Farewell

When I was a small child, toddler, perhaps, one of the growing members in my vocabulary was the “word” mags-mags.”  I have been an aficionado of magazines from early on.

Today I heard that NEWSWEEK would be biting the dust and I felt the compunction to send off the publication with a little tribute.

I remember coming home from school and seeing freshly received magazines on the round table in front of the fireplace.  I loved going through LIFE and National Geographic.  For a time, I found TIME and NEWSWEEK out of my realm.  But I grew into them.  TIME and NEWSWEEK, especially, became my friends when I lived for five years in a variety of foreign countries.

I still have a fondness for the 1970’s issue that had Joni Mitchell on the cover.  It kept me company for many hours at Victoria Station in London as I waited for my train to a German Christmas.  Or the time I used my sparse kroner in Stockholm to buy an issue to read on the journey to the Soviet Union (as it was at the time).  Unfortunately,  the cover picture on that issue was of recently exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Wanting to get my money’s worth I hid the magazine under my seat on the train as I crossed over the border.  A guard came and inexplicably lifted my cushion and took the magazine.  Big Brother WAS watching.

BUT, having done a quick Google search of these issues I now realize that they weren’t NEWSWEEK at all.  They were TIME.

In any case, farewell to NEWSWEEK.

FEAR: In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings

When I was a child growing up in Silver Lake I remember three distinct times that I was really afraid.  Comparing those three times to the horror and fears that the students and parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School have experienced cannot equate.

I like to think that my five-year-old grandson’s fears consist only of me singing “Merry Christmas, Darling.”

I had never seen a dead body, nor had I even attended a funeral.  My three fears were of a grasshopper in the back yard, the fact that my father—being much older than my mother—would die, and, thirdly, feeling terror at watching the scene in Ben Hur with the lepers.  Each of these situations was dealt with by different means.  With the grasshopper, my dad carried me outside to try to show me that the insect was of no harm.  With my father’s age, I came up with a ploy that calculated his age and mine and that by the time he was in his 70’s I would be in my twenties and able to deal with things like death.  I was 8 at the time and 20 seemed a long way off.  And with the leper scene, I crawled into bed with my little sister.

I cannot image how the children and witnesses of the Sandy Hook killings will deal with what they’ve experienced. 

Scents and Sensibility

I don’t remember the first perfume or cologne I ever smelled.  I do remember other odors like roast lamb with crisp bacon, our Christmas trees, diesel fuel from a boat, dried kelp on a beach, the oil from a tangerine when I peeled it, or the dampness of a California rain forest.   

But when it comes to scents that can be purchased, I’m a bit vague.  I do remember how Chanel No. 5 permeated my grandmother’s bathroom.  She had the entire array of No 5.   Products including the talcum powder that no one uses today.  (I once had to explain to a class what talcum powder was so they could understand a scene in a movie.)

There was the occasion when my father gave my mother a bottle of JOY by Jean Patou, probably purchased a Sav-On, and she was quite pleased.  She would adorn her neck and pulse points before she went to church or out to dinner.  But during my teen years she only wore Estee Lauder Youth Dew.  And that is the scent that will forever be linked to her in my memory.   At one of the schools where I worked, an employee also wore Youth Dew.  It was so strong that even ten minutes after she had left the room, it lingered.  I found it slightly off putting that someone else should smell like my mother.

When I entered high school, I started to develop an interest in the world of perfume.  I was intrigued that something should be called eau de toilette and be stronger than cologne.  It was during this time that I started wearing MISS DIOR.  It was also during this period that my olfactory sensations were awakened to the phenomenon of men’s after shaves.

One Christmas when I was shopping at The Broadway on Hollywood Boulevard, I spent far too long sampling the heady smells in the men’s section.  I settled on a bottle of ENGLISH LEATHER to put under the tree for my father. 

My first boyfriend used to douse himself in HIGH KARATE  (or it might have been JADE EAST!) and it wafted across to me during assemblies in the auditorium of John Marshall High School and when he would kiss me each time he dropped me off at my various classrooms. 

When I graduated from high school and started college, I switched from MISS DIOR to the cheaper and more popular scents by DANA.  One day, driving to school, I came off the ramp of the San Fernando Freeway too fast and hit the car in front of me. The driver got out of the car and looked for damage.  There wasn’t any.  All he said to me was  “Aren’t you wearing TABU?” and got back in his car.

Around this time my former Sunday school teacher, Mrs. E, gave me a bottle of FLEUR DE ROCAILLE.    I loved it.  Not only did the name sound French and foreign, it was NOT the kind of perfume you could buy just anywhere.  I finally found a small shop that specialized in European perfume at former The Farmer’s Market.   Recently, I bought a bottle at Duty Free, and, based on the advice of a Frenchwomen, keep it in my refrigerator.  It is the perfume made famous in the Al Pacino movie SCENT OF A WOMAN.

As my college years went on, I switched from MISS DIOR to DIORISSMO and wore it almost exclusively through the 1970’s.  It was my “daytime scent” and FLEUR de ROCAILLE was the “special” one.  My first college roommate introduced me to the name SHALIMAR but it was much better suited to her than to me.

Around this time a new scent was sweeping the vanity tables of America:  JEAN NATE.  A girl named Nora, who sat behind me in my Japanese film class, always wore it, and soon enough, my mother added it to her repertoire of fragrances.

A boyfriend came to visit around Christmas time and, so he would have a gift to open, my grandmother got him a bottle of British Sterling Imperial aftershave.  I haven’t smelled that since the mid 1970’s.  That’s just fine with me.

