October 10, 1994
Our second trip to L.A. in 1994...
I'm in the closet-like restroom of the 757 over the Rockies when a bell rings and a little light comes on that shows a stickman figure walking back to his seat. I took this to be a suggestion, a desirable future, a visual hint to the wary. If they had a series of lights, the next one would have shown the stickman bent over double trying to pull up his pants while the plane bucked wildly. And then one with the stickman washing his hands while braced against the bulkheads with knees and back. Just opening the door - follow the jumping knob - was a challenge, but I did get back to my seat where my seatmates laughed heartily at my sense of timing.
Shortly thereafter, we went down into a cloud bank and really rocked. I was holding a glass of ice and Sprite, which rose three feet straight up. My hand followed it so that when it came down I stayed dry. Abbie, however, soaked herself with a cup of water, grinning the whole time, and Laurie just closed her eyes and white-knuckled the arm of the seat.
I had the window, so I got to see the Rockies, the Grand Canyon, the green and brown plains where they now plant in huge circles as well as squares, red rocks, towering buttes, tan and yellow desert, and tiny dots of civilization, all from eight miles high on a mostly clear day.
We arrived in Los Angeles 15 minutes early, my first early flight ever. I love L.A. (Randy Newman said it first.) I know I'm not supposed to. "It has no soul. The people are artificial. It's a jungle." But it has so much neat stuff, and so much ocean. And I am a fool for a palm tree, swaying gently in an 80 degree breeze over the pool or standing like a sentinel on the lawn of a billionaire's bungalow.
Friday morning, we enjoyed the Hampton Inn's complimentary continental breakfast, "featuring Rita Haynes," according to the sign outside. Rita was 71 and kept a sharp eye on the muffins.
Friday at 11 a.m., we went to the Arboretum in Arcadia, the former estate of California millionaire Lucky Baldwin, founder of Santa Anita race track. We saw acre upon acre of wonderful plants, plus Lucky's guest house, a Queen Anne style cottage, white with red trim, that took the breath away. I especially wanted the elk horn chandelier with Tiffany glass shades in the shape of flower petals. At age 55, he built it for his fourth wife, who was 16. Isn't money wonderful? The stables were nicer than most houses, paneled with redwood and cedar, and the dog house matched the cottage and stables.
Abbie thought she'd be bored at the Arboretum, but she stepped inside and saw the brilliant blue peacocks roving the grounds and flipped out. They came to our table while we ate lunch and stood waiting for a handout. (One perched on a railing; a peacock is a very big bird to have perched on a nearby railing when you are eating.) There was also an old railroad station and an adobe house, and towering trees covered with thorns, hummingbirds in the rose garden, a waterfall and lots more. We could have spent a quick grand in the gift shop. I settled on $5 for a replica deck of Lucky Baldwin's custom playing cards, with different scenes from the cottage and gardens on every card.
We returned and splashed in the Hampton Inn's pool, not featuring Rita Haynes, and speculated on how it would be to join "the idle rich." I noted that I had a grip on the idle part, but no touch for the rich, at least not yet.
Friday evening was the rehearsal dinner, for indeed the reason for this journey was to attend the wedding of Laurie's brother Jeff to his sweetheart, Millie Tsuha. On the way over, we passed a restaurant called "The Cask and Cleaver," honest. Once at the restaurant, I met the Tsuha family for the first time, the sweetest people you could hope to know. Ralph Tsuha, the father of the bride, and I talked about sumo wrestling; it was great. He was saddened because - being here in L.A. instead of home in Okinawa - he was missing the September tournament.
A raft of giggling cousins arrived late for dinner, having taken in the Grand Canyon during the day, after Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills the day before and a mall the day after. They were not going to miss a thing. They took 1,000 pictures, and Abbie is in 500 of them.
On Saturday morning, we splashed in the pool and then Dave Myers, (Laurie's sister's husband) went to get Aunt Martha - Laurie's father Larry's aunt, Laurie's great aunt and Abbie's great great aunt. Martha had been treated shabbily by Larry's father in the 1940's and had left Syracuse in 1951. Jeff found her last year and reestablished contact. She hadn't seen Jeff, Laurie or Lee since they were children. She had never seen her great-grand nieces and nephew - Abbie, Allyson or Michael - nor had they ever heard of her. Michael (college senior, trumpet major) took his mother aside and said, "Mom, what's going on? Why didn't anyone ever mention this woman to me?" Aunt Martha was 86 but you'd never had known it; she was full of energy and looked 68. She had a great day; we all did.
The wedding at the Crown Rose Mansion (built in 1892) in Pasadena was wonderful, and featured a woman pastor with an Australian accident and two classical guitarists. The pastor was detained in traffic, but Jeff reassured everyone with upbeat comments like, "I knew something like this would happen," and then she arrived and the ceremony proceeded. The Mansion is the scene of many Murder Mystery Parties where you have to figure out who killed the guest. There were no mysteries today, however. Jeff and Millie got married under an arbor while the first two rows sobbed with happiness and emotion. I have never seen two people happier in my entire life. They glowed. And afterward, every person there was fun to talk to. Millie is an art director and designer, so a lot of her friends are in the arts, architects, Disney people. A mangy German Shepherd named "Shadow" even put in a cameo (he lives there).
I met some of Jeff's old friends who had great stories, and talked to Ralph Tsuha about the Balkans "Sit down and teach me something," he said, after I mentioned that I had been in the Air Force and learned Serbo-Croatian. Born in Hawaii, and armed with nothing more than his knowledge of Japanese, Ralph went ashore with the American G.I.'s invading Okinawa to shepherd the civilians out of harm's way and assure Japanese troops they would not be shot if they surrendered. He is one of the most quietly courageous men it has ever been my privilege to meet. And great fun to talk to. He met his wife in Okinawa, and they have lived there ever since.
I met the woman who encouraged Millie to go talk to Jeff at the Angel's game - the moment they met; she got more thank you's than the caterer.
Sunday afternoon, we migrated to the Hampton Inn near the airport, and then went down to Belmont Shores for dinner at the Belmont Brewing Company. I had a pale ale and a wheat beer; yum. Ah, Paradise. Good beer, good food, beautiful people (tanned women in shorts and bikini tops, in white socks with rollerblades at their feet) and a beautiful sunset. At dusk, Abbie ran out on to the sand to the ocean and shouted, "Life is so wonderful!"
On the way back to the Hampton at LAX, up in the clear night sky, we saw the landing lights of eight big jets, each one perhaps a mile from the next, moving slowly in a long line that stretched to the horizon.
The next morning, as we took off and the plane banked out over the ocean, I saw three islands off the coast (looking at the atlas, I see they are Santa Barbara and Santa Catalina, with San Clemente in the distance) with tiny boats making tiny wakes, and then it was Chicago, Rochester, North Syracuse to drop off Larry, Syracuse and an awakened parakeet and gerbil to welcome us home.