As odd as it sounds, I want to say "Thank you, Polio."

PART ONE

Katrine Kleihauer met Ray Haurin when she was at UCLA --at the same time as Jackie Robinson.  Ray was not a student.  I think they met at a dance class, but I can’t quite remember.  They fell in love, he proposed and she accepted. But she agreed with the stipulation that she would graduate and get two years of teaching experience under her belt first.  Completely smitten,  Ray could do nothing but wait.  I always thought this decision shows how practical my mother was, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions she made.

My grandfather was less than thrilled that his future son-in-law was not a college graduate. He, himself, had a Doctorate of Divinity and his daughter’s grandfather had been a college president.  I spite of this he performed their marriage on the flagstone patio of his house near Beverly Hills.

Ray was the only child of a widow who had epilepsy and lived in a Seventh-day Adventist home in Azusa. Azusa was about an hour outside of Los Angeles and was made famous by THE JACK BENNY SHOW: "Train leaving on Track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa and Cuuuu-ca-mon-gaaa!"

Ray supported his mother and was a responsible son who got life insurance for both his mother and his new wife. Not wanting to risk passing epilepsy to any of his children, he had a vasectomy.  So two very practical people were now happily wed.

That was until December 7, 1941.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, Franklin Roosevelt declared war the next day and immortalized the “day that would live in infamy.” Things quickly began to change.  Ray joined the U.S. Navy, as did my mother’s brother. Katrine and my aunt moved in with each other to save money.  My mother continued to teach.

My uncle, as an officer, had the unlikely posting of Arizona.  Ray was sent to Long Beach, California.  It was there that he caught polio and died within a week.  He was buried with full military honors and my mother kept the flag that draped his coffin until she died.  It is now in my attic from which I can see Pearl Harbor. I can’t bear to throw it away and my sister does not want it.

PART TWO

Katrine was devastated, but ever practical, she took Ray’s insurance money and bought a two bedroom, one bathroom home on a hill in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.  She paid $10,000 cash for the house. 3018 Angus Street was a rather plain house that was built in 1939 and today is worth well over $700,000. Sometimes she rented out the extra bedroom to unmarried teachers or their equally unmarried sisters.

Silver Lake was, and is, an eclectic neighborhood with a hodge-podge of architectural styles, races and, today, sexualities. There are homes designed by Richard Neutra and a nearby Frank Lloyd Wright.  Silver Lake was where Anais Nin lived with her last and very youngest lover who would become my science teacher in junior high school.  It was friendly and crime-free and a much better bet than the Quonset huts and Levittown cookie cutter homes that many G.I.s were returning to.

Once the war was over and she got used to being an independent widow, she decided to take a trip to the place she had most wanted to visit:  Alaska.  My uncle who had survived the war unscathed, the biggest threat being rattlesnakes and heat stroke, gave her some advice.

“Katrine, if you want to meet a man, don’t travel with a girlfriend; travel alone.”  And she took his advice.

PART THREE

Katrine Kleihauer Haurin headed north.  By the time she was in Anchorage, she sat on a bus waiting for it to leave the station.  A man came and sat next to her. He had wavy hair and a pencil moustache, which was the style of the time.  He pulled out a packet of gum and offered her a piece. I prefer to think it was either Juicy Fruit or Doublemint. He offered her a hell of a lot more than that., as well  He announced right then and there that he was going to marry her. He broke the date he already had for that night, and my mother became his unofficial “intended.”

There were several bumps in the road—one being that he was married to a woman in Detroit who had ditched him for someone in a cute uniform.  He had traveled to Alaska to start a new life without ever bothering to get divorced.  Other slight bumps were the religion in which he was raised, the fact that he was not a college grad (again!) and that he was fifteen years older than my mother. When he promised to go to Michigan to get a divorce, Katrine worried greatly that she would never see him again.

Then on Thanksgiving Day he showed up at Angus Street.  My mother, I believe, was entertaining a second tier man.  The man left quickly  and my mother and father were soon back on my grandfather’s flagstone patio.  My mother wore a modest white dress with eyelets and carried a small bouquet of Bachelor Buttons and daisies.  My father wore a broad, rather gaudy tie and a suit with wide lapels.

Once again, my grandfather was not overly pleased with my mother’s choice.  A man with little education, raised a Mormon and fifteen years older to boot.  My father was actually closer in age to my grandfather than he was to my mother.  But that was all snobbism.  My father was funny, kind, handsome in the look of the day, a bit shy sometimes and witty in a unique way.  He had the look of a Hollywood star when he was young and my mother was charmed. Katrine Kleihauer Haurin became Katrine Kleihauer Haurin Smithson.

Angels and Alpha-bits

While my mother was in the hospital for a month or more, my father, sister and I were invited by well-meaning friends and neighbors to dinner.  An ambulance on Angus Street was unheard of, and everyone seemed to know that my mother was ill and that my father had the two small girls to handle on his own.

Directly next door were a childless couple named Mac and Doris.  He owned some sort of business and she was his secretary. They had a poodle named Tammy and cocker spaniel named Shane. Movies were obviously a big source of dog names for them. I loved the cocker spaniel and my sister went for the poodle

Mac may have had a stroke, because he could not use one of his arms and walked with a limp. Or maybe he’d been injured in the war.  No one talked about it. They smoked and drank and owned a yacht that was kept at the Balboa Yacht Basin. To me they were rather glamorous.

Our dinner with them was at once odd and comfortable.  We usually only saw Mac and Doris for a party of some sort and their annual New Year’s Eve party.  Doris’ elderly parents always came and stayed in the chilly apartment they had on their lower floor.  There would be kids, Doris’s sister trying to dance the Twist and platters of walnuts with nutcrackers. People smoked cigarettes and cigars and drank cocktails.  Not like at my house where cranberry juice was the holiday libation.

