Keep on Dancing

I’ve been thinking about my son’s recent comments (tongue in cheek, I assume) about me becoming a grouchy old man, making exasperated declarations over trivial things. I’m pretty sure he’s right and I’m pretty sure that at my age, just like having all the questions at 5 and all the answers at 20, a person suddenly has or feels as though he has all the understanding of all the absurdity of everything or nearly everything. It’s not something you choose, but rather it just falls on you.

I was in the store the other day and I looked at a jar of peanut butter and on the label were these words: “This product contains peanuts.” I mean, what does that mean? Why does it exist? The best I could hope for was that the company had a sense of humor.  It’s not like I started shouting in the store or anything, but damn, I mean “This Product Contains Peanuts.” Really?

It’s just like that car commercial where the car goes up a ramp, flies through air and lands on top on an elevated train—do they really have to put a disclaimer, “Fantasy. Cars can’t ride on moving trains. Do Not Attempt.”  Can’t sue that car company, they warned you!

Lately I’ve been thinking about my friend’s dad back when we were in high school. The three of us were in Thrifty Drug Store one night. He was buying batteries for his transistor radio or something. The store was pretty much empty and there were no clerks anywhere in sight so he stood up on the counter and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Does anyone work in this god-damned store?” At the time it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen from an adult. He wasn’t unhinged, either; he just wanted to pay for his batteries and get on with his life. He had expectations—you go into a store and there’s a clerk somewhere when you’re ready to pay, and if you’ve already waited five or ten minutes you, shouldn’t have to wait any more than that.  A clerk came running, and the exchange of money for product was conducted without a word, except when Mr. Kranz thanked the young clerk and said something like, “Let’s go, boys,” in a

very genteel fashion.

We are only dancing for a short time. The song ends. Thank you’s are exchanged and Goodnights as well. There is that echoing sound as the dance floor empties out. The doors close. Did you dance or did you waste it on something else? I don’t want to be a grouchy old man that my son thinks I’m in danger of becoming.  I want to dance (mostly figuratively). I remember a Disco-themed movie from 40 years ago and the best part of it was a character who stood on a car in the parking lot of the dance hall, declaring, “There is only dancing, everything else is bullshit!” At the time it seemed like the most important and most humorous pronouncement ever. It still has much truth to it. Remember what the Gentrys advised us to do in 1965, Keep on Dancing! Good advice, I’d say.

Norita

My friend Norita died a few days ago. She had tremendous heart but more than that, she heard a calling from God and she answered it. She ministered to impoverished, disabled people in Turkey. She’s Armenian-American and that was the call she got. That was the whispering in her ear that wouldn’t go away. She said, “Here I am, Lord,” and she and her husband went. She was courageous and true. When I heard she died I kept staring at the screen as if it were mistaken. After that I looked up the parable of the talents. God gives us talents—a measurement for gold—and God expects us to put our talents to use for some profitable purpose. By profitable I don’t think God meant make more gold. I think that parable means take the gifts God gives you and do something good with it—something holy, something meaningful, and not for your own legacy, but to honor God.  Jesus said, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done it for me.” Norita ministered to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the outcasts of Turkey. Her talents were her compassion, courage, willingness to sacrifice the comforts and pleasures of American middle-class life.

 

There won’t be a story today.  I only ask you to read an entry from her blog and ask yourself, as I have been asking myself, what talents do I have that I can put to use for something meaningful, holy, and pleasing to God?

 

http://thesnowdrop.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/what-about-the-snowdrop-ministry/

 

Freddy’s T-Shirt

The image was the Twin Towers. One plane had hit the building while the other was on its way. My blood started to percolate. I turned the image face down as if there had been a mistake. Maybe I was dreaming or hallucinating. Or maybe it was a poster from some other class. I turned it over again and it was still there. I looked at the quote the student had selected to support the image he drew from the speech by Martin Luther King. “We must make full and creative use of the freedom we already possess.” I kept looking at it, trying to make something understandable, if not good, from it. But there was nothing. He was mocking the assignment; no one could have misunderstood it so severely.

I knew a few things about Freddy Pena before the t-shirt incident. From his journal I knew that he believed in hard work. And that hard work meant money, and money meant you could buy things you wanted – mostly cars and parts and car accessories. He worked in the fields with his parents and siblings and cousins, and when it turned out that he couldn’t get work, when his weekends were open, he was disappointed and annoyed. After I read that in his journal I began to look at him as an adult who saw finishing school only as a thing to pass through in order to increase odds for a better paying job. Hard work equals money equals things was a formula that was working for him and talking, writing and thinking about things, about why people make choices and what the results are, were things that were not that meaningful to him. And talking, writing and thinking about all that stuff was about all I was interested in getting them to do.

He also caught my attention when I took them to the library. “Pick something that’s interesting to you,” I tell them. Freddie picked How to Interview to Get the Job. He sat in the front row and once during our silent reading time I interrupted him to comment on it.

“Interesting book.”

“Yeah, man.”

“Good advice?”

“Yeah, like how you gotta wear a suit and show up early and…”

“Not say yeah?”

“Yeah. Ha-ha. Yeah.”

“Gets you that job, though.”

“That’s right. Yeah.”

He was big but not in a sloppy way. He was wide and square. I asked him once if had ever considered playing football. “No time for it,” he answered. He outsized most of our varsity linemen and did not appear to be uncoordinated or unable to learn. I saw days of glory and a lifetime of memories. But he was right; the hard work in sports had rewards that were abstract. Freddy was pragmatic and single-minded which wasn’t necessarily bad; it was just where he was.

There are lesson plans that come and go, even when they are good. A teacher sometimes finds a more efficient way to teach the same principle, or maybe just gets tired of teaching it. Sometimes the times change and the lesson becomes irrelevant. Some lesson plans though stay for an entire career arc. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 speech “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” is one that is so old that I typed the speech out on a typewriter off a cassette player. I used the speech for 25 years.

“This speech is old. It was given in 1964, before your parents were born,” I would tell them. “I want you to go back through the speech and find five quotes that say something to you, right here and now in…” whatever year is was.

“We must go all out now.”

“Freedom isn’t given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“Be the best at whatever you are.”

“How long will prejudice blind the visions of men?”

