Flip Floppin' the Facts

Flip Floppin’ the Facts

In 2012 I wrote a post titled BEFORE.  In it I talked about the many changes since the time I grew up in Silver Lake.  Facts have been flip flopped a lot since then and here are a few to make you ponder the advice of “experts.”

Remember when having a tan and being in the sun was considered “healthy?”

Butter was banned at our house in favor of margarine  which was touted as being much better for a heart healthy diet and low cholesteral.  But made out of plastic. It's butter for me now.

Drinking coffee is bad.  Now it helps liver health and fends off Alzheimer’s disease.

Red wine good, red wine bad. Red wine good, red wine bad.

That weird kid was a weird kid.  Now he has an alphabet soup disease that benefits the drug companies.

Nuts are too fattening to eat.  Now they are healthy again. In moderation. And don’t open a packet on a plane.

Swimming is an excellent sport. Swimming causes appetite increase more than other sports….so don’t bother if you want to lose weight.

Women MUST take calcium pills.  Calcium supplements cause kidney stones. And can choke you.

Hey, menopausal women…pop a few estrogen pills and replace your hormones.  Hormone replacement can cause cancer.  But that may have flip flopped back. But I’m not buying it.

Botulism is a deadly thing to be avoided at all costs.  Now it costs to get Botox.

Just get old with grace.

And today….multi-vitamins  are not worth their salt.  Okay.  I’ll wait a few years for the flip flop.

And to the men…"low T" is now a new problem.  I guess when my parents were alive it was called “getting old.”   It meant that you loved your wife and family and didn’t have to show it with an erection.  But my dad did in all ways.

Brushes With Fame

Brushes With Fame

When you grow up in Silver Lake, you are only several degrees away from fame.  Not Kevin Bacon, mind you, but a wide and varied selection of the once and famous. Your high school was a film set for the tv show Mr. Novak, and later, GREASE.  Since then there have been many other productions that featured the brick tower of John Marshall High School.  It’s even more so now as I’ve read that Silver Lake is a hot spot for many young and hip celebs.

None of it rubbed off on me.  I am about as far from being famous as I could be.  My closest experience with being famous is going to the local mall in Honolulu and knowing that, without question, I will bump into a former student or two. Sometimes they were shopping.  Sometimes they were behind a counter.   Once, I had three "hits"  before I got out of the parking lot and into the stores.  That’s ample for me.  The stress of trying to remember the kid’s name or recognizing the parent who approaches is enough. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be stared at while I ate, be tailed as I roamed through a drugstore buying something personal and embarrassing, or have my photo taken on a bad day.  I don’t need Joan Rivers (RIP) commenting on my garb or TMZ  mentioning what was in my shopping cart.  All this be said, I do have a tincture of interest in the famous. 

I went to school with the extras--the little kids--who made up the line of children in the movie THE KING AND I.  And one of them went on to make an Elvis movie about the Seattle World's Fair.  

In elementary school, our class was led to the library where the only television set existed.  There we watched one of our classmates on DIVOCE COURT.

Being raised in Silver Lake meant that you were bound to bump into people who were well-known names.   I had no clue that the kid with the last name of Neutra was related to an amazing architect.  Never did it dawn on me that the judge in the OJ Simpson trial was the kid who wore a tie to school and was the student body president.  Nor that my science teacher who drove a T-Bird with porthole windows and would give me lifts to school was living with the famous writer Anais Nin.  At the time, I didn’t even know what “living in sin” meant.  There were stories about a mob boss named Ice Pick Harry, rumors that Catwoman had attended our high school and later, Leonardo DiCaprio.  All true.  My first boyfriend was an extra on Dragnet and Room 222.  Several of my junior high school English teachers were bit part actors.  My prom date was a star in the Bold and Beautiful--- a long running soap.  Another guy I dated briefly was the producer for The Sopranos and wrote for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and The Incredible Hulk. A childhood friend’s father was an actor. My Girl Scout troop loved it when he was on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. 

There were times when my parents would recognize someone that I didn’t know.  At the Hollywood Bowl, where my mother took us to appreciate the music of Aaron Copeland, Irene Dunn sat a few boxes away.  I had no clue who Irene Dunn was, but my mother was thrilled.  She was equally thrilled when she saw Frederick March sitting outside of I. Magnin on Wilshire Boulevard. My Aunt Cora knew Buster Crabbe.

