the surfers of Manhattan Beach.  I spent the time riding the waves on an inflatable canvas raft and reading SURFER magazine.  The raft had a blue side and a red side and I always rode it red side up so sharks wouldn’t think it was blood. I envied the wet suited boys with sun-bleached hair who walked passed our house to the beach carrying their boards and their egos with confidence.

In those days women didn’t surf…. especially if they were a 14 year old from Silverlake who only had the Pendleton and the St. Christopher medal to prove her worth.

In a moment of great patience, my mother drove me to a surf shop in town to look at the goods.  I coveted the Gordon Smith and Dewey Weber boards and wished more than anything that I could own one.  I think a came away with a decal.

When I wasn’t fishing off the pier or riding the raft, I wiled away those days reading SURFER magazine. I taught myself about the sport.  I learned about far off places called Sunset Beach, Makaha and Pipeline.  I knew what “ hanging ten” was and became familiar with the names of great surfers and their feats.

Little did I know that one-day, by the oddest of confluences I would live in Hawaii and see these places. And odder still, I would end up teaching school with the daughter of one of the most famous surfers I had read about many years earlier. 

My husband wore my Pendleton until it got holes in the elbows. And as for the St. Christopher medal, who is to know what long ago drawer it got lost in. But, to this day, I’ve never been on a surfboard.


Thomas Starr King Jr. High: Bad Teachers Part One

I have had some memorable, fantastic, caring and inspiring teachers.  And then there was Mr. N. 

Mr. N was very short and his lack of height was exacerbated by the size of his head.  He looked like a bobble doll that rode on a dashboard of a GTO. He lacked any teaching skills whatsoever.

I had the unfortunate luck to have Mr. N for both an English and a history class in two different semesters.  He made no bones about the fact he just didn’t like us.  He was humorless, uninspired, and uninspiring.  And he wasn’t even retirement age.

It was in his class that I perfected my “married woman” signatures; writing “Mrs. Steve Stone”, “Mrs. Kristie Stone” over and over.  It was also in his class that I selected my children’s names: twin boys would be named Kirk and Kyle….or maybe Keir.  Keir Dullea had just made “David and Lisa” and seemed very exotic.  Oddly, I never selected a daughter’s name. Prophetic perhaps.  And thirty years later I named our son Keir.

In his English class Mr. N would write a weekly list of vocabulary words on the side blackboard.  The only one that I remember was “buxom.”  He droned on about Greek gods and goddesses while I stared out at the gym field wishing I could be out in the smog playing softball. 

Once, our 8th grade class got together and agreed that everyone would shove their books off their desks at an appointed hour.  Deliciously anticipating this prank, we pretended to be interested in whatever it was Mr. N was saying.  When the time came, we slammed our books to the linoleum in unison.  He was not amused.   He just stood there rubbing his giant forehead.  The only words I can ever remember him saying—while he rubbed the dolphin-esque brow were “Take your seat.”

In his history class, from which I remember absolutely nothing except my grade, things were no better.  I missed two weeks of it because of very bad case of poison oak and got a D.  Yep, a D in 8th grade social studies.  And now I teach it. Granted, I got the grade up to a B by the end of the semester, but it was my first experience of having a grade on the “dark side.”

I hope Mr. N left teaching and got into something he liked. He did go on a bit about martial arts. Maybe he found solace somewhere in that field.



Saturday, May 1, 2010

The Gold Chair


In the 1950’s, before my mother and father re-decorated our house, we had a wing chair that sat in the living room next to the fireplace.  It was covered in a gold fabric that was embossed with a pattern.  This became known as “The Gold Chair.”

When I was feeling odd or icky—that feeling where your stomach churns and you just KNOW that things aren’t right with the world—my mother would take me to The Gold Chair.  I would sit in her lap and she would try to make me feel better.

One of these occasions was shortly before she and my father were to go off on a romantic weekend together—obviously, without me.  Even at that young age, I appreciated that my parents needed time to be together and I secretly admired their marriage for that. My mother’s mantra was “your father was here before you were.” BUT, I never relished being left behind for a weekend with one of my mother’s unmarried friends.

