Winter Sports a la Silverlake

Growing up in Silverlake, within view of the Hollywood sign, did not offer a lot of winter sport experience.  I think the coldest it ever got was around 40 degrees and the big thrill was being able to see your breath….but not smell it.

There WAS the one time that it hailed and I ran down to the garage to find a pair of wooden skis that my father must have used in Alaska before he met my mother.  By the time I ran back up to the ice covered lawn and put on the ill-fitting skis, my “powder snow” looked like a melting lemonade slushy.  So it was on Saturday afternoons spent watching ABC’s WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS that I became an aficionado of ski racing. 

At that time in the sport, the French were dominant.  This coincided with my French 3 class taught by a very cranky Czech with a thick accent that resembled nothing one would hear in Paris.  He kept a stack of Paris Match magazines on a table conveniently located behind my desk.  Mr. L. was obviously bored stiff and teaching until his Social Security would kick in.  Kids cheated like mad, passed notes and had appalling pronunciations. He didn’t seem to care.  I spent the time in class “reading” Match.  I was proficient enough to get the gist of the captions.

The oversized magazines were filled with stories and large glossy pictures of Jean Claude Killy, who was movie star handsome.  And with whom I was madly in love.  There were also articles about sister racers Marielle and Christine Goitschel. Between WIDE WORLD OF SPORTSS and the Match magazines, I became quite the expert on the French ski team.  I could pronounce their names with nasal accuracy, knew who was fastest, and learned about ski wax.  Of course, some of this valuable knowledge was gained while ignoring the drone of Mr. L’s Czech accent trying to get verb conjugations into our adolescent brains. I paid the price. 

I don’t want to sound like a goody goody, but I was one of the few who didn’t cheat in the class.  Trust me, Mr. L was either ignorant or apathetic to notes written on hands, papers and desks.  Cheating wasn’t a challenge and it just wasn’t for me.  I preferred my covert sessions with the Match magazines.  That Mr. L even noticed that I reading these rather than listening to his diabolically boring lessons on how to say what we had eaten for breakfast, is something I greatly doubt.  He didn’t want to be in the class any more than any of us did.

In later years, when I had a slightly wider view of the world, I thought of Mr. L and wondered if he had fled the Nazis or survived war horrors that were beyond our 9^th grade ken. He may have experienced a hell that none of us baby boomers would ever be able to comprehend. For this, his reward was teaching a bunch of kids who thought he was a boring old fool. 

I got a D in French 3, had to go to summer school, but still remember with fondness those wonderful foreign magazines that took me to a different place.

The last time I was in Paris, on three different occasions, I was stopped by a French person asking me for directions.  I was able to help---in hopefully non Czech-accented French.

Field Trip to the Tuna Factory

Field trips were a big deal that spanned several weeks.  Not the actual field trip, but the preparation.  First, there was anticipation of a day out in the real world.  Then came the parent permission form to be taken home, signed and the date added to the family calendar.  Then my mother would buy special blue lunch bags—not the regular brown ones, but a cool blue-green color that matched the bottom of most of the swimming pools I’d seen.

On the appointed day of the educational experience that was to rouse us from the comfort of Ivanhoe Elementary School, my mother would pack a special lunch for me.  It would contain a love note wishing me well.  The outside of the bag would be decorated with her simple drawings of sailboats or something related to the trip.  This trip was to the tuna factory in Long Beach.

I boarded the big yellow bus with my classmates and we each clutched our brown bag lunches—though, of course, mine was in an ocean blue bag.  We were driven through and over the freeways of Los Angeles that still amaze me, and down the coast.  At a large park we exited the bus and ate on dirty public picnic tables.  Soon after we re-boarded the bus and headed for the tuna factory.

I don’t remember what the special lunch was, nor the love note.  I only remember throwing up on the bus and suddenly becoming a pariah. My classmates screamed with revulsion.  I was immediately given a seat up in the front with the teachers.  And was told that I was “bus sick” and needed, from there and then on, to sit at the front of the bus.  If only Rosa Parks had had such a teacher.

The field trip was ruined for me.  I was humiliated, ashamed and embarrassed. Frankly, I did not care about the cans of tuna I saw going down steaming conveyor lines.  Now, in retrospect, I wonder what the heck Mrs. Berkheiser was thinking.  How was this to enlighten the children of Silverlake.  Maybe, forty years later, they would choose a healthy brand of dolphin free tuna.  But back in those days the only dolphin we knew of was Flipper—and the ones we saw at Sea World.  Tuna was a mayonnaisey staple that turned my stomach more than once. Had I even known about the dolphin connection, things would have been much different.

School buses became synonymous with barf and field trips lost their appeal.  To this day I wonder why school buses are the only form of public transport that don’t require seatbelts.  Now, as a teacher, I avoid field trips like the plague.

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.