Charmed, I'm Sure

My mother was obsessed with appearances.  I think it was because she had been a fat kid.  In her later years I used to see if I could get through one phone conversation with her that someone’s “looks” weren’t mentioned. But I’ll hand it to her, she always looked good.

By the time I entered high school, this obsession was directed at me. Apparently, I needed a bit of refining and thus started our weekly treks to the Sunset Strip charm school of Mary Webb Davis.  I wasn’t a fat kid, I was a tomboy and I didn’t fit the acceptable mold.

My mother would pick me up after school --and after she had taught all day-- and drive me down Hollywood Boulevard to the Sunset Strip.  She must have really thought I needed improving.

Sometimes these drives were not happy. I’m not a big talker; I’m comfortable with silence.  My mother was not.  I think she found my silence rude and one day, as we drove by Hollywood High School, she lost her temper at my quietness and forced me to “make conversation.”

I suppose today Mary Webb Davis and her crew would be called “life coaches.” The teachers were conventionally beautiful, pointy breasted, well-groomed, stiff haired blonds and apparent experts of everything I didn’t know that I needed to know. I am in no doubt that many brain cells were sacrificed by theses women from decades of breathing in hair spray, polish remover and eyelash glue.  I doubt a single one could name the capital of Canada.  Can you?

I learned valuable skills like how to accept a compliment (not a skill that I have much need for), how to walk down stairs gracefully and, most importantly, how to apply false eyelashes. I learned to drink a large glass of water with freshly squeezed lemon juice first thing in the morning—a sure cure for bad skin and the evils of the world. I mastered the art of using an emery board;  only sand in one direction. This was long before botox—I can only imagine what they might have suggested to a 16 year old—and liposuction.  Breast implants were unheard of. 

Sure enough, I looked better for a while. I wore false eyelashes to school, got a boyfriend and used peroxide to highlight my “dishwater blonde” hair which was in the de rigueur style.  And I’m certain my mother thought she was providing me with a wonderful experience.  I’ve just always wondered why my sister never got the same wonderful experience. 

Ivanhoe Teachers: Part Two

Mr. L, my sixth grade teacher, was rather intimidating.  He was a tall, Asian man who was basically the only source of testosterone in the school.  I have based my teaching—for I am a teacher-- on how to not be like him.

He was well respected by the powers that be—Mrs. Joyner, the principal with her sleeve always stuffed with Kleenex.  We had a  “student teacher” who was a menopausal nun and about as exciting as eating cornflakes without milk.  Between the two of them, my last semester of sixth grade was not a fun one.

Mr. L loved to assign projects that were due the day after a holiday vacation.  That Christmas, my family drove to Yosemite.  On the drive there, before my father put on the chains—a skill that always amazed me—we were almost killed.  We hit a patch of ice on a mountain bend.  My mother summed it all up:  God!  Oh God…Oh, my God—an adjective added as the car slid out of control and neared a cliff.  And when the car stopped just at the edge of the road I think I was probably thinking that death would have been a welcome relief from Mr. L’s looming due date.

Safely ensconced in a cabin in the valley under Half Dome, just below where the “firefall” used to be, I tried to enjoy my Christmas vacation. I skied at Badger’s Pass, skated on an outdoor rink in a Norwegian sweater and ate meals at the festively decorated lodge---all the while worrying about that damned paper I was supposed to write about Rio de Janeiro.  My stomach churned.  And then I realized that I had the stomach flu, and so did my entire family.

Mr. L did something that, to this day, still irks me.  Every Friday he and the student teacher nun would give a math test.  I never finished in the allotted time.  And every Friday he would mark my unfinished questions as wrong.  I never have understood how something not done can be “wrong.”  Then, every Monday, he would divide the class into two halves.  The nun would take one half and he the other. It didn’t take too much to realize that the class was separated into the smart and dumb groups.  I only had to look around and I did not appreciate where I had been placed.

One of the oddest days in Mr. L’s class was the one when all the girls were sent to the auditorium.  There, innocent of what was to come and curious as to why the boys had to stay in class, we were shown a movie in black and white with a pompous British narration that proclaimed we were about to become women.  I was mortified that Mr. L would need to know this, and slightly appalled with the sudden realization that Mr. L. had a penis.

Politics: Part One

Politics were not something that my family engaged in.  We talked about school and friends and the news.  I remember sitting at the breakfast table and my mother telling us that a great lady had “passed away”—Eleanor Roosevelt. My mother could never say, “died.”  She was the queen of euphemisms.  And I remember her pain when she explained to us about the bombing of the little girls in a church in Birmingham.  But politics never entered the conversation.

My very first glimpse at “politics” was when I walked by the kindergarten enclosure at Ivanhoe Elementary School.  One of the kids was wearing a large button that said “Elect Pat Brown for Governor” It may have even said “re-e-elect.”   His father was a judge who would go on to mentor another judge who would come to national attention with the O.J. Simpson case.

The next time I became aware of politics was when I was in the fifth grade and in Mr. C’s class.  One of the students was wearing a large VOTE FOR KENNEDY button and it fell off.  Mr. C said  “That’s where he belongs…. on the floor.”   He also told us that in our lifetime a man would walk on the moon.  I thought he was nuts.  And, besides, my parents were voting for Nixon.

Shortly before President Kennedy was assassinated, I asked my mother who she would vote for in the next election.  She was no longer a Nixon fan.

Another political memory were bumper stickers that said “IMPEACH EARL WARREN.”  I thought he must be a very bad person.  And I learned what “impeach,” meant.

I don’t think there is a descriptive title for the group of people who were just a tad bit later than the beatniks and just a tiny bit earlier than the hippies.  But my friend’s parents were in this category.  They slept on a mattress on the floor, dogs were everywhere and the walls were black. Instead of putting butter on their corn they rolled the cobs in the stick of butter.  And they served me ox-tail soup for dinner.  Our families were quite different.

