Tommy Joe

October 1976

Dennis had his ways. He bobbed his head to music and thought Peter Frampton was better than Bob Dylan. He was the boss’s son though.
“Next week you’ll be working with Bobby. He’s an old coot but he’s ok. He’ll tell you the story of the night we got robbed.”
“Got robbed?”
“Yeah, well they tried, but they didn’t get anything out of the till.”
“What, does he carry a weapon?”
“No, you wouldn’t want ol’ Bobby carrying a gun. He just wouldn’t open the box.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he just kept saying I ain’t openin’ it so just get the fuck outta here.”
“So what happened?”
I was beginning to feel like being broke wasn’t all that bad. But I needed the job. Well, I didn’t really need the job,but at the time I thought I did.
“Well, the guy in the getaway car got nervous. He comes running into the store, grabs the sawed off shotgun out of his partner’s hands and tells Bobby, Gimmie the fuckin’ money, I ain’t got time for this shit! and Bobby tells that guy to go to hell.”
“Is Bobby all right, I mean, in the head?”
“Yeah, sure, he’s just stubborn that’s all. Very loyal to Dad.”
“So what happened?”
“The getaway driver fires the shotgun.”
“The old guy survived a shotgun blast?”
“He managed to jump out of the way.”
He dropped his cigarette, looked down at it and squashed it with his shoe.
“So they got the money?”
“No they ran off.”
“Bobby didn’t have a heart attack?”
“Are you kidding? He got up and chased after ‘em yelling, Motherfuckers! You ruined $200 worth of booze! The guy’s aim was off and he blew out the bottles on the back shelf.”
“Ok, I get it. This is his version of the story, right?”
“No, his partner heard the whole thing.”
“Partner? Where was he?”
“Hiding in the walk-in.”
He lit a new cigarette. We were quiet for a minute and then the door chime sounded. I started to wonder if working at a liquor store in North Hollywood was such a good idea. I pictured myself broke but at the beach on a Saturday until a customer appeared just inside the entry.The chimes didn’t ring for some reason.
“Hello! I’m Tommy Joe! You’ll wanna be my best friend ‘cause brother I’m ready to spend!”
He was a short, thin, balding man in his 40’s with boots and a bolo tie. He had a leg brace and a cane. As he moved toward the counter to speak to us it was apparent that one leg was not mobile; he would turn his hip to walk, dragging the leg with him.
“Yes, boys, I can’t walk for shit, but take a look out there, tell me what you see? I see a brand new El Dorado lookin’ back at me!”
I went out the door and there it was– white with white leather interior, capped off with Texas style horns at the front of the hood. Despite its spectacle of an ornament, the car, a convertible, looked good in the morning sun. The engine, at rest, clicked contentedly.
When I came back, Dennis was stacking a case each of Budweiser, Miller, Coors on the counter, while Tommy Joe was tossing chips and pork rinds to go with his selection of Oreos, M&M’s, and beef jerky at the opposite end of the counter.
“Yessiree, Bob!” he was shouting, “that’s my Caddy and one more thing I got the pink slip, Daddy!”
“Nice car, beautiful.” Dennis remarked.
“Boy, you ain’t even seen it. Go on out there; I think I got what I need here.”
He didn’t want to but he went out.
“It’s a very nice car, sir.” I said, curious about him.
“I told you my name; it’s no use sirring me. I ain’t had to sir nobody since the Army. Been to Seoul, Korea, been fightin’ in the war. Army bunk, Army chow, Army clothes, Army car, hah!”
He stopped and looked at me to see if I was going to finish the lyric.
“Too much monkey business?”
“Goddamn right it was too much monkey business! I was glad to get out of there.”
“But the words to the song…”
“Been to Yokohama, I know. Shit, I ain’t that old! It was Korea what messed me up.”
“Oh, is that how…”
“Oh hell, no. You think I got this brace and twisted spine over there? No, boy, that comes from getting slammed by a big rig and finding out that a fuckin Ford Falcon don’t hold together a whole hell of a lot.”
“Oh. You mean…”
“Yeah. Falcon versus Peterbuilt, and you can guess how that turned out. But it wasn’t my fault, and I suffered mental anguish and shit. And the only good part of two years in court is I don’t have to work for the rest of my days, which is good ‘cause I sure as hell can’t work like this.”
“Yeah.”
“But I tell you what, those kids been in Viet Nam, they got it worse off than me.”
“Yeah?”
“They got the real mental anguish. Me, if my body hurts, I just pop a few of these and it goes away.”
He patted the top case of Bud.
“That works?”
“Hell yeah, it works, and it don’t matter what kind, neither, cause it’s nothing but a different brand, it’s all the same inside and they all can make the hurt go away, least for a while. But those kids, they’re carrying all kinds of shit in their head, shit they can’t get out.”
“But didn’t you see some bad stuff?”
“In Korea? Aw, hell, I spent most of my time scrubbing pots and pans. Hard to do when you’re hung over, but it ain’t so bad. Nah, I’m lucky, bent frame and all.”
“Nice car, best car on the parking lot. Better than my Firebird; way better than that grey Ford Torino!”
Little punk Dennis kissed the customer’s ass and gave me shit about my car at the same time.
“And sure as hell better than that shit brown Mercedes. I mean hell I ain’t got no competition, shit! This is Nathan’s Liquor, in North Hollywood, all right? Nobody out here but junkies and faggits. Send me over the hill there to goddamn Beverly Hills, and my Caddy will outshine them all.”
He was convinced that a gunboat El Dorado with cow horns didn’t shout Texas car dealer. The Mercedes belonged to the boss, Dennis’s old man.
Dennis rang him up and he paid with a crisp hundred-dollar bill. He tipped Dennis with the change, which he quickly pocketed, making sure not to look at me. We loaded up his trunk and he wheeled around to thank us.
“Thanks, boys. Life is short. You don’t know how things are going to turn out. Could be one way, could be another. Usually though it’s both. So when there’s money have a few beers and a good time. When there’s no money, well you’re shit out of luck.”
He clambered into the car, started it up and tooted the horn. For the moment, I didn’t care whether Dennis liked Peter Frampton better than Bob Dylan. The entire San Fernando Valley was madly in love with “Do You Feel Like We Do?” and ignored all the superior tunes from Dylan’s new album. But after all, maybe it was all just a different brand of beer.
By the end of the shift though, Dennis had played all 14 minutes of the song three or four times, and he and Frampton were both getting on my nerves again.