The night they had us for dinner, a school night, Doris served us home made chicken noodle soup, which in itself was a novelty. But it was the big, black peppercorns floating amid the wide noodles that grabbed my attention.  I had never before seen a whole peppercorn and, oblivious to the fact that I was breathing in plenty of second hand smoke, I really enjoyed that soup.

The invitations for dinners started pouring in.  Dad knew we had to bring a gift to each and came up with a typical Al Smithson solution.  He bought pre-made angel food cakes, which we “frosted” with whipped cream.  Then we opened boxes of Alpha-bits cereal—a new item on the market—from which we picked out the sticky letters to spell THANK YOU and the names of that particular evening’s host and hostess set gently on to the top of the cakes.  The three of us got pretty good at the routine of decorating our cakes and thought we were pretty slick.

The Choice

 I don’t have many regrets in life, I am happy to say.  But a big one happened when I was in the fourth grade. I still feel guilty about it.

My mother was seriously ill and in the hospital.  She had pinprick-sized holes throughout her stomach and she was bleeding.  She had had major surgery at Ross Loos Medical Center.  Dr. Loos, himself, and the brother of writer and wit Anita Loos who penned GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, preformed the intricate stomach procedure.  Friends, family and even our Mobile gas station attendant donated blood.

My mother lay in Good Samaritan Hospital, the same in which I was born. The same one in which Robert Kennedy died.  She had tubes in her nose and IV’s in her arms.  Above her bed the Catholic hospital had placed a very graphic statue of Christ slumped on the cross-, oozing blood from hands and feet.  It was not a pleasant place to visit.  The nuns, the smells, the hushed tones, the visiting priest—and we were definitely NOT Catholic—were not things I felt comfortable with.

One day during my mother’s time in the hospital, I received an exciting invitation.  Kayla A. was a member of my Brownie troop who had moved to The Valley.  She was inviting the entire troop to her home—with a swimming pool—for an after school birthday party.

I had a choice:  visit my mother or go to the party. This was the first time in my life I had a serious dilemma.  And every time I see, read or hear the word “dilemma” I think of the choice I made.

 I went to the party at Kayla A’s. and don’t remember a thing about it.  I do remember that I let my mother down. 

Death, Illness and the Good Hostess

The year that my mother went back to work was a difficult one.  I was just starting fourth grade; my sister was in second. We still had our hair braided or pony-tailed in front of the pink bathroom’s large mirror every morning; our lunches were still made the night before and stored in the fridge in colorful paper sacks that sometimes had love notes tucked between the waxed-papered tuna sandwiches, cherry tomatoes and much welcomed the new invention of “Cheese n Crackers.” We still had a sit-down breakfast at the dining table that, too, was set the night before.  I had no idea at the time how stressful this must have been for my mother. She wanted to be the perfect music teacher for the Burbank School District, perfect cook, perfect homemaker, perfect wife and perfect mother.  People didn’t talk about stress in the 1950’s.

These were not the days of driving with your kids to a McDonald’s drive-thru and ordering a McMuffin with processed cheese or grabbing a Jamba Juice.  These were the days of wheat germ, oatmeal with raisins and that cereal that made me feel like puking: Cream of Wheat.  On weekends it got more elaborate.

In mid September, my mother’s beloved father passed away in his sleep. On the morning of Dr. Cleveland Kleihauer’s death, the phone rang as we were eating breakfast in the dining room. My father was reading the sports section of the LA TIMES.  With naive excitement, I ran into the hall to answer the phone.  My step-grandmother said in a flat and unfriendly tone: “Get your mother.”

For the first time in my life I went to school without my hair being done by my mother. And since then, I never answer an early phone call.

My mother blamed her father’s death on “having to carry too much luggage” on a recent tour of Europe, did not allow us to attend the funeral and very soon became very ill.

PART TWO

I don’t remember how much after my grandfather’s death that the doctor came to our home…maybe several months.  Because I do remember taking our somber grandmother on a tour of the “Apple Country” which was an annual day outing in the fall for the Smithson’s.  Day tripping with Ione was well out of the ordinary, and it seemed “forced.” She had always been the Grand Dame—head of the Kleihauer household, putter-on of dinners with silver candleholders, director of the housekeeper, wearer of fur stoles and mistress of the domain.  She had social status and let it show.  She was not used to sitting in the back seat of a station wagon with an eight year old.

I sat next to her, feeling uncomfortable at the proximity to a woman who was not, in today’s parlance “warm and fuzzy.”  It did not feel right.  Perhaps it was the proximity to death, as well, that made me feel odd.  I had never known anyone who had died before my grandfather.  Maybe I thought it was catching.  We ate fresh Red Delicious apples, visited my father’s friend named Blackie, who owned an orchard and got Smokey the Bear comics from a ranger.  I was glad to get home.  I’ll bet Ione was too.

PART THREE

When the doctor arrived at our door on Angus Street, I was oblivious as to how very ill my mother was.  She had been passing blood, all the while passing as the great mother that she was.  My father made the call and later the doctor told him that if he hadn’t my mother would have died.  When she arrived at the house, she immediately went into my parents’ bedroom.  My sister and I stayed out of the way.

But my sister inherited a super gene for hostess-ness.  She went into the freezer and dug out a frost-covered can of concentrated lemonade.  She would serve the doctor a cool drink.  Being little, she may not have been able to manipulate a can opener.  This was before the lids just could be lifted off.  So, with goodness in her heart, she got an ice pick out of the drawer and started stabbing.  She stabbed right into her finger.  The ice pick was stuck and dangling, blood was flowing and the doctor did not end up drinking lemonade.

When the ambulance took away my mother and my father followed in the car, a neighbor at the top of Angus Street swept us up and included us in her dinner.  Mrs. Clifton had raised three sons and was good in a crisis.  She told us that she was making macaroni and cheese.  I told her it was my favorite.  When we sat down at the table, I saw that she included stewed tomatoes in her version of the dish. While my sister ate gingerly with her bandaged hand, I tried to hide that this was nothing like my mother’s macaroni and cheese.