My friend’s cousin had a VW Beetle with a sunroof and we were allowed to stand up in the car and stick our heads through the roof while he drove on the freeway. I never told my mother about this. From this girl I learned the words “atheist” and “agnostic.”   I think we were twelve.

 Later, the cousin and the family acquired a Chinese junk that was berthed in Long Beach.  On a weekend visit, we went to the Pike and took in the rides, cotton candy and oddness—all barefoot.  My mother would have been appalled.  And after, with very filthy feet, lying in the upper bunk on the junk, I listened to Petula Clark singing “I Know A Place” on the radio while the waves rocked me to sleep, This was despite my fear of having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night on a strange junk. 

This friend was the one who informed me about a “proposition.”  It was to make sure that landlords didn’t discriminate against potential renters because of their color.  There was a rally in my junior high auditorium and my parents came.  Things were starting to change.

Ivanhoe Teachers: Part One

After the oddness of Mrs. M, my first grade teacher, I had several teachers who didn’t really register in the memory bank, except for one who told me not to wear lipstick to school. I was in the first grade, after all. That same day I went home, reapplied the color and went back to the school with my mother to register my little sister for kindergarten.  The teacher was in the office and didn’t say a word about my lipstick.

In the second grade Mrs. Bevan became Mrs. Trask (or was it the other was around?) I never thought of people her age getting married. But she, with an adult son that we often heard about, did. I remember three things about her class. She taught us about cows—Guernsey’s, Holsteins and Jerseys. And she was taught us to draw cows using a method completely devoid of any creativity. It was only a matter of connecting circles. How this was at all relevant to a 7 year old growing up in Los Angeles is beyond me.

And she had to deal with Raymond. Raymond had done something very bad.  He had uttered the “f” word and been sent to Mrs. Joyner, the principal, with her Kleenex filled sleeve. I had no clue what the “f word” was but it didn’t take long for another boy in the class to inform the entire class and me.

There was another troublesome boy in the class named Tommy. Between learning about John C. Fremont and the Pueblo de Los Angeles, I was chosen to be his seatmate.  It didn't get past me that I had been chosen for this task because I was considered "a good girl."  Little did she know.  I didn’t think Tommy was so bad.  He even fixed the tilting desk by putting a piece of cardboard under the leg.  I was impressed.

In the third grade all was not well—especially with our teacher who seemed to have completely lost control.  She disappeared shortly after Mark threw a blackboard eraser at her head.  The parents did a lot of whispering during this period.

After a series of substitute teachers, we were introduced to Miss Rasmussen.  She kind of looked like Barbie—the blond one. I called her Miss Razzamatazz.  It was in her class that I first got stitches, was the only kid not allowed to watch Zorro because it was on a half hour after my ridiculously early bedtime, and got diarrhea at school. Academically, I remember nothing.

I guess learning about the cows made more of an impression.

Christmas Eve

 

On the day of Christmas Eve, my father would pack the popcorn balls he and my mother had spent hours making and wrapping-- and his two daughters--- into the Chevrolet and drive to Burbank and Glendale to make his deliveries. While we drove from house to house, I hope my mother was taking the time to nap.  But I suspect she was stuffing the stockings. I know she wasn’t wrapping gifts, because we were told early on that an organized woman is finished with her Christmas shopping—and wrapping--by Thanksgiving.

 

When we arrived home it would be showers in the pink tiled bathroom, special dresses and the arrival of Aunt Cora.  Aunt Cora was my father’s Mormon sister who was divorced and lived in nearby Atwater.  By tradition, she spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with us.

 

The station wagon was loaded with gifts and we drove to Beverly Hills. My favorite route was along Wilshire Boulevard because of all the Christmas lights and displays in the Cadillac dealership.  As we officially approached Beverly Hills, lighted reindeer draped the street at every block.  The park that bordered our drive had two or three large pine trees—thirty feet at least.  At Christmas, they were always decorated with blue lights.  The “blue light trees” were a sign that we were getting close.  Once the San Diego freeway was built, it was faster to go through the Valley and take the pass over to the house.  It was never as fun as the old route.

 

My grandparents lived with my grandmother’s adult, gay son from an earlier marriage.  Uncle Max drove a red convertible with white leather seats and worked in the book trade. His bedroom was a virtual bookstore. When I was much older, I appreciated his more adult editions.

 

Christmas Eve would include an odd mix of people. Single ladies from the church joined us as well as Uncle Max’s good friend named T.V.,a cross between Ayn Rand and Coco Chanel, who gave us impressive—and sometimes signed—books.  My grandfather always hugged us as we entered and called us “his little lambs.”  He was a prominent minister in Hollywood and must have been glad to be home after a barrage of pageants, nativity plays and having to write meaningful sermons. My mother’s brother and his wife would come as well.  They were the epitome of cool.

 

The dining room was set and ready with candles burning in twisted, silver holders that reflected against the windows and mirror along the wall. Always, while he lived until I was nine, my grandfather put a silver dollar on his granddaughters’ plates.  Mostly we had turkey, and the single church lady always brought Jell-O salad because she couldn’t cook.  Aunt Cora always brought the Cranberry sauce mix that’s on the packages of Ocean Spray.

 

In the living room a fire would be burning in the hearth and the chubby stockings would be waiting until after dinner. Also in the living room, near the tree, was a large, whipped wax candle infused with glitter.  I don’t know how many Christmases this candle lasted, but in my memory it was always there.