That day my mother held me on her lap in The Gold Chair and told me that she was putting a special green vest on me.  It would stay on me while she was gone and I was to think about the green vest whenever I felt sad or lonely. It kind of worked.

As a music teacher in the Burbank School District, my mother collected unmarried women friends like some women collect shoes.   With only one exception, I think all of her female friends were without spouse or children.  In some ways, that gave them an advantage over her.  They had a lot more time and freedom to do whatever it was that they did.  On the other hand, my mother had the advantage of my father.  And that was quite an advantage.

On those getaway weekends, one of unmarried would come to tend my sister and me. And life wouldn’t return to normalcy until my parents walked through the door late Sunday afternoon.  The food wouldn’t be right, bedtimes would be odd and everything was akimbo.

The worst time was when we were left during the school week.  I think this was after my mother retired so she could spend more time with my father who was fifteen years her elder. They must have gone on a business trip together. My sister and I were in high school.  The Gold Chair was long gone. I was far too big to sit in my mother’s lap. And the little green vest story wasn’t cutting it anymore.

The unmarried lady was adamant that we didn’t need to set the morning alarm because she “got up at the same time each day. “That theory works if you are in your own bed, subliminally listening to your own neighborhood’s predictable morning noises and awakening to your own day.  This woman was not doing any of these things. 

Being tardy to school was something we just didn’t do. Had never done. Nor was having a burnt breakfast that suffered from having been broiled rather than baked. 

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Wild Things




This has nothing to do with Maurice Sendak or misbehaving.  This is about all the stuff that we ate while walking to and from Ivanhoe Elementary School. Not the stuff we bought at Mike’s little store, but the stuff we culled from the neighborhood.

First, there was the lemon tree.  I now know that it was a Meyer lemon.  We would pick a fruit, peel it and sprinkle the remains of the small Morton’s salt container on it.  Our teeth would lose whatever they lose when you eat pure acid, and our salivary glands would kick into high gear.  The lemons weren’t like the ones my mother bought at Hub Mart. They had a distinctive flavor that was not as sour.

Then there was the wild weed—usually growing in an empty lot that today would be worth at least half a million dollars—that we called the licorice plant.  We’d shake the head and dislodge the seeds and chew them. I now know that it was wild anise.  The last time I tasted it in seed form was at an Indian place that gave a seed mixture as an after dinner palate cleanser.

We also ate the stems of the little purple flowers that grew all over.  They were sour and tart and it is no surprise that my generation grew up with a candy called SWEET TARTS.  Wild sorrel.  I think this may have been a subversive move on the part of dentists who would later advise products to strengthen one’s enamel.

There was also the pomegranate tree that we eyed enviously but waited until Halloween night when it’s owner would bestow us with a fruit or two in lieu of candy.

And lastly, was the magical little drinking fountain on Panorama Drive.  Why it was there, I have no idea.  But I always loved drinking the cold water and wondering about who put it there.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Easter


My grandfather was a minister and a quite prominent one at that.  If you google his name—Cleveland Kleihauer—you’ll see that he is credited with (cough) being a mentor to Ronald Reagan.

So at our house, Easter meant several things.  Both my sister and I expected, and awaited, the arrival of the Easter Bunny and the cellophane wrapped baskets that would be sitting at the ends of our matching twin beds when we awoke on Easter Sunday. Somehow, though, this was nothing like the thrill of Christmas morning. No explanations as to the entire oddity of Jesus dying, bunnies, crucifixion, chocolate and Jesus returning were ever mentioned. But, in return for the Easter Bunny gifts, we were put into the scratchiest, stiff, pastel colored dresses that we’d ever worn.  And, almost worse, were the little hats we had to wear.

At Hollywood Beverly Christian Church we were THE GRANDCHILDREN.
Our church didn’t DO Lent, Ash Wednesday or Shrove Tuesday.  Just Sunday. Women would pinch our cheeks, comment on our dresses and suck up to our mother. My sister and I stood stiffly in white socks and, sometimes white gloves, and smiled. Once home, we were free to explore the chocolate—after my father did the family photographs in the back yard where I could still see the stains from the Fourth of July worms on the bricks.

My mother would switch out of her “church clothes” and begin dinner. Our father would hang up his tie.  My sister and I would eat candy free from the crinoline.

