Yea, Dad gained some status with us kids. And, since Mom was usually in a bad mood, I took to gardening with him, both of us keeping out of harm's way. We’d work together in silence. He was a gentle man, who also happened to be a little bit kooky. Dad always claimed that he didn't smoke, yet he puffed away behind the big avocado tree, oblivious to the smoke billowing out. Mom would just look out the window and shake her head. She didn’t care if he smoked, for she, herself, was into Old Gold straights . . . it was his world of denial, dreaming and bragging that she hated, so much. Bragging that he never ate sweets, we'd watch him sneak down the back stairwell to the outside fridge late at night and devour nearly an entire quart of ice cream. Bragging about his job, when we knew he had lost it. Bragging that he never drank alcohol, when he'd come home reeking and slurring, most every night. "Nev toush th stuv." In his defense, he was a happy, happy drunk.
As I grew older, I resented my father so much, that I temporarily forgot all the good things about him and the times we shared, while I was younger. He was like a child himself, actually. We went for weekly long hikes with him, on the trails of the Hollywood Hills and he loved taking us for long car rides, never caring where we ended up. Mom went with us on a few of these outings; suffering the time for the good of us kids. She was so miserable, that we wished she'd have stayed home. We visited all of the Californian Missions, The Museum of Natural Art, The La Brea Tar Pits, The Griffith Park Observatory and any other place he longed to see. Then, after, sometimes my parents would splurge take us for a burger at Bob's Big Boy, in Burbank. If we were especially lucky, we'd even get a couple of milkshakes to share.
Dad spent a lot of time nurturing us girls. These displays of his love, were lost on my mother. To her, it translated into, "He's out of a job again." He pretty much stayed in the record distributing area, but went from record company to record company. Still, he fought to please in any way he could. When Mom complained that it was too shady in the front for flowers to grow ~ the next day, Tada! There were flowers! True, they were tacky plastic bouquets of orange and yellow, (colors that she hated) but, heh, nothing's perfect. In all fairness to Mom, we all moaned and rolled our eyes over that one.
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Jerry, they don't even smell." Mom would gripe.
Tada! Perfume from Thrifty Drug Store. Then, they smelled.
My mother would throw her fists to the ceilings, screaming and scaring us. "Your father drives me nuts! Now I've got stinking, ugly, plastic, flowers! What in the hell am I going to do? He doesn't care that we have no money for food on the table. 'Relax! Relax!' That's all he ever says. God, I hate that fucking word." Mom truly considered my father a total failure and it made me sad.
One of my father's favorite sayings to my mother is "You don't know how to relax!" She's still like that. You can't stop her from doing housework even with a bad hip. It's like she was indoctrinated with the idea that's what she's here for. "He didn't smoke"....the first time my father found marijuana in my pocket, he took it away from me, telling me that he flushed it down the toilet. Ha! I found it in his drawer about a month later...right next to that old tobacco pipe I was looking for..."Got any Cab Calloway records, dad?"
I think that one realizes many things as they are happening, but, there isn't the luxury of reflection,as one is so busy dealing with the situation at hand, (in spite of, or because of instinct, there is a knee jerk reaction.) The more time removed from the initial situation, the more reflection. It's the reverberation of cause and effect, so to speak./P
Love this chapter Mom. Your father sounded like a sweet man. I have a few memories of him playing Piano in his apartment. The perfumed flowers! We had a neighbor that used to do that. Too funny!
Hi there, my father was a very sweet man. He had some views about life that caused us to lock horn, later on. As a child I didn't know about them, as a teenager I did, and bucked. I suppose that is a teenagers job.
Of course, we were too young to understand the stress my mother was under. We didn't know that Dad was drinking up most of the money we needed to live on. A loser some called him, but when I was very young, I loved my father and most of my fondest memories were of the times he shared with me. Like the times, when he'd sing to me, in my darkest hours; when the voices and my nightmare's grew more frightening than I could endure. In his best Bing Crosby voice, he’d sing me to sleep. “Bababa, boom. Cough. Cough." He would clear his voice and then start in.
Close your sleepy eyes, My little Buckaroo. While the light of the western skies, Is shinin' down on you. Don't you know it's time for bed, Another day is through. So go to sleep, My little Buckaroo. ....
He made me feel that everything was going to be alright.
I imagine, that for each one of us, there was a time, or even a sense of a time, that lives deep within ourselves, exclusively for the purpose, of that certain, most desperate, search of calm. A feeling, a memory, that guides us through our hopelessness, sadness and confusion. For me, it was the moments of hiking in the Hollywood Hills, for hours on end, with my father. In the crisp morning dew, until the heat of the day we’d be there with all that nature had to offer. How Dad loved those hills! It made him happy to see us scampering about in the cool of the morning, chasing this and that, marking our trails. Our favorite path started across from the Griffith Park Observatory and as we hiked, so there, were the birds, rabbits . . .fox and deer, too. The dusty trails lead up to a lovely resting place, shaded by large fir trees, and seasonal flowers that swayed with the breeze. We’d be parched, by the time we reached the oasis, where we would drink the cool spring water that bubbled from the stone fountain. Refreshing ourselves for the long hike back down, I’d lay back and munch on the pungent clover stems. At other times, I'd plant flowers, while the other hikers shared cheeses and fruits with everyone. Like a small family, we’d enjoy together, what little of nature there was in the traffic infested, brown smog, of L.A.
There, was a little old man with tanned and crooked legs, by the nickname of Stick, (due to his trusty walking companion, that he had ripped from a tree, years before.) Stick, was the one who started the planting ritual by putting flowers at the fountain, and others fell soon followed his example. Plush vines and ferns dripped over jagged rocks, while geraniums and wild flowers of every hue imaginable, intermingled. My sisters and I picked our spot for planting our cuttings from our home garden.
I often wonder from time to time, if the spot is still flourishing by the grace of some present-day hiker, or if an L.A. gang has trampled them down. I say this, because, the last time I went hiking there, in 1990, it no longer seemed a safe or beautiful place. The few people I passed were sketchy characters and the graffiti didn't lend towards the slightest hint of loving; not to mention the dog shit, beer cans, used rubbers, hypo needles and junk food wrappers that laced the trails. The garden then, at the fountain, was still growing, but it was ill kept and almost snuffed out.
I was glad my father couldn’t witness any of this, as he had passed six years prior. He suffered a heart attack, but seemed out of danger. He went to the doctor for a checkup and the doctor told him that he was doing so well that he could start driving. So he drove home to his apartment on Vermont Ave. with his girlfriend, Harriet. He turned off the engine, looked up to the hills and exclaimed, "It's such a beautiful day!" then, keeled over and died. I couldn't be there for his funeral, as I had just delivered my fourth child in Mexico City and couldn’t fly back. So when I hiked up to the fountain, in ’90, I found a lovely stone that I wrapped in a paper with a message and buried it deep in the ground, near the fountain. It read . . . Good-bye, for now, Dad. See you again someday,somewhere in the blue, I send my love, from me, from your daughter, #2.
EASY TO BE HARD
Often, there was the question of how, when or where. What matters most is why...
They say there is but five degrees of separation between all of us.
This is my story and observations about growing up under the infamous Hollywood Sign, in the 50's 60' and 70's. This is also a story of my entering the fast lane, and finding that if I wanted to survive, I had to get off it, but... it wasn't that easy.
Paula 
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