At church, there were the odd brushes with George Kennedy and Gale Storm.  My mother was once in a wedding party with Ronald Reagan. And she claims that she told him he should get into politics.  (Don’t blame me!)  My grandfather married Ron to Jane Wyman. 

My dad played golf with Aldo Ray. 

While working at The Farmer’s Market camera store as a teen, I sold film to Peter Falk, saw Cary Grant walking to his car and sneaked a look at Agnes Moorehead’s recently developed photos.  I saw Tom Brokaw while on a date to a Burt Bacharach concert at the Greek Theater. It was the same place that I saw Bobby Kennedy shortly before his death.

In 1968 I “covered” for my fictional newspaper the election and witnessed—close-up—Nixon, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert and Muriel Humphrey.  The same “newspaper” got me access to the set of the Dean Martin Show and the Andy Williams Show  where I saw Petula Clark.  I got a press pass for a Sammy Davis Junior concert at The Coconut Grove.  He was one tiny guy.  And interviewed Sonny and Cher before anyone cared.

My girlfriends and I sneaked onto a well-known movie studio lot and watched, un-noticed, while Carol Channing and Julie Andrews filmed Thoroughly Modern Millie.  Bumped into a few stars on the way. 

I have written earlier about the two teen crushes that I had: Warren Beatty and Richard Chamberlain.  Their magazine pictures graced my bedroom wall.  I have seen both in person.  One at the Academy Awards and the other three times in Hawaii. 

And once, I visited the real Lassie (or one of them) at a kennel in a small town outside of Los Angeles.  I took her picture and taped inside my own canine’s doghouse.  She was a Silver Lake dog, after all.

The Prom

Prom is a big deal to most high schoolers.  It was to me.  A bizarre right of passage of sorts.  And I was damned if I wasn’t going to go. I didn’t have a boyfriend and pretty much figured I was not too high on the list of primo invitees. I didn’t have big breasts, genuine blond hair or a long-legged physique.  I wasn’t particularly popular, nor did I travel in the upper echelons of the many cliques. So I decided that I would eat my pride (of which I had little) and ask a boy to be my date.  I tried three.

 The first two, who will remain nameless, were less than ideal romantic partners, but good guys.  I think they were both shorter than I was.  They were neither handsome, nor witty, nor charming.  Their only redeeming factor was that I had known them since junior high. 

They both turned me down.

Then, one day in my science class, I was sitting next to a very attractive guy while we waited for our fetal pig to defrost so we could dissect it.  Maybe it was the formaldehyde fumes, but I bit the bullet and tried for the third time.  This time the answer was YES.  Though he was one grade younger, he was sweet, and, as I have said, quite cute.

Well, that little YES set the ball rolling.  I had to get a dress.  It cost $40 dollars and I think I bought it at I. Magnin in the Sherman Oaks mall. The dress was white, floor length and sleeveless.  I honestly had no intention of looking virginal, but I guess that was the effect. And, if truth be told, it was true.

On the weekends and during vacations, I worked in the camera store at The Farmer’s Market—now better know as part of The Grove.  My bosses were a childless married couple.  He was Mormon and she was Christian Scientist--- which eventually led to her death.  They were old family friends.  The woman really got into my prom experience and lent me a beautiful white shawl.  From somewhere or the other a pair of elbow length gloves appeared. 

On the day of the prom, my friend Monica and I drove to the Sunset Strip to have our hair done at a fancy salon.  The woman doing my hair used the word “groovy” and Monica and I looked at each other.  “Groovy” was now déclassé.   With enough hairspray to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa we left to don our gowns.  My dad took many pictures of me in the living room at Angus Street.

When the doorbell finally rang, my date stood in an ordinary suit, not a tux.  Though extremely handsome, I was a little disappointed.  I don’t remember if he brought me a corsage like they did on “Father Knows Best.”   I climbed into his forgettable car and we drove to Burbank and up the hill to The Castaways restaurant. 

Sitting at the dinner table, I do remember.  It was awkward.  Dancing, I have no memory of.   In the car, on the way home, he stated a “fact” that I knew to be wrong.  I pretended to agree with him.  But at that moment I made a vow to myself that I would never play dumb for a guy again.  That was our only date.