“If you are students you must burn the midnight oil.”

“Doors of opportunity are opening now.”

“Doors are opening that were not open to our mothers and fathers.”

“We must prepare ourselves to walk through those doors as they open.”

“If a man has not found something he is willing to die for he isn’t fit to live.”

“An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

“It isn’t by tide that you rise or fall.”

Afterwards I’d have them write about the quote that they liked best and what it meant to them.

I got the t-shirt idea from Carole Hendsch, who was the department chair at the time. She had students take a quote from a play they were reading and then they brought a t-shirt and did some kind of iron-on appliqué process. Later she changed it to making a quilt of quotes from each class and hanging it on the wall. Well, both those projects seemed a little too labor intensive for me so one year I had them cut out a t-shirt shape from poster sized paper and put their favorite King quote on it, along with an image to support the idea behind the quote. The results were good and I still had them writing when we were finished; the t-shirt was a process by which they would have the time and opportunity to think about what the quote meant to them.

One of my favorite t-shirts was done by a Hmong girl who picked the quote, “God is not merely interested in the salvation of brown men, yellow men, black men or white men. God is interested in the salvation of the whole human race.” The accompanying image was a heart with stars in it being held by the hands of God.

So near the end of my career I came to work and I gave them the assignment as I had for many years. There were other things I had to talk about with them, but I stayed in the moment, looking at them working contentedly on their t-shirts, while my Classic Soul playlist picked out the bouncy, jaunty “Knock on Wood” to roll in the background. I stood up and spoke from my desk.

“You had a day off for King Day. I want you to know why. Give me some good ones now, come on.”

After school that day I fell asleep twice and woke up twice achy and disappointed and restless. Quarter to five. I had other things on my mind. I had told them I was going to be out for a month for surgery and I hated being away from them for more than two days. I looked at the stack of completed but ungraded Martin Luther King Jr. t-shirt-shaped posters with a quote from a 47 year old speech and I absently started grading and entering. I got restless and it was getting late so I decided I would grade one more and go home. That’s when I picked up Freddie Pena’s t-shirt. I didn’t gasp but my mouth fell open.

My first impulse was to crumple Freddy’s t-shirt and throw it in the trash. Then I thought I would do it in class and tell him publicly he must have some serious problems and send him to the SAP counselor. My outrage wasn’t going to do anything for Freddie though. I was the teacher and my job was to teach. Freddy clearly didn’t understand what he had made. Everything else about him indicated he was a decent guy with no real malice in him. I was angry and didn’t know what I was going to do, but raging at Freddy wasn’t going to be it. At first I thought I would just give him a D-, not post his t-shirt with the others and not say anything else. But a few days later I knew what I was going to do.

When they came in I had Freddy’s work taped to the whiteboard. I greeted them, took roll and described the day’s agenda to them. We did our sustained silent reading and then our journal writing.

“Ok,” I said, “I had one shirt that confused me a little and I’m going to ask Freddy to come up here and explain it. Can you see it here? Twin Towers and the quote by King. All right, Freddy? Come on up, man.”

He smiled and blushed and waved his hand at me as if I had asked him to dance. After some coaxing he got up but stood before the class with his hands in the pockets of his jeans and his head down in a bashful manner.

“So help me out, Freddy. What’s it mean?”

He shrugged. I waited.

“That’s what they did,” he finally said.

“Ok. It is a universally recognized image, an unforgettable image, an emotional image. And the quote?”

“They made use of their freedom.”

He said it as simply as someone else saying you needed two eggs and a pat of butter to make scrambled eggs.

“And their full and creative use of the freedom they possessed was to crash the planes into the Twin Towers and kill 3,000 people.”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was hope in his voice that I might understand him.

“And those 3,000 people weren’t soldiers in a war. They were just people coming to work. And the guys that used full and creative use of their freedom crashed into the buildings at 9:00 when everybody was at work.”

“I guess.”

“So the part I don’t get is… Well, see, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an international award. He was a man of peace. It was 1964, same year as the speech. So, I mean you’ve taken that and mixed it with something the opposite of peace.”

This time when he shrugged I shuddered. I fought to contain myself but at same time I thought it would be ok if the class saw how upset I was. And they did. Except for one student.

“Excuse me, but I don’t think you’re being fair,” a voice called out from the back.

It was Roland, a new student, or I should say a student who appeared briefly late in August then vanished only to reappear just about a week before that day. When I asked him where he had been he gave me a rambling, muddled explanation that had words like “self-discovery” and “disengagement” and “court appearance.” His features seemed to include every race and creed. He had a cube-shaped, rust-colored goatee, straight brown hair combed to the side, and mismatched rumpled clothes like some resident of Venice Beach. His peers loved his “randomness.”

“You don’t think I’m being fair? Why’s that?”

“Mr. Chavoor, allow me to amend that. It’s not just something I think. It is something verifiable.”

“You think so, huh?”

“I would say that given the difference between your age and Freddy’s, the likelihood of his knowing whether or not King won a Nobel Prize for Peace is slim.”

“That may be so, Roland. On the other hand I bet most of the students here, including Freddy, have listened to or even memorized the “I Have a Dream,” speech as far back as what, fourth grade?”

“Third grade, Mr. Chavoor,” a student two rows over from Roland put in.

“Ok then,” I said, “I think one could gather from that speech alone the general idea of what King was about. You know, like mutual respect good, hating and killing bad.”

“I suppose,” Roland said, “but your feelings about his work shouldn’t mean he gets a bad grade. He completed the assignment.”

“But it makes no sense,” I exclaimed.

“To you,” Roland replied, “but this was the artist’s vision and you can’t interfere with that.”

“Yeah, Chavoor,” another student called out, “You can’t give Freddy a bad grade just because you didn’t like it.”

“Yes I can! That’s my job. That’s what I’m supposed to do. Evaluate, assess. They gave me a credential. State of California, ok?”

I looked over at Freddy. He was quite pleased that others had taken up for him.

“What are you going to give him?” another student demanded.

“I’ll tell you right now, it’s an F.”

There was an immediate uproar.

“That’s not fair, Chavoor.”

“Freddy’s the artist, not you.”

“You didn’t tell us that’s what you wanted.”