FISHING:PART ONE

I caught my first fish when I was about 7.  It was as small as I was.  We were on a vacation—probably driving up to Seattle from Los Angeles, and we stopped at a lake.  I think it may have been Crater Lake.  For some reason unbeknownst to me now, we kept the little fellow and took it to our motel room in a milk carton.  I do believe it was flushed while I slept.

I remember fishing on a Girl Scout trip to Big Bear.  We were out on the lake in a dinghy and one of the advisors told me to spit on the hook.  It didn’t work. But a few hours later I developed a 104-degree fever and slept out the rest of the trip in the adults’ room on a canvas cot.

One summer at Manhattan Beach when I was an early teen, unable to surf and consigned to a blowup mattress, which wasn’t cool, I went out to the end of the pier and bought a drop line for 99 cents—but with the tax it was just over a dollar.  I only had a dollar and the man fronted me the extra two pennies.  I gathered barnacles from the bottom of the pier for bait and, predictably, caught nothing.

On another occasion, when I was a graduate student in Scotland, my friend and I went on a trip with the “Hill Walking Club” from Strathclyde University.  We took the ferry over to the Isle of Arran and it poured.  We walked several miles to the campsite in the dark…and it poured.  We set up our tent, which was lit by the phosphorous of the smoked kippered herring we had brought for breakfast.  And, to paraphrase, ‘the rain it raineth.’

The plan of this overly ardent club was to climb Goat Fell in the morning.  In the rain.  I thought, no.  This is just not fun. And not for a girl from LA.  When it rains we light a fire and drink hot chocolate. With marshmallows.

So on the wet morning of the proposed hike, I bailed, took my backpack and walked alone into Brodick to await the ferry to Ardrossan and the train back to Glasgow. The wait would be several hours and I bought a drop line, plucked mussels from the rocks for bait and went to the end of the ferry landing.  And caught nothing.

What I would have done with a fish I have no idea.  I hate trying to get the hook out of a wriggling fish. Add that to the fact that—to this day-- I’ve never gutted a fish and I would going to on public transport with a fish and nothing to carry it in.  Not a wise idea. But I did meet a handsome young man on the train who asked me out.  We were to meet the following Saturday in George Square.  He stood me up.

When we lived in Seattle I bought a rod, reel and salmon eggs and tried to fish in raging rivers, off Edmonds pier and out of my sea kayak.  None of these attempts were successful ventures.  But I enjoyed it, nevertheless.

Fate brought us to a summer of teaching in American Samoa; living next to the beach in Pago Pago.  To keep my almost four year old entertained, we went fishing off the rocks near our hotel room.  He caught a tiny fish. We threw it back into the polluted waters of the bay where it could live amongst the plastic carrier bags that floated like multicolored jellyfish.

When I lived for a cold and wintry year in Stockholm, a friend introduced me to Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream.  The notion of drinking rum and coconut and fighting with marlin off the back of a boat named PILAR seemed unbelievably attractive. So on our first trip to Kona, on the Big Island of Hawai’i, my husband watched our son while I ventured out on a deep-sea fishing charter. Hemingway was posthumously fueling my passion.  No one on the boat caught a thing except sunburn.

When my son was around 8 years old, and we were living in Kailua, I needed something to keep him busy during school breaks.  I bought two cheapo fishing poles at the oddly named Holiday Mart and drove him to a Heeia pier.  I taught him how to bait the hook, cast, and deal with the disappointment of not catching anything.

A few years later, now living in Honolulu, I took my son to the harbor off Ala Moana and joined a charter for an early morning deep sea fishing trip.  Again we caught nothing, but the captain brought my son up to the helm and let him steer the boat back into Honolulu. And we did see a basking shark.

On another occasion my son and I went out on a charter from the same harbor.  The seas were very rough.  We could see the whitecaps from our house. It was the only time the captain chose to go around Diamond Head and not in the other direction towards Barbers Point. All the passengers were puking their guts out.  But not us; we had Australian candied ginger as our secret weapon. This intestinal upset was a good thing because it significantly raised the odds of us catching something as the poles are divvied up.  With three of the six onboard curled in the fetal position, our chances were elevated. I honestly don’t remember if we caught something or not.  Most likely not, if I don’t remember it. The surreal thing was that one of the pukers was a former student from the Lab School with very bad eczema.

Lest this sound like a tale of fishing woe, things started to change.  One year my birthday aligned with a school holiday and I convinced my husband to go deep-sea fishing with me.  We got up at 5 and each ate a bowl of saimin because my dad always said never go out to sea on an empty stomach—something he’d been told by Italian—or perhaps Portuguese—fishermen.  Rather ironic from someone from Arizona.

As the boat was clearing the harbor and the lines put in, we all drew cards as to which pole would be “ours.”   Within seconds, my pole got a major hit.  The sunrise was lightening the sky and I couldn’t have been happier.  I had a mahi on the line and despite all the movies I seen of people struggling for hours with a fish, I pretty much knew I didn’t have the strength.  The fish was brought aboard just as the sky lit up to its fullest extent.  A mahi mahi is a beautifully colored fish in the water, but once it dies, the color fades.  I felt a bit sad.  But I guess we all fade when we die.  We had enough fish to share with the neighbors.

ABBY and SNORING

I was saddened last week—well, for many reasons, but that’s another story—when I referenced “Dear Abby” in one of my classes and drew blank stares.

I cannot tell how much life experience, how many sticky situations and what possible foibles I have avoided, because of what I’ve learned from reading those daily columns.

It started at the breakfast table at Angus Street. (That in itself is a cultural rarity) and, with the exception of my five years in Europe, continued to September of this year when we chose to cancel the local paper and get the NY Times instead.

