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.