Written April 26 - May 5, 1994
Our trip west to Colorado Springs and Los Angeles in 1994...
My favorite was the men's room in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Polished mahogany paneling showcased the urinal, with a crystalline mirror directly ahead into which one could gaze and check one's head and shoulders during the quiet, oddly ennobled moments. Around the corner at the marble sinks, white linen hand towels were neatly stacked in baskets, to be used once, then tossed into the hamper.
I felt underdressed, framed in the mirror wearing my green hat, not having had a haircut since October, but still dignified enough to wonder how much to tip the crisply uniformed attendant. But he vanished and so I was spared the embarrassment of tipping too little or too much, and I returned to the sun-soaked streets with a spring in my step, and a sense of having truly lived the good life.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
We began the adventure by flying Delta from Syracuse to New York on a prop commuter plane with the peppiest stewardess of all time; she served two snacks on the short hop to Gotham -- including breakfast burgundy for those who wanted it -- kept up a line of snappy patter on the intercom, then handed out mints with one hand and opened the door with the other as we deplaned.
Colorado Springs Then we flew to Dallas, then to Colorado Springs ("We love to fly and it shows") where we were met at the airport by Laurie's girlhood pal Miriam and some of her nine (9) children. We piled into their 15-passenger van and motored to their home, where on the deck you can gaze at Pike's Peak, dark and foreboding at night, radiantly snowy and white by day, and rose-colored at sunset. I spent a lot of time out there.
Inside were nine perfectly behaved children, 19 years to 2 months, and a family that exists without the school system, television, radio, newspapers or magazines. When I began playing chess with one of the boys, everyone else gathered around to watch. I crushed him. Then I played Pitfall, a board game with marbles, with a sweet little five-year-old. He crushed me. Repeatedly. "Oh, you're playing that with Andrew? He never loses at that."
It was like being in The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet or Cheaper by the Dozen, only purer. There was no beer, no soda, no chips, no bad words. How I got through three days without blowing my cover I will never know, but I am something of a chameleon. And everything flowed so smoothly, with everyone helping out constantly, that it was easy, almost dreamlike. I remember one moment when the 17-year-old daughter was bending over tying her three-year-old brother's shoelaces, bright lime green laces that had "Jesus Loves Me" on them, and she's softly singing to him, "Jesus loves me, this I know," while her hair falls over her blue eyes.
There was one discordant note, but it was mine, and a quiet one. During our visit, I was reading Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, the novel which preceded The Silence of the Lambs, a horrifying spellbinder, and it was definitely out of synch with the surroundings.
Speaking of books, we went to a wonderful, huge place called "Hooked on Books," and I scored a stack -- some of Michael Hague's for Laurie (he's her favorite illustrator) and some of Adam Hall's for me -- that we mailed to Syracuse the next morning. And one evening, the four adults drove through the old residential neighborhood in Colorado Springs, lights glowing in the windows, and then went to "Josh & John's," an ice cream parlor with homemade ice cream and a college clientele. It was yummy, and Laurie got a great t-shirt. This will complement her Ben & Jerry's shirt she got at the factory tour, and perhaps be the beginning of a collection. It's a genre where she feels comfortable.
From Eden, we flew west to Sodom & Gomorrah, with a stop in the Salt Lake City airport where I noticed the Mormon influence in the men's room with metal partitions between the urinals lest anyone peek.
Los Angeles We landed in L.A. on Saturday night and were met by Laurie's brother Jeff at the airport. As we left, three Japanese gentlemen in blue blazers with flowers in their lapels stopped us and checked out luggage tags to be sure the bags we'd selected from the carousel were truly ours. The gentlemen looked pretty solid. I felt like I was in Rising Sun.
Thence to Jeff's apartment in Garden Grove with its enormous banana tree in the courtyard, two stories easy with a huge green bunch coming along way up high, and on to Von's groceries to fuel up for the week. I love out-of-state groceries, especially in California where you can buy beer and bourbon along with the chips and dip. I scored a six-pack of Rainier Ale, the Green Death, an old favorite, and made my first of many trips to the cash machine.
Sunday Sunday morning, we arose refreshed and ventured two blocks to the Crystal Cathedral, the Rev. Robert Schuller's legendary church as seen on TV. It was wild, Church Lite, easy (all the words to the hymns appear on the SONY Jumbotron, and they only do two or three verses), encouraging, visually spectacular with towering walls of glass, a huge pipe organ, huge choir, small chamber orchestra. And because one of the hymns* contained the line, "Swift as the eagle cuts the air/ We'll mount aloft to Thine abode," they had a live bald eagle, Buddy, appear for the children's sermon, flown in from Alaska. Buddy was followed by Al Denson, minister and recording artist, flown in from North Carolina. (Glen Campbell was coming for Mother's Day.)