Ann Landers and “Dear Abby” were twins.  In Los Angeles, in the 50’s, there were two newspapers.  One had Anne and one had Abby.  We had Abby.

What I loved about “Dear Abby “ was the total commitment to common sense.  If I could spread a salve over this present generation and my own, it would be a balm made of COMMOM SENSE. 

My all time favorite column was one from a woman who was writing “back” about a previous one. The subject was a woman complaining about her snoring husband.   The writer wrote:  “I just wish I still had my snoring husband. He died this year.”

Every time I wake in the night to a snore, I think of that.

The Indian in the Bathroom

When I was a child it was obvious that my mother idealized and idolized her only and older brother.   He had chosen to have a childless marriage that would allow him to design and build homes in comparatively glamorous places—ocean cliffs or hillsides overlooking Los Angeles; one poised under the HOLLYWOOD sign and just a block or two up from Aldous Huxley’s home.  He and his wife were free to travel to parts foreign, rub shoulders with Jawaharlal Nehru and know what the words “obi, “sake” and  “arigato” meant far earlier than most Americans.  This was the fifties.

My mom was stuck in Silverlake with two young girls and a loving husband, but her summers were spent driving up and down the west coast.  Though those summers were wonderful for my sister and me, I’m sure they paled in comparison to the trips my uncle and aunt were taking.

My uncle and aunt took tramp freighters and posed for stiff photos with Japanese hosts.  When they returned from their trips my sister and I would be given things we had never seen before:  purses with little metal mirrors reflecting all the Silverlake light being an example.

Although Silverlake was a diverse neighborhood and my sister and I had been exposed to many different cultures; tempura lunches with our mother in Nisei town, Janice Hing’s wedding reception in Chinatown, my father flaunting his three words of Spanish at Mexican restaurants, we were not too familiar with Indians.  I mean people from India. Of course my mother had introduced us to chicken curry, but I was later to learn that it was nothing like the real thing except for the color of turmeric.

My mother worked hard at everything she did.  She could have been the prototype for Martha Stewart—had Martha been a music teacher in Burbank with two small daughters, a salesman husband and a house in Silverlake.  She enjoyed entertaining and chafing dishes with purple flamed cans of sterno and sherry infused recipes.

I remember, on the eve of a dinner party that I would eventually be sent to bed before it ended, being given what, at that point in my life, was ALMOST the worst thing I had ever tasted.   I sat on the two steps that separated our dining room from our living room and tried to eat cream cheese.  It was only slightly less disgusting than my mother’s zucchini squash with tomatoes and Italian spices.  Of course, today I like cream cheese, but even in adulthood zucchini is not something I choose to eat.

One evening my mother and father had a small party and my uncle and aunt were invited.  They brought with them two tall Indian men who stood around the fireplace shyly.  After awhile one of the men needed to use the restroom.  I do not know whether he was directed to the room or just went off on his own to search for it.  It wouldn’t have been a long, or a difficult hunt as we only had one bathroom.  The door was closed and he walked in and went directly up to the sink.  Maybe he just wanted to look into the mirror, or perhaps wash his hands after eating a messy appetizer. Thank goodness he didn’t need the toilet.  In any case he did not notice that my little sister was sitting on the pink toilet-- that matched the pink shower-- with her wide 1950’s skirt covering the porcelain.  She was absolutely mortified and quite traumatized.  I think he finally saw her and made a soundless exit back to the fireplace.  It was a memorable evening at Angus Street.

Bobbie Pins With a Message

Most of my life my mother wore her hair up.  Then, in the 1970’s, perhaps inspired by Nancy Reagan, but who’s to say, my mother went “short.”    This hairdo lasted briefly and began to grow into a length that could once again be “put up.”  During this period there were “falls” and fake hair to add to the zest of the style.

My mother became an aficionado of what my sister and I called THE HELMET.  Hair spray and regular appointments with a Hispanic hairdresser ensured that her hair would not move, look a bit like Margaret Thatcher and remain fairly carefree if one slept in a special net.  Bobby pins were always somewhere in the nest that was my mom’s hair.

When my mother passed away, she left me an article that she had once read.  It was about death and memory.  It said that I should think of my mother whenever I saw a particular bird.  I have done that with the white fairy terns that fly around Hawaii.  When there are two I think of both my parents.

There is something else that resonates deeper.  I have found bobbie pins around the world.  In Japan, China, Britain, and the U.S.  I always seem to find a bobbie pin when I travel.  It’s a pretty random thing to look down at a sidewalk and see one.   But I find them with regularity…Kyoto, Beijing, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and recently, in the place where I will eventually live, I found four.  One was on top of Lava Butte and another on Pilot Butte.  Two more were found on the streets of Bend, Oregon. 

It may be that “Oregonads” (as my husband calls them) use more bobbie pins than the average world population.  But I choose to believe that they are a message saying that I’ve made a good choice for the future.

The Boat and the Cooperative Rat

  At Angus Street we had a large teak picnic table with benches in our upper patio.  My father had laid all the slate and brick and made the backyard quite nice. He built a bar-b-que out of stone—which I never remember us using-- and made seats of wood slats.  This was where we entertained in the summer.  My uncle would come over and churn lemon custard ice cream.

 The picnic table was below a shading arbor and behind it was a bed of fuchsias planted into a stone wall.  When my parents were out of town it was my job to make sure those fuchsias had enough water.  When I was younger, I loved to go up to the patio and pretend that the table was a boat.  I would ride here and there in my imagination.