“You know, my Dad told me that the artist has a responsibility to the audience to not cross certain lines,” I finally said.

“Actually,” Roland countered, “the artist’s obligation is to smash restrictions.”

“Ok, I’m going to give two examples and then we’ll be done. Yes, I’m the teacher, I get the last word.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“There was an artist in Chicago around 30 years ago. His art piece was a flag on the floor and a podium like mine here and he put his podium on the flag. On the podium was a guest book.”

“So you had to walk on the flag to sign the book?”

“That’s right.”

“Couldn’t you, like, come up from, like, the side?”

“No. The whole point was to step on the flag. That was his art. It was in an art museum.”

“That sucks, Chavoor.”

“No it don’t, Chavoor. It’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Art is political,” Roland pointed out.

“Point is, some of you don’t care either way, some of you might like it, and some of you who might be joining the military in six months don’t like it at all, and then some of you whose uncles or older brothers or dads…”

“Or sisters or aunts or moms, Chavoor.”

“Yes, I stand corrected, them, too. Your family members who served in the military, put their lives on the line for this country, or some who may have even died, well those students really don’t like the idea at all.”

“Some of them might though,” Roland said.

“But my point is some things you just don’t mess with things that way. In Chicago, some people went to see the art, some didn’t go, and some stood outside the museum asking people not to go in because it was disrespectful. Some people were so hurt by it that they made threatening phone calls to the artist.”

“Damn that’s messed up.”

“Yes I agree that threatening phone calls, well, that is wrong. But you see my point, right? Look, I’m going to put a word on the board. Check it out.”

“What’s that?”

“Sacrosanct. It is used for things that no one should mess with.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me neither.”

“Ok, that’s why I have the second example. Now in this case the artist took a crucifix. Know what that is?”

“Yeah. Like, Jesus on the cross.”

“Right. Ok, I’m going to tell you this one and I don’t like it but it will prove my point. There was this artist…”

“From Chicago?”

“No I think this guy was from New York City. He took a crucifix and put it in a jar. And then he filled the jar with urine. That was his art.”

They were in shock. The room was completely silent. I couldn’t tell whether they got the point or if they were just thinking that their teacher was twisted. Before I could make my point, Roland broke the silence.

“Wait, was it his own piss?”

The room exploded. Everyone was making a comment at once. I had to override all the voices by shouting.

“I DON’T KNOW WHOSE PEE IT WAS! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? THE POINT IS THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT ARE SACROSANCT. YOU CAN’T MESS WITH IT, OK?”

“Chavoor lost it!”

“I didn’t lose anything, I made my point.”

“He’s right, that’s pretty sick.”

“Thank you, Sandra.”

“This is cool, Chavoor. We’re good debaters. We should do this every day.”

“You mean, go off topic for half an hour? I don’t think so, Tomas.”

“It’d be bomb, Chavoor. Every day you come with a different topic and we debate it.”

“Especially since Roland’s here now.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe someday Roland will be a teacher and have debates every day but we’ve got to get back on track. It was interesting though.”

“Yeah, so let’s do it every day.”

“No. I’ve got one more thing to say and then we’re done.”

“You said we’d be done after the two things.”

“I did say that but too bad. I’m old and can’t count.”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s a Bible verse.”

“You can’t tell us Bible verses.”

“Oh yes I can. I just can’t tell you what to believe or not believe about it. You can decide that. And it has to do with our conversation. It goes like this…”

“Go ahead,” Miguel called out from the middle of the room. “I got my Bible to make sure it’s a Bible verse.”

He was a football player and his parents were lay ministers. He produced an enormous ten pound Bible from his backpack and let it thud authoritatively on his desk.

“Ok, Miguel. Hope I got it right. I am free to do all things but not everything is good for you. Get it? I think Paul said it.”

“McCartney?” Roland asked.

“No. Look, many of you have been saying that the artist has the right to make whatever he wants, but not everything he does will be good for any of us. Ok?”

“Yeah but what are you gonna do about Freddy’s t-shirt?”

“Yeah, you still gonna give him an F?”

“Here’s what I can do. Freddy, here’s your choice. You can keep your artistic integrity but I have to keep my teacher integrity. So you can turn this in for a grade and take the F or you can make a new shirt with the same quote and a different, more appropriate image.”

Freddy smiled and put his hand out for the new sheet of paper I was offering him. He drew flying cars high in the sky, and kept the quote. I wasn’t sure what freedom had to do with imagining flying cars, but it was better than what he had before so I gave him a C. Miguel could not find the verse, put his Bible back in his backpack, shrugged and drew football plays on a piece of paper. Roland started to say something but changed his mind and took out his book of poetry and busied himself with it. The rest of them were ready to go back to our routine so I put them on it and the room hummed with something positive and good. None of us imagined the life lessons that came with Freddy’s t-shirt.

Dressing for Dorothy

Dressing for Dorothy

January 1975

 

She had an open, oval face and a genuine, unrestrained smile. And freckles. I don’t know why but I was always a sucker for freckles. And a sense of humor with a free-spirited laugh which, along with her green eyes gave me the feeling of floating, or flying or going downhill on a skateboard almost out of control.

Her name was Ruby, and I talked to her in the library, I talked to her at lunch, I talked to her before, after and instead of class. The month before I had invested 45 minutes talking to a girl in the library when this guy named Mark came along and took over the conversation and ended up dating this girl for a while. Then he must have thought I was a good luck charm or something because he started coming to my church and proceeded to comport himself like a hungry weasel with a free pass to the chicken coop. I wasn’t going to take any chances; I asked Ruby out before Mark got wind of her. Not at all to my surprise, she said yes. I was quite convinced that I knew what one needed to know about how to impress girls; most of it had to do with being manic until the girl asked if I was crazy. She hadn’t asked me yet but she had that smile which I presumed was the same thing.

I planned to take her to dinner, then to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I was a broke college student but I knew that as a college student you could go to the will call window just before the show and get great seats for cheap. It was true that there was the risk that they may not have any college student priced, last minute tickets on a given night but I have done it once for a class and got great seats and became obsessed with the notion of seeing a play in high priced seats for huge discounts.  As for dinner I would find a nice—but reasonable—place in the Valley somewhere, after which we’d work our way to Downtown LA.