The bulletin listed 22 support groups, 13 fellowship groups, and 2 to 5 meetings per evening all week long. As first-timers, we stood up to generous applause. Dr. Schuller spoke on self-confidence. The service moved with a swiftness that accounted for much of the crowd's enthusiasm, and ended right on time. Off we went to the on-campus bookstore, larger than most Waldenbooks, and packed to overflowing with trinkets, tapes, books, cards and visiting worshippers. We scored a copy of the "Be Happy Attitudes" in response to a friend's request, and a refrigerator magnet for ourselves.
After church, Millie Tsuha appeared at Jeff's. She is Jeff's girlfriend and a delightful woman, a graphic designer who grew up in Okinawa. Very sweet, very smart, very talented.
We all went to Newport Beach where it was gray and chilly to the embarrassment of our host who had promised sun. Laurie, Abbie and I were just glad it wasn't snowing. We got some take-out from Ruby's on the pier and ate while sitting in the park watching small children rollerblade expertly past slow-learning adults. We also scoped out the real estate, which was pretty neat, and Abbie ventured onto the beach where an errant wave crested at her shorts.
On the way back to Garden Grove, we stopped at the Yaohan Center in Costa Mesa. It has a Kinokuniya bookstore (where I scored three new sumo books) and a wonderful Japanese grocery store where I got lots of new Japanese candy, a six-pack of Asahi Edomae Draft in a commemorative can, and ogled the endlessly different and fascinating foodstuffs, including a wall of Sake. The packaging and aisles upon aisles of new & different were wonderful. Millie, who grew up bilingual, was a big help with translations.
Next, we went to visit Jeff's friends, John and Nina Stevens, two of the nicest people you'd ever hope to meet. The popped Abbie's surf salty shorts into the dryer. Then they took us to dinner at the Souplantation, and then back to their home for strawberry shortcake.
(It was outside the Souplantation that Abbie reached up and took Nina's hand in her own, and Nina said, "oh," one of the loveliest moments of Abbie's childhood for me, an unprompted act of love and sweetness that I didn't include in the letter, but which I remember vividly today, ten years later.)
Originally from Virginia, John and Nina have managed to retain their southern accents through many years of travel and living in Southern California. They had great stories of years in the Navy, squirrels running through the floors in an ancient home in New Mexico, etc.
Then it was off to John Wayne Airport to rent a car for Monday and Tuesday; Millie and Abbie and I returned to Jeff's in her car, and we had a nice conversation about cross-cultural identity struggles. Millie's father was from Hawaii, but returned to Okinawa with the first wave of American troops as a translator (an unarmed role, telling civilians to get out of the way, and that they were not going to be murdered). He met Millie's mother there; they married; their kids grew up speaking English and Millie is an American citizen, living in Southern California, but really not Japanese nor completely American. Abbie asked about the animals that live in Okinawa, and we talked about Laurie's sister's visit which had preceded ours by a week.
Monday Three million people live in Greater L.A., and they all drive. Traffic reports air every six minutes, and describe slow-downs, accidents, flaming vehicles and all manner of mayhem. TV viewers get their fix from "The Jam Cam." What "Lake Effect" is to Syracuse, Rush Hour is to L.A.
All the cars seem new ("You are what you drive."), most are imports, and amazingly enough, unlike New York State, most of the drivers are polite. If you enter a freeway from the left and need to exit in one quarter mile on the right, across six lanes, they will let you in. All you need to do is signal and move with predictability. On a number of occasions, we crossed the three lanes in less than 30 seconds. And these roads are packed. At 5 a.m. on Sunday, the roads are busy. We never traveled during rush hour, and yet we encountered stop & go traffic. And they have their own language; my favorite phrase was "against rush," as in "Route 57 won't be a problem at that time; you'll be traveling against rush." Meaning, most people are going the other way at that hour.
In those moments when you are not looking at traffic, the license plates and road signs are very entertaining. As plates went, we liked TV HAIR, VISION and RAUL, ESQ. (he was on the phone, of course). My favorite sign was "The Sword of the Lord coming soon. Sponsored by Tim Bickers." I'll bet he does. The road signs themselves are protected by by spirals of razor wire to keep the graffiti artists and vandals from obscuring the road names and route numbers. "DO NOT REMOVE BACKYARD FRUIT" was another favorite, a Med Fly precaution. And this from a car lot: "New and Used Salesperson Wanted." Well, you're either one or the other.