As summer arrived and friends and family came for bar-b-ques the table reverted to its original use.  My sister and I would go up and clean the table, cart out bowls of pickles, salads and potato chips and await the guests.   One summer, my mother discovered that we had a “wood rat.”  I think she thought that that name sounded a bit better than a regular old rodent rat. My sister and I were under strict orders not mention the rat at our dinner party that evening.  As we sat at the large picnic table, probably eating hamburgers I saw the nose and tail.  It was coming in the midst of our party and would be a nightmare for my mother.  I was seated next to one of my mother’s oldest friends.  I nudged her, gave her a look and then she saw it.  Thankfully, the “wood rat” scurried away and made its retreat.  My mother didn’t know until I told her the next morning.

The Plastic Thingies and the Honest Lobe

I don't know what they are officially called.  Those little clear plastic bits of tube that women--and maybe some men--put on the end of earrings for pierced ears to prevent the earring from falling out.  I had lost one.

I wear four gold—real gold, I might add—earrings.  I shower in them, sleep in them and rarely remove them from my lobes.

With the price of gold rising daily, I was doubtful as to whether or not a lost earring could be replaced without refinancing our home.  So to find a new back thingie became a mission.

I was in Melbourne, Australia when I noticed the loss. I mentioned it to my husband and because he had no interest in mortgaging our house to replace the gold earring that might fall out of my ear in a hotel bed, shower, bath, Malaysian restaurant or taxi in Australia, he eagerly joined in the hunt for the little plastic things of no particular name.

We were walking around the CBD at the time and came upon a Target Store.  I had been explaining that, at home, these little thingies were purchased in malls at CLAIRE’s at great mark-up.  They probably cost less than a cent to produce and are sold in a pack of 10 for $5.95---$6.25 in Canada (as per the back of the pack that I have at home).

But Target seemed a most likely option; better than the bookshops, pubs and office blocks that we’d passed. The “greeter” at the front door was of no help. I have found through life that when you ask someone a question to which they don’t know the answer, they lie, make something up or send you astray—especially if they are male—which was not the case in this instance.

In the girl’s defense (“defence” since it was in Australia) I have several things to say:  1. We were not in a Wal-Mart and I think I may have mistaken a shop girl who worked in a clothing department near the front door as a “greeter.”  2.  She may not have had knowledge outside of her department 3.  Maybe she didn’t understand our accents because there were plenty of times we didn’t quite get theirs. E.g. “Do you want a rhyme?” meaning, “room.”  But I digress.

I consider myself a fairly savvy shopper and instinctually knew that I was on a wild goose chase.  In spite of that we went to the earring section under the slope of the escalator. Each cheap metal set had the little plastic thingie on the back of the hooks.

I looked at my husband and whispered that I could easily remove the plastic thingie and no one would be the wiser. He was appalled—visions of CCTV cameras capturing my crime in grainy black and white, being stopped and shackled by ardent customs agents at Sydney airport then hauled into a little paneled room with no windows surrounded by bearded terrorist suspects, a man who tried to smuggle a snake in his trouser leg, a shuddering woman waiting to evacuate a condom of heroin, AND our professional reputations sullied all for the quick allure of one little plastic thingy. No.

The search continued.  And then we found NINA’s.

 NINA’s is the CLAIRE’s of Australia.  The girl behind the counter immediately knew what I wanted, and they were sold out.  BUT they had a sale on.  I bought the cheapest earrings I could find, took off the plastic thingies—my husband keeping the one not required in his wallet for future need.  With the plastic thingy firmly in place behind my ear, and acquired honestly, I gave the earrings to the clerk as a gift.  In actuality, two gifts were given that day. I have honest lobes.

My Bedroom Wall--The Pin Ups

About the time that I was 11 or 12 I started collecting magazine pictures on my bedroom wall.  Most of them were Purina Dog Chow commericials  with photos of Irish setters and labs. My wall had only two humans. 

Richard Chamberlain was the star of Dr. Kildare and I was in love. He was moral and kind and could save your life.  The other human on wall was Warren Beatty.  I can’t say the same for him.

Fast-forward to 1988 and my husband and I moved to Honolulu.  I knew that Richard Chamberlain lived in the city and I told myself, based on the small town feel, that some day I might meet him.

Around 1990 both my husband and I were working at the University of Hawaii and sharing a car.  I wanted to go home and my husband still had unfinished business.  He asked that I go to Safeway and “get in a shop.”

At the time I was reading a novel by Peter Lefcourt.  One of things mentioned in the book were the various classifications of Mercedes.  As I pulled into the Manoa Safeway, I noticed a Mercedes with a very up market number.  Then I looked at the driver.  IT WAS RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN.

Richard and his partner got out of their car.  I got a shopping cart and Richard got the one after me.  I refused—being from L.A.- to acknowledge him.   Though my heart was beating faster than a speeding bullet, I realized that my lifetime crush was gay.  I later saw him at a PBS fundraiser where a colleague took photos of me with him.  By this time, I was over the crush and aware of the plastic surgery.

This year, by a wonderful confluence of things, I attended the Academy Awards.  I was on the wrong side of the velvet rope when Warren Beatty and Annette Benning walked passed me.  I think that I was more excited about seeing her.  But now, in retrospect, I realize that I have fulfilled the dreams of my Angus Street wall. 

I’m pretty proud to say that YES—I have been in the presences of Warren Beatty and Richard Chamberlain.. They were my pin ups.  But I am most proud of being married to a man who was not on my wall.  

School Smells

A simple list of the school smells that I remember.  From elementary, jr. high and high school in no particular odor….oops, I mean order.

Wet paper towels in the bathroom

Algae water in the classroom aquarium

Shepherd's Pie in the cafeteria

Vomit...not as a result of Shepherd's Pie

Right Guard deodorant spray in the locker room

Boiling hot dogs on Hot Dog Day.