 

My grandmother, not my mother’s real mother, always called my mom “Sister.” I thought it was odd. On a few occasions, my grandmother’s real sister would join the Christmas Eve celebration from Bainbridge Island. She and my grandmother both suffered from genetic deafness.  My mother’s voice was usually hoarse after these dinners.

 

When we finally got to open our stockings they contained things we didn’t normally see.  Lollipops from France, tiny hard milled soaps in the shape of a rose—everything smelled exotic.

 

On the day of my all time favorite Christmas Eve, my sister and I were told we could open a gift before going to our grandparents.  This seemed quite decadent.  But later made sense.  The gifts we both opened were life sized baby dolls with eyes that had lids that shut and opened and mouths puckered and ready for a bottle.  We took these with us to our grandparents.  After the dinner and after the stockings we were surprised with wooden cradles for the babies.  Ladies from the church had made us tiny quilts.  We were completely ready to set up parenting shop.

 

On the way home, we drove down little Santa Monica and often saw an indoor skating rink.  Once back at Angus Street we would put on our brand new Lanz flannel nightgowns.  Aunt Cora would be ensconced on the living room sofa turned bed and we would kiss her goodnight.  And then we waited for the dawn.

 

Many, many years later my husband and I flew into Los Angeles from our home in Scotland to get married.  There was an airplane strike and Margaret Thatcher had yet to take things into hand. Our flight from London was delayed one day and we arrived in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve night.  My family had not met my husband-to-be.  My father and sister met us at the airport and whisked us to my grandmother’s.  The fire was still burning, the stockings had disappeared years earlier and the regular guest list had been depleted by deaths.  We sat at card tables and ate homemade clam chowder. 

The Boss

My father worked a small company based in Elgin, Illinois that made “variable speed drives.” My dad would show these to me when we went to a carwash.  His office was in a very boring part of Los Angeles that was made up of warehouses and railroad tracks.  The office had two rooms, a front office and a back storage area that smelled of lubricating grease. The best part about the whole thing was that the desk chair was on wheels and could spin around.

About once a year my dad’s boss would fly out from the Chicago area. He was very different from my parents and therefore seemed slightly glamorous.  He smoked heavily and drank heavily and a stroke had left one side of his face droopy. We had been warned not to stare.  He wore hats like Frank Sinatra and shiny sharkskin suits, and took my parents to fancy restaurants on the Sunset Strip.  He was Catholic, had seven children, one of whom was deaf, and never brought his wife along on these trips.

There was a drawer in one of the living room side tables where my father saved all the little free cigarettes packs he’d gotten on his business flights.  These were to offer when the boss showed up.  Some type of liquor would be purchased, the house completely cleaned and my mother would be her most charming. Once I caught her in the kitchen adding water to the boss’ drink.  She told me that he already had enough and he wouldn’t know the difference.

Sometimes a fellow distributor, an Armenian, would arrive from Fresno to meet the boss. My mother’s close friend would be called upon for double date duty and the five would enjoy a night on the town.  I remember my mother’s excitement when they dined a few tables away from Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra.

On one visit we drove The Boss up to Santa Barbara for a Sunday outing. We pulled into a large seafood restaurant in Ventura for lunch and the boss insisted that I order lobster.  It was my first time.  I’m rather embarrassed to say that it reminded me of popcorn because of the clarified butter.

The summer that I was eleven my father had been invited to Elgin on business. He invited me to join him.  It was to be my first flight.  In preparation, my mother took me to I. Magnin’s on Wilshire and bought me a red suit trimmed with white—sort of a pre-teen Chanel knock off.  I felt very sophisticated, in spite of my white socks.

I remember that we flew American Airlines, that the dinner tray contained the familiar five pack of cigarettes and that Lon Chaney Jr. aka The Wolfman, was sitting just across the aisle. Against my wishes, my father forced me to get his autograph.

At home my mother was buying my sister a new Barbie to make up for the fact that she didn’t get to come.

We stayed at the boss’ house—but I would call it a mansion.  It was large, brick, has a circular driveway and a pool.  Dad and I were put up together in a downstairs bedroom.

I had four firsts while staying there.  I fell in love with the boss’ oldest and best-looking son who told me I was beautiful. (I imagine he has a guide dog now.) I got hay fever and sneezed to the extent that the boss’ wife got me medication.  I attended a Catholic mass—still in Latin—and contemplated converting because the service was so short.  And I got my period for the first time. I dealt with the later by hiding my underwear and praying it would go away. It did—for a year. 

Christmas: The Tree, Kit and Caboodle

In the 1950’s Christmas was not “Xmas” and it did not follow Halloween. A tasteful week after Thanksgiving was the usual time that Christmas carols started playing on the radio, poinsettias were everywhere and the Christmas cards started rolling in.

I loved collecting the Christmas cards from the mailbox and delighted that during this period we got two mail deliveries a day. The “rich people” had gold or silver foil lining in their envelopes. And their names were printed onto the card in a matching metallic font.  Sometimes after the printed names would be a one sentence handwritten greeting that smelled of insincerity and laziness. My family never had our name printed on our cards and actually wrote sincere messages.

We got our fair share of mimeographed newsletters that contained only the most positive updates. There were cards that contained photos, die cut ornaments and the one special card, each year that was a hand done mini -masterpiece.  If I had saved those particular cards, there would be a coffee table book in the offing.

My generation has Ben and Jerry’s.  Our parents had Harry and David. Maybe it was because I was from California, but getting a box of pears or apples—no matter how polished--didn’t seem like much of a gift to me.

It was roughly around this time that Hickory Farms opened and Christmas gifts and goodies began to contain smoked rectangular cheese with a brown rind, salami style sausage and those miniature ceramic pots of spreadable cheeses.

Nuts were another popular item.  The nut tray and accompanying cracker appeared on the table in front of our fireplace.  My father taught us how to crack walnuts without using anything but another walnut.