 

Where North Meets South

Mr. Werner probably knew his name was “Lightbulb Head”; he seemed to know what we were thinking most of the time anyway. He had an unusual style and masterful classroom control. He appeared to be what middle school students today might call “random” but he always knew exactly what he was doing. One day he brought a miniature statue of an African.
“Behold the native African in his natural attire,” he said holding up the statue.
“He ain’t got any clothes!” Johnny Dixon shouted. Having been in trouble so often, he no longer had any fear of being in more of it.
“Astute observation, Mr. Dixon. I am sure many of you noticed that the gentleman being represented here is sans any covering where north meets south and south meets north. Mr. Dixon would have undoubtedly preferred the counterpart to this piece but if I were to bring her to class, if might create a considerable uproar.”
“What the hell?”
Johnny often spoke for the rest of us.
“Mr. Dixon, your stay here in class is in jeopardy for two violations of class conduct: one, speaking out without raising your hand and two, and this carries with it a higher level of concern and perhaps requires more severe disciplinary action, your selection and use of inappropriate language. I may find it necessary to take you as a hostage to both encourage the observation of class rules and to assert the authority granted to me by the state of California.”
“Sorry, Mr. Werner.”
“You can see that the mere threat of hostage taking is a powerful tool. Note how any hint of disruption has suddenly abated.”
“Uh-huh.”
On another day when we were still noisy after the bell rang he turned to the blackboard behind him and wrote in letters three feet high, SEX. The noise stopped almost immediately; the class was as quiet as an empty church. We waited to hear the lesson on the forbidden word.
“Well then, now that I have your attention, we shall proceed,” and he directed us to our text book where we read about the African Veld.”
“No fair!” Johnny Dixon shouted.
“Mr. Dixon, with all due sympathy to your runaway hormones, I prefer remaining among the ranks of the employed. So I am afraid you will have to feel betrayed by my manipulative maneuver in as much as accommodating you in any way, shape or manner is out of the question. You will have to concede nevertheless that the ploy was indeed an effective one.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I find no equivocation in what you say there, Mr. Dixon. I am aware that the youth of our fair country spent the summer hearing the directive All you need is Love several times a day, however you also need knowledge as it is essential your opportunity to be active participants in society. So we shall proceed. It is time for our map test.” He distributed the tests, returned to his desk and sat trance like while we tried to determine the names and locations of the countries of Africa .
I didn’t notice it at first, and then when I did I tried not to take advantage of the situation. Mr. Werner had left the map down. Not looking was not a matter of honor; it was a matter of fear. The map was on the wall in the row where I sat, and China hovered right above my head, but the continent of Africa was not far away. Mr. Werner though had his desk situated closest to that side of the room, so the risk was too great for me. The kid in front of me though stretched and looked up as though he was trying to remember, with his face parallel to the ceiling he rolled his head to the right, held it there for a while and finally snapped back into the study position writing two or three answers down. Mr. Werner was just 10 feet away sitting there with his eyes open but he must not have been looking directly in front of him because he did not make a move. Soon other students in my row were taking less subtle glances and then the row next to ours was glancing over, too.
I kept looking over at Mr. Werner to try and figure out what he was up to but he sat perfectly still in his brown suit and tie with his white shirt starched so heavily it would have made noise if he had moved. He had earned the name Lightbulb Head not just because he was bald but also because the upper half of his head was considerably larger than the rest of it. I was sure that with his oversized cranium he would outsmart us in one way or another.
The test was two pages long and asked for rivers and lakes as well as countries and cities. We labored on. More kids were looking over at the map though, and eventually the kids on the far side of the room saw what was going on but couldn’t take the chance of walking across the room to peek at the map. Johnny Dixon though was the exception. Being stuck on the wrong side of the room when there were free answers available wasn’t going to stop him. He got up with the test and his pen in his hand, walked right past Mr. Werner, then turned up the aisle to get as close to the map as he could. We all looked up to see how this would play out. Johnny wedged himself between two kids sitting at their desks and took the paper and held it against the map. He looked from Africa back to his test paper for about four or five questions and then nodded to himself in satisfaction and ambled back to his desk. Mr. Werner did not stir. Five minutes later he called for the papers without comment, and when the bell rang he wished us a pleasant weekend and dismissed us.
Monday morning we went into Mr. Werner’s room with some trepidation. The fact that he didn’t say or do anything was making us uneasy. He took roll with no discernible difference from any other day. He returned our tests without comment, then returned to his desk, folded his hands and looked at us like a newscaster waiting to begin his report.
“Well, it seems that I inadvertently gave the class two tests on Friday: the one you knew about, the map test; and the other you didn’t, an ethics test. Leaving the map down was not by design, but it yielded some interesting results. I was disheartened to find that more than half of you were willing to give the map at least a cursory glance, or in the case of Mr. Dixon, a lengthy perusal. However, life, I have found, is rife with irony and the fact of the matter is that those at the greatest distance from the map did better than those in the first two rows adjacent to the map, the exception of course being Mr. Dixon whose sojourn from the north side of the room to the south end placed himself inches from the map. Perhaps he did not purloin a sufficient amount of answers; his grade was a lowly C minus. So I find no need to scold or otherwise reprimand the class; I will instead delight in the spectacular levity which this kind of irony frequently produces. Now let us turn our attention to the task. Please open your books to our new unit, Chapter 6, where we will discover what is worthy of knowing in the Amazon.”
As usual, we had no idea what he was talking about.