Sour milk in the lunchbox thermos that wasn't rinsed

Damp clay in ceramics class

The urine dankness of the underpass

Cinnamon rolls served at "nutrition"

Luden's cherry "cough drops"

High Karate aftershave

Formaldehyde on fetal pigs

TABU cologne by Dana

MarksALot  black pens

The alcohol on the freshly printed purple mimeograph papers

The soap in the bathroom soap dispensers

The blue fabric on the three ring binders

The buff, lined paper in elementary school

Brown paper lunch bags

Teachers wearing Estee Lauder “Youth Dew”on the off chance that they would seem youthful.

Spring Break in Moscow: Part Three

Jeans were a big deal during the Soviet era.  I don’t understand why the Soviets couldn’t make the equivalent to Levis….but they didn’t.  Jeans were a hot item.

So when I went, armed with the knowledge that jeans could easily be sold on the black market, I took a pair of worn demins that I had purchased at Fred Segal in L.A.

I’ve always loved fishing.  And trolling for jeans buyers didn’t take long.  Within minutes I was given rubles and the buyer had my jeans. 

I spent those rubles on a good meal in a restaurant and in a bookshop.  I bought a set of Anton Chekov plays.

A few years later, my soon to be husband took me to see The Cherry Orchard at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre.  I pulled out the Russian book and read up so I wouldn’t seem uneducated about the play.

Spring Break in Moscow: Part Two

Leningrad was beautiful. The gold of the Peter Paul cathedral glistened in the April light, the art of the Hermitage was overwhelming.  But the NO TOUCH ladies, as I called them, were everywhere; always stout and always in black, They were in every room of the museum and if one dained to go too close to a work of art, there was a scolding that transcended the language barrier. The NO TOUCH ladies also occupied every public bathroom.  Their job was to dispense one lone piece of toilet paper to each user.  The toilet paper was akin to the wax paper bags my mother used to pack my sandwiches in for school lunch.  These were the widows of World War Two.  The Soviet government made every effort to employ them, whether it be passing out toilet paper or sweeping the streets with twig brooms. 

Moscow was altogether different; a huge city with the Soviet era architecture that has also infected the look and landscape of Beijing.  Concrete, bold, stout—like the war widows—and crumbling.  It was when I went to Moscow University that I first came to the realization that all the red scare of my childhood was needless.  If the premier university was in such a state of shambles, what did this say about the Soviet Union? I had a private laugh at the folly of our fear. 

The Soviet Union Part One: Spring Break in Moscow

 Some college students go to Palm Springs, others to Fort Lauderdale, Miami or Cancun.  All for Spring Break.  I went to Moscow at the height of the Soviet era.  And Leningrad too.  But, of course, it’s now back to being called St. Petersburg.

It was 1973 and I was a graduate student at Stockholm’s Universitetet.  I lived on about 10 Kroner a day, which was the equivalent to $2.50-in those days.  My main meal was eaten in the student cafeteria and invariably coincided of torsk—a.k.a. cod.  Torsk with cream sauce, torsk with lemon, torsk fried, torsk in a casserole.  Always with boiled potatoes.

So money was an issue.  All my fellow students purchased the “femtikort” which was a bus pass that cost 50 kroner a month and gave unlimited travel.  Instead, I walked the roughly four kilometers to the university wearing black Swedish clogs and coat purchased in Pasadena, California. My leather-shearing coat, which had been a gift from my boyfriend’s brother-in-law, was stolen out of his car. Those walks gave me time to think and dream.  I sang Carly Simon songs to myself and once I found an Irish coin on the sidewalk.

In the early months of my program most of the students went on a trip to Goteland.  I chose to save my money.  But when spring break neared and the opportunity to go to the Soviet Union arose, I was in. 

As a treat I bought a copy of NEWSWEEK for the trip.  It happened to be the week that 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in the cover after Leonid Brezhnev had exiled him from the USSR.

First our student group boarded a ferry that took us on an overnight trip through the Swedish archipelago to Helsinki, Finland. I slept on the floor between the seats of people who had booked a touch higher class than the carpet.  Helsinki was an amazing spring fest of market gardens, floral delights and reminded me of my mother’s love of the Marrmekko brand that has now been added to Crate and Barrel.  A touch of spring, cat tails and flowers and we were on the overnight train to Leningrad.

I was raised in a family that showed us the wonders of nature: Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Yosemite.  But the skies I saw from that 1940’s era train were like nothing I had ever seen.   They were the BIGGEST and WIDEST vistas that I hade ever seen. The train chugged across Finland and finally into the Soviet Union.

 And then when we were at the border of the country I had lived in fear of my entire life, I wondered what would happen. I tucked my copy of NEWSWEEK under the cushion of my seat.  My papers were in order.

 The Soviet custom guards entered the train and proceeded through every compartment.  When they came to mine, they lifted the cushion I was sitting on, removed the NEWWEEK with Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the cover and moved to the next compartment.

I found it frightening and wondered if they had bugged the compartment.   Soon waiters with hot tea in high glass containters and sugar cubes arrived to server us.

We were on the way to Leningrad.  Not the stuff of a little Silver Lake kid.

The Queen's Skin

I spent the summer of 1974 working in a pickle factory in Regensburg, Germany, having finished my studies in Stockholm.  Now it was on to Glasgow, Scotland.  My boyfriend drove me as far as Strasbourg where we shared one twin bed in a hotel the night before my departure.  They next day I set out carrying literally everything I possessed.  I had a backpack, suitcase, duffle bag, money hidden in the bid of my overalls and a passport. I boarded the train and did the Hollywood style farewell from the window.

The train chugged across France to the English Channel and I decamped to an overnight ferry.

As we neared the white cliffs of Dover—and well before I would hear that song in my mind when listening to those words—the ship’s P.A. system asked all non-British persons to report to a certain area to deal with customs.  I stood behind a youngish American, the type that didn’t have the savvy to put a Canadian flag on his backpack.  The customs agent asked him a question and his answer was “Hunghh.”  He was immediately rebuked.  “In this country, sir, we say ‘pardon’.”   This was my introduction to a country I would live in for several years.