I am grateful that the Chex Mix fad lasted only one Christmas season at our home.

At school we were busy making ornaments for our parents and practicing our Christmas songs for the school concert.  Unless you were in Mrs. Steiner’s class and then it was all about dreidels. We soaked string in starch and wrapped it around soon to be deflated balloons, we pressed fingers and shapes into flat clay circles and we posed for our silhouettes to be traced. 

But the best of the best was the day—always the last day of school before the holidays—when we would get our Christmas tree.  My father was not one to mince around Glendale tree lots.  We drove right down to the railroad station where the trees were unloaded from the Pacific Northwest. My dad would bargain and haggle—point out unseemly branches—and always get a good deal.  One year we went in the pouring rain and my dad traded his plastic raincoat for a tree.

Once home, my father would examine the tree and make it right. He cut branches, drilled holes and inserted them here and there to make up for nature’s errors. Then we would decorate.  Boxes of ornaments would be pulled out of storage. Some would be broken and some would cut your fingers.  I quickly learned the dangers of “spun glass.” 

Christmas Part One: The Lead Up

Christmas—Part One: The Lead Up

We knew Christmas was coming when my mother put a sparkly German advent calendar on the mantle of the fireplace, just under her favorite Gauguin knock off of Tahiti. The calendars over the years varied little.  They were either a manger scene or a candle lit village covered in the snow that we never got to see in Los Angeles.

Each day before school my sister and I alternated opening the little paper windows and it was fortuitous that the calendar ended on the 24^th so we both got the same number of windows to open. The window for the 24^th was always the most coveted, largest and had the best picture.

There were no chocolates or toys behind the windows, just sweet little pictures. A trumpet, a candle or a toy car.  By the time my son was old enough for an advent calendar there seemed the commercial need to put actual goodies and chocolate in each window.   I continued the tradition of the simple glitter shedding German ones.

The next sign of Christmas was the smell of popcorn, Karo syrup and food coloring being conjured into Christmas gifts.  My parents would spend evening after evening busy in the kitchen popping corn and stirring large pots of sugary goo. My father formed the cooling mixture into popcorn balls.  Sometimes they added red cinnamon candies.  Once cooled completely, we would cut brightly colored cellophane on the dining room table, wrap each ball and tie it with a ribbon.  These would be distributed to friends later. When you bit into the stiff balls, the corn would cut into your gums.

The next harbinger of Christmas was the annual Group Six carol sing at our home.  Our church, Hollywood Beverly Christian Church, divided women into like-minded groups in an attempt to stimulate socializing and friendship. It was pretty obvious that my mother had been put in the “career woman” group—Group Six.

Being the only married member of the group, and the only one with a husband, young children and a welcoming hearth and home, my mother invited Group Six every Christmas to come share a buffet of Christmas cookies and sing carols in front of the fire, no matter what the temperature.

One member of G6 arrived early every single year.  I imagine she didn’t want to drive home and then back to our house. And I know that she had no idea how much she irked my mother, because she never entertained and had no idea of the work that went into it. She would park and read a book.  This drove my mother nuts.  Irritated because she felt like she should invite her in and annoyed because her last half hour of getting ready time would be stolen, she bemoaned this woman’s arrival every year.  And every year, after some good old complaining, my mother would go out to her car and ask her in.  The woman’s name was Betty and she always brought those round, rich cookies that have powdered sugar on them.

The ladies would fill our living room and my mother or someone else with musical skill would play the piano. Sometimes there would be the Autoharp or guitar.  My sister and I would join in and feel slightly awkward around these women who sometimes seemed a little desperate for our companionship. My father loved to play practical jokes on them, but not in an unkind way.  Group Six was just something we had to do before the fun stuff happened.

Another Christmas lead up was the Hollywood Christmas Parade. The parade route was a block from our church and we would go to the Friday night church dinner beforehand.  The food was truly atrocious—green jello encasing celery with stiff dollops of yellowing mayonnaise on top, fried chicken and brown gravy over lumpy potatoes.  The evening I remember the most was when my uncle, who lived just below the Hollywood sign, had gone off on a freighter and left my mother in charge of his house.  The Hollywood Hills caught on fire.  Aldous Huxley’s home, a few blocks below my uncle’s, was burned to the ground. We could see the fire from the parade.  My uncle’s house was spared.

Music Lessons

Music was a big part of our lives.  My father played the guitar and had a beautiful deep singing voice. My mother was an elementary school music teacher for the Burbank School District and played the piano, Autoharp and guitar.

My parents loved to sing. And in harmony. Every Sunday at church they would harmonize the Doxology and whatever hymns were on the menu for that day.  My sister and I would cringe and slink down into the pew in embarrassment.

When I was about 10 years old, my mother conned me into taking piano lessons.  She assured me that this skill would make me popular at parties later in my life. I think she’d seen too many Bing Crosby movies and certainly couldn’t predict that by the time I was old enough to attend parties, playing the piano would not be able to compete with The Doors, The Stones and The Beatles.

She would come home from teaching all day, pick me up and drive me to Glendale. Like the swimming lessons, she would sit waiting for me to finish the lesson, inevitably hearing me being told that I needed to practice more.  Then she would drive home and make dinner. 

When I was in the sixth grade, it was announced at school that we were going to have an orchestra.  Mrs. Cobb would come weekly to teach us how to play a variety of instruments.  To be in the orchestra was a no-brainer.  The choice of instrument was a little more difficult.  I wanted to learn the trumpet.  My mother insisted that the noise would bother the neighbors and that the trumpet was a boy’s instrument.  We settled on the flute.  Later, as I walked home with my neat little case watching the saxophone and tuba players struggling, I realized the flute was okay.