 

The 4% Chance

No one sleeps in a hospital. And I found out that no one expects you to sleep there. If they want you to sleep they can knock you out, but apparently sleeping while having a stay in the hospital isn’t at the top of their list. In my point of view the longer you stay the more you realize what horror a hospital is. Not that they don’t save lives and do the best they can; they do. And not that I’m not grateful; I am. It is after all, better to be getting better than to be getting worse. But to not be able to sleep for five days after major surgery is to add mishap to mayhem.
Day one was tough but the harder days were ahead. There I was on day one, having been anesthetized, sawed open, hacked on my heart, given a cow valve, closed, and then awakened. Grace and the kids came to see that I had both eyes open and was going move forward toward living my life instead of being finished with it. I don’t know the sequence of their arrival or if they let them all in but I remember hearing there voices and seeing them and trying to assemble and assign clearer meaning to the scene I was in.
“How do you feel, Dad?”
I think it was Greg. I knew if I said ok it would be enough. But I wanted them to know that I was fully there or would be; that they hadn’t carved away my personality, whatever it was or is. I tried to summon up a humorous reply, but nothing was forthcoming. Everything was swirling around—ideas, words, time, place, people, family, the darkness of the room—and I couldn’t slow things down or put anything in order. I knew I had to answer soon or they wouldn’t think I was ok.
“How I feel?”
“Yeah.”
“I feel like shit.”
They laughed. Pretty sure they did. I felt as though they knew it was still Dad. Then for the next five days the realities of hospital life underscored my reported condition.
I actually ate nearly everything they gave me. Chicken, salads, dinner rolls, vegetable medley. I swallowed pills at every hour of the night and day. I watched TV. They had all the ESPN channels including one that showed old college football games in an endless loop. I watched the same games over and over—it was better to have something to look at that to look at where I was and how I felt.
I tried to sleep but after the first night or two I gave up on the concept entirely except that I would take a nap from 3am to 5am to mark the passing of one day to the next. I would shiver with cold and then feel so hot I would perspire until my hair felt greasy. I tried to control my environment and asked for the thermostat to be adjusted. They set it wherever I asked but it didn’t do any good, and in fact it may have result in my perspiring and shivering at the same time, because that’s what happened next.
No surprise I began hallucinating. There were moths, big as kites on the ceiling and they were all angry about something. I would say to myself “Of course they can’t be real.” On the other hand though I was looking at them, and seeing was some sort of believing. They kept their distance and stayed high and close to the ceiling, flying in tight circles with that angry look fixed on their faces. And I saw Eddie, our dog, who apparently came for a visit. I called out to him but he ran and hid under a chair. Then one morning as I was watching a football game for the third time or so, I looked up and just behind the screen was a decal of a silhouette of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. All day I kept looking at it, thinking how cool it was that someone put the decal up there and equally cool was no one had taken it down. I imagined that someone had put it up there way back in the old days and there it was somehow, some way, still there. When Grace came later that day I said, “Look at the…” but there was no John and Yoko silhouette; it was just the two plugs of the television.
The only thing to look forward while in the hospital to is when they start disconnecting you from tubes and IV’s. Each time they do that you are closer to going home. I had chest tubes and one day they took me to a different room and said that a doctor was coming soon to take them out. I was happy. When the doctor arrived three young people who were trainees of some sort accompanied him.
“Hello there, buddy-buddy. How’re you doin’ today?”
“I’m all right.”
He wasn’t looking at me though. He was fiddling with some tools he was about to use on me.
“I’m Dr. Felix and these are three students who wish to observe this procedure. Is that all right?”
“I guess.”
“That’s good. You recall that you signed a form giving your consent for observation.”
He comported himself like a game show host, rolling his head side to side, smiling, making like we were old friend and moving the show right along all at the same time. I tried to say that I felt there was some difference between being observed when you were knocked out and being observed when you were awake, but I couldn’t assemble the words.
“Yeah, ok. Fine.”
“That’s good, good buddy, because they need to learn these things and you probably wouldn’t mind having these chest tubes taken out.”
“Right.”
“Great. What’re we doing today?”
“Taking out chest tubes?” the young man on my left answered tentatively.
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t need them anymore?” the young lady standing between the two young men offered.
“All right. Now you’re going to feel some pulling but it won’t be too bad,” the doctor said to me.
I looked over at the students and gave them a worried look. They smiled.
“Let’s go.”
“Attaboy. Now we can’t leave the tubes in too long because there is the risk of infection.”
I turned to my audience and raised my eyebrows. They were fighting the urge to laugh out loud.
“The wires,” the girl asked, “what are they for?”
“Pretty routine for cardiac surgery,” the doctor replied.
“Huh,” the young man who hadn’t spoken yet said.
“Now back in the day, in the 70’s they didn’t have the wires and patients were dropping like flies. They would just, you know conk out.”
This time I raised my head and did my best Charlie Chaplin fully-startled face. All three of the students burst out laughing, but the doctor didn’t seem to notice.