When I got married in 1979 I was rather relieved to be with a man who had forgone the whole BRUT fad.  In fact, he had forgone the entire aftershave movement.  A few months after our marriage we went to Paris.  We were to stay in the empty apartment of a friend of a friend and went to collect the key.  We were invited to have a glass of wine and I went to use the bathroom. Never have I been so overwhelmed, in a good way, by the fragrance that infused the little room.  I kept it tucked in my memory.   Then, one day years later, I was at Heathrow Airport and found something very similar: Roget & Gallet Vetiver.   Gone was DIORISSIMO and in was VETIVER.  It took a little longer to find the exact scent that I had experienced in that Parisienne restroom.  Almost twenty years.  It was Guerlain Vetiver and I have been wearing it ever since.

One of my last perfume encounters took place at Heathrow Airport.  A woman walked passed me on the concourse and I was immediately taken with the wafting aroma of her perfume.    As fate would have it, we were eventually seated next to each other on the airplane.  Before we took off, I asked her the name of her perfume.  She looked at me oddly, not sure whether I was hitting on her or just a rude American.  She told me:  PARIS by Yves St. Laurent.  I was quite grateful when the flight attendant moved my seat so I could be with my family.

More recently I thought I should kick it up a notch and try something new.  I read a novel where the character claimed that Jo Malone’s “Grapefruit” gave the olfactory impression of youth.  On a whim I bought it.   That evening my husband told me I smelled like his mother.  So much for Jo Malone.

Bygone Foods and Flavors

Foods and flavors, very much like fashion, have trends that come and go.  Some stay forever, like the perennial jeans and t-shirts of the food world.   But other dishes have gone the by the wayside ala hot pants and bell-bottoms.

In the late 1950’s through the early 1970’s no respectable hostess would neglect to put out onion dip made from a powered mix to serve with heavily salted potato chips. (If she was particularly clever in the kitchen, she might even add the mix to hamburger meat on a weeknight).  In those days “sodium counts” were relatively unheard of.

I have not attended one party in the last twenty years where this bygone dip was served.   With it’s passing was the equally popular clam dip.   I must admit that I DID have clam dip about 17 years ago. On the last day of school at University of Hawaii Laboratory School in Honolulu where I was teaching at the time, we had a student potluck party.  I can just picture the scene between a busy working mom and her 12-year-old son as they drove to school that morning.

Kid—Mom, I just remembered I have to bring something for the potluck today.

Mom—Thinking an expletive, but not saying it, she swings the Dodge Caravan into Safeway and says: Stay here; I’ll be right back.

Kid—What’s this?

Mom—Clam dip.  Just take it. Someone will eat it.

And that someone was me. ( I do know that it’s supposed to be “I” but it just sounds so stiff.)

These two former staples have been replaced by the likes of hummus, salsa, guacamole and pita chips.  Their popularity was briefly threatened by the new dip invention called “layered bean dip.”  But in today’s world, this takes too much time, unless one buys it premade in a supermarket.  There was a passing fad of dumping various substances on a block of cream cheese.  I have tasted a jalapeno jelly version and another with canned shrimp and cocktail sauce…but not recently.

Another food coup d’état took place in the early 1980’s.  Most people in Silver Lake bought their Italian dressing as a dried powder, mixed it with oil and vinegar and had a specially made bottle on hand to shake the mixture.  This was the only kind of salad dressing we had at Angus Street.  It was in restaurants that we learned of the likes of blue cheese, Russian and Thousand Island dressings. 

I vividly remember sitting in, ironically, a Mexican restaurant with my family.  After we had ordered salads, my father spun a tale of Roquefort cheese.  According to him, a shepherd had left some cheese in a cave and returned months later quite hungry.  Even though the cheese was moldy, he ate it and, voila, a future salad dressing was created.

But in the 1980’s a new food bully emerged:  balsamic vinegar.  Yes, I know, Europe was using it all along.  But not at Angus Street.  Today, my cupboards hold perhaps four different types of balsamic vinegar and one bottle of fig vinegar.  There is not one packet of dried Italian dressing.   And those shaker bottles have gone to the kitchenware cemetery.

When was it exactly that “noodles” became “pasta”?  Or bread, which in the early days of Silver Lake came in white or brown, became baguettes and chibattas?  When was it that sherbet went out of favor—except in the punch at Mormon weddings—and sorbet took over the throne?  When did canned mandarin oranges and pineapple loose favor?  When did Neapolitan ice cream get lost in the dessert wake of Ben and Jerry and Hagan Daz?  Not that one single of these changes wasn’t for the gastronomical better.

I spent five years during the 1970’s living in Europe.  When I finally moved back to the United States in 1979 I noticed quite a few changes.  I had never heard of such a thing as a Born Again Christian.  Desperate for a teaching job, I applied at a Christian school.  On the application form, it asked for my personal relationship to Jesus.  I wrote down “brother-in-law” and crossed that job off my list.  It was almost as embarrassing as applying to a Christian Scientist School and asking about health benefits.  But I digress.

In the America to which I returned, blacks had names like Jaquwana or La Toya, cocaine was becoming the drug of choice and a few new food selections poked their ways through the crowd.