I’m sure this must not have been a good day for my mother. I’ve never liked it, in spite of the candy.  But, I’d rather eat potato chips anyway.

I really don’t like this holiday.



Saturday, March 20, 2010

School Lunches



At Ivanhoe Elementary School everyone brought lunch from home. We did not have a cafeteria. Your lunch and what it contained and how it was transported were matters of great importance.

I vacillated between the generic brown bags and the metal lunch box that included a Thermos. The lunch boxes ranged from The Lone Ranger to Barbie to Superman.  It was important to have the right celebrity for each year.  No one wanted to be carrying a Davy Crockett one when they were in the sixth grade. I can still remember the smell of sour milk that could never quite be removed from those Thermoses.

My gastronomic fare in those days ran a fairly routine gamut, but one of my favorite lunch additions was a wax paper bag of cherry tomatoes with a miniature Morton salt container.  I loved those shakers because I always wondered about the little girl with the umbrella on the label and, more so, because I loved pouring the salt into my hand and just eating it.  My mother, who seemingly was unaware of how much salt those baby shakers held would have been appalled.  One container probably equaled the recommended sodium intake for five heavily sweating long distance runners.

For some reason, the PB and J phenomenon was not part of my upbringing. If we had peanut butter sandwiches that was what they were. Peanut butter. With lettuce.  Rarely was there jelly or jam.  The bread was always whole wheat.  Tuna sandwiches were a mainstay, as well as left over chicken, roast lamb or turkey. Sometimes we’d get cold meatloaf sandwiches with yellow mustard.  Those were a favorite.

One day our neighbor from across the street brought over some fresh venison that he’d shot.  My parents informed us, as they served it up for dinner, that we were eating deer. They both seemed quite excited about having this rare treat. BAMBI was the first film I had ever seen and the prospect of eating her did not sit well.  The next day in my school lunch was a sandwich that had dubiously dark meat.   Racked with quilt about all the starving children in China, I chucked it into the garbage bin. My mother later told me that the sandwich was turkey.

As I reached the fifth grade a new invention began to grace our lunches.  Kraft Cheese “N Crackers.  I always felt like a bit of a big shot when I’d pull one out, tear back the plastic and watch the other kids look enviously while I spread the plasticy orange substance onto the crackers.

Every now and then, the PTA mom’s would have “hot dog day” and we could buy a dog and potato chips for 25 cents. The entire school would smell of boiling Oscar Meyer franks. I quickly learned not to call them “weenies” as we did at home.

Going off to junior high school was a frightening experience, especially since I was the family pioneer.  My fears were slightly offset by the fact that Thomas Starr Jr. High had a real cafeteria where students could make their own food selections.

The cafeteria was manned by the ubiquitous lunch ladies in hairnets who stood behind glass and over steaming trays of the day’s entrée.  My favorite was shepherd’s pie. Sometimes I would just buy a couple of bowls of canned spinach.  The Jell-O was topped with spray whipped cream that seduced me into the occasional purchase. Fruit cocktail was another staple of the dessert section. It was in the cafeteria that I discovered roast beef could contain gristle and something that looked like little tubes of vein. These never, ever, showed up when my mother made a roast for Sunday dinner.

By the time I moved on to John Marshall High, a cafeteria didn’t hold the same allure. It was a noisy room with a long line at lunch and would be transformed into a table less floor space for evening dances. I cannot remember one meal that I ate there.  I do remember the big, doughy cinnamon rolls that were sold for “nutrition” break.  There was a little campus store that sold school supplies; pencils, folders, paper and Luden’s Cherry Cough Drops.  I could down a box in one class period with no cough symptoms to be had.




Saturday, March 6, 2010

Confessions from the Closet


I have a confession to make.  I have kept something in the closet for quite a while and I am ready to let it out.  I have always wanted to be a cowboy.
 
CowGIRL never quite cut the mustard.  Fringed skirts and white holsters were not my to my liking.  I wanted the real thing.  As a child I was satisfied with a couple of hours with Roy Rogers.  But no one, meaning me, ever wanted to be Dale Evans. Many years later, after Roy was long gone and Trigger was stuffed in a museum, she became an evangelist and I felt vindicated.