He went on the become a very successful pop musician and then soap opera star on The Bold and The Beautiful, where he still works.    He still looks good.  I, on the other hand, have not had the benefit—nor the desire—for “help” from Hollywood…. if you get my drift.   

I’m glad this was before the days of rented limos and post prom hotel rooms.  I’m glad we just drove home and I learned a lesson about being the true me. 

The STUFF of Life

I may have grown up in Silver Lake, but I no longer live there.  I have moved many times from the house on Angus Street.  And, in a year, I will be moving again.  This leads to the question:  What do I do with the STUFF of life?

I am not a pack rat and purge belongings regularly.  This was a necessity in the days when I could carry everything I owned from one country to another, and continued when everything I owned would fit in the trunk of a used Ford Maverick. Those days have gone.  Still,  Goodwill and Salvation Army are not unfamiliar with my drop offs.

BUT, there are some items that have come into my possession that have me wondering about the ethics of their final disposition.  The item that has me the most conflicted is the American flag that draped the casket of my mother’s first husband.  He died of polio during World War Two, and my mother saved the flag until her own death.  She and my father would occasionally hang it on the Fourth of July and then stow the neatly folded triangle in a plastic case at the top of a hall closet.  When my mother and father had both passed away, the flag remained. My sister didn’t want it, and nor did I, but I took it.  I really don’t want to take it on my next move and I don’t know what to do with it.

Another item that has me in a quandary is a rather unattractive needlepoint pillow that my mother made from a kit.  Once again, neither my sister nor I wanted it.  To ensure that the pillow made its way out of her life and into mine, my sister sneaked it into my luggage.  It now lives in my basement.   Perhaps I should sneak it back to my sister’s house some day.

My husband’s father’s linen jacket sits in our office closet.  My husband has never worn it and never will.  It serves only as a memory of his father.  I have my aunt’s Hong Kong made black and gold embroidered dress and jacket that will never fit me.   And there’s the blouse that a well meaning friend gave me, the glass lobster brought back from a European trip by another friend and the beaded purse that was a gift from a visitor from China.  None of these things are items I wish to take to my new home.  But each has its clutches into memories and emotions.

What about the “challenged” clay art made by my four-year son, or the candles given to me by my mother that I’ve never put a match to?  There’s the rather ugly gold-tone watch that my husband gave me as a wedding present because the name of the brand was “Corvette” and he’d heard me talking about Chevy Corvettes every time DALLAS would air on our tiny black and white television in Edinburgh.  No one would want these things…and I don’t either.  But I can’t quite part with them.

There’s the cookie cutter in the shape of my two year old’s hand, the masks given me by well meaning people who knew I collect masks, but not which kind, and the cups and saucers from some distant relative of my husband that someone somewhere might like to display on a wall.    Just not me.   What about all the high school senior portraits with heartfelt messages that I have acquired over the years as a teacher?  Do I want to become one of those people who bring out a box of mementos every year to relive my life?   No, not yet. 

A few months ago I cleaned out the filing cabinets and got rid of five trash bags of letters of recommendations, school transcripts, contracts and virtually anything work related.  No need for it now.  If I ever decide to go back to work in education they’d be damned lucky to have me and a letter from someone who is probably dead isn’t going to help.

Then there’s the holiday STUFF:  the ornaments that are ugly and the felt stockings made by a deaf great-aunt in the 1950’s.

And lastly, there are the clothes of the babes.  I am 62 and still have a yellow hand-knitted infant jacket that someone made for me.  I have two sweet sweaters from St. Stephen’s Street in Edinburgh that I bought for my son.  On has spit-up stains and the other has moth holes.  

This is the STUFF of my life.  It will eventually go.   But how long that will take, I do not know.

Audience

On this blog, one that I care quite a bit about, there is a statistics page.  It tells me how many people have read my blog and from what countries.

It seems that many people around the world are reading Silver Lake.  Some of the countries mentioned in the ”Audience” report are: Germany, Russia, Turkey, France, Great Britain, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, Slovenia, Nepal, Latvia, Canada, Sweden  and, of course, the United States.  Obviously, some of you are repeat offenders.

I would love to hear from you.  Send me your comments and tell me what you think, and what you want to know. 

Let’s make this a two-way street.