I can still remember the smell of the Artley silver flute with its padded stops. I enjoyed twisting it to tune and polishing it with a purple felt cloth. I also liked that in the music we played, the flute parts were pretty much the main tune, not like the parts for the triangle.

During rehearsals, I was appalled by the other wind instrument players who had to vent their spit valves onto the wooden floor of the auditorium.  By the end of the session, little pools of saliva surrounded them. The flute was looking better and better.

When I graduated from Ivanhoe Elementary School Mrs. Cobb left my life. My mother hired a flute instructor, who like all music teachers seemed to, lived in Glendale.

By this time, the lure of a Dunkin Imperial yo-yo or the promise of popularity was not enough to keep me interested in playing the piano. I did it out of guilt to please my mother.  On the occasions when she would sit on the bench next to me I remember staring at her hands and their boniness and feeling even more guilt. In spite of the fact that my sister had now been roped into the lessons and the teacher moved a mere block from our house, I was desperate to quit.

 Frankly, I only remember two things about those lessons—other than the horrors and stress of the recitals.

One day I arrived a bit early for my lesson and Mrs. Gwendolyn Brain Lund was busy in the next room with a student.  She had a waiting room set up just like a dentist’s or doctors with magazines.  Except the magazines weren’t boring.  She had LIFE.  On that day I opened the large magazine and found an article about sharks.  There was a very realistic underwater picture looking up at a man floating on an inflatable raft with his feet dangling in the water.  Below him a variety of sharks were circling.  I had an inflatable beach raft.  One side was blue and one was red.  After that I always surfed with the red side up in case a shark might think it was blood.

The other thing I remember was my very last day of lessons. My mother came in and asked me to wait outside. I heard her tell Mrs. GBL that I would no longer be her student.  Without missing a beat, Mrs. Lund told my mother that that was just as well because I had horrible hands.

Now free of the piano, I was bitten by a new musical bug. The British had invaded and every rock and roll group had guitars.  Every group I listened to on my clock radio had guitars…and drums.  I would have preferred to play the drums but I figured if the trumpet was too noisy for the neighbors, drums would definitely be out. So, I was allowed to quit the flute (and I think my mother was secretly relieved that she didn’t have to drive me to Glendale once a week) on the condition that I would learn to play the guitar.

The teacher was Russian and named Serge—pronounced Ser-gay. And he didn’t live in Glendale. I was allowed to use my mother’s guitar for the lessons.

Things went along quite nicely.  I could strum a few tunes, enough so that my best friend would come over and sing with me.  We fantasized that one of the cars driving up Angus Street would hear us, stop in wonderment and present us with a contract. I think we actually believed it a bit.

Then the day came that the seventh grade class of Thomas Starr King Jr. High announced that they were having a talent show. My friend and I signed up.  We practiced the song over and over while sitting on my twin bed.  On the day of the performance, we walked out onto the large stage of the auditorium.  I started playing the introduction and then we both began to sing. I suddenly forgot the chords and stopped.  My friend forgot the lyrics.  We walked off the stage in shame.  I never played that guitar again and Serge lost a student.  The hit of the talent show was John Friesen on the drums playing “Wipeout.”  He went on to be in the 1970’s band Player that had a hit with the song “Baby Come Back.”  The last time I heard it was on a Swiffer commercial..

Swimming: Part Two

Once I could swim, my mother had a hard time getting me out of the water. We went to various local pools. Griffith Park’s huge one was kind of scary because of all the older teenagers trying to impress each other.  Much, much later in life I read a “Dear Abby “ column about how it was possible to get impregnated in a public pool from all the wandering sperm.  That was the end of the Griffith Park Pool for me.

There was another, smaller pool in the neighborhood where kids took lessons. It had a really stupid name that I can’t remember. We often went there and I often ignored my mom’s calls to get out of the water.

And then there was Jane’s. Whenever it was really hot, Jane would invite us over to swim.  Not, it always had to be made clear, to pet her bedlington terrier who didn’t like kids—but to swim.

Jane was my mother’s maid of honor.  Jane never married and lived with a woman doctor who never seemed to be there. The two homes they owned together both had pools.  The first home had a deep kidney shaped pool where I perfected my skills with a scuba mask and snorkel.  Needless to say, my favorite television program was SEA HUNT with Lloyd Bridges.  My main-non cowboy- hero was Jacques Cousteau and—after a science fair project—I was an expert on the bathyscape Trieste. (And also at painting a softball gray and adding portholes made out of the ends of an empty toilet paper roll.)

Then Jane moved to a new house that the couple built together. Each woman had a separate wing of the home (Jane's was always a purple theme) and the pool was a perfect rectangle bordered on one side by a sandstone wall and on the other by a deck with orchids. By the time we were invited to this house, I was a teenager and becoming too cool for the pool.  Years later, Jane would open her house to my in-laws when they came from Scotland for our wedding in 1979.  I’m sure that the David Hockney blues of Jane’s pool were a welcome change from the omnipresent grays of Scotland during the December miner’s strike that eventually led to Margaret Thatcher's election.

Swimming: Part One

When I was five years old, the day that I had awaited all summer finally arrived.  My mother’s best friend, Hellen, arrived from Seattle with her husband and youngest son, who was my age.  My memories are of Dip ‘N Sticks, Fizzies, Lick M Aid and Hellen’s cigarette smoke, which seemed quite glamorous.

Then one day we all drove to the beach. I think it was La Jolla or Laguna. The two families walked down a sandstone cliff trail and spread the towels and food on the sand.  The two dads and my mom went into the water.  Hellen watched us as my sister, her son and I made sand castles.