I wanted the smell of leather, horseshit and gunpowder.  I wanted to hear the creak of the saddle, the taste of dust in my mouth and the vista of Monument Valley. My fingers ached for the reins and the saddle horn. But I was in Silverlake.

 I’d never get a pony, a horse or even an old nag.  My best hope was one of those life-sized plastic horses that stood outside of camping stores. I knew nothing of guns, but, to me, the smell of caps exploding was like a connoisseur wafting the finest brandy in front of his nose.

When I was 15 and spending the summer in Mesa, Arizona with relatives while my parents went to Europe, I bought my first pair of cowboy boots. I think at J.C.Penney’s.  I kept those boots for years and actually rode a few horses wearing them—albeit in Griffith Park..

 As for the de rigueur belt with the large silver buckle, I was set.  When I was in the sixth grade my father went on a business trip. Where or why, I do not know.  But when he returned, he brought me a tooled leather belt with a large “silver” buckle with boots on it.  I remember it was size 28.  That meant I could use it until I was in my mid twenties.

So with the boots and the belt—holsters were no longer a viable possibility—I had half the kit.

Hats ran the gamut from the red ones with the white stitching around the sides—which—even as I child I disliked for their inauthenticity--to the stiff pressed felt of the “real” thing. One summer when I was in college, my mother sent me a Fourth of July gift.  Besides the See’s suckers in a firecracker, there was a check.  I used that money to buy a cowboy hat.

To be continued.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Winter Sports a la Silverlake


Growing up in Silverlake, within view of the Hollywood sign, did not offer a lot of winter sport experience.  I think the coldest it ever got was around 40 degrees and the big thrill was being able to see your breath….but not smell it.

There WAS the one time that it hailed and I ran down to the garage to find a pair of wooden skis that my father must have used in Alaska before he met my mother.  By the time I ran back up to the ice covered lawn and put on the ill-fitting skis, my “powder snow” looked like a melting lemonade slushy.  So it was on Saturday afternoons spent watching ABC’s WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS that I became an aficionado of ski racing. 

At that time in the sport, the French were dominant.  This coincided with my French 3 class taught by a very cranky Czech with a thick accent that resembled nothing one would hear in Paris.  He kept a stack of Paris Match magazines on a table conveniently located behind my desk.  Mr. L. was obviously bored stiff and teaching until his Social Security would kick in.  Kids cheated like mad, passed notes and had appalling pronunciations. He didn’t seem to care.  I spent the time in class “reading” Match.  I was proficient enough to get the gist of the captions.

The oversized magazines were filled with stories and large glossy pictures of Jean Claude Killy, who was movie star handsome.  And with whom I was madly in love.  There were also articles about sister racers Marielle and Christine Goitschel. Between WIDE WORLD OF SPORTSS and the Match magazines, I became quite the expert on the French ski team.  I could pronounce their names with nasal accuracy, knew who was fastest, and learned about ski wax.  Of course, some of this valuable knowledge was gained while ignoring the drone of Mr. L’s Czech accent trying to get verb conjugations into our adolescent brains. I paid the price. 

I don’t want to sound like a goody goody, but I was one of the few who didn’t cheat in the class.  Trust me, Mr. L was either ignorant or apathetic to notes written on hands, papers and desks.  Cheating wasn’t a challenge and it just wasn’t for me.  I preferred my covert sessions with the Match magazines.  That Mr. L even noticed that I reading these rather than listening to his diabolically boring lessons on how to say what we had eaten for breakfast, is something I greatly doubt.  He didn’t want to be in the class any more than any of us did.

In later years, when I had a slightly wider view of the world, I thought of Mr. L and wondered if he had fled the Nazis or survived war horrors that were beyond our 9th grade ken. He may have experienced a hell that none of us baby boomers would ever be able to comprehend. For this, his reward was teaching a bunch of kids who thought he was a boring old fool. 

I got a D in French 3, had to go to summer school, but still remember with fondness those wonderful foreign magazines that took me to a different place.

The last time I was in Paris, on three different occasions, I was stopped by a French person asking me for directions.  I was able to help---in hopefully non Czech-accented French.