We drove to Riverside to visit my friend Melissa, head of a small college library and in her copious leisure time a buyer of illuminated manuscripts for a mysterious millionaire. I've never traveled to London and Rome to bid on such items at Sotheby's, but I can imagine worse fates. At any rate, we found her home in Moreno Valley, took the house tour, saw the fax machine that I and the millionaire fax to, and drove into Riverside, a lovely town that in the late 19th century had the largest per capita income in the U.S. due to the sudden wealth of the citrus industry. The streets were lined with palm trees and the architecture was fabulous. Greater L.A. does sprawl, but there are some real gems amid the freeways. After a delicious lunch in the atrium of the Riverside Art Museum (I had the hot crab & artichoke sandwich and Laurie had the Genovese Chicken sandwich, chicken in a pesto mayo, which was divine, followed by homemade desserts), we went to the Mission Inn, an architecturally fascinating hotel in the Spanish Colonial style with burbling fountains, ancient cannons, beautiful flowers and a lobby that oughta be in pictures.
Melissa regaled us with an account of her former husband's attempt to have their marriage annulled so he could remarry in a sanctified manner. Pat, the laying sack, has an uncle who is a priest in Washington and hence wanted to have it adjudicated in D.C., but Melissa called the head of the panel who would hear the case and noted that the marriage took place in Scranton, the former bride lived in California, and the former and would-be groom in resided in Houston. The bishop told her that he was only listening to her as a courtesy, and that the panel would do whatever it wanted to, and she would accept it. She then quoted Canon Law (the Catholic Church has long been one of Melissa's hobbies), told him what text he was bound by, told him exactly what she could do, and he freaked. Days later, after he composed himself, he wrote her a very nice letter telling her she was exactly right and now, miracle of miracles, the case is being dealt with in Scranton. Apparently non-consummation is out as a cause for annulment, so the groom will content they were too young and too impulsive in marrying, hence the 15-year union was invalid.
Melissa dislikes being thought of as invalid, and given that it was her husband who left the marriage after falling in lust with a co-worker ("The worst case of poontang fever I've ever seen," noted another co-worker.) who, it turned out, would not leave her husband lest she lose her house ("Do you know what real estate is like in Arlington?!"), this is very ironic, to say the least. You think he'd accept the fact that he's an adulterous bum and throw in the towel, but he wants to pretend he's still pure and religious, especially since he told his family and friends that Melissa was the one who had an affair and left him. Ah, what a tangled web we weave.
From this idyll, we motored south to San Juan Capistrano. We chose the scenic route, over the mountains on Route 74. Jeff had said it would be narrow and winding, but we didn't quite gather how steep and winding. It was spectacular, up 2000 feet to the summit and then down, through an area where fire had charred all the trees, the vegetation just coming back, the signs scorched, lots o' gorges; Abbie slept through it; I gawked; Laurie perspired at the wheel.
Once in San Juan Capistrano, we met Harold and Helen Bolton at the gates of the mission, and adjourned to El Adobe, Richard Nixon's favorite restaurant, for an early dinner, a Mexican feast, yum. The 3-foot-thick walls of the cocktail lounge were built in 1797 and the patrons seem to have gathered soon after. Harold is a physicist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla and Helen works for the Post Office (!). A swell time was had by all, especially when Helen told Laurie that she had James Taylor's bandana, a souvenir from the years in Tulsa when she worked at a club and people were coming in from all over to play with Leon Russell. Harold told us about the earth's core, and a sax solo he played in church as a boy that drew a resounding "amen" from the assembled multitude. And he told us some great stories about Siloam Springs, Arkansas.
Tuesday Tuesday morning, after rush, we crawled up I5 past downtown L.A. to Universal Studios and took the tram ride tour which included some swell outdoor special effects and a glimpse of the Psycho house as well as the sanitarium from Harvey.
Then we took the E.T. ride which was great. Then we did a series of "How Movies Are Made" demos, which included Abbie's on-screen appearance as Jennifer Parker riding in the DeLorean from Back to the Future. And a great sound effects demo and another special effects demo using the Statue of Liberty footage from Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur.
Then Abbie and I steeled ourselves for the Back to the Future ride, which was fantastic. The whole building was done as the Time Travel Institute and we lined up as "time travelers," instructed by videos, run down the halls to the airlock, lined up and then rushed into an eight-passenger version of the DeLorean from the movie, enlisted to pursue another time traveler who had stolen another DeLorean. With a cloud of dry ice fog and a blast of sound and wind, the "garage door" opened and off we went. The sight, sound and wind are all around you, and the car itself moves just enough to sell to your spine the belief that you really are flying, dipping, turning, crashing through walls, blasting into space, then straight down into the mouth of a volcano. I looked over my shoulder to see about 20 other cars up and behind us all experiencing the same ride, but mostly I looked straight ahead, held onto the bar in front of me and screamed. Abbie and I just loved it.
