I find it oddly soothing to recreate memories from the thin little strands we have left of them in our minds. I’ve had to braid in a little new material here and there, imagine plausible dialogue, but the nucleus of the weave is usually pretty solid. Things that happen to us when we’re small, and sensitive, have a way of instructing us, even when we’re old men..
Salty Tomatoes
When I was a child, growing up in Arcadia, California, I noticed an odd sort of weed growing up near the brick pathway in front of our home. As I kept checking on it, I noticed that its leaves actually looked fan-like, weirdly large, like a small palm tree.
When I showed it to my Uncle Marsh – a retired air force pilot – he said, “Jimmy, that’s exactly what it is. A baby palm tree. Ask your dad if I can take it up to cold country.” Dad agreed and Uncle Marsh got a shovel and drove back to Utah with it.
A few years later, we visited our cousins. Uncle Marsh had a greenhouse attached to his house, and there was this same maturing palm tree, in a hostile climate, flourishing, getting big, looking very much like the baby “real thing.” Next to the palm tree, Uncle Marsh had grown all of these flourishing beefsteak tomatoes.
“Wanna try one?” Uncle Marsh asked.
I hesitated. “Not really,” I said.
I watched Uncle Marsh and Aunt Pat over the kitchen sink, doing dishes together. Marsh was flirting with Pat. She wasn’t having it. She was beating him back. Keep in mind, they were very much in love. Pat was a sweetheart, like my mom, but it just wasn’t the “night.” I learned something about couples that day – the married romance thing.
My mom, out in the greenhouse, challenged me to give the tomatoes a try. She picked a big red tomato, cut it in slices, and poured salt over each one.
“Just try it,” she said.
I hesitated again, but I took a nibble. They were so juicy. The produce was so fresh. The salt was so enlivening that I couldn’t stop eating those fresh tomatoes.
I remember my mother laughing at my delight.
“Not sure if I should stop,” she told Uncle Marsh. “He might break out in hives.”
Those folks, except for me, are all gone. Tonight, I was looking for something to snack on, and the fridge was full of Roma tomatoes. I watched a movie and poured salt on them, and thanked the Lord for families.
They teach us, challenge us, give us memories in our old age.
Bless the Lord, Oh my soul..
Cherry Bombs
It is, I suppose, around 1967, and I am seven years old. Arcadia, California. There are older kids on the street – the Walks, the Beermans, the Wardells. They are anywhere from 11 to 15, and they hang out at our house, I think, to avoid their parents. My mother was the very picture of conviviality and hospitality. (My father, at times, was exhausted by the number of wedding receptions she gave away.) Mom made these older kids fresh, homemade wheat bread with melting butter and honey. We also had a treehouse that served as their club house, so that probably explains most of their presence.
One day, trying to impress them, I pointed to a small red sphere sitting on my mother’s knitting machine.
“That’s a cherry bomb,” I told them.
My stock went up with them instantly, but – technically – I didn’t really know that it was a cherry bomb. My mother was into so many different sorts of crafts, that it could have been a paper mache Christmas ornament.
“Let’s light it,” Paul Walks said, grabbing it, and heading toward the street.
Over the next 30 minutes, as the plan was hammered out, at least 15 different kids emerged from various houses down the street. (The rumor of explosives will do that.) The plan was to drop it down a sewer manhole cover in the middle of Woodland Lane.
I can remember thinking – only – “is it really a cherry bomb?” After that, I thought, “I mean we did just come back from Mexico on a family vacation, and MAYBE one of my older sisters bought a cherry bomb, but what if it’s not? Why was it sitting on my mom’s knitting machine.” Steve Beerman held it. Jeff Walks lit the fuse. Down it went.
There was a short, long-lasting silence, and then Boom. It was the real thing.
But that wasn’t NEARLY so dramatic as Mrs. Walks slamming open the screen door on her porch and raging at her sons. I got the sense she was spying on them, that she was waiting to see if they would really do what she hoped they wouldn’t it. She was much louder, and more sustained than any firecracker.
“Jimmy Riley said it was a cherry bomb.”
All eyes were on me.
“I wasn’t sure about that,” I said – lamely. “I mean—”
She looked at me as though I were not her responsibility, and then asked her boys, “so you just HAD to light it, right?”
I think she was smoking a cigarette. She was the very picture of rage, but ineffective rage, if you know what I mean. She barked a little more shame in their direction and stormed back into the house. Her daughter, Susie Walks, a year older than I was, looked at me curiously. Our little tribes were different, we seemed to be telling each other, even if Susie made me a little dizzy. Our mothers operated differently. The older teenagers began giggling. No one blew their fingers off. We could hear the jingle of the ice cream truck wandering in, down the street.
Someone in Charge..
It is, I think, around the summer of 1972. My older sister, Colleen, is at the wheel of the car. She drives with great authority – effortless on the stick shift. It’s born of the same casual skill she has for tennis or dancing or singing. My mother had complications with Colleen’s birth, and Colleen wound up with missing teeth, a skin condition, and something like stunted growth. None of these conditions really held her back. She always brought the party with her, and she had an artist’s need to chronicle and explain. I think her abundant curiosity might have starved out any chance for self pity, and she actually seemed to enjoy laughing at her shortcomings. (“In the first day of seventh grade, Jimmy, Mom dropped me off wearing cat glasses and a skirt with a giraffe on it.” The memory makes her snort with laughter.)