Around 4:30 Saturday morning I heard congas right outside my window. I couldn’t see them yet but I was sure it was Santana—just the rhythm section—warming up or maybe starting the show with “Soul Sacrifice.” Even when dawn broke they were still working on it, and even though when I looked out the window and couldn’t see them I knew they were out there. Then the bass player kicked in, then the drummer, and then the keyboard player. I kept waiting for Carlos Santana to play some licks but he hadn’t arrived yet. He had been delayed for some reason. Maybe they recognized him in the hospital and he had to sign autographs or maybe he went to visit patients.
The music abruptly stopped when the nurse came in and told me they were going to escalate the laxatives or find another procedure, and that I would have to go before I could leave.
“I’m pumped full of drugs, I haven’t slept since I got here and the bathroom looks like a laboratory for unseemly experiments. I’m sure when I get home I’ll be able to function.”
“We’ll up the laxatives. After that…”
“Look, can I have my wife bring me some carrot juice from Jamba Juice? It always works for me.”
“Have you tried deep knee bends?”
“I can barely walk and you want me to do deep knee bends?”
“Works for me.”
“What about the carrot juice?”
“Sure, you can have that.”
I called Grace and told her to bring me some carrot juice when she came after school. Then I waited.
It might have been a few hours later or it might have been a few minutes later when I began to get anxious about Grace’s arrival. It seemed as though it had been a long time, but time and the concept and function of time had melted like the Wicked Witch of the West. I was asleep and then awake and then asleep and awake again, and then I was sure I heard her out in the hall, and she was talking to a staff person but gave him the wrong room number.
“Grace,” I called from my bed feebly, “I’m in 473, not 471.”
But no one responded. They kept taking about room 471. I would never get my carrot juice and never get to leave the hospital. She had already shared with me about being led to the wrong room when I first was waking up from the surgery. Somehow Grace mistook me for an obese Asian man. They told her I would be puffy and swollen. Now maybe this was another calamity.
I called out again, in what I thought was a louder voice, but they kept talking. How could they ignore me? At least they could send someone into my room to see what I was clamoring about. Asleep, awake, asleep, awake, asleep, until I didn’t know which was which, except that Grace was out there with the carrot juice. And then I heard my brother-in-law, Henry, out in the hall telling Grace to forget about the carrot juice because I was asleep and it was more important to sleep than to have carrot juice.
“Henry! I’m awake. Tell her to come on in. I’m awake, Henry. Both of you can come in.”
But they didn’t. This time I thought “Oh the hell with it,” and fell asleep, except that I dreamed I was at church standing in the pulpit, telling the story of not getting the carrot juice. I knew it was a dream because I was dressed up, and my body had strength and my mind was clear. I was feeling the sorrow of being so far from real clothes and strength and clarity but then the real Grace came in the room. What a joy. I drank the carrot juice and told her the stories the best I could. She smiled and looked at me quizzically. Nothing could have been better than seeing my lovely wife, her smile and the light in her eyes.
This is the essay I didn’t want to write, the story I didn’t want to have. But we don’t get to choose some things and sometimes those things are really big. At some point I told Grace, “Gosh, I never thought I’d have something that would cause me to forget about the prostate cancer.” But here I am. God has His plans, even when they don’t seem to make sense. Some days I feel like well, whatever happens after this I know that I was blessed and fortunate enough to reach all the usual goals. I am married to a wonderful woman; we successfully raised three wonderful kids, who in turn chose wonderful life partners. And then there is Miss Violet, our granddaughter with boundless joy and curiosity over everything presented to her in her life so far. I had a career, and I hope and pray that I did more good than harm. There were frustrations and setbacks and unfixable faults in the system and my own stubborn faults and shortcomings. But it was the career I wanted, the career that made sense to me, and the career where I met so many wonderful, amazing peers and students. All my life it seems that I’ve met so many interesting, intelligent, witty and clever people, and I’ve been blessed to be friends with so many good-hearted people. That’s how I was thinking before the surgery, you know, so on that 4% chance that something would go wrong I felt like I had lived a full and meaningful life.
Now on the other side of the surgery, on the recovery side, I still feel that way and I feel so grateful to continue. I will value whatever the good Lord decides to give me—I mean, I believe I’ll be here as long as He needs me—and I will savor every precious moment. It will also be easier to dismiss the negativity—those things that we become obsessed with that only drag us down—and look for and encourage the good, wherever it is.
When we are young we run with time, and later on—at some point when we don’t even realize it—time runs away from us. Time wins the race; it is undefeated in this world. It’s ok though, we can still do what we’re supposed to do as long as time doesn’t disappear below the horizon. In the next world Time will stop and you can pour it a glass of wine and swap stories. In the meantime though we should make the most of it.
And if you are wondering… an hour after I drank that carrot juice, I qualified to check out of the hospital, and four hours after that, I did. I have no intentions of trying deep knee bends now or at anytime in the future. It is good to be home, that’s for sure.

And as for the Santana “Soul Sacrifiece” video clip. Play it loud, dance around and shout, “I’m alive and live’s good!” That’s the message I got from this experience.