Until my return, I had never heard of taco salad, mahi mahi or Chinese chicken salad.  The closest we got to this at Angus Street had been packaged, hard shelled tacos made with a powdered mix, halibut and chow mien out of can sprinkled with crunchy, curly topping.   Today halibut is too expensive and the taco salad and Chinese chicken salad are the mainstays of many restaurants.  In the entrée area, dishes like beef stroganoff and Swedish meatballs disappeared.  Dinners of roast beef and fried chicken went by the wayside.   At least at Angus Street.   My mother, always interested in new cooking ideas and recipes, experimented with red snapper, water chestnuts and Sara Lee coffee cakes. Not all at the same time.

  I remember the absolute worst meal I ever cooked for my family.  I was in college and had a free afternoon.  I thought I’d cut my mom some slack and cook dinner.  I set the table with my favorite place mats from Sweden, my Mom’s blue glassware and went out to the back yard and cut some color coordinated Agapanthus for the centerpiece.  Then I started cooking.  I used what was in the fridge.   Red snapper, sour cream and red wine.   Although my family was very polite, it was the most God awful purple meal anyone had ever eaten.  But, at least, it coordinated with the colors of the place settings.

Sometimes I miss the simple foods of Silver Lake in the 1950’s and 60’s.   I have not had a bologna and onion sandwich with mayonnaise since childhood.  Nor have I have “weenies”, as, much to my embarrassment, my mother called them.  I did buy some a few months ago when my grandson visited.  I sampled a few bites and though they tasted good, the gristle reminded me why I no longer ate them. 

I would love a good beef Stroganoff and plan to make one soon.  My mother’s recipe is about as far from Russia as Honolulu, but it’s the best one I know.

Silver Lake Olympics

We had our own version of the Olympics in Silver Lake.

 There were the Nelson M. archery events, in his backyard and mine, the Alan L and Timmy P. football in the street and my sad attempt at skiing during a very unusual hailstorm.  The skis had been in the garage for almost 20 years and my father had brought them back from Alaska where he met my mother.

After JFK’s fitness push I was forced to hang from those bars in a gym—I never lasted very long --and run through the smog the length of the school.  Taking deep breaths hurt because of the pollution.

We had bicycle races on Panorama Drive and pony rides at Griffith Park. There were sad attempts at cartwheels on the back lawn.   And we had a giant spool that we would try to maneuver like a log-rolling contest.

There were the many laps swum at the Glendale YMCA and the Griffith Park pool; both of which had almost blinding amounts of chlorine in the water.  I once read a Dear Abby where someone wrote about a girl getting impregnated by “loose sperm” in a pool.  That was not going to happen in the pools I swan in.  The chemicals could kill every living thing.   Mainly targeting athlete’s foot.

Now tennis was something I was pretty good at.  I played for several years by walking down to the Griffith Park courts.  I had a secret crush on a boy who was on the John Marshall tennis team.  I continued to play tennis and took my racket with me to Europe.  When I met my husband, his parents had a tennis court at their house.  The asphalt was a bit broken and mossy, but the net still stood, and in summer we would play.  I beat him. 

No gold medals or steroids for the Silver Lake kids.

Rickrack Riff Raff

There are many women, and, I suppose, a few men, who actually enjoy sewing.  They love to search for patterns, thread needles and peruse fabrics.  They are comfortable with words like selvage, Butterick and bobbin.

When I was in elementary school, my mother decided to use her summer vacation learning new skills.   She took sewing lessons in an upstairs room on Hillhurst Avenue that was filled with Singers.   The result, perhaps a sewing school’s version of a dissertation or thesis, was a lot of pink and rickrack.  My mother made matching outfits for my sister and me.  

In those days, our home sewing machine was kept in my parents’ bedroom.  Lest I sound utterly ancient, it was the type of machine that was powered by a foot pedal.  At some point the antique disappeared and my mother got an electric Singer.  I can still remember the slightly acrid smell of the oil and the look of the tiny screwdrivers that were to be used for maintenance.

Gradually, my mother’s fascination with sewing clothing for her daughters waned and I don’t think any of us in the family were at a loss for it.  

And then came Thomas Star King Junior High.  Every new female student in the seventh grade had to take sewing, while every male took “shop”---which sounded and seemed so much more interesting. 

The sewing class was filled with a world of new vocabulary terms and lessons on how to thread the machine and needles.   Everyone in the class had to create, make and decorate a “gym bag.”  The purpose of these bags was to take home ones dirty gym clothes at the end of the week and return it clean on the Monday.

I do believe that my gym bag may have had a touch of rickrack.

Based on the expertise—or lack of it—that the gym bags demonstrated, the class was divided into two groups for the next assignment.    The “Special Ed” seamstresses were to make an A-line skirt and the “gifted” ones got to make a much trendier “wrap-around” skirt.

Needless to say, I was in the Special Ed group.  The thought of making, and let alone actually wearing, an A-line skirt was too much to bear.  I broke into tears and was quickly and quietly upgraded to the "wrap-around" crowd. 

My mother took me fabric shopping and I vaguely remember a demin-esque light blue cloth.   I sewed my way through the "wrap-around"—maybe even wore it once—but I learned that sewing was not my thing.  With a language more difficult than the French I was being exposed to for the first time, and concepts slightly more confusing than the ones in my algebra class, I was not sad to see the semester come to an end.  I never even mastered zippers.  Next came the required cooking class.   THAT, I could do.  White sauce and hot chocolate.  But I still envied the boys and their woodshop classes.