The ferry took us across the channel and I re-boarded a train to Victoria station.  From there I took a taxi past Buckingham Palace to Euston Station and finally a train to Glasgow,

It was one of those trains where two people sit facing another two people over a laminate table. Riding in trains was something I had never experienced until I went abroad.  In LA we had our cars.  I was also not aware of the types of magazines women read in Britain.  This was well before PEOPLE and magazines of that ilk. 

Across from me was an elderly woman reading one of the those women’s magazines.  I watched out the window as London quickly disappeared and a rural landscape took over.  The woman was very friendly and asked about me and my trip.  I explained that I was going to Glasgow to do graduate work at Strathcylde University.  As we reached the Lake District, I saw sheep—tons of them.  And they were spray painted with different colors.

The train chugged along as the elderly woman read her magazines.  Suddenly she looked up at me and said  “Doesn’t she have beautiful skin?”  She held up a picture of Queen Elizabeth.

I was a bit taken aback.  I have never found Queen Elizabeth to be a “looker.”  And now I had to be polite to my friendly passenger. I was in my early twenties, the Queen in her 50’s and the woman in her 70’s.  I believe I muttered something fairly kind.   But what that comment taught me was the utter devotion of some British to the Royal Family.  I am married to a Scot who abhors the royals.  I do suppose that not having to get up at all hours to go to work, having someone put toothpaste on your toothbrush and seeing your face on all the stamps and money will make for good skin.  I’ll never know.

The King's Death

By now everyone in the Western world has heard of the movie “The King’s Speech.”   Yesterday was Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain’s 85 birthday, and in a week her grandson and flag bearer for the royalty will get married in Westminster Abbey.

Helen Mirran got an Oscar for playing royalty in the movie “The Queen.”  Colin Firth scored by playing the Queen’s father.

Growing up in Sliver Lake we didn’t have kings and queens.  We had cheerleaders who got pregnant and football stars that ended up working at Albertson’s.

The closest I got to “royalty” was when my grandmother went on a cruise with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.  “Their children were very well-behaved,” she told us.

So when I arrived in Sweden for graduate school, not knowing a single person in the nation, I found myself in a monarchy for the very first time.  There were royal residences guarded by Swedish soldiers with shoulder length hair.  And names that I needed to learn.

The king’s name was Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.  He was old and beloved.  And he had an interesting history.  His first marriage was held at Windsor Castle and his second marriage was at St. James Palace in London.  These were the days of the royal in breeding. His second wife was the aunt of the present British Queen’s husband, The Duke of Edinburgh.

His son, who may or may not have been sympathetic to the Nazi cause, was killed in a plane crash in 1947.  The King’s grandson, Carl XVI Gustaf became the heir apparent. 

Carl Gustaf met his future wife Sylvia at the memorable 1972 Olympics held in Munich and marred by the deaths of the Israeli wresters.  They fell in love and married.  Their progeny are the next generation of royals.

On September 15^th, 1973, shortly after my arrival at Valhallavagen Fem, the King passed away due to pneumonia. He was 90 years old and his grandson was a young man with a very new and non-Swedish bride.

The power of royalty made itself known to me at that time.  I stood on the street, amongst the mourning Swedes and watched as the funeral procession passed by. 

I had been a bit taken aback at the unrestrained patriotism of Stockholm’s main department store.  EVERYTHING including underwear could be found in yellow and blue with crowns.  Coming from America where we were the scourge of the world because of the Vietnam War and a President like Nixon, it seemed odd to see such unbridled patriotism and confidence in the government.

 Sweden is one of the most egalitarian places I have lived.  But more on that later.

Easter redux

This is a re-post but one I still feel the same about the Easter holiday. I've made a few changes and adds. 

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. Our communion beverage was Welch's grape juice. 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. Having worked all week, bought the Easter baskets and dresses and hats, she still had to produce the "Easter dinner."  I wish I could give her a hug of thanks.  But it's too late. 

I’ve never liked Easter, in spite of the candy.  But, I’d rather eat potato chips anyway.

The Funnies

I come from a dying breed—practically extinct-- of children who ate breakfast with their parents at an actual table.  A major part of those meals was spent reading the morning newspaper:  The Los Angeles Times was our main source of information.   I vividly remember my mother, newspaper spread across her face, commenting on Eleanor Roosevelt’s death; telling us what a wonderful woman she was. The bombing of the little girls in a church in Birmingham, Alabama was shared over the same table.  This was how I learned about the world.

The sections of the paper were divided up between the four of us. My father taught me how to read the baseball stats, know the initials “ERA”, “RBI”, and see who would be pitching for the Dodger’s that night all from the sports section.  I learned a lifetime of common sense from reading DEAR ABBY. But, without a doubt, the best part of the paper was the “funnies.”

People of a “certain generation” have their favorites.  I loved the drama of REX MORGAN, MD and the “I’m so superior and all knowing” nose butting of MARY WORTH.   I could almost picture her walking down the streets of Atwater. NANCY and SLUGGO were my best friends, and the war orphan DONDI tweaked my pre-adolescent heart. They even made a movie about that cartoon and by his demise, the orphan from Italy had morphed into being Vietnamese. ANDY CAPP gave me a glimpse of what my future life in Britain would be. There was one cartoon that made me want to change my name. I’m grateful that I didn’t.  Not telling.

I followed the black and white stories with more passion than I did the Mickey Mouse Club, Leave It to Beaver, Bonanza or The Monkeys. And on Sunday’s they were in color.

When today’s newspaper was delivered, something that I am well aware will soon be an anomaly, I went straight to the comics. Now the comics are always in color. The strips that I loved are no longer.