I remember hearing the screams of “help me” and I don’t think it really registered that it was MY people who were in trouble.  The riptide pulled them out and under, and only two were rescued.  My parents. My next memory was of being left in the car outside of the mortuary for a very long time. I also remember thinking about giant squids. I must have recently seen Captain Nemo on a Disney program and giant squids were the most frightening things I had ever seen.

I think it must have been the following summer that my mother, sister and I began our regular treks to the Glendale YWCA for swimming lessons. I was in heaven.

I loved the smell of the eye-watering chlorine, the adventure of walking through the two-inch deep foot bath that was meant to prevent athlete’s foot, the lockers with their little keys on a safety-pin that ended up making holes in the fabric of your suit, and the teacher who spread our toes to look for fungus.

There were levels:  Tadpoles and something else and then Sharks.  As my mom sat on the bleachers and watched, I progressed up the ranks.  I quickly became a Shark. The reward was a small, gray felt shark that was meant to be sewn onto my suit.

After each lesson, we would cross the street to a large supermarket that had an ice cream counter.  I think the cones were 5cents.  But that now seems unbelievably cheap and I’m not sure my memory is correct.. My sister wasn’t into the swimming as much as I was.  She was in it for the ice cream.

Breasts,Asphalt,Kickball and Stilettos Don't Mix

I really don’t know what was going through the heads of the people who designed the playgrounds for the Los Angeles School District.  Bottlebrush does not constitute a shade tree.  Asphalt does not welcome a falling knee.  Drinking fountains should not be inaccessible

Ivanhoe Elementary had playgrounds that were divided by age.  The little kids had the upper yard and the big ones, the lower playground.  The lower field was dominated by two large handball structures.  Adjacent, were the rings.  It was here that I had my front tooth chipped by a girl named Hannah.  Rather large, she swung into me as I was shimmying up a pole and slammed my mouth into the pole.  She didn’t even get in trouble!

The rings and the monkey bars took effort and the slow build-up of calluses. I can’t tell you how many days I came home to Angus Street with blistered palms—desperately waiting for them to heal and toughen so I could excel on the bars.  The boys were the best at this, and the strongest.  Girls also had the disadvantage of showing their underwear when upside down.

One blistering day, the kind where the asphalt shimmered in the heat, a new teacher was on recess duty.  She walked over to the monkey bars and watched. Within minutes her stiletto heels sunk into the asphalt. When she finally extricated herself, there was a permanent rut. 

The games we played were sometimes cruel.  Dodge ball is not a kind game, no matter how you try to explain it. Picking teams could be ego shattering.  Kick ball is just like baseball, but with a large inflated red rubber ball and no bats. It left your hands covered in a layer of patterned dirt. It was my favorite game until a new girl joined our sixth grade class.  Jeanette was the Dolly Parton of Ivanhoe.  The boys looked at her in a way that was new to me.  I felt sorry for her.  When she ran the bases her breasts flip-flopped and heaved through her sweaters and the boys made fun of her. I was not looking forward to puberty.

Occasionally we weren’t allowed out for recess at all because the air quality was so poor.  These were smog days.  My lungs hurt when I breathed deeply and we were left to play games like Simon Says and something else that involved the phrase “heads down, thumbs up” while sitting at our desks. 

After school, the playground became a different place altogether.  A young college student would man the “ball box”, wear a whistle and be idolized.  The kids who stayed after school learned how to make lanyards from colorful plastic, weave potholders from elastic cotton bands and design pictures made out of kidney beans and lentils.

Ten years after ‘graduating” from Ivanhoe, I became the college student with the key to the ball box.

Ice, The Big Apple Motel and Aku Aku

My favorite thing in the world, besides Christmas, was our family vacations.  My father was the west coast salesman for his company and every summer we would make our way from Silver Lake up to Seattle where we would spend time with my mother's best friend and her three sons.

We usually left as soon as school got out.  The night before our departure my father would disappear into the garage and load the musty smelling four-person tent, the Coleman stove, pots and pans, food and our suitcases into the back of the Chevrolet station wagon. He took great care stowing everything so it was nice and flat.  Then he covered it with two soft layers of flannel sleeping bags.  The nest was where my sister and I would stretch out and sleep. This was also before seatbelts.

Because my mother could not tolerate heat, and our first day's drive inevitably took us through Bakersfield and the Central Valley, we left well before sun up.  My sister and I crawled into the "nest" and fell back to sleep listening to the muted tones of our parents' conversation and quiet sounds of the night highway.

One year, a particularly hot one, we could not avoid the Bakersfield heat.  My father pulled into a gas station and disappeared for a moment.  When he returned, he was carrying a huge block of ice.  He set it on the floor in front of my mother, opened the air vent and declared that we had "air conditioning."

These trips were a working vacation for my father.  My mother kept a careful log of all mileage and expenditures.  Some nights the four of us would share a room in roadside motels with names like The Big Apple or The Blue Lantern. These places were not the sort to have miniature "amenities" in the bathroom. One tiny bar of soap was all that was on offer.  I was in Heaven when our night's stop included an overly chlorinated swimming pool. 

 Breakfasts would be in coffee shops that served little boxes of cold cereal that you could pour the milk right into.  Lunches were often picnics in public parks where we'd play while my father made his business "calls." 

My father always enjoyed educating us through the real world. We toured the Tillamook cheese factory, the Birdseye pea plant, and numerous national parks and museums.  When my mother wanted to nap, I would crawl over the seat, be handed the map and become the navigator.

To make the driving time pass more easily my mother would read to all of us.  "Born Free" and "Living Free” were my favorites.  My father loved "Kon Tiki" and "Aku Aku”--- maybe because as he piloted the Chevy through the roads and highways of the West he felt an affinity with Thor Heyerdahl.