The sewing gene definitely got passed to my sister.   The Singer got passed to me.  I used it gingerly while I was pregnant and in major nesting mode.  I wanted my son to have red flannel sheets for his crib.  In those days of the mid 1980’s everything was either pastel, covered with circus motifs or just plain tasteless.  So I hauled out my mother’s Singer—she had since bought a Swiss machine—and attempted to sew.  I made two quilts that, in my mother’s parlance, had the “loving hands at home” look.  The red flannel sheets actually worked.   No one was telling me to give up my day job.

My sister, on the other hand, inherited the sewing gene.  She spent several years working for Vogue Pattern magazine.  She took classes and created the most beautiful and interesting dresses I had ever seen.    I still have one hanging in my closet.   At one point, she toyed with creating her own line of clothing…a sad loss for the fashion world.  Her daughter was by far the best-dressed little girl I have ever seen.  Eat your heart out, Suri.

I know that someday in the future I will pull out the Singer—or the Swiss machine which I now store in a closet—and try to make a pillow cover.  Let’s just hope that no one notices that it doesn’t have a zipper.

Disneyland in the Early Days

As a child, the most wonderful thing in the world—besides Christmas and our summer vacations with The Bradens—was a trip to Disneyland.  I went almost every year and sometimes twice.  If we had out of town guests visiting in the summer, it meant a trip to Disneyland with a late stay to watch the fireworks over the Magic Castle.  My father would offer a quarter to the first kid in the car who could spot the Matterhorn from the freeway that led to Anaheim.   I was pretty good at winning the prize.  On the way home, I would be dead asleep in the back of the station wagon.

When my sister and I went with our parents and family friends, we could roam the park at will, as long as we met on time at the designated spot.  We had no fear of kidnapping, molestation or being abducted into a prostitution ring.  We never feared of being raped on Tom Sawyer’s Island at the back of a cave, or being hurled from an ill-maintained carnival ride.  We felt safe.  It never occurred to us to feel otherwise.

Once a year the park hosted a Girl Scout Day and Troop 2277 could enter a bit earlier than the masses and pay a discounted price for our coupon books full of tickets for all the rides.  At that time the rides were rated alphabetically.  The E rides were the best and descended from there.  The A rides were pretty dull.

The first and foremost thing to do on these Girl Scout mornings was to run.  I mean sprint like Valeri Borsov, Roger Bannister and Bruce Jenner before he joined up with the Kardashians.  To the Matterhorn.  In my early teens there was no Splash Mountain or Space Mountain.  The Matterhorn was IT.   There, in spite of our speed, a line would have formed.  The yodeling soundtrack was lilting cheerfully, and the lederhosen clad workers were smiling and escorting guests into the toboggans.  It was Switzerland without the avalanches and the private bank accounts.  Or so it seemed to a ten year old.

The next best ride at that time was the submarine. It pretended, thanks to many bubbles and sound effects, to take you underwater to see the delights of mermaids and fish.  Once the day began to get warm, it was time to go to the shady jungle ride where, after waiting in another long line, we would board a small boat and be assaulted by electronic crocodiles, a hippo and a whole lot of bad puns. 

As I got older, so did the park and new attractions appeared.  Suddenly, just off the jungle boat, one could be in Old New Orleans.  Here was The Pirates of the Caribbean ride through a cool and dark grotto.  Feisty animated wenches, tail wagging dogs and pirates knocking back the moonshine in jugs sang and romped through this fantasy world without AIDS or STDS.    Then came the Haunted Mansion and its elevator and holograms, the signing bears featuring “Big Al” and the mining car through the ore field.

I loved Frontierland and the fake shoot outs, the Mexican cantina where I could get a taco and Tom Sawyer’s island with its rope bridges and places for many a potential lawsuit in today’s world.   

I was also a sucker for Main Street.  I loved going into the old time grocery store and buying a sodium packed dill pickle the size of a fairly well endowed man.  I would poke a tiny whole in the plastic wrapper and drink the dill juice.  No comments please!  A few doors away I could watch Abraham Lincoln rise rather shakily to a stance and give a speech.  The pharmacy gave away free Upjohn vitamins; another store had a machine where you could press a penny into a memento.

Once our “good” tickets were used up we headed for Fantasyland and the Mad Tea Cups, the Monorail and the merry-go-round.  Some rides were just too dull,  Mr. Toad’s Ride only appealed to my hidden delight at the miniature world. I remember on my very last visit to Disneyland, almost twenty years ago, suffering through “It’s a Small World” twice because my young nephew liked it.  Also in this category were the paddleboat and the train that circled the park.  I usually saved a ticket for the train and the end to get me to the front gate.  Often, as people were leaving the park they would give their un-used tickets to people who were just entering.  In my case, they only got the A tickets.

Eating Out

   I remember fewer restaurants than I should but there a were few that made a lasting impression. Two,  Clifton's in downtown Los Angeles and The Tic Toc in Hollywood are memorable because they were "events"--respectively a birthday party and a post sermon dinner with my grandfather.  But the restaurants that I really remember were because of both their ambiance AND their food. 

   At the top of the list is The Tam O’Shanter. Little did I know during post-church Sunday visits that one day I would live in Scotland, read the works of Robert Burns and marry a Scotsman who would return to the Tam with his own tartan to be added to a wall that displayed them. The Tam provided all Silverlake-ites with a touch of the real thing. Disney must have had a thing for Scotland because Grey Friar’s Bobby was also a highlight of my childhood. When I lived in Edinburgh, I never passed the small statue dedicated to Bobby that sits on the sidewalk just outside of Gray Friar's Kirk without a smile. Going to the Tam O’Shanter was like entering a completely different world. I visit it every time I return to Los Angeles—even if I’ve just come from the real thing.