After we got back to Garden Grove, we drove over to Knott's Berry Farm for fried chicken just like Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor had. (The pages from the guest register are pasted up so you can amuse yourself while you wait for a table.) Laurie bought a lot of jam after dinner.
Wednesday Wednesday was Disneyland, merely a childhood dream for me, and nothing I thought I'd ever do. We had a great time. First, Jeff showed us some of the places he'd drilled core samples to test the timber (his job) and then we went to Splash Mountain. Laurie waited outside, not one for wild rides, and Abbie, Jeff and I wandered, in a very organized fashion, through the mountain and into the log for a ride to the flume. But it was so much more, with all kinds of animated characters inside the mountain, telling the Brer Rabbit stories from Joel Chandler Harris's Song of the South. A real wonderland. The drop down to the flume itself was sudden, dramatic and wildly wet and then you're right back inside the mountain for a grand finale.
They take your picture as you plunge, show it to you as you float to the finish and sell it to you outside. I bought it. I had to have it. It's wonderful. We had to get Laurie on this thing, and finally talked her into it, all went again, and she loved it, holding onto me screaming her lungs out. Her flume photo is even better than mine, but some day you must see the woman in the back of our log.
Then we went to the Haunted Mansion, twice, the Pirates of the Caribbean, twice, Space Mountain (without Laurie), the Country Bear Jamboree, Toon Town and Roger Rabbit's Wild Ride, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, It's a Small World and then the Matterhorn with Laurie, emboldened by her Splash Mountain triumph. She rode behind me and from the screams and her death grip on my ribs I thought she would be insane when we got to the bottom, stark, raving mad for the rest of her life. But she was only bruised at the knees and shaking like a leaf. We ate lunch at Pinnochio's Workshop; I had the Puppeteer with Cheese. It was a swell day.
Thursday We spent a day at Santa Anita, playing the ponies. On our way in, the parking lot attendant said, "Good luck." Abbie and Laurie each had five winners (betting on them to Show) and I did my part to swell the winnings of the other attendees. I did correctly predict the exact finishing order of two horses in one race; unfortunately, they finished second and third, rather than first and second. Darn.
We had a table reserved for the day and a lovely view. Abbie liked winning and watching the horses. I enjoyed the sensation of "being alive" again, i.e., holding a ticket for the upcoming race. Unfortunately, the gift shop was closed after the races, so we were denied a refrigerator magnet with which to commemorate the day.
From Santa Anita, we motored to Belmont Shores, near Long Beach, with one detour to avoid "a fatality at the Katella Exit." Didn't want to see that; didn't want Abbie to see that. Fortunately, we had Jeff's Thompson's Guide, a phonebook-thick guide to L.A. that is a must for travel. We found an exit and a swell detour via surface roads, and arrived at the Belmont Brewing Company, a brewpub on the beach, right on time to meet with our friend Cinde, who works for Coors. As with Melissa, it was great to see Cinde again.
We started with the Belmont's sampler, which included small glasses of five beers: Marathon, a light ale; Top Sail, an amber ale; Long Beach Crude, a stout tribute to the oil wells across the water; a guest honey beer from Oregon; and Wheat Ale, hoppy, tart and terrific. I had a large one of those with my dinner, a super chicken thing with a mustard sauce. Cinde also let me try some of her squid. Cinde brought t-shirts for Abbie and Laurie, and a swell George Killian '94 tour shirt for me. After dinner, while Jeff, Laurie and Abbie walked out on the pier, Cinde arranged for a quick tour for me of the brewpub. Love those tanks and hoses.
(One of my favorite memories of this meal, not in the letter, was the look on Jeff's face when Cinde said she was paying for lunch. He was one happy Jeff as he put his wallet away.)
Friday We took the "Jeff's L.A." tour, which was great fun. We saw Hollywood & Vine, Hollywood High, Grauman's Chinese Theater, visited the lobby and restrooms of the Roosevelt Hotel, once haunted by stars, then had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe where Abbie got a t-shirt (Jeff's treat) and I got an eyeful of great old guitars and memorabilia, and a darn good lunch. Abbie liked the waitress's two-tone lipstick. Indeed, this is a town where so many beautiful women are waiting to be discovered.
We went to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and gawked in the shop windows, gawked at the people, sales girls of almost incomprehensible beauty, saw a super-model (Linda Evangelista) and a camera crew moving to a new location, stopped in the Beverly Wilshire to powder our noses (see first paragraph), drove through neighborhoods to gape at the houses almost all of which bore multiple security service signs and even "Armed Response" tags -- when you've got that much, you'll go to any length to protect it.