The Walkout

The war Vietnam was raging furiously, and the movement against it was growing steadily.The war against the war makers was inside many of us and starting to percolate. We were 15 years old, struggling through Mr. Korngold’s Drama I class, and from there we were free to try out for any of the drama productions. I was there because I liked to talk. Hamming it up for the amusement of my friends and classmates was one thing; getting on stage was quite another though.

October, 1969 was different from any that came before it. Every student in every high school and every college was supposed to walk out of class to protest the war. Now I had other issues to deal with of course, such as Halloween falling on a Friday, which meant that I would be playing football that night instead of trick or treating, and by next year I felt I would be too old to trick or treat, I mean, a junior in high school, well, that was just too close to being an adult to trick or treat. This meant that last year was my last time trick or treating and I didn’t even know it.

I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed that Mr. K had finished taking roll and was talking about something. “Volunteers” by Jefferson Airplane was playing in my head. If everybody volunteer against the war, instead of for it, there would be no war. Eventually though Mr. K’s voice came to the front of my attention.   At first I only heard the tone of his voice, which was deadly serious, at if someone was about to die. Then the words came.

“…And if any of you think you know what’s going on in this war or understand its complexities, go ahead and walk out. That door is not locked. But please don’t make a mockery of this day by going out and then just going to McDonald’s. And if you decide to walk out there will be a consequence; nothing is free or easy in this life. If you walk out, you will receive an F for the day.”

I had heard that phrase before, but I had never really thought about it. What  is an F for the day? Does it mean the next day you don’t have it anymore? Does anyone ever get an A for the day? Was Mr. K bluffing? Would there be any hidden consequences? Teachers had a habit of doing that. They tell you the punishment and you decide to risk it but since the punishment didn’t seem to bother you, they would pile more on. Teachers didn’t play fair.

I looked around to see if anyone was going to go out. Did any of us understand the war? Every night on TV the local newscaster, George Putnam would ridicule protesters, calling them unpatriotic, long hair hippies. It didn’t seem like the anti-war people were so bad. How could being against people getting killed be bad? The girl in front of me didn’t move. I figured she’d have some perfectly logical explanation for not walking out.   None of us moved. We all looked at Mr. K and he looked at us. I wanted to walk out, and I knew if I did some other people would follow. But we were waiting for someone to go first. I turned to look out the window and saw maybe 50 or 60 people already on the P.E. field, sitting in a circle. I was disappointed that so few were there. The whole idea was to show the older people that we didn’t want to be the next to die, and the more people that went out, the more powerful the statement. My leg muscles didn’t seem to work. In a way, Mr. K was wrong; the door was locked. I wasn’t ready to defy authority; I wasn’t ready to get on that public stage.

After waiting quite a while Mr. K sighed heavily. I was confused by the look of disappointment on his face.

“Very well,” he said with a certain resignation, “we will begin today’s lesson.”

Exacting Revenge

October 1994

If you smoothed out the ridges in the Michelin Man, you’d have Jon Rojo. He had that pudgy look with the soft face, the overinflated hands and the eggplant shaped torso, and he was 6’ 2”. He was amiable though—Jon would often show up at my classroom after school just to shoot the breeze.
“Sup, Mr. Chavoor?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah? How was your weekend?”
“Ok, I guess.”
“What’d you do?”
“I don’t even remember. That’s why it was only ok, I guess.”
“Man, Chavoor, you need to get out more often.”
He tossed a ball of paper into the wastepaper basket. I tried to twirl a pencil like so many cool teachers could do.
“Hey, Jon, let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“You still waiting for UNLV to get back to winning games? ‘Cause you’ll be waiting a long time!”
“Oh, you gonna go there? Dis my team?”
“I’m thinking they should just cancel the basketball program there.”
“Alright, Chavoor, you’ll see. You think you got jokes, tryin’ to punk The Runnin’ Rebels like that.”
“You notice since they lost the Brother, they’re not going anywhere.”
“Just ‘cause Tark’s Armenian.”
“Yeah, but to tell you the truth, I don’t even like him.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t care whether his players graduate or not.”
“So what? They play in the NBA.”
“They’re not all Stacey Augmon.”
“You know that’s right!”
“It’s all about that education, Jon. And Augmon isn’t all that.”
“What?”
“Give me James Worthy any day.”
“Oh Chavoor, he’s like a hundred years old. He’s gar!”
“He’s what?”
“Gar. Garbage.”
“That’s wrong, man.”
“No it ain’t.”
He kept launching 3 pointers from my desk to the trash can by the door.
“So Rojo, what were you doing over the weekend?”
“Exacting revenge.”
“What?”
“A little payback.”
“Rojo, you big fool, are you in a gang?”
“Oh hell no, Mr. Chavoor. It’s not like that. Who needs that? We just had some fun is all.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Me and two my homies, you know, Danny and Rico? We egged this house.”
“Yeah? Who was it?”
“This guy we didn’t like.”
“He goes here to Roosevelt ?”
“No. He’s old, like you. We got his house good.”
“I did that once.”
“Stop lyin’. You didn’t do nothin’ like that.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t think I actually threw any eggs. I was just along for the ride.”
“When was this?”
“In high school.”
“You got mad at Fred Flintstone?”
“Ok, I see how it is. High school was like 20 years ago.”
“You probably did it like two weeks ago.”
“You think I go around egging people’s houses now?”
“You never know.”
He had a look on his face that even my teacher radar couldn’t figure out.
“Well, my friend played on the basketball and they lost all 20 games.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Every single game. So we got the coach’s address and went to his house at like one in the morning.”
“A coach?”
“The head coach.”
“Did he come out the house?”
“No.”
“Where’d you throw the eggs?”
“On his front porch.”
“Did he call the cops?”
“I think he slept through it.”
“Oh. That’s no fun.”
“Yeah.”
“How many eggs?”
“A dozen.”
“That all? Me and my homies, we had like 60 eggs.”
“Sixty?”
“Yeah. So we drive to Visalia.”
“What’re you doing out there?”
“That’s where our victim lives.”
“You drove 50 miles to egg someone’s house?”
“It’s not that far.”
“So who is this guy?”
“Put it like this. We’re doing a favor for my mom.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She bought the eggs.”
“Your Mom said you’re gonna egg this guy’s house for me. So you say give us some money and we’ll go do it.”
“No, Chavoor. It wasn’t like that.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“She bought the eggs and came with us.”
“Uh, what?”
“Yeah, my mom’s cool, huh?”
“Well, she’s one of a kind.”
“Not really. Danny and Rico’s moms came with us, too.”
“All the moms went.”
“Yeah, man.”
“The six of you…”
“In the Reliant.”
“The moms threw the eggs?”
“Heck yeah, man. They threw more eggs than we did. They got his car, the windows, the side of the house.”
“And you didn’t get caught?”
“Yeah we did. He called the cops.”
“What in the world did your mom say to the cops?’
“She didn’t say nothing.”
“She just, she didn’t talk?”
“No, the moms got away. They got to the car first. They caught me hiding behind this tiny bush.”
“Jon, I mean, why would you try to hide behind a tiny bush?”
“There wasn’t anything else. The cops were like ok, come out from behind the bush!”
“So they caught you…”
“And my homies too. The moms jumped in the car.”
“They LEFT you?”
“Not for good. Then the cops talked to us and wrote our names down. Then they let us go.”
“Did they ask you about, I mean, well, did you tell them that it was your mom’s idea?”
“Rat out our moms? Hell, no.”
“I guess it will be one of those crazy once in a lifetime memories.”
“Yeah. And then in two weeks we’re going back with even more eggs.”
“All of you?”
“Yeah. My mom’s diabolical, man. This time she’s gonna let the eggs rot. She’s my hero!”