 My favorite Tam O'Shanter dish was the cold slaw with peanuts—which is still on the menu today.  It gratefully contained no mayonnaise.  Other childhood favorites were the hamburger steak with mushroom gravy and the thickly battered fish and equally thickly cut chips with plenty of tartar sauce.

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

   Conrad’s had a long Formica counter that I believe was aqua in color.  It ran the length of the open kitchen. There were friendly and patient waitresses with name tags and a menu that appealed to all the family. My favorite dish was The Captain’s Plate—deep fried scallops and shrimp and fries. There was probably some fish in there as well. I thought tartar sauce was a food group.

  Conrad’s was where I was tutored in the Americana of salad dressing choices: blue cheese (my preference) Italian, Green Goddess, Thousand Island (when did you hear that on an modern restaurant selection? ) and that sweet red Russian dressing that has also faded from menus—and not without cause.  At home, we always had Italian dressing made from a dry packet of spices, shaken in a jar with oil and vinegar.  But I'm not talking balsamic vinegar or extra virgin olive oil.

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

   I still think of that cake. I found a recipe for it on the internet and some day I will attempt to re-create it.

  Van De Kamp’s was both a drive-in and a sit-in restaurant. This was as close to Holland as I ever got until I was in my late twenties. The huge decorative windmill seemed exotic and was further from the pot bars and red light district of Amsterdam than one could ever imagine.  The signature colors were blue and white and the food had absolutely nothing to do with the Netherlands. My two favorite dishes were (yet again) the overly battered fish and chips (with tartar sauce) and the cheese enchiladas. After a dinner here, my father often drove to the car to a neighboring Foster Freeze where we would watch in wonderment as the vanilla cones were dipped into the hot, paraffin-like chocolate coating.

  No one had ever heard about cholesterol in those days.

Drill Baby Drill

At Ivanhoe Elementary School we had recess and P.E.   Everything was active and co-ed.  There was handball, kickball, rings and monkey bars.  The boys may have kicked the ball a little further and run a little faster, but we played together.

Those were also the days of President Kennedy’s physical fitness campaign for young people.  Suddenly words like “standing long jump” and “sit-ups” entered my vocabulary. I distinctly remember being very impressed with a boy named Chuck (who always reminded me of Gil Favor from the television Western “Rawhide”) because he was able to do 200 sit-ups.  My personal best was fifty in one minute.  I’m sure neither Chuck’s abs nor mine show any evidence of these athletic feats.

Once I entered Thomas Starr King Junior High, things changed.  The girls played softball and volleyball and the boys climbed a rope to the ceiling of the gym, played football and baseball.  The girls and boys, for obvious reasons, had separate locker rooms.   The women P.E. teachers all wore white polo shirts, white Bermuda shorts and white canvas shoes.   I guess at the time I never really noticed or felt slighted by the different curriculum.  Just being in the locker room with my new breasts was traumatic enough.

By the time I started at John Marshall High School, things were perceptively different.  The girls did archery and jumping jacks.  We were taught to raise our arms and push our hands together chanting:  “I must, I must, I must increase my bust.”  I remember once we just lay on the cool gym floor because it was such a hot day. Perhaps the teacher had a hangover.

 On the other side of the gym and locker room, things were much different.  There things called varsity and JV.  There was a boy’s swimming team, track and field team, tennis team, basketball team, baseball team and cross country team.  All these teams were photographed annually for the school yearbook looking serious, muscular and manly.  One look at the yearbook shows that the only “athletic” outlet for girls was the drill team.

In an attempt to get out of school early for home and away football games, I joined the drill team.  It counted as a P.E. class and gave me a legal exit from the doldrums of my geometry class and memorizing theroms taught by a guy who wore the same suit every day.

As “drillettes” (my word, not theirs) our job was to march perkily out onto the field at half time, accompanied by the marching band that had much grander uniforms.  We would execute sharp turns and form shapes on the grass that we would never see from the stands.  It meant memorizing and counting steps and being slightly military.  Rumor had it that the supervising P.E. teacher had a military past.

One semester of wearing white gloves, and a dress uniform that was a cruelly ugly, was enough for me.  The thin cotton, knee length dress was powered blue, sleeveless and accented with a darker blue vee at the neck and matching belt.  The hideousness of the uniform was matched only by my hair that was growing out after a very bad Julie Andrews cut that I hated from the minute I exited the “beauty” salon.  Drill Team student leaders got to wear whistles around their necks. 

Had I stuck it out for a second football season I would have worn a much snazzier and shorter uniform and the student leaders got dark blue, shiny braids on their left shoulders.  But I came to the quick realization that remembering marching steps and theroms had a lot in common.  Neither was fun.  And neither has ever been of any practical use to me in my life so far.

                                                     *********************

In a previous post I mentioned Patsy Mink and Title IX.   She went to bat for women—and fought against the Viet Nam War.  Although she has since passed away, I would like to thank her for what she did as a congresswoman from Hawaii.  Now girls can compete in everything:  wrestling to lacrosse.   And hopefully no more high school girls will have to suffer the terrible uniforms of a drill team unless they truly want to march around a grass field at half time in a meaningless exercise.  Drill Team was a poor girl’s cheerleader.

Golf and the Dead Mud Hen

Twice in recent months I’ve landed at LAX on the way to other places.  Each time, my husband leaned over to the window and said: “That’s where I played golf with your father.”  Not on the runway, but at a course directly adjacent to it.