We drove by Paramount Studios ("Look inside, there's the old gate where Gloria Swanson...") and by scads of classic L.A. bungalows in the surrounding neighborhood with all the chimneys down from the recent quake. Then past the shops of Melrose, e.g., Retail Slut, and to the La Brea Tar Pits (cool!), then up to the Griffith Observatory where James Dean appeared in Rebel Without a Cause and more recently the Rocketeer made his stand against Neville Sinclair. Neat exhibits, a crackling Tesla Coil demonstration, a great view of L.A. and the HOLLYWOOD sign.
Saturday Abbie went to Knott's Berry Farm to ride the rides with Uncle Jeff, and Laurie and I went to the Huntington in a rented Korean car with no frills and no name recognition. The Huntington is just fantastic, the 600-acre San Marino estate of a California railroad baron turned into extraordinary gardens, with an amazing art collection and research library. People have written books about it. Kudos from me to the Palm Grove, the cactus collection, the ferns by the waterfall, the Zen Garden, the Japanese Garden with its complete 18th century Japanese residence and ginkgo grove. Then, to stand and actually look at portraits by Gainsborough, Turner and landscapes by Constable, it was overwhelming. "Blue Boy," actually Master Jonathan Buttall, the son of a hardware merchant, really is extraordinary, but for my money, my living room, I'd opt for "Diana, Vicountess Crosbie" by Sir Joshua Reynolds; you could see the wind blow in that one. And for the den, "Master William Blair" by Sir Henry Raeburn; the kid looks right through you.
Only a small portion of the library was open, so we had to settle for a Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare's first folio.
On the way back to the freeway, we drove through Pasadena, scene of Jan and Dean's immortal "Little Old Lady from Pasadena," ("Go granny, go granny, go granny go!") and as the song was playing in our heads ("She's the terror of Colorado Boulevard") we crossed Colorado Boulevard.
In Anaheim, we stopped to see our friend David, who was abed with AIDS in the Kaiser Hospital. I was grateful to Laurie for coming with me; it wasn't exactly a vacation pursuit. But it meant a lot to Dave, and to his parents, that we were able to see him on Saturday. We only stayed for five or ten minutes; he seemed tired at the end of every sentence, breathing with the aid of oxygen, and about 85 pounds, so thin he didn't make an impression on the bed. It almost seemed as if the wrinkles in the sheets were holding him up. I had known for some time that Dave was ailing, but even two weeks earlier he had hoped to entertain us at home; I left a message on his machine when we got to California, and his father called Jeff's a few nights later; he said Dave was in the hospital and wanted us to see him very much, and I told him we'd stop by on Saturday.
And there we were. We talked about Southern California, and what we'd seen. And the rubber stamps on my letters. Laurie was wonderful. I didn't know what to say as we left, but Laurie said, "We hope you'll be home soon," and everyone smiled. That was a realistic wish and a happy thought. Dave asked if I would send an envelope with my return address stamp on it, so he could show it to a friend. I promised I would, and I did, as soon as I got back to Syracuse.
From the hospital, we went to Garden Grove, dropped off the rental car (I should note Laurie did all the driving, and a darn fine job of it too), had a nice dinner with Jeff and Millie, packed, and rose Sunday morning at 4:30 a.m. to catch the plane at 5:30 a.m., to return, jet-lagged but full of memories to Syracuse, to gray skies, to 40 degrees, to ten days of unread New York Times, to lots of mail, to our own beds, and Blueberry's chirping.
And so it goes. It was a pretty rich time.
P.S. Dave died on Friday, April 29th; his father called me Sunday, May 1st, to tell me. Dave was a quiet, shy, hapless little guy who collected Hummels, and now they were taking his body back to New Jersey for burial. His dad said they received the envelope with the stamp, but that Dave never got to see it. I said I was sorry, but he told me twice how grateful he was that we'd been able to see Dave. "He talked about it all week," he said. Probably the most important thing we did in California, but not in any of the tour books.
Life goes on. Abbie had a hit in her first softball game, a crisp grounder and a sprint to the bag. Last weekend, I went to the Vassar Book Sale and scored some nice stuff. This weekend, I move the brush pile.
(And not in the letter, one more memory: Dave left all his money to charity, meaningful donations to at least a dozen causes. He was such a class act. A gentle, caring, little man with the heart of a lion. I hope we meet again.)
* From "Awake, Our Souls, Away, Our Fears," Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707-1709 by Isaac Watts (1674-1748)