But there is one “comic” that hangs on.  It is the one comic that I never “got.” It was in the LA Times and it is in The Honolulu Star-Advertiser.  But only on Sunday;  same as when I was a child. PRINCE VALIANT never got his hooks in me because I could never buy into the once weekly story,

It ticks me off that there are crossword puzzle questions about Prince Valiant’s wife. And it ticks me off that I don’t know the answer. Give me a question about Kryptonite and I am good to go. 

The Odd Date

On September 11, 1973 Salvador Allende, the democratically elected, Socialist president of Chile was killed.  Suicide or murder, no one really knows.  I suspect the latter. Augusto Pinochet’s junta tortured, killed and abused the citizens of Chile for years. 

As a fellow socialist nation, the Swedes offered support for Allende’s followers.  The ambassador opened the embassy in Santiago and offered sanctuary.   And Chileans flooded into Stockholm.  And into my dorm.

One of the Chilean refugees landed on my floor at Valhallavagen 5.  We met, spoke and arranged a date.  I wanted to be a journalist.  He would be my interview subject.

On the night of the date, I was nervous.  This was not about him, but about money. I was living on a VERY tight budget—about $2.00 a day.  I became a specialist at walking everywhere, eating one good meal in the student cafeteria—it was always TORSK—which I now know is cod, and dining on omelets for dinner. 

Who would pay for this date?  At home in Los Angeles my male friends paid.  I still feel a bit guilty about that.  What was the protocol of a Chilean and an American in Sweden?

Our dinner was in Gamla Stan-the Old Town.  At an Indian restaurant.   After the curry in an old Swedish café we took the subway to a movie theater.  It was a French movie by Claude Chabrol. A French film with Swedish subtitles.  He spoke Spanish, I spoke English and we both spoke fledgling Svenska.

How many cultures can be incorporated into one date?

Later in the year, Allende’s daughter came to Stockholm and gave a speech at a huge rally.

Today the leader of Chile is a woman whose father was one of the tortured.  Go for it Michelle Bachelet.

Religious Irreverence and White Asparagus

In May of 1973  I left everything I knew and was comfortable with and boarded a plane bound, indirectly, for Munich, Germany. 

As this was well before cell phones, Skype, and email, to finalize the details of my arrival I went to the home of one of my good friends in Los Angeles.  He was Jewish and his mother’s family had been decimated by the Nazis.  But she spoke German and was able to confirm my trip details by phone. I boarded the flight with confidence that my boyfriend would indeed, meet me in Munich.

The plane landed in Paris and for some reason there was a screw up with my connecting flight.  This resulted in me being upgraded to first class on Air France.  I still remember the meal that included aspic and liqueurs.  The man next to me was intent on pointing out the Starnberger See and other Munich landmarks. 

My first night in Germany was spent in a Catholic rectory surrounded by priests.  One smoked a cigarette with his thumb and forefinger (and we all know what that means.) I was in Regensburg for the summer before heading to graduate school in Stockholm.

Early summer was in full Bavarian bloom and one day we drove out into the countryside for a meal. It was Christi Himmelfahrt---ascension.  Although my grandfather was a noted minister, but not Catholic, this holiday had passed me by.  I’m afraid that the visual I got of Jesus farting up to Heaven ( Himmel) was quite irreligious.  I still find the name of the holiday amusing.  Call me irreverent.

We stopped at a small inn and ordered lunch.  I had never heard of white asparagus, let alone eaten it.  It was quite special.  Every time I see it in a store, I buy it and remember that day.  But it’s never quite as good as it was that first time.  I have heard the same about heroin.

One day, many years later in my 20th Century America class, I was using white asparagus as an example of something that was a rarity and would be priced higher. Supply and demand.  The next day one of my favorite students brought  a gift jar of white asparagus that she'd found in her kitchen. 

Going to Grad School--Stockholm

When I left Regensburg, Germany the first time it was to head to Stockholm for graduate school in Sweden.  I was kindly given a sack full of sandwiches made of semmel mit wurst.  I caught the train to the north of Germany and had many hours to kill before I caught my ferry to Sweden.  Because it was the only film in English that I could find, I went to see DEATH WISH with Charles Bronson, a revenge killing film that was not my normal genre.   Then I boarded the overnight ferry. 

When I had lived in Germany, my boyfriend left for Poland for a month and asked his sister and husband in Munich to put me up.  To say the least it was awkward due to the language difference.  They were kind people and all went well.  One day the sister’s neighbor needed help moving and cleaning in her apartment.

I needed money and was eager to help.  After several hours of scrubbing, it was time for lunch.   I was offered a gin and tonic and iceberg lettuce.  That lettuce was at a premium in Munich at the time and probably cost more than I was being paid.  The gin and tonic also caught me by surprise.  I had never had one.

The neighbor explained that she had once dated an American soldier and that they drank gin and tonics.  And they had salads made with iceberg lettuce.

Several weeks later I was finally on the overnight ferry to Sweden.  My only ferry experience was in the San Juan Islands.   It was going to be a long trip so I went up to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic.

The next day as the ferry began to arrive in Nynashamn I was nervous about how I would get myself—and all my worldly goods (a suitcase, a down comforter and a backpack) to the dormitory I supposed to live http://open.salon.com/blog/silverlake in Stockholm.

As I watched the ferry approach the dock I was joined by two Swedes.  I asked them about transportation between the port and Stockholm.  They looked at each other and asked if I could drive a stick shift.  I said yes.

Within minutes I was driving a Porsche off the ferry.  Due to the stringent alcohol laws, the guys I met were cautious about their onboard drinking.   Grinding the gears a few times, and watching the ethereal fog rising from the lowlands, I drove to Stockholm in tandem with the second guy’s Porsche.  Those two guys were decent enough to take me to hotel after hotel (fully booked) and to the Youth Hotel (filled) until they found a bed and breakfast in the outskirts of Stockholm.

My money was short and I didn’t want to spend more than I needed.  I lived off of those sweetly given sandwiches for several days. Half sandwich at a time.