3013 1/2

More GenX History

You know I wear the curse of memory. Fortunately, my life has been fulfilling. Or at least that’s the measure of memory worth sharing. Today I am remembering a book called Tuesdays With Morrie, because that is what I am doing with my 89 year-old father these days. He is the man with no memory and when I talk to him, it brings him to tears.

3013 1/2 was our first dwelling on Wellington Road in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. We moved across the street in 1966 when I turned five. Yet I still remember things from our backhouse apartment. These are the things that made me the boy that I was.

Short Pants
I asked Pops if he could recall the rule about young boys wearing short pants. When was it that little boys became big boys and could put on big boy pants? He couldn’t recall exactly but he thinks it had something to do with going to church. Actually, we didn’t begin going to church until I was about eight. By then I was already reading tarot cards and speaking Swahili. This Jesus character was new to my young mind. Nevertheless, all of my pictures at 3013 were of me in short pants.

That’s me with Amanda Prentiss. We used to call her ‘Mouse’. She lived in Silverlake on one of those very steep hills. They had a Japanese garden and a banana tree in her backyard. That’s where we had the Easter egg hunt later that day. What’s strange about this picture is that I didn’t realize until today that the front fender of my father’s Porsche could be seen in the carport. Nor did I recognize that my jacket collar was undone.

Upstairs
My first memories go back to the crib. Like many kids, I had a Fisher-Price Busy Box. My comfort doll was Casper the Friendly Ghost. He had a pull string and could talk. I kept Casper until all of the wool covering him wore down and revealed him to be a robot. At night, I would turn to the west window and I could see the twin radio towers of KABC and KLOS on LaCienega. Their red lights would blink in and out of synch and I would watch them and count until I fell asleep.

We had two bedrooms with a bathroom in the middle, a large living room and a kitchen. Mrs Towns was my babysitter. She was a dark chocolate brown lady who was a nurse with the kindest warm voice. I loved her very much. Every once in a while she would wear her white uniform. Even her shoes were white. She said I misbehaved once. I was trying to find out what was going on in the oven.

The living room held several memories for me. We had a large (to me) hardwood floor and a fireplace on the south wall. It didn’t work but we did have a floor heater. I learned the hard way and hated that thing. One night I left my red Texaco truck on it. The whole thing melted and stank up the house for a month. I should have known better because I panicked on it with my bare feet. Mom had to put vaseline on the criss-cross marks on my feet. The only other great disappointment I remember was the mail-order Woody Woodpecker pen that came six weeks late. It fell apart the same day.

Once a year, my father and I would strip and wax the living room floor. I would skate with rags on my feet to polish it up. This would always make Mom very happy. Every once in a while Dad and I would play ‘night owl’ and stay up late watching TV in the living room. He had a giant sleeping bag with a yellow lining featuring hunters and birds. I liked camping in the living room, for some reason Dad didn’t like it so much.

The best thing about the living room was the music. I can remember the first albums I ever listened to. Dad had Come Fly With Me and Wee Small Hours by Sinatra, Henry Mancini’s soundtrack to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He loved the Four Freshman and Nancy Wilson. But his very favorite was the Atomic Basie. Lil’ Darlin’ was his song for Mom. He also got me Peter and the Wolf.

Downstairs
Mrs. Simmons had a piano that didn’t fit on her garage so it was in ours. I was free to bang on it and so I did. I’m sure I stood on the pedal and made dramatic noises for what seemed like hours. I simply remember that my mother had to get me to stop.

We had a clothesline in the backyard. It was not a very deep yard but as wide as both of our apartments. Just inside our garage backdoor was a bucket and washboard. I know that my mother hated it, but she didn’t mind the clothesline so much. I would help her collect the clothespins which, like all boys, I found magical. We had intricate climbing vines of jasmine. I loved the twirly springs and the pink buds. But we had moved before I realized the name of that lovely smell.

Mrs. Ivory lived next door, and she would give us peaches that grew on the tree in her backyard. Our landlady was Mrs. Martin. I almost never saw Mr. Martin around. Their daughter Beverly has inherited at least three of the houses on Wellington Road. I’d guess she’d be ten years older than I am.

Mrs. Martin had a series of rose bushes that extended from the archway where our mailboxes were out to the sidewalk. This was the border between our house and Mrs. Ivory’s to the south. There was a large quartz rock that I used to love to climb on right at the sidewalk.

Dad had a Porsche 356 Convertible. Like many, he did his own tune-ups. Even though I was in kindergarten, I knew what a timing light was and I helped him gap the spark plugs. That was my favorite tool to play with. But on the other hand, I was deathly afraid of his Weller soldering gun. Once spattered, twice shy. I can remember him driving fast with the top down on the Santa Monica Freeway. The wind was too fast and I hid in the footwell of the passenger seat. My guess would be that it was a 1960 model B, and because of Pops I’ve had an unhealthy attraction to Porsches and Big Sur ever since.

Dharma Bums
I guess I should conclude on that note. You see my father had, and retains to this day, a love of poetry and the outdoors. He has always been that combination of cerebral and outdoorsy that California appealed to. So the ultimate journey for him would be to hang out with like-minded folks in the Land of Enchantment. It was thus inevitable that I would find myself at a restaurant called Nepenthe. Pops was a big fan of Henry Miller, but also of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I can literally recall that day we spent a mile northbound on the Harbor Freeway trying to get me to pronounce that name properly. Also that of Pablo Casals. He had very high hopes for me and for all of us.

It’s strange as I write of these connections, aligning them with memories, that I find it miraculously simple to evade explaining my early political environment in the largely stereotypical way I have traditionally done. I was a kid raised by granola crunchy parents in a California way, but it’s the particulars that make the world of difference. I promise this year to put a lot more of my own life and that of my contemporaries into historical context as some of you have asked. So here’s a teaser.

This would be across the street at 3026, thirteen years later.