“Well, I have no reason to doubt that.”

“Tellin’ you, man.”

Jon was a good kid and would be a good adult some day. The feeling I had was so certain I did not try to untangle this particular incident.
“So when they do that commercial that says, it’s 10 o’ clock, do you know where your children are? Your mom will say yeah he’s egging a house in Visalia with me.”
“Exactly. More eggs this time. Rotten.”
“Well, I’m speechless, and I’m going home.”
“What’re gonna do when you get home?”
“Monday Night Football. Chiefs and the Broncos.”
“Not the Vikings?”
“That’ll be the last game of the year.”
“Like I said, Mr. Chavoor, you ought to get out more.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll egg your house instead.”
“Oh! Chavoor’s still thinks he got jokes.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jon.”
“Yeah.”
“Stay out of my neighborhood, man.”
“Don’t worry, Chavoor. My mom don’t have any issues with you.”
“Guess I’ll have to give you an A for the rest of the year.”
“You know that’s right.”
I locked up and headed for the parking lot, wondering if Grace would be interested in The Shawwshank Redemption.

Out of the Box

October 1991

“What in the world did you tell them?”
“I told them the truth.”
“What are you talking about?”
She was usually calm, even when the news was bad, but now she was using a voice that had rage in it. I didn’t expect this from her, even though she was the principal and I was the teacher who had created some bad publicity.
“We promised these kids that they would be on a nice campus somewhere else; we put them at a middle school with hoodlums worse than anything here at Roosevelt. And a high concentration of them.”
“We didn’t….”
“We told them there would only be like-minded science students in their off-campus satellite school. Then the counselors started sending us behavior problem kids who had no interest in science or even being in school.”
“The numbers didn’t….”
“When they asked me why I was leaving I didn’t even tell them that stuff. I told them they didn’t get what they were promised. Field trips, fancy equipment. I started a garden and it was vandalized twice. Who vandalizes a garden?”
“Do you know how many phone calls I’ve received from parents? Those kids love you and you tell them the program’s no good? Any idea what kind of damage that’s going to do?”
“I didn’t say the words no good. Whenever possible, when a kid asks me a question I answer truthfully. It was in my classroom. A kid asked me why I was leaving and I answered him. I didn’t know it was going to upset everyone and create a problem.”
“I’d like to know. What you are going to do to fix this?”
I had never been called on the carpet before. After seven years at Roosevelt I had a reputation as an easy-going, kid-friendly teacher.
“Fix it? You know I’m a team player. A student asked me a question and I answered the best way I could. But that created problems, so I would be willing to meet with the parents and explain what I meant.”
“We’re not doing that. What else?”
“I could write a letter.”
“A letter of apology.”
“Yes, I could write a letter of apology. I’m sorry all this happened after I said what I said. It was not my intention to create a problem.”
“Fine. Write a letter of apology. I will need the letter by the end of the day.”
“I’ll have it for you after lunch.”
“Your classes will be all 9th grade.”
“What?”
“All English I, 9th grade. That’s all that’s available.”
“I’m no good with 9th graders. It’s like asking a center to play quarterback.”
“What?”
“You want each teacher to be in the best place they’re suited for.”
“This is all there is. If you want to come back to the main campus, that’s it.”
“Switch me out with teachers who like 9th graders and don’t want 11th or 12th.”
“There isn’t anyone like that.”
I spoke to the English department chair but she said there was nothing she could do. I didn’t believe her, though.
So I returned to the main campus of my beloved Roosevelt High but I was given five periods of 9th graders and was “traveling” which meant that I moved between periods, not from one end of the hall to another, but from the east end of the campus to the west end, and I made that journey not once but twice a day, and just to sweeten the deal one of those rooms was the only third story room on campus for which there was no elevator. There wasn’t even a window up there, which would have provided a pretty nice view. And the department chair, whom I had known for 10 years and considered a friend, had looked me in the eye and said there wasn’t anything she could do. There was and I did make changes myself later on.  Maybe she forgot that the department chair’s main role was to advocate for the teachers in the department.
But there was more. Those ninth grade classes of mine were created from the overflow of crowded classes. Part of being a professional involves resisting the temptation to handpick the worst behaved students when your class is being leveled, however as it turned out, the friends of this department chair picked out the worst imaginable students. The students I got were immature, uncooperative, under skilled, socially inept–and those were the better ones. I had no 9th grades lesson plans and no one offered anything to me. I was hurt and angry and I decided that I would not give these students my all and that I would be and remain detached and affectionless. In some twisted way I imagined I was paying back those who had done me wrong.
I put the kids in a pattern and stayed with it. We read, and then had brief discussions, and then I gave them questions to answer and vocabulary words to learn. There was no playing, no joy. I was straight-arming them emotionally. I was sure it would be the worst year of my career, but my wife, Grace, is always offering sage advice. She often said, “If you get one kid to catch on, to get it, and that kid suddenly knows he can be successful and wants to be successful, then you can call that a successful year.” Somewhere, even in that lousy year, her words lingered in the back of my head.