I remember fewer restaurants than I should but there were about four that made a lasting impression.

At the top of the list is The Tam O’Shanter. Little did I know during Sunday post church 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 the wall that collected 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—and of the years that I lived in Edinburgh.

As my parents’ finances eased a bit, they took to going to brunch at The Tam O’Shanter—designed by Disney people and still an icon. My favorite dish was the cold slaw with peanuts—which is still on the menu today and still in my cooking repertoire—albeit not with all the Lawry’s seasoning stuff. 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.

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 bordered the kitchen, friendly 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. Balsamic vinegar apparently didn’t exist.

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 those ladies’ lunches at Blum's.

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 colors were blue and white and the food had absolutely nothing to do with the Netherlands. My two favorite dishes were 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.

Dinner Redux

Once we got a television, it didn’t take long for my family to acquire the de rigueur TV trays. My sister and I were in heaven when we could spread open the hollow metal poles, place the black patterned tray—much prone to rust—into the recess and await a formerly frozen meal. The irony of this now is almost too much to bear. I believe my mother rationed these evenings carefully because they didn’t fit with her vision of what a mother should do.

The thrill of my parents’ social life was transfered to us in the form of Swanson Chicken Pot Pies or the full-blown Swanson “dinner.”

As I remember it, the dessert was always a mushy form of apple crisp. The vegetable was always diced carrots and peas and the main part was usually a drumstick surrounded by never enough mashed potatoes. I preferred the potpies with the buttery crust which was probably pure lard. But that was until something happened.

One night, happily ensconced in front of the TV and the TV trays with our babysitter Janice Hing, a Swanson Chicken Pie in front, I bit into what still remains-almost- the worst thing to venture into my gullet. It was a bumpy slab of chicken skin covered in the thin sauce of the pie. When I pulled it out of my mouth, I could feel each bump. From that day forward, I insisted that my mother buy me the Swanson Beef Pie.

I have written of our Sunday dinners, but my favorite meal of the week was Sunday night. My sister and I would bathe and dress in our Lenz flannel nightgowns, make our packed lunch—wrapping carefully in the wax paper. Then my family would adjourn to the living room and watch a series of programs that for me meant joy, adventure and love.

With a bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup in front of us—placed carefully on the TV tray—we first watched Lassie. Then came Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. And, as we grew a bit older and could stay up later, Bonanza. Occasionally Rawhide would slip into the mix.

I think I loved those Sunday nights more than any huge meal my mother made. It was cozy and comfortable and we all cuddled on the overly nubbly fabric of the couch. To make the Sunday night exquisite would be a long distant phone call from my mother’s best friend in Seattle.

Dinners

Food was a big deal in my family.  We always had “sit down” family dinners.

On Sunday we would go to church because we had to.  My grandfather was the minister. My cheeks would be pinched by childless old ladies wearing stoles made from dead animals, who, most probably, had unrequited crushes on my grandfather. I would sing songs about people in faraway lands that had words like “bosom” in them.  On the drive along Franklin Avenue to the Hollywood church, there would occasionally be a man selling fresh lilacs at the corner of  Hillhurst. My father would stop the car and buy a small bouquet for my mother to pin to her jacket.

And afterwards, once home and back into comfortable clothes, we would have a big dinner. It never crossed my mind how much work this must have been for my mother. There would be pot roast with carrots and onions, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, roast lamb covered with crispy strips of bacon, pork chops with applesauce or those red colored cinnamon infused apples cut into slices and green beans with bacon made in a pressure cooker that always frightened me.

We also had liver and zucchini.  These I did not like.  I developed the skill of shifting the limp sections of squash around the plate, into my lap and into a recession under the table.  When my parents finally bought a new dining room table and the old on was being carted out, petrified zucchini rained down onto the carpet.

As we ate during the midweek repasts, we learned that if we asked a question my parents did not know the answer to, my father would leap up and go to the newly purchased set of World Books. We also learned to never ask for salt on our food.  “I have seasoned it in the kitchen.”

My two favorite meals were spaghetti and chili.  The spaghetti was made from a Lawry’s powdered packet mixed with tomato sauce.  The chili was very much the same, and only made if my father was doing the cooking. These dishes were deemed “fattening” and we rarely had them.

As the 50’s became the 60’s, my mother’s cooking changed and expanded. Chafing dishes and beef Stroganoff replaced the fried chicken, aided by the invention of Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken.  My mother practically beatified him. We were introduced to cream cheese and words like “frappe”. Shish kebabs, bulgur wheat, red snapper, ratatouille, Armenian “pizzas” and freshly made string cheese were added to the mix. We were taken to Niesi-town in downtown Los Angles to try tempura and to Chinatown to sample hom boa. Because my mother’s brother had traveled to India, we now were eating prawn curry, albeit very mild and very unauthentic. Chopped hard-boiled eggs, sliced green onions and peanuts were the condiments, along with Major Grey chutney, which seemed quite exotic. And salads now contained mandarin orange slices from a can.  Surely, there were still Tater-Tots and Sarah Lee in the freezer, but things were a changing.

My parents enjoyed entertaining.  At a dinner party, my mother produced one of the most captivating dishes I had ever seen.  She hollowed out the core of a purple cabbage and put “canned heat” into the center. She skewered “Little Smokies” onto bamboo sticks, lit the flame (which perfectly matched the color of the cabbage), and each guest got to cook their own sausages.  Another food introduction during this time was “rumaki.”  My parents would spend the afternoon stuffing dates with water chestnuts and wrapping them carefully in bacon secured with a toothpick, where they would await the grill pan. 

But during the week, there was the new thrill of Chung King dried noodles in a can.