Although I don’t really play golf, it has always been part of my life.  A regular part of an evening at Angus Street was listening to the whiz of the wiffle balls my father would hit every night.  One hundred.  Sometimes he used real golf balls and once broke our neighbor’s window. After that he constructed a large chicken wire barrier.

My dad sawed off a couple of old clubs and taught me how to position my hands and I joined him now and then for the evening “shoot.”  But I’m left handed and all my father’s clubs were for a right-handed person.  I have played a few rounds of golf, but, to be honest, the best part of the game was being able to drive the golf cart.

When we finally got a dog—I had yearned for one my entire life up to the age of 17—my father trained her to not be afraid of the swishing balls and swinging clubs.  So even our dog was involved in golf. 

I remember my good friend Monica and I watching golf matches on the living room TV and then practicing the “golf voice”; the almost whisper narrative that seemed so funny to us.

This was well before Tiger Woods and his mistresses.  The names were Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Chi Chi Rodriquez, that Aussie upstart Greg Norman and Nancy Lopez.  This was also WAY before Congresswoman Patsy Mink (for whom, I am proud to say, I campaigned) introduced Title IX and opened up the world of sports to girls and women.  Seeing a woman play any sport was an oddity.

My dad loved to get up at the crack of dawn and play on a golf course in Griffith Park.  When I was in high school he would often drive by me as I walked to school, honk his horn and wave.  He had already finished his game and was heading home. 

Golf led him to meet the odd celebrities.  He often played with the actor Aldo Ray.  And he played with Governor Pat Brown—Jerry’s father—on the course at Wawona Lodge in Yosemite.  He got a hole in one during a golf tournament sponsored by our church at the time and became a celeb in his on right.  At least in our house.

When I was living in Scotland, my parents and sister came for a visit.  My dad played Saint Andrews golf course as a walk-on with rented clubs. 

After my father retired, my mother felt she should take up the game so they could play together.  Soon a second “women’s” set of clubs found their way to our garage.  My mother didn’t have an athletic bone in her body.  Even in a swimming pool she only swam sidestroke…the only stroke not represented at the Olympics. As hard as she tried, golf just wasn’t her thing.  Her playing days were quickly ended when she swung the club hard and the ball, instead of heading towards the hole, killed a mud hen that was resting on the green.

When I brought my soon–to-be husband home for our wedding, he and my father instantly bonded over golf.  Whenever we were visiting in Los Angeles and Manhattan Beach, the two would get up early, often in the in the dark, and head out to a golf course.  My father even found one that was floodlit and open 24 hours a day.

Years later, as the ravages of Alzheimer’s had stolen my father’s wit and humor, my husband would take him to “shoot a bucket of balls” and give my caregiver mother and few hours of respite. 

The last time my five-year-old grandson visited, he and my husband hit golf balls in the back yard.  He was pretty darned good.

Red Rock Canyon

During my childhood, my family liked to go camping.  It was cheap, “kinda” fun and got my parents out of Los Angeles for an easy weekend escape.  And we usually did it in the summer.

But one weekend—or it could have been Spring Break or some other holiday—we loaded up the Chevrolet station wagon and headed in the direction of Las Vegas. We were not going to Las Vegas; we were going to camp at Red Rock Canyon. 

My father put up the large, musty tent in the dark and my mother heated Dinty Moore Stew on the propane cook stove.  Dinty Moore Stew was a favorite of mine at the time, unless I got a chunk of beef that was more fat than meat. I loved the soft texture of the potatoes and carrots.  I don’t think I’ve eaten it since I was a child, but they still make it.

The next morning, I caught a horned toad and held it in my hands without either the fear or revulsion I’d probably feel now. Oddly, I grew up being afraid of the big alligator lizards and smaller relatives that seem to litter the streets with their dried up carcasses on the walk home from Ivanhoe Elementary School.  But for some reason, the horned toad—or horny toad as we called it—seemed like a cute little pet.

As the day progressed, the desert winds picked up.  Red dust began to swirl and howl around my family’s canvas enclave.  We ate a sandy dinner in the tent, gave up any notion of watching a clear sky for shooting stars and went to sleep in our sleeping bags lined with duck patterned flannel. The next day, my parents decided to pack it in.  I let the horned toad loose and we loaded up the car. 

On the way back to Los Angeles, somewhere in the middle of the desert, the car broke down.  My mother, sister and I decamped to a very rudimentary motel room.  I suspect it was in Barstow.  My dad organized a tow truck and I remember sitting in the front with the driver.

Funny, isn’t it, where some memories just stop.  I have no memories of getting home, or getting the car fixed.  But I guess some camping trips were not meant to happen.  And one horned toad went on to live a life of freedom. 

Pranks by Dad

Today is Father’s Day and thinking of my father I remember, among many things, the wonderful pranks he loved to play.

When my sister and I were young (ages concealed so as not to incriminate) we seemed to have trouble remembering to flush the toilet.   Of course, this could have been my sister….  In an effort to remedy this social faux pas on our part, my dad announced that if we forgot to flush the toilet ONE MORE TIME we would have to drink the contents of the toilet.

A few mornings later, our father entered our shared bedroom to wake us up.  He was holding two glasses of urine colored liquid in his hands.  In a voice which was dead serious, he reminded us of his earlier ultimatum.  “I warned you girls…”

He gave each of us a glass and told us to “Drink.”  As I reluctantly raised the glass to my lips, still sitting in my twin bed, I felt overwhelming relief when my nose detected the smell of apple juice.  I don’t recall if our flushing skills improved, but I’ve never looked at apple juice in the same way since.