I was on my way to work one morning, driving down Kings Canyon, gazing at all the graffiti, thinking that the bad guys were winning, when I heard something on the radio. A woman was talking about teenagers from lower socio-economic backgrounds. “They are trapped,” she said without histrionics, “trapped in a box.” She went on to explain that their neighborhood, the mores of the neighbors there, formed a box that held them in and kept them from seeing anything else outside or beyond their box. Trapped in a box of violence, drugs, sexism, hatred, anger, and fear. It was like one of those obvious truths sitting there waiting for someone to say out loud. Poor kids in Calawa, Pinedale, West Fresno, Eastgate and wherever else poor kids were trapped. To get out they had to see or believe in a different world and acquire the desire and the determination to get out.
I climbed up to my third story cave and plopped in “The Quiet Man,” into the VCR. In less than a minute, a kid named Victor was acting out. Victor was a prototype “vato,” with khaki pants, a white t-shirt and a hairnet. He swayed when he walked, and usually had his hands in front of him, his right hand holding the thumb of his left. He would arrive five minutes late, offer no excuse, tip his chin at me and amble to his seat. His class work was abysmal: incomplete, barely legible scrawling. I did get him to stop wearing sunglasses in class, but tardiness and the chip on his shoulder was something I was still working on. I was working on it slowly though because I still wanted to be mad and doing less would serve as the proof of my resentment.
The movie was dull and John Wayne’s limited acting did not impress them. Victor was talking and pestering people.
“Victor. Come here.” He turned and stared at me. I had to speak before he told me he wasn’t my dog.
“You’re not in trouble. Just come over here for a second. I’ve got a question I want to ask you.” He made his way back to my desk.
“What man?”
“How come you’re not watching the movie?”
“You want me to watch some stupid movie about a bunch of white people and a guy who don’t want to fight? Why should I?”
“Well, you can have whatever opinion you want about it, but your assignment is to watch it, or pretend to watch it, but the thing is, you can’t disturb others who are trying to watch it.”
“You think anybody’s watching it?”
We stared at each other for a while.
“Hey Victor, you know what?”
“What?”
“You’re trapped in a box.”
The comment threw him for a second.
“Whatchew you mean?”
“You’re trapped in this whole Vato Loco thing. Trapped in the rules of the street. Trapped into fighting when you don’t have to fight. Trapped into thinking that you have to be cool, bad, slick.”
I don’t know why I said it. I just knew I was looking at the embodiment of that obvious truth. I wasn’t sure how he’d react.
“Yeah, ok, man.” He waved a hand at me, turned and returned to his seat.
The next day I had them answering questions about the movie. Victor put his name and date on the paper and then got up and came to my desk.
“Hey, teacher, know what?”
“What?”
“You’re trapped.” He pointed at me. “Trapped in a box.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re trapped in the 60’s. Over here on the Eastside trying rescue ghetto kids. Trapped with your Simon and Garfunkel records. Trapped dreaming about making society a better place and ending prejudice and all that.”
“What do you listen to, rap?”
“Ever heard of Ice Cube?”
“Maybe. It’s all f-this and f-that, and body parts.”
“Don’t say what you don’t know.”
We both smiled.
“Victor, you tipped your hand. I know something about you.”
“What?”
“You’re smart. You can’t hide it. You can’t fool me by slouching, strutting, rolling up late, or tagging up your notebook. You can do this school stuff, it’s all up to you.”
From that day on and for the next four years things were very different between us. We took turns either getting out of the box or challenging the other to get out of the box. Victor went out for track, then he challenged me to coach football, but while I resisted that notion I did begin to see my opportunity to turn a bad year into a good one by taking Grace’s advice.
One day he was wearing a Malcolm X baseball cap. I called him out on it, saying he was just a fashion follower and he most likely hadn’t actually read anything about the man. I handed him my copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and he took it. He returned it a year and a half later.
“What’s this?” I said. I had assumed that after such a long time he was going to keep it.
“I’m done reading it.”
“Well, what took you so long?”
“I had to hire a guy to read it to me.”
“Yeah?”
“He reads pretty slow, too.”
After that he began reading on his own, starting with Mexican literature, history and social commentary.
“Christianity is a slave religion,” he said to me one day in his confrontational style.
“It’s true that there have been some disastrous misinterpretations made in the history of Christianity, but what do you know about the faith itself? Have you even read the Bible?”
He kept the Bible that I lent him for about six months. His only comment when he returned it was that he found the passages in the Old Testament to be more interesting than those in the New Testament.
Victor was my student for three years in a row, which almost never happens. I found out later he had been requesting my class, and the counselor made it happen. I wanted him to go to a different teacher his senior year but he said he would quit school if I spoke to his counselor about it. I worried that four years of a “laid back” teacher may not prepare him sufficiently for higher education. Victor and I never debated his going to college; it was just understood that a college education was the most efficient way to get out of the box.
I saw him a few times after he graduated. He called me up and said he wanted me to see the movie “Dead Presidents.” We went to see it and as much as I was hoping to like it, I wasn’t terribly impressed. I did though have the feeling that given the late 60’s/early 70’s setting of the film, Victor was trying to merge our two worlds, and I appreciated the gesture.
The last time I saw him was at a freshman football game I was coaching. Victor had completed two years at Fresno State. I had told Victor the truth, the best way I could and he told me his. We were both better for it.
I was busy coaching, but I did hear him say, “I see you got out of your box,” as  he strolled away from the field holding his thumb in his right hand, his chin pointed to the sky.