I started getting ready for the date when I realized to my horror that my dress shoes were not with me at the dorm in Azusa. I kept looking for them under the bed or under my study cubicle as if the fourth or fifth time I looked they would be there.Why would they though? I was usually home on the weekends and didn’t even dress up at all for a date, generally speaking, but I wasn’t dressing for Ruby Simmons; I was dressing for Dorothy Chandler. I tried Fred’s shoes, but my roommate, it turned out, had shoes two sizes too small. Finally I considered wearing my tennies with my dress pants, ala Paul McCartney at the Grammy Awards in 1971. But I didn’t consider it for very long; I had neither the chutzpah nor the panache to pull it off. It would just look stupid and I was out of time. I had to drive from Azusa to Burbank and back. On a Friday, after five.

There is something wonderful and ridiculous about being in your early 20’s. I was able to imagine doing something that was impossible– such as taking a huge detour at rush hour– because I had no other choice. Wearing jeans and tennies to the Dorothy Chandler was out. I discovered I had some limitations to dressing casually at all times. I had to have those shoes, so I would simply make a 100 mile round trip to get them. I hit traffic almost immediately. By the time I got back, dinner was out and my date was undoubtedly wondering where the hell I was. I went to her dorm room and she was amazingly enough, happy to see me. I hustled her out to the parking lot and we got in the Gran Torino station wagon.

“I had a bit of a delay,” I said.

“What was it?”

“Uh, I didn’t have any shoes so I had to go home to get them.”

“Wait, aren’t you from Glendale?”

“Burbank.”

“Wow.”

I could see her smile as we passed a street light.

“I think we still have time to make it back to LA in time for the tickets to the play.”

“But, how much time do we have?”

“About 40 minutes.”

“There’s the traffic.”

“I figure it’s cleared out by now.”

“Oh.”

She was too polite to say my figuring was way off. We were on the freeway about 15 minutes before I finally concluded what she already knew.

“Ok, looks like we’re not gonna make it.”

“Yeah, but it’s ok.”

I got off the freeway, then got back on and headed back to Azusa.

“We can find a place to eat in Azusa.”

“Sure.”

I was in a panic. The only eating place I knew was the local pizzeria and I wasn’t going to go there. I got off on Citrus Avenue and began making random turns at major intersections until I had no idea where I was.

“I’ve never had such a, well an adventure!” Ruby exclaimed.

“How about Marie Callender’s?” I said, spotting it and making a hard right at the same time.

“Sounds great,” she replied, gripping the armrest with both hands.

It was 7:30 when we sat down to order dinner. I couldn’t believe what a good sport Ruby was and I tried to think of a way to salvage the evening. When the waitress came around she ordered a Frisco Burger and I, without thinking about the potential gastronomical consequences, ordered a chili size.

“Would you like to go to B&R’s?” I asked when we got back in the car and I figured out which way it was to Azusa Pacific.

“No, thanks,” she said.

She didn’t want ice cream.

My stomach was growling like a cornered pack of dogs and I contracted every muscle I had, fighting off what would be a certain first date catastrophe. I was still trying to think of something to do between where we were and being back at school when it suddenly came to me like a dream or a vision from God who felt sorry for me.

“Wait,” I said, “I know what we can do.”

“What’s that?”

I pulled into a dingy liquor store. I was perspiring from keeping my muscles tense, but I wasn’t going to give up. I had been through Plan A, B, C and most of the rest of the alphabet. Now I was down to my last plan.

“Be right back,” I said.

I bought some Wrigley’s Spearmint to cancel the onions, and then grabbed a bottle of Lancer’s Vin Rose. I figured the least we could do is go back to my place, as it was, and it was good for the moment because Fred had gone home for the weekend, then Ruby and I would have some wine and maybe make out a little. I could not end the evening with one of us or both of us saying or thinking, “This was an entire waste.” It was a risk because I didn’t know her and she might think I was a bad guy but I wasn’t. I had heard of guys who carefully considered the amount of alcohol in any drink they might offer their date. But that wasn’t me. Still though, did she know that? I paid for the wine, and took it out of the bag for a moment—14% alcohol. Pretty innocuous. I came outside and the cold night air hit the perspiration on my neck. I shivered and headed for the car.

“What’s this?” Ruby asked, laughing joyously.

“Well, I thought we could end our spectacular evening with a glass of wine.”

“That sounds good,” she said.

It was after 10 when we got to Adams’ Hall. I had alcohol and a girl in my room thus violating the most serious two rules a Christian College could have. Everyone there lived by the straight and narrow, except for the baseball players. And, apparently, Ruby, and me, well, under the circumstances. So, I put on a Linda Ronstadt record and peeled off the cover at the top of the bottle. I stared at the cork in disbelief. For some reason I had presumed that such a popular wine in an unusual bottle would have a screw-top.

“Ok, well, I don’t have a corkscrew.”

“I can’t believe it!”

She was laughing but not in a mean way. Still, though.

“That’s it,” I said.

“Why don’t you ask one of your neighbors?”

“You mean here?”

“Yes, of course.”

I was encouraged by her inventiveness and thought maybe she had read my transparent mind and thought well of the plan. I was sure though that no one would have a corkscrew, and besides it was Friday night and everyone who lived close enough to home was in their respective hometown. The fourth door I knocked on though opened. There stood a guy I only knew as “Butterball,” which was simply an apt description of his physique. He was in gym shorts, terrycloth slippers, a well-lived in Dodger’s shirt and a bathrobe.

“Hey, man. What’s up?” he said, as if he were expecting me.

“I got a bit of a dilemma. I got a bottle of wine and no corkscrew. Happen to have one?”

“Well all right!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, I…”

“Hang on; I’ll be right with you.”

He started rummaging around. I had a moment of hope when he found a corkscrew, but it didn’t last long. He put it in the pocket of his bathrobe, came out in the hall and closed the door.

“You got some wine. Sounds good to me. Don’t mind if I duuuue,” he said in the voice of W.C. Fields.

Turned out that Ruby and Butterball knew each other from a class they had. He came in, said hi, and flopped himself on the beanbag chair. I search for some paper cups.

“Joni Mitchell, huh?” Butterball said.