Later in life, she became a commercial illustrator, but tonight she was tapping her fingers to the sparkle of the electricity rippling through the California summer.
“Look at this night!” she said.
It was true. The air was full of melody and French fries and sugary root beer. Two pretty girls were running up the grassy median of Santa Anita Blvd. A gleaming 63 Ford Falcon, turned hot rod, idled next to us. Summer felt like an endless parade of Fridays and turquoise pools lighting up in the dark.
“So how is Julie?” Colleen asked, chuckling.
“She hates me. I have no chance. None.”
She might have debated giving some encouragement, but she sensed that would just make it worse.
“Sometimes,” she said. “You just have to get tough. Love is war. There’s always someone else. Someone else much better.”
We stopped in at Ralph’s grocery store, which was heaven, since my mother always shopped as though it were the darkest year of the Great Depression. Colleen filled entire grocery carts with popcorn, ice cream, Dr. Pepper, chocolate chips, brown sugar, Hershey bars, watermelon, strawberries, and the glorious, fluffy Wonder Bread we were forbidden when mom wasn’t out of town on business with Dad.
The great bounty of the harvest left me feeling optimistic enough to ask my sister for advice.
“What do girls like?” I asked.
She thought for a minute.
“They like someone in charge,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you’re driving, you want to know where you’re going. You need a plan for the evening. That’s the worst thing when you’re with a guy, and you can tell he hasn’t thought anything through. It’s awful.”
I let that sink in.
“You even,” she continued, “need to control the conversation a little. Not bossy, but sort of, um, directed, if you know what I mean.”
I had to process this.
“I guess it’s just confidence,” she said. “You can almost feel confidence radiating out of a guy. It’s a little hypnotic.”
The advice was beyond me. I assumed she would talk about cars or clothing or hair or something. I was twelve years old, but I would remember this conversation many years later and give it my best effort on some very imperial, and cold, Stanford feminists. (Sometimes, it actually worked.)
That evening, my brother Scott and I ate corn on the cob, watermelon, and strawberries out on the screened-in porch with Colleen. She sketched pictures of us, singing something from Johnny Matthis or Karen Carpenter. Later we nearly sickened ourselves with chocolate chip cookies and Dr. Pepper. The television played late into the evening.
Life would go on forever..
Whitecaps..
We must have been a mile into Jackson Lake, at the base of the Grand Tetons, in a rented boat-– Colleen, Scott, Dad and me. The fishing had been unremarkable, along with the conversation. Nothing materialized. The scale of the terrain–the vast horizontal and vertical distances–stood over us like stony, soaring ancestors, and it all felt so “church like” and ominous that normal conversation almost felt irreverent. We were floating little ants. What could we possibly speak to this enormity?
The lake was beginning to turn a kind leaden blue, almost deep gray, as the wind picked up and the clouds began moving in.
“Better pack it in,” Dad said.
Up came the lines. We buried the hooks in the cork handles of the fishing poles, and Dad began yanking at the outboard.
The boat was rocking gently, and we could see thin whitecaps in the distance as dad finally gave up on the failing motor, which refused to start.
“I guess,” he said, “they gave us oars for a reason.”
Dad established himself by the oarlocks, turned the boat around, and began rowing.
“Reminds me,” he said, “of that time in the Sierras. Lake Edison, I think. We lost the motor, and we had your big strong brother Mike in the boat with us. Michael rowed the boat ashore.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
Dad squinted. “Must have been ten, fifteen years ago.”
He was getting a little winded on the oars. “No big strong Mike this time.”
I don’t remember being concerned at all. In the distance, I could see the little boat rental marina bobbing up and down in the distance.
“No big strong Mike,” Dad repeated, breathing a little harder. He would have been in his mid fifties at the time. “No big strong Mike. Michael row the boat ashore.”
“Dad?” I asked.
“What?”
“How old was Mike then?”
Dad took a break, looked up in the air, and thought about it. “I think he must have been about your age.”
I looked over at Colleen, who tried to restrain a smile, but couldn’t. “What a burn,” she said.
“No big strong Mike,” Dad said, breathing hard. “This time.”
Colleen laughed out loud. “Poor Jimmy.”
I had the tall, skinny gene; had I, daily, consumed my weight in fried rice, ice cream, and peanut butter, nothing would stick. I was so tired of being a freak.
“No big strong Mike,” Dad said, pulling on the oars. “No big strong Mike.”
Colleen, who knew what it was like to be the girl runt, to be ridiculed for her figure, seemed to be telling me something. I should have been angry with her laughter, but I found it strangely reassuring. She knew something: Dad was actually a little afraid for his family. He was pacing his effort, reminding himself that he would have to get us safely ashore. He wasn’t taunting me. He was acknowledging the situation was a little dangerous, and it was all on him.