 

 

 

 

The Lake

When I was in the fourth grade my mother went back to work. My parents arranged for our after school care to be provided by the parents of Harvey Jr. and Gary. Gary was my age; Harvey Jr. was my sister’s. Neither my sister nor I were particularly friendly with these boys.  They just happened to be in our classes.

Every school day we would walk to Gary and Harvey’s home.  This wasn’t an ordinary Silver Lake home, it WAS Silver Lake. The boys’ dad was the caretaker of Silver Lake Reservoir and they lived in a compound within the fence.  It was like living in a private park.  Adventures abounded.

One day after school. we ventured into the laboratory that tested the reservoir water. The scientist, surrounded by test tubes and charts, and having plenty of free time on his hands, asked our names and spelling. He wrote each name with a thick leaded pencil onto strips of paper. Then he weighted our names on a small scale.  Until then, and never since, was I aware that a name could weigh something.  Unless it’s something like Hitler. 

A regular duty of the caretaker was to keep ducks from establishing a home on the lake. Harvey Sr. would put us in the motorboat and go out on the lake to shoot ducks.  Then we would have to pick them out of the water so they wouldn’t pollute it.  The small boat was awash with blood and feathers, and this was perhaps the grossest thing I had ever seen up to that point. And I think the family even ate the ducks.

It was quite a change being in a family that had boys.  There were older brothers as well. And a teenaged daughter whose room I snooped through when I was home from school with some ailment; the thrill of my paper dolls having waned. I learned odd things like how to hone an axe on a grindstone, how to ride a boys bike with gears and that inexplicable bar that hits your crotch, and that the olives on the tree in the yard were nothing like the Lindsey ones we ate at my house. I learned how to insert caps into guns and to love the smell of the gunpowder.  And I stole my first thing at the lake too.  Harvey Jr. wore a rabbit’s foot chained to the belt loop of his Levis.  Under the guise of wrestling, I got him down, unclipped it and he was never the wiser.  I still feel guilty.  And now that I think about it, a rabbit’s foot was almost as gross as the bloody ducks.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cuban Missile Crisis

 

I was in the sixth grade and every morning our family would sit down to breakfast in the dining room.  In retrospect, I have no idea how my mother managed this, drove to Burbank where she was a music teacher and then came home and repeated the scene for dinner. With the exception of Tater Tots she never used frozen food.

But in October of 1962 I had no appetite for breakfast.  I was scared. 

Even an eleven year old could pick up the tension of the nation.  Mr. L talked about Cuba in class, the TV had pictures of families building bomb shelters and people were stocking up on food and water.

One of the kids I walked to school with even went so far as telling us that the huge white paint stain spilled on the roof by her inebriated father was actually a signal to the Russians to bomb her house as a sacrifice to others.  It was indeed a crazy time.

I, of course, had the confidence of knowing that we had practiced “drop drills” and “red alerts” at school.  Surely my fake wood Formica school desk would protect me from a nuclear blast.  And in our garage was a strange, tiny room that had once been used as a darkroom and smelled of the chemicals.  This was to be our bomb shelter. Better than nothing.

But the most frightening part of those days in October was the fact that when I walked to school each morning I never knew if I’d see my parents again.  I had calculated that if the bombs dropped while my mother was is Burbank she MIGHT be able to walk home in a day or so. On “Wagon Train” they covered about ten miles a day. My dad’s job was more flexible, so I figured he’d be okay.

Because I wasn’t eating, my mother grew concerned.  When I told her why, she wrote a note to Mr. L, my teacher.  She asked him to not talk about the crisis as it was too upsetting for me.  Later that day, he told the class that we shouldn’t be concerned by any of the news.  I guess his mom didn’t work in Burbank.

 

 

Troop 2277

Brownies.  The word implied little pixies, elves and magical things.  I wanted to be one and so did most of my friends. And when I was seven I joined up.

Two mothers volunteered to be our leaders and troop 2277 was born. This being Los Angeles, and near Hollywood, our investiture was sprinkled with the fairy dust of glitter.  For a reason unknown to me, Troop 2277 was going to be the lead story of the family section of the Los Angeles Times.

In our brand new uniforms, we practiced our pledge and our one-hand salutes. When the day came, we assembled in the back yard of Mrs. M’s house and a photographer showed up.  We were a little group of para military baby boomers dressed in brown felt hats, earnest in our beliefs and not yet jaded by the thought of selling cookies outside of grocery stores. In the picture that was on the front page of the newspaper section I am either the only one getting the salute correct, or the only one getting it wrong. 

Some of us stayed a part of 2277 until we were 17 years old. It wasn’t for the scouting experience, trust me. It was because we were friends. We survived poison oak, first kisses at a beach campout, baked biscuits in coffee cans, grunion running, eating a tube of Alka-Seltzer without water and dancing a very bad version of the hula to “Little Grass Shack” in front of a packed auditorium.  We also dealt with death.

I first learned about communism while “camping” on Mrs. H’s shag carpet. The girls slept in sleeping bags, lined with cozy flannel decorated with flying ducks and hunters.  I claimed the spot under the dining room table, and as the evening wore on the adults started talking about “reds.” I could not fathom why it would be better to be dead than red.  But it certainly sounded frightening; especially when one adult added that there was a “red under every bed.”  At least I was under the table, not the bed.

For years we raised money to go to the Girl Scout chalet in Zermat, Switzerland.  It was the thought of the cool, clean Alpen air that inspired more car washes than I can remember. Years of them.

When the remaining stalwarts graduated from high school, Troop 2277 finally retired. We counted the funds that had been growing for eleven years. There certainly was not enough to take us to the real Matterhorn, but we’d been to Disneyland enough times to know what it was like.  Instead, now college students, we flew up to San Francisco for the weekend.  The year was 1969 and we couldn’t have gone to a cooler place.