“Yep,” I replied curtly.

He looked at me and smiled. Maybe he would have his paper cup of wine and go. I was pretty sure he understood the situation.

“This is a good album but ‘Blue’ is her best.”

“I love that album!” Ruby exclaimed.

Of all the popular records by popular recording artists that I knew and was quite familiar with—oh, let’s say I knew a thousand or so—Butterball picked the one artist who released the one album I knew nothing about. He and Ruby went in to a discussion of ‘Blue’ that was just about track by track. I poured wine. Turned out my uh, date, and Butterball grew up not too far from each other. He ended up staying for all of both sides of “Court and Spark” and half of Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky.”

He thanked me for the wine, got off the beanbag chair and bid us good night.

“Well, here we are,” I said, .

“It’s been quite a night,” she said.

“This is true.”

It was not only the most disastrous first date ever it became one of my most favorite stories to trot out on occasions when the theme would present itself.  I made a vow at some point to never make myself familiar with that Joni Mitchell album that ruled the conversation that night. I am still not familiar with it. I actually bought it around 10 years ago because it was supposed to be one of the greatest records ever. I have never listened to it though.

Overall, I am a person who believes that things go the way they were meant to go, and in the case of my one date with Ruby, well, it was true. And many, many, many years later when Grace and the kids were in the car and I didn’t know where we were going and we were lost, I would tell the kids we were having an adventure, a phrase I got from Ruby that night. So it wasn’t a entire waste, after all. 