On another occasion the prank was on my mother.   In private, she had commented to my father on the length of time it took him to pee.   So a few days later, probably after my sister and I were well asleep, he filled a large jug with water and sloooowly poured it into the toilet within hearing range of my mother.  She must have thought that he had the bladder of an elephant.

Lest one think that all of his pranks were toilet based, he chose a national park for another joke.  He took a container of cookies from our camping store and secreted it in a trashcan.  A few minutes later, as he and my mother walked by the trashcan, he lifted the lid, grabbed the cookies and began eating.  My horrified mother could only shout “OH Al!”

My mother had quite a few female friends who were rather uptight and conservative.  Many were unmarried schoolteachers.  My dad liked to shake them up a bit.

When I was an adult and living far away, one of my mother’s friends invited her to an all woman party.  By this time my father was retired and had plenty of time on his hands to concoct crazy ideas.  He went to the Goodwill and bought a most unattractive dress, Queen Elizabeth style handbag and wig.  On the day of the party, he stuffed his “front” low and full in a way reminiscent of Eleanor Roosevelt or British matrons in black and white movies. He put on the wig, a dab of lipstick and off my parents drove to Glendale and the party.  Alfreda Bagley was a huge success.

For my mother’s 70^th birthday, my son dressed up as Alfred Bagley Junior.  The pranks continue.

The Italian VIsit

Another summer had arrived at Angus Street and, as was the custom, my father picked us up on the last day at Ivanhoe Elementary School and took us horseback riding in Griffith Park.  This terrified my mother who had a fear that we would be bucked off onto Fletcher Blvd, or worse, the nearby freeway.  We survived every time.  But the year that I was around nine years old we were greeted at home with fascinating news.

My mother told us that her good friend, and former and fellow Burbank School District music teacher, would be coming to visit with her husband and two children.  They would be taking the train all the way across the country from New Jersey.  Priscilla and John had a son about my age and a daughter just a touch younger than my sister.  I was excited. 

When all the sleeping arrangements had been made and the house cleaned, we finally drove down Sunset Boulevard, past Olvera Street, to Union Station.  I now know it as a beautiful retro building seen in many movies, and, at the time, I must admit, I had never been to such an opulent train station.  The little Atwater station was nothing like it.  Union Station was not the sort of place that you put a penny on the tracks to find it flattened.   And, frankly, we didn’t know any people who traveled by train.

We waited at the tracks for the train to pull in, and I can only image now how tired the family must have been.  My first and very vivid memory was of the father, John.  He was wearing a navy blue, double-breasted suit.  My dad dressed more “Mad Men” and there wasn’t a single double- breasted suit in his wardrobe, let alone anything navy blue.

The two families quickly melded; the adults talking and the kids playing.  There was the de rigueur trip to Disneyland where Priscilla mouthed to my mother that the Magic Castle was a “J.I.P.”   But I was in pig heaven.  We probably went to Marineland too, but I have no memories of that.

The one two-family expedition that I vividly remember was when Priscilla took us back to her old neighborhood in Burbank/Glendale.  I can still see the sycamore trees and the 1960’s bungalows that lined the street.  This is where the story gets fuzzy.  Do you remember the TV series in the 1950’s called “December Bride”?  Well, Verna Felton, a character on the show (a show that I had watched when I was home sick) had been a neighbor.  But the visit on that neighborhood trip that really wowed me was to the home of the widow of Babe Ruth.  I was impressed.

Then one day during the stay of the New Jersey family the father, a violinist, announced that he would like to make an Italian meal for all of us. 

Now—my mother was a good cook.  But “regional/ethnic” cuisines were a bit lacking and supplemented a great deal by Lawry’s packets of spices and MSG.  So for the Smithson family, spaghetti meant pouring a packet of Schilling spices and powders into tomato sauce, simmering it, and dumping it over spaghetti pasta and topping it with Parmesan cheese from a green cylindrical container.  Trust me, this didn’t happen often as my mother had a great fear of us getting FAT.  To my mother, pasta equaled getting FAT.  This is why I love macaroni and cheese.  But I digress from the story.

John took off his navy blue double-breasted suit and started to cook.  Smells like I had never experienced wafted through the Angus Street house.  Oregano, basil, garlic, and rich tomatoes simmered into a sauce.  And when the dinner was served, I was rather shocked.  THIS was not the Italian food that I had known. 

There was music too.  The daughter played a memorable version of “I am climbing Jacob’s Ladder” and, though I don’t recall this, I am certain my parents must have played their guitars and sung their repertoire of folk songs.  Perhaps John played his violin.

Year later the New Jersey family would return.  But that is for another story.

Diamond Jubilee: The Queen's Skin Redux

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 those inexpensive women’s magazines that promise good sex lives, answers to problems by an “agony aunt, ” and tricks to stretch one’s wardrobe. I think the title was WOMAN’S OWN.

 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 magazine.  Suddenly she looked up at me and said  “Doesn’t she have beautiful skin?”  She held up a page with 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.

Addendum:

I did see Queen Elizabeth II in person three times.  Twice she was being driven down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile for a stay at Holyrood Palace—site of Mary Queen of Scots’ lover’s assassination--and the upcoming garden parties.  The third time, was when I scored tickets to the Order of the Garter ceremony at St. Giles Cathedral.  I plunked on a simple straw hat and stood with the best of them. But I never thought her pancake covered skin looked “lovely.” ZCYY6H

Scratchy

I suppose that each holiday has its up and downs; the positives and the negatives.

