When my father purchased our house on Wellington Road it was painted pink and the weeds in the backyard were taller than my five year old head. He had to cut them down with a sickle. Within a year we were scavenging milk crates, styrofoam and fabric from the nearby alleys to make seats for the two car garage we were converting into a backyard theatre. Ten years later I had three more siblings to add to my little brother, Mom and Dad had given up the Institute for Black Studies and the house was a completely different color. We had redwood patio furniture, more pavement extending the patio and we had painted the back of the house and garage red, white and blue.
I was in the middle of my high school years and we had since converted the garage into an office for my father and a bedroom for me. I lived on the south wall of the garage with pale periwinkle blue plywood walls. The slanted roof exposed a bit of the insulation at the front of the garage that peaked about the 8 foot tall sheets of half inch ply. But we had electricity and Pops had a second telephone on the other side of the wall. My brother and I would call ZZZZZZ and Dial a Joke to his consternation whenever he left his office unlocked. But who could resist the entire White Pages and a pushbutton phone?
I remember songs and thoughts from my five years living in my side of the garage. An old blue green sofa sat lengthwise across the back wall upon which I drew my name logo and spaceships inspired by Star Wars and the classic comic Superman vs Muhammad Ali. Some of the most vivid memories were from playing chess openings from Horowitz and listening to the Isley Brothers’ For the Love of You. I had neon pink and green chess pieces, and Caro-Kann was my favorite. I still have that book.
I read Alive by Piers Paul Read listening to Meco’s Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. My love for electronic music began in those days. By the time I started work at Fedco, I saved up money to buy my stereo and DJ setup. New Advent speakers and a Setton AS-1100 integrated amp. Two Dual turntables and Sony’s first solenoid driven cassette deck, the TC-K6. So many nights I went to sleep to Stevie Wonder’s Secret Life of Plants. So many mornings I got dressed to Spyro Gyra’s Morning Dance or Yellow Magic Orchestra’s U. T.. Still nothing grabbed my ears by the scruff like Stanley Clarke’s Modern Man album.
I bought my first cherry red electric bass guitar and plugged it into the disembodied amplifier from my dad’s old 16mm movie projector. I’d turn it up as loud as the vacuum tubes would allow and play Taste of Honey’s Boogie Oogie Oogie and Blues for Mingus from Clarke’s double album I Wanna Play for You.
The smooth cement floor was painted a thick coat of dull red. On the north wall I had a huge 6 by 10 foot American flag. I can’t even remember where I got it from, but certainly during the 1984 Olympic Games, my brother and I took it to the intersection of Buckingham and Coliseum and held it up for the marathoners jogging by. We got caught on camera and made the evening news. My twin bed was on that side of the room, inline with the door but out of view of the sliding window.
I had a six foot dowel hanging from the ceiling onto which my sparse wardrobe hung. Opposite that on the south wall was my dresser, stereo setup and shelves. My boxes of college recruitment flyers occupied the floor space on that side. Trophies and medals took up the shelves along with some tools and spare wood from the original garage. Most of my books remained in the house. I had no posters. All I had were stacked milk crates of albums and a leatherette case for my mixtapes.
I have often said that I’m rich by the standards of my youth. It surprises me today to see how much of my drawing was done on backside of discarded memos from my father’s job. I’m fond of my youth and my memories of a simple, optimistic life. I was a wild California-American. I skateboarded, body surfed, longboarded, hiked, camped and jogged like so many others. I can still remember my first pair of waffle soled Nikes that I bought in Westwood when I went to summer school out in Pacific Palisades. That school, Paul Revere is still standing. I can still remember my first green skateboard with Stoker wheels and Chicago trucks that I painstakingly saved for and bought, not to mention my minibike. But nothing quite resonates like the constant housework and chores for a family of seven.
Packrat that I am, I still retain several drawings from my Small Art Classics. Motorcycles, mazes, custom trucks with exhaust stacks and CB radio whip antennas. Household appliances and crazy machines from studies in my sophomore year class where I learned single and double point perspective. Never got to faces and bodies.
Wrestling With Patience
My American teenhood was unusual but immediately recognizable in retrospect. It was charged with hopes many of which were popularly denied and long delayed but never dashed.
I’ve often used the metaphor that the American Dream is like an inherited Cadillac delivered just up the road in an alley up on blocks. You have to claim it, protect it, find and buy the wheels, learn how to drive it. Some just play behind the wheel without any investment. Some head straight to the back seat and only oscillate in place. Some dismiss it as a clunker despite its purpose. An early start beats fast running later when your mind is full of doubts. So the discipline of youth is crucial whether or not it delivers immediately.
I read sometime during that sojourn, The Count of Monte Cristo. Now it is clear to me that it was the abridged version. Having downloaded the 1556 pages into my Kindle, I tired and watched the French film over three nights. The tale is far less heroic than I recall, it was one of calculated revenge of the honorable sort one might care to call justice in a romantic way. In that way much of what we think of the American Dream is bundled into a romantic package of sentiments. One needs their romance with America justified. It’s not for the faint of heart, and of course fortune favors the brave.
I have braved the alleys of America and found milk crates to convert into theatre seats. I watched my mother sew discarded sheets of leather into huge pillows for our living room that were too sweaty to bear in the summer, but perfect otherwise. I have pushed my brothers up the hills of Ladera Park and watched them careen down in a wagon with its steering handle reversed. I have watered the Burmuda grass in my front yard knowing it’s not the stuff for golf, but spongy enough for back handsprings. So I learned to flipflop. My brother and I named it FFG, flipflop grass, and we called it out from our car windows all across the city, claiming territory for future performance.
My American life has always been, and continues to be under construction, and a bit out of focus, full of skinny kids and trashcans on the patio. You just have to keep building and pardon the dust.
Oh, and one more thing. My brother and I are thinking a lot about next year. Believe it or not, I still have this banner I drew 49 years ago. Remember when all the murals had black and white handshakes? No regrets.
A great read and brings back generational memories.
You’ll have to make a semi-quincentennial banner.