Catching Up

January 1965

It had been raining. The clouds were still present but they were high and grey, and the sun was out, although it was on its way down. Burbank and Los Angeles were only 20 minutes apart but it was always cooler in LA. Dad used to say it was because LA was closer to the coastline, but I never saw the ocean from the heart of the city where my great Auntie Margaret lived. It was cold now at 4:30 and the chill touched my arm, taunting my decision to not tie a sweater around my waist as we cousins– Glen, Keith and I—ventured out. I was coming up on 11, too old to lug a sweater around. To a 4th grader, high school teenagers look like adults, and that’s what Glen and Keith seemed like to me. Granted they were crazy, abnormal adults, but they were adults nevertheless. Glen once took me to A&W and let me order anything on the menu. That seemed adult-like to me, although he paid for it with a twenty-dollar bill he took from his mother’s purse. A time before that he took me to Charlie’s, the little grocery store two blocks from my house, and bought a grocery bag full of Twinkies, snowballs, and chocolate cupcakes. We sat down at the corner of Catalina and Oak and ate most of them, and when I threw up, Glen was there– one moment to comfort me, the next to scold me for getting sick. What could be more parental than that?
But now I was on Glen’s territory, as far removed from the dull comforts of Burbank as I had ever been. There was something different about LA, like something was already happening but you just hadn’t found it yet, and Glen and Keith were out to catch up to it. In LA Glen was always up for something different, something that would cause my Grandmother and all my great Aunts to shake their heads and mutter things in Armenian. We were out to get away from them anyway, away from a stuffy, mothball-smelling, old people infested house where the only perk was stale Hershey’s chocolate kisses which had to be purchased for the price of real kisses from ancient, loose fleshed relatives who would then grab your face, turn your head this way and that and eventually find something wrong with you.
We slipped out the front door, walked briskly, and then took off running, with no particular place to go. Glen and Keith ran ahead, bouncing and shoving each other like two of the goats from “Billy Goats Gruff.” I was almost out of breath keeping up with them when Glen suddenly stopped and pointed at a grocery store. This was the place; this is where the adventure would happen. I hadn’t even noticed that we had run out of his Grandmother’s neighborhood and into a commercial area on a busy street.
We walked in and Glen moved straight to the magazine rack, located not 10 feet from the door. Keith stood in front of it as an interested customer might. Glen struck a pose that included a finger to his chin. I put my arms across my chest and, looking contemplative, simply waited, having no idea what we were doing yet. When Keith selected a magazine with a cover that had a sexy looking woman whose face looked like she was hoping you had found something that she had lost, I looked for a similar one and discovered that there were a dozen of them, each with a woman with that same hopeful look. When I turned to see what Glen had picked, he was already nonchalantly thumbing through his selection, gazing dispassionately at print and picture alike. I tried to look like my two role models, presenting myself as an adult who was merely considering purchasing this magazine, but the images in it were too much of a shock to my system. I began to shake, and I was convinced that if we got thrown out it would be because I had failed to emulate that indifferent pose which my cousins had so successfully mastered.
Sure enough, in less than a minute I heard an elderly, New York-sounding voice call out, “Hey you kids, put those back and get outta here,” and out we went, without a word of protest. I was relieved but quite thrilled at our little adventure, and was ready to return to the security of familiar sights and sounds of family and home. But Keith and Glen had other ideas.
Outside again we breathed in the perfume of a smoggy LA night, a huge improvement over the smell of dust and musky odor of the meat section, which permeated the entire store. We resumed our high-spirited, rambunctious walk. Then Glen grabbed Keith by the arm, and spun him around until they were face to face.
“I didn’t like that guy,” Glen said in his whispery voice.
“Yeah,” Keith replied,”me neither.”
“He insulted us, throwing us out like that.”
“Yeah. He thinks he’s so tough.”
“We have to show him.”
“Yeah.”
My heart started to accelerate. My silence was taken as an affirmation. As the two of them worked up their plan of revenge, I saw that it was getting darker and that would be the signal for the families to suddenly wonder where we were. I was getting colder and I was sure I smelled rain in the air, but the plan had already been hatched.
We would go back to the store again, and this time stagger our entrances so as to appear total strangers. After a while of positioning ourselves, one of us would grab a magazine, preferably Playboy, and sprint out the door. Cousin number two would cry out, “Stop! Thief!” and assure the store manager that he would gladly apprehend the culprit and then give chase. Glen and Keith heatedly debated the role of cousin number three. Glen thought that he should be the friend of the thief; Keith thought he should assist the valiant thief catcher. I assumed that I was the third man. After all, I was the youngest, did none of the planning and was not terribly anxious to begin a career of stealing. The presence of the third commandment circled my soul in an uneven arc: one moment it pressed me hard; the next I couldn’t feel it at all. Glen’s voice, full of conviction, interrupted my troubled, confused soul.
“Jackie can grab it, that way the guy will be convinced that we can catch him.”
“No way,” Keith replied, “He can’t do it. He shouldn’t do that stuff. He’s too young.” By that time I was wondering if God saw any difference between playing the third man and being the actual thief. I was flattered though, that Glen thought I was capable. The two of them argued some more until Glen won the debate by simply turning his back away from Keith and throwing his hypnotic gaze on me.
“Jackie,” he said softly, using a tone that mixed the paternal with the co-conspirator in equal measures, “All you have to do is walk in, look at the comics for a while, then count to five, and grab the magazine and run. You can do that, right?”
I considered while Keith shook his head with his eyes closed. It was dark and cold now. The breeze filled my t-shirt like a sail, and my belly—along with my arms, ears, cheeks and the tip of my nose—was cold. I was not thinking about my decision, but about being warm and safe, back home in a stuffy old house. I nodded my head.
“Ok, let’s go!” Glen spoke now with the authority of Sergeant Saunders from Combat! He led the way; I was right behind him, my heart pounding and my head dialing up “I fought the law, and the law won,” while Keith, as if he were being shunned for doubting the plan, brought up the rear. We walked with a more determined gait than before, and we were silent, each wrestling with his own thoughts: Keith, thinking either about my ability to complete the mission or the ethics of my participation in it; Glen, focused on righting the wrong of being insulted by the man in the grocery store, not to mention adding a magazine to his collection which he had told me about but wouldn’t let me peruse; and me, thinking about darkness, rain, cold, and whether this crime would lead to other crimes and if it would leave me with detectable scars on my soul. I had already assisted Glen the year before when I delivered a note to a liquor store proprietor requesting a pack of cigarettes and a six pack of beer from my alleged father who was suffering from a debilitating headache which prevented him from coming to the store and making the purchase himself. It worked. Lost in thought, I bumped into Glen when he suddenly stopped. I hadn’t even noticed that we where right in front of automatic doors that led back to the grocery store.