Thanksgiving requires eating, if you are a kid.  But when you are the adult host it is a different story entirely.  There is the slaving in the kitchen and trying to make a Martha Stewart performance meal.  And always the question of what to do with that little icky bag of giblets inside the turkey.

Christmas is a wonderful event if you are a kid.  But if you are the mom it means buying and decorating the tree (plus dealing with an irritable husband whose patience is tried three fold by the time he tries to straighten the fir for the fourth time.) Then there is the buying of presents—and wrapping them—hanging the stockings and buying the stuff that will go in them, cooking the meals for both Christmas Eve and day.   Oh, and Christmas cards.

No wonder I want a glass of champagne as we open gifts.

Easter is another story.  It was always tied up with church and scratchy dresses and silly hats.  Was it some odd Puritan thing that kids needed to be uncomfortable in their Easter Sunday best in order to get the chocolate? If truth were told, I would much rather have had black licorice and wear jeans.

Lay odl lay old lay hee hoo

I grew up in a family of music.  My mother taught it.  My father played it. I listened to it.  And I was forced to attempt playing it with the piano, guitar and flute.

 My parents sang in embarrassing harmony during church services and played their guitars for Boy Scout gold dinners.  Unfortunately, it went no further as American Idol didn’t exist in those days.

My sister and I were taken to Pasadena to see Florence Henderson in the Sound of Music.  We went to The Man From La Mancha, Mame and A Chorus Line at the Schubert Theater in downtown Los Angeles.

When we got our first “hi-fi” console at Angus Street my father mysteriously disappeared into the hallway closet that had a secret hatch into the attic space.  My sister and I were prudentially warned NEVER to walk on anything but the beams up there.  In a short while my father had carved out a pretty cool music system by placing speakers into the ceilings of the bedrooms.  Frankly, I was rather impressed.

And so it was that on varying holidays my sister and I would be awakened with the appropriate music.  On Halloween, for instance, it was Dans Macabre or Night on Bald Mountain.  Much better than an alarm clock.

One day, sitting in the New Room, (check out an older post) my dad and I were looking at his collection of LP records.  Amidst the Elaine May /Mike Nichols and Bob Newhart sketches and a record made by a woman who made her fame by singing off key (which is surprising difficult if you have a good “ear”) were his favorite singers. He told me whom he liked and why and, other than Burl Ives, he was right.  There was Pete Seeger—who my parents took us to see at Idyllwild.  I’m sorry to say that all I remember of that trip was the swimming pool and an old man with a banjo.  Patty Paige, Julie London, Ella were other favorites of my father.  HE went for the sultry.

 My mom’s records tended toward Leonard Bernstein…and yes, my sister and I had to sit through his Young People’s Concerts. (Bernstein always reminded me of my Uncle Max—and now I know why.) She also liked Matt Munro and anyone singing light opera, especially Rogers and Hammerstein. There was the sound track to Flower Drum Song and musicals that I had never heard of.  My mother also had a thing for tenors. 

Fast-forward many years and this explains why, when driving across the Dolomites in southern Europe with a (thankfully) long gone boyfriend, I suddenly burst into song:

“High on a hill was a lonely goatherd- lay odl lay odl lay hee hoo.”

Beans

Dill Beans

In the early 1980’s we became friends with a woman who lived in a cabin in the Washington woods, taught the deaf and was one of the best cooks I’ve ever known.  When we would arrive at her cabin on the Kitsap Peninsula, we would be greeted with a Bloody Mary that always had a dilled string bean in the glass.  The beans, and the drink, were memorable.

Despite working in a Regensburg pickle factory, I still love a dill pickle. Despite spending six weeks smelling of vinegar and dill and shoving cucumbers into a jar, I feel fortunate that the Hengstenberg Pickle Company made crap pickles.  Therefore, I am still able to enjoy a good pickle—ala Hub Mart’s deli—or more recently, Bubbies. 

Our friend was kind enough to give me the recipe.  I remember when my mother once asked someone (who lived on Los Feliz Blvd. and thought she was the bee’s knees) the woman declined.  My mother was shocked. There are those sorts of women who leave out the key ingredient so that even if they share the recipe, it’s never quite the same.  I can understand if your recipe is from some award-winning restaurant, but in Silverlake,….come on.  Mrs. B.—you should be ashamed.

The making of dill beans became a summer ritual.  First in Seattle, and then in Honolulu.  I grew dill and bought the beans.  Usually I would invite a coterie of women and round up my son and his friends.  We would sanitize the jars, boil the vinegar and salt, boil the lids of the Mason jars and wash and cut the stems of the green beans.  Often it was a domestic assembly line:  one person washing, another cutting, someone else stuffing the jars and another pouring in the brine and sealing the jars. 

I did this for many summers and included many friends.  All of the friends have moved elsewhere.  Then I stopped. 

But this summer I saw a small dill plant and bought it.  It has grown strong and produced many of the heads that are perfect to put in the bottom of the jar of dill beans.

And so, now in my kitchen, there are eight jars of dill beans.

My son visited last week, and the first thing he noticed was a jar of dill beans.  We opened one and, for the first time, shared them with my grandson.  He loved them too.  My son ate too many and even drank the juice.  I ate a few.  We all woke up with swollen eyes from all the salt, but it was worth it.   Thank you, RF.