“No big strong Mike,” Dad repeated, pulling harder on the oars against waters getting downright choppy. “No big strong Mike.”
Across the boat, Colleen’s laughter felt something like a hand on my head, a blessing.
“Poor Jimmy.”
In memory, those words felt something like “I have your back. This too will pass.”
A little story from my Freshman year at Stanford…
I was assigned to lead a small group colloquium on Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents.” There was no academic distinction for me in this; It was merely my turn, and I sensed, from the way previous students had handled the material: Freud, by the standards of both our professor and the students, was to be considered as something of a “holy man.” Clearly, we were meant to “absorb,” and not “critique.”
I’m not sure I could have articulated my discomfort on this front, but I wondered: was Freud a philosopher or a scientist? The book didn’t contain any studies, any empirical data. It was just Freud riffing on matters of personal morality within the matrix of civilization. It seemed to me that he was given the authority of “science,” when – in reality – he was just editorializing.
I was assigned a section of the book where Freud was attempting to use the history of Rome as a metaphor for his conclusions about the conflict between social obligations and personal liberty. I tried my best to give the work its due, but eventually, I just blurted out..
“..and then he bores us to death with his history of Rome..”
The room broke out in laughter. I had said what everyone was thinking but too afraid to say. Even the professor (an adjunct, post-grad type), chuckled.
Be polite about it, but say what you think. Most sane people will agree.
The Culture Wars..
On one of those long, winding, 1976 journeys up to Lake Arrowhead, where our family kept a vacation cabin near Grass Valley Lake, I was drawn, against my will, into a full trial court proceeding, with my mother, Bea, acting as chief prosecutor. The case before the court dealt with contemporary music lyrics, specifically certain lyrical crimes alleged to have been committed by the Eagles.
“So, this song, ‘Take it To The Limit,’ what are they saying?” she asked. “What do they mean by ‘Take it to the Limit?’”
I hesitated.
“What,” she continued, “does he mean ‘you can spend all your love making time?’”
I don’t think even F. Lee Bailey or Vince Bugliosi could have leaned into this line of questioning with any more intensity.
“It’s just like,” I said, “well, you know, ‘give it your all.’”
She paused. “’Give it your all?’” she asked. “Take it to the limit means ‘give it your all?’”
“Something like that,” I said, weakly, lamely. I was just a public defender going up against a special prosecutor.
“So it’s a motivational song?” She asked. “Seems like a love song to me. Why is he singing ‘Would you still be mine?’ Isn’t he singing to a girlfriend, or something? Isn’t he asking her to take it to the—”
“Okay, okay.”
And this other song of theirs, “Take It Easy.”
I shuddered. I looked out the window and tried to beam myself across a cloud bank, far across the valley. This would be brutal.
“C’mon, baby,” she said. “Don’t say maybe. What is he asking for?”
“A ride?”
“A ride?” she repeated. He’s just hitch-hiking?”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“I gotta know if your sweet love is going to save me? He’s just asking for a ride?”
“Okay,” I said, exhausted. “Okay.”
“You have to listen to the words, Jimmy.”
“Got it.”
“That other song? That Rod Stewart Song? Maggy Mary or something?”
“Listen, just no,” I said. “Okay. You got me. Turn me over to the bailiff.”
Study Techniques..
For me, there was a certain dry, hot, optimistic sterility to junior high summer school in the early 1970s. Most of us weren’t there for punishment, or failed attendance. We were there to get an edge, learn how to type, show ourselves ready to maneuver the maze of adulthood promised by the student handbook. We were nerds, college bound. Summer, in the classroom, felt devoid of the vaguely dangerous types: loose, loud girls with enormous midriffs, the dangerous Martinez kid who greeted me in the hallways with the words, “hey, tall geek!” He followed this up with an air punch that made me shudder. (I don’t think he hated me. I was just a scarecrow he could mock for both comic effect and alpha male credits.)
Anyway, summer felt something like what “school” was supposed to be: a place dedicated to learning and not adolescent pre-crime. Later in life, as a substitute teacher, I told a school principal what we should do with the kids who didn’t want to learn, who were constant disruptors. “Give a few of us teachers shotguns, and let all the violent, problem kids sit in the stadium, with us taking turns. Armed supervision. You get your ADA and the real students get to study.” This was too sensible an idea for any California bureaucrat to process, and it speaks to our current problems: public policy is full of people with big hearts and tiny brains. (Credit Jamie Dimon)
The course “Study Techniques,” was taught by a kind of Arcadia music-teacher legend — Mr. Aldstdt. He actually taught the class, so that he could identify recruits for his band program. It worked, in my case. I was playing saxophone the following fall. I don’t remember many of the “study techniques” Mr. Aldstadt taught us, but I do remember that he shared his life stories with us, that he seemed keenly interested in letting us know how much comedy and drama filled his own midwestern youth. He wasn’t just riffing; he used the stories to illustrate the principles of the course. But what really came through for me? He was genuinely interested in teaching these summer school kids who wanted to get ahead in life. I don’t think any of us would have expressed it this way, back then, but years later, the truth seems clear now: he loved us. He loved what we were trying to do.
That’s where it starts.