Keith was sent in first, as a brand new customer, not one who had just been tossed out five minutes earlier. He amiably circled the front area where the magazines were, as if he weren’t sure exactly where he was headed. A few moments later, Glen tapped me on the shoulder; it was my turn. I walked in, determined not to acknowledge or look at Keith. It was like a play. I walked directly to the magazine rack as though I was looking to find the latest edition of Captain America. I actually found Captain America, opened it but I couldn’t make sense of the words for some reason. When Glen strolled in my heart was spinning madly, ricocheting about in my hollow, shaking body. Every admonition of every relative, every teacher and every Sunday school teacher became a jumbled mess in my head. If you’re ears were burning, or if you suddenly got a headache or felt sick to your stomach, you were committing a sin, or lying or something. My five seconds were up. I put the comic book back—Captain America was in a defensive crouch and he grimaced at me with unbearable fury—then I moved to my right a bit, grabbed the first appropriate magazine I saw and made for the door. I looked back for a second and there was Glen glaring at me for looking at him. He waited until I was near the door and when he shouted, “Stop! Thief!” I thought of the two thieves on the cross, although I didn’t know which thief I was. I heard Glen assure the grocer that he would catch me, and Keith’s “Me too!” was the last thing I heard; they told me later that the grocer seemed grateful for their crime-stopping assistance.
It’s a fact that I was the second fastest fourth grader in my class; it’s also true that I never ran as fast as I did on that day. Sidewalks, stores, cars, people were a blur and I ran until I couldn’t see any of it anymore and I ran some more after that, running across a field and then up what seemed to be a hill while Glen and Keith called after me, telling me I had run far enough. We had made it, we had outrun anyone who would cause trouble; we had even outrun the city. We were surrounded not by run down buildings, dirty sidewalks, lost dogs and worn out people, but from where I stood, or rather from where I bent over with my hands on my knees trying to gulp down air and catch my breath, there was nothing but earth and sky. We were at a construction site for a new overpass of the freeway. When I finally stood upright, the wind was making a flapping flag out of my t-shirt, but I wasn’t about to complain: I had an adventure with the big boys. We weren’t going to be breaking rocks in the hot sun; we fought the law and we won. I looked out over LA and felt very much like Superman standing on top of the world. Glen and Keith were gasping and leaning on each other and for once were laughing instead of arguing.
The moment was short lived though. They soon became combative both verbally and physically. They were at odds over which one of them should get to keep the magazine, and the sense that their disagreement was just innocent horseplay was dissipating quickly. Glen had Keith in a chokehold and had a very focused look on his face with his top lip folded over his teeth as if that helped him concentrate. Keith broke free, immediately slapping Glen in the face.
“What the fuck’s a matter with you? You trying to kill me?”
“Yeah, I’ll kill you if you think you’re gonna try and pull some shit. I’ll kill you in four seconds.”
I had experienced Glen’s chokehold firsthand. So had my sister. I marveled that Keith got out of it.
“This whole thing was my idea, remember?”
“So what? Big deal. Asshole.” He massaged his throat. “Tryin’ to kill me.”
They stood glaring at each other, ready to go another round. I thought the best thing to do would be to throw it off our little hill. We had won. We played a game and didn’t get caught, but they wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. Then Glen, who would have given Keith a beating, spared him by coming up with a compromise.
“We’ll let Jackie decide,” he murmured. He knew I knew him better than I knew Keith. He was playing the percentages that I would give it to him.
“No.” Keith said decisively, “Let Jackie keep it.”
“But you said he was…”
“Just give it to him. It’s fair.”
Their treasure though was my burden. How would I get it home? Where would I put it if I did get it home? Was I doing more damage to my soul? Would I become beyond hope? What would Dad do if I got caught with it? How long would Mom cry and blame herself for my moral shortcomings? How long would Dad blame Mom? The compromise Glen and Keith came up with may have been fair but it was throwing me into a state of bewilderment. Glen read my face.
“Jackie. The magazine is small, like Readers’ Digest. So all you have to do is put it in your pants. Right in front. No one will see it. Ok? So, when you get home, just put it under your bed or under the mattress but push it into the middle so when your mom changes the sheets she won’t find it. So, do you want it?”
He tipped his head back as if an affirmative answer was the only one to make. I didn’t want them to fight again; neither did I want to risk the consequences—in this world or the next– accrued by taking it, and at the same time I felt I had worked the most by doing the actual pilfering and pulling it off with my speed. There was no reasonable answer to his question that I could think of.
“Yes?” I asked, shrugging my shoulders.
“Ok. Here you go.” In the excitement I hadn’t noticed which of them had taken it from me.
“Thanks?” I asked again, wishing one of them would tell me how I felt. I tucked the trophy in place with the girl on the cover facing out, and walking like a cowboy who just got off his horse, followed Glen back to Auntie Margaret’s house.
Upon arriving, three families descended on us, asking questions and making accusations. Auntie Margaret, Glen’s grandma, grabbed my face, turning it this way and that, and was shouting something in Armenian, well not all of it was Armenian because I was picking out a few English words here and there to grasp the notion that I had overheated myself and that too much perspiration was bad and that my mother had not dressed me adequately. The part that was in Armenian was directed to my mom who did not answer but instead let Glen’s mother, Lily, defend her, which she did, mostly in English.
“Leave him alone, Ma,” Lily said, “He’s a boy. Boys sweat.”
But Margaret would not listen; instead she dragged me to the kitchen where, to my horror, she tucked my shirt in but somehow did not find anything, and then much to my extreme mortification she began stuffing my t-shirt with paper napkins. My mom looked on with disdain from a distance but would not intervene.
“Too hot. Bad for you.” She smelled like perfume and an old sweater. I looked like a scarecrow, stuffed with napkins instead of straw. She dabbed my face, frowning and shaking her head at me.
“I’m ok.” I tried to pull away but she grabbed by arm. She was stronger than I imagined.
“You get sick. Sweat too much. No sweater. Sick. No good.” She wiped down my neck with a new napkin and after what seemed like an interminable amount of time, she pushed me back, still clutching my arm, examined me for any perspiration that she might have missed, and apparently satisfied, she pushed me away, making some declaration in Armenian that I didn’t understand and no one bothered to translate. Dad wandered into the kitchen then, asking me if I was crazy, and if I wanted to get pneumonia and die. I held back from answering yes to all three, though I felt he deserved a sarcastic answer. Then he told me the story about when he was 10 and marched in the World War I victory parade in his hometown, or he tagged along behind the end of it.
“It wasn’t snowing, but it was cold enough to snow,” he said, “I was so excited I didn’t bother to put on my cap or gloves. I was marching with the soldiers. Everyone was cheering and crying.”
“Dad, we’re in California. It doesn’t freeze here.”
“I marched for six miles. My mother didn’t know where I was.”
“Dad. I know this one.”
“Keep still! So by the time I got home I was exhausted. I got chilled. I was so sick I ended up with a fever of a hundred and five. My mother stayed up with me four nights, praying and putting wet towels to keep the fever down.” Auntie Margaret added some commentary in Armenian. I couldn’t tell whether Dad heard her or not; his eyes were back to the past.
“They almost lost me. On the fifth day though the fever broke. Then they took me to the doctor and he said to move to a warm climate. That’s when we moved to Fresno. But Dad didn’t like farming and then Uncle Eliah said, ‘Come on to LA’ so we did. Eventually. I was 14.” I waited for a point but he either thought it was too obvious to actually state or he just didn’t have one. He turned and walked out of the kitchen.
Auntie Margaret then dragged me to the kitchen sink, made me drink three glasses of water and that made me feel pretty good. I felt restored in such a way that I almost forgot about the contraband and the moral dilemma it had caused.
Sitting in the car on the way home created some ironic discomfort that caused me to laugh out loud. When my sister asked what was funny, I told her none of her bees-wax. The day felt like a bad dream. Arriving home I realized it was Sunday night and I volunteered to take out the trash. It was like getting three birds with one stone: I impressed Mom and Dad, confused my sister, and was able to dispose of the magazine. The rain never felt or sounded or smelled so good.

The Peace Button

The Peace Button
“Move fast. Talk confident. Sell, sell, sell!”
January 1973

“Happy New Year, man,” I said as the Chevelle lurched forward.
“Yeah, right,” Lenny snarled as he banked left and we headed east on 134.
“What’s a matter?”
“Nothing, at all Jack. You had a nice time last night right? I’m a good date, aren’t I?”
“Man, shut up.”
“Then don’t wish me a Happy New Year. We’re already big enough losers. No date on New Year’s Eve.”
“The movie was pretty good.”
“Oh thanks, I feel better.”
“Your dad poured a very generous drink.”
He punched the accelerator as we approached Glendale.
“That’s how you always imagined your perfect date to end, right? No date, no party, $1 movie and my dad pouring some whiskey that he got free from a customer anyway.”
“Ah, but that wasn’t the low point of the evening. When I got home my mom was waiting up for me. And then she goes, Happy New Year, and kisses me, and then she says how much did you drink?”
“Yeah, you’re right. You win the pitiful loser award.”
“Checking my breath.”
“Yeah.”
“So I told her Lenny’s dad poured me a drink.”
“What’d she say?”
“Hmphf. And just goes to bed.”
“Classic.”
We came to the off ramp for Pasadena.
“What is it we’re selling again?”
“Souvenirs, Jack.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, like it makes a difference. People go to the Rose Parade. They want something so they can prove they were there. They come with money, and we sell them something.”
“Where’d you hear about this job?”
“On the board, where else?”
“There’s no good jobs on that thing.”
“Hey, Valley College cares about its students, especially two losers like us. It’s the perfect job. One day, make some cash, then back to our regular busy, meaningful lives.”
We were quiet while Lenny looked for a place to park for free, on New Year’s Day, in Pasadena, at or near the Rose Parade. It took us quite a while.
“How come John Wayne has to be the marshal?”
“Oh I don’t know, Jack. Maybe Jerry Garcia was all booked up. As if it matters. Who was the marshal for the parade last year?”
“I dunno.”
“Exactly. You don’t even know who was in the Rose Bowl last year.”
“Uh, it was…. You’re right.”
“Know why that is?”
“I don’t know. Bad memory, I guess.”
“You’re not supposed to remember. It doesn’t matter. You’re only supposed to get all excited about it when it happens.”
“What for?”
“Because that’s how it is.”
“So you’re only supposed to be interested in something when it happens?”
“That’s how they want you to be.”
“What for?”
“So you never figure out that it doesn’t really mean a whole hell of a lot.”
“Wait a minute now.”
It was just how we talked. He’d take one side, usually the everything sucks side, and I’d take the other. It was a way to put off making a commitment to anything. We were coming up on 19, and as such we were obliged to talk like we knew everything, especially because we knew we didn’t know anything.
“Look Jack, it’s like Duane Thomas said, ‘If the Superbowl is the ultimate game, then why are they gonna have one next year?’ Get it?”
“No.”
“It’s supposedly like the greatest thing ever, except they do it every year. He plays football but he’s not falling for all the hype.”
“Great. So, you wanna be like Duane Thomas. Hate everything. Not talk to anybody.”
“Whatever. He’s got his reasons.”
Our parking spot was two miles from Colorado Boulevard. We were used to walking though. It was a chilly morning, but clear. The sun was out but it was lazy and distant.
“So, any new year’s resolutions?”
“Oh, God,” he groaned, shaking his head.
“What?”
“I’m not even answering that.”
“Why not?”
“Because. What do I look like Wally Cleaver? Gosh, Beav, I guess I’m gonna try and get better grades and junk like that!”
“Yeah.”
“Here. We’re going up this street.”
Four blocks later we met Stan, our employer for the day. He stood by an old Chevrolet pickup truck with a camper shell. He was short, bald, and wore Red Wing work boots. He wore his wristwatch on the inside of his wrist.  He squinted and grimaced as though an invisible tormentor was ceaselessly whispering threats to him. He had something in his mouth that he kept repositioning. In short, he looked like a doomed character from an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
“Ok, boys. Ready to make some money?”
“Yeah,” Lenny answered.
I nodded and tried to look serious.
“Gotta look positive. Think positive. Gotta look like the guy they’d buy something from. Take a look.”
He opened a cardboard box. They were silver dollar sized buttons with a ribbon attached to them. The ribbon said, “Peace” on the left side and “Happy New Year, 1973,” on the right. The button was a black dove and a white dove linked to each other.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s Zen, it’s peace, racial harmony, the ying, the yang. A keepsake. It’s a money-maker, that’s what it is.”
He smiled proudly, as if he were their father.
“Ok I get it,” I said.
“What’re we supposed to call it, Stan?” Lenny asked.
“Peace Button! Hey! Hey your peace button right here!” Stan shouted, holding a handful of them aloft. The question offended him and energized him at the same time.
“All right!” I said.
“Gotta shout it out, loud and clear. Get their attention. Hold it up so they can see it.”
“Got it,” Lenny said.
The wind was rippling through my embroidered denim shirt. I felt jittery, as if I were about to play a football game. He gave us each a canvas pouch and poured the buttons into them. He gave us territories to cover and rendezvous points. He promised us $10 and a certain per cent of whatever we sold. The price was per button was $2.
“Hold the money like this,” he said, putting a bill between each of his four fingers, “so it won’t get lost or stolen. Move fast. Talk confident. Sell, sell, sell!”
He charged off toward Colorado Boulevard like people were about to pay ten bucks for a ten cent peace button, not just two.
“Doesn’t it seem odd to be making money off of peace and racial harmony?” I asked Lenny.
“You’re on this side, I’m over there. Come on, let’s go.”
So we split up. I had a hundred buttons in my pouch and I didn’t sell a single one. I did try to sell them, but no one was interested. I gave up in less than an hour. People asked to see the button, and then look at it quizzically. When I tried to explain what it was, the moment of impulse where they might have bought it had passed. The thing had too many messages, and it was dated. Stan was about four years behind the times. If it had been a Smiley Face and it said, “Have a Nice Day, 1973,” two thousand of them wouldn’t have been enough. I tried watching the parade but I couldn’t enjoy it because I felt guilty for not trying to sell Stan’s useless product. I wandered around, looking at people watching the parade.
When I spotted Lenny, I saw that his pouch looked empty. It made me feel horrible.
“You sold all those?”
“Didn’t sell any of them.”
“What?”
“I tried lowering the price to a buck. Then two for a dollar.”
“And that’s how you sold them?”
“Not even then. I gave them away.”
“Gave them away? They weren’t yours.”
“Jack, this guy’s lost all his money. What’s he gonna do? Keep ‘em all? Send them back to wherever he got them from?”
“I don’t know.”
“I feel bad for the guy.”
“Bad?”
“Yeah, not just the money. This was like his idea. Something he thought up and believed in.”
“Yeah, really.”
“And it blew up in his face.”
“No kidding.”
“And the guy’s old. He’s probably tried different things, you know?”
“Yeah, not much of a truck he had there.”
“It’s not just the truck, Jack. He’s just some schmoe trying to do something.”
We found Stan sitting on the curb by his truck, both hands cupping his face. He apologized to us and when Lenny explained what he did, Stan thanked Lenny for trying to drop the price. It didn’t bother him that Lenny gave most of his buttons away. He sighed heavily and was no longer trying to move whatever it was in his mouth. He looked like a man whose dreams had been clobbered by reality more than once. He offered us our ten bucks but we declined.
We walked back to Lenny’s car and headed west back to Burbank. It was quiet until “Clair” by Gilbert O’Sullivan came on and Lenny cursed the song and the singer. He punched buttons until “If YouDon’t Know Me by Now” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes came on.
“I swear it’s impossible to find a decent song anymore,” Lenny muttered.
“This one’s good though.”
“Yeah, really.”
“Let’s get something to eat. I’m starved.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Come on, let’s go to Copper Penny or something.”
“I said I’m not hungry, Jack.”
We were quiet except for Lenny’s cursing of lousy songs. We were at the Buena Vista exit before he finally turned off the radio and cleared his throat.
“I got my New Year’s resolution for ya.”
“What is it?”
“It’s for guys like Stan to hit it big for once.”
“It’s not like a wish.”
“Yeah it is.”
We raced north up Buena Vista and he went right through a red at Alameda. I was going to say something but I decided against it.