 

All Good

October 2012

“You want to play varsity next year? There’s five things you have to change.”
“Pfft. I’m playing for USC!”
“Well, USC will expect those five and 25 other things as well.”
“Whatever, Coach.”
“You have the size and strength to do really well.”
“I already do really well, Coach.”
“You could play college ball and maybe even get a partial scholarship.”
“I told you, I’m playing for USC.”
“Except for the five things.”
“What are they?”

I fell in love with football at the age of four. If I could somehow get past my 14-year-old brother, he would laugh and hold me up in the air and shout what I thought was “TT!” which was in fact “TD,” or touchdown.

“Your stance is too wide.”
“Bullshit.”
“What’s the first thing you do after you snap the ball?”
“Blow up the guy in front of me.”

My brother showed me a proper three-point stance when I was eight. Back straight, head up, feet a little wider than your shoulders, square, not leaning left, right or back on my heels.

“That would be nice. But you snap the ball, then adjust your too-wide stance and then you move for the guy. You waste an entire second or two doing that.”
“Whatever, Coach. I get the guy, right?”
“If you play varsity everyone will be faster.”
“USC.”
“Even faster.”

I was too tired and, at 59, too old to have coached. My love for it had waned; my body was worn out and would not stand on a practice field for 2-1/2 hours very well. And information about brain trauma was becoming a topic to be considered: where seeing a big hit was cause for elation just a year before, now it was giving me a little twist in the gut.

“But that’s how I do. I’m comfortable like that. What else?”
“You double-clutch the ball before you snap it.”
“I never been called for that.”
“Yeah you have. But even when you’re not, that’s another half a second you wasted.”
“Half a second, big deal.”
“The whole idea is to be perfect, five seconds at a time.”
“Nobody’s perfect, Coach. Real talk.”
“That’s right. But if you have that standard you can keep improving. Sometimes good enough is good enough, but not in football.”

There were life lessons to be learned. Wasn’t that why I wanted to coach? But the years had piled up and I was spending most of my energy just trying to get through the day in the classroom. I figured since I hadn’t connected with the team or even the linemen very well, the least I could do is to help the player at the position I knew best. On the JV staff I was the extra appendage; there were already offensive and defensive line coaches, and they were all in their early 20’s. I was the old guy along for the ride. I could run a drill but I didn’t know the offense or defense inside out so I stayed with the basics, the things I learned when I played in high school. We were well instructed and I paid attention because I was neither big nor necessarily aggressive.

“What else you got, Coach?”
“You put your head on the wrong side on a block.”
“Damn, Coach. You know I dominate. I take out everything in my path.”
“But if the play is going to the right and you got your head on the left, the guy’s going to slip off and make the tackle.”
“When did that happen, huh? I get to the guy.”
“But when you waste time doing that other stuff you get to him late, and you don’t get position on him.”
“But I do get to him.”
“If you want to play for USC, or varsity for Roosevelt, there are going to be guys as big or bigger than you and you will need these skills.”
“Oh I got skills, Coach. I got mad skills. You’re talking to Bobo, you forgot.”

I was never good at chasing down linebackers, but if the man was in front or shading left or right or even in the gap, I was going to get him, and it didn’t matter how big he was. I wanted to go back in a time machine and have Bobo’s body. I would have done a lot better, much closer to perfection. There were others things I would correct if I could go back in time. I didn’t move my feet very well and I was slow to get to a second level block.

“And you stay on your blocks too long.”
“First I don’t block right, then I block too long. What the hell!”
“Remember the game against Hoover?”
“I was rolling that guy’s ass.”
“That’s right. You were still with him when the play went for like 15 yards.”
“I was gonna push him to Bakersfield!”
“Yeah well, the running back was downfield, surrounded by three d-backs.”
“So?”
“He could have used your help, but you were still way back at the line of scrimmage.”
“I’m ruthless, Coach. Savage.”
“When the ball carrier crosses the line of scrimmage get off your block and go get a second block downfield.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I’m so into it.”

Bobo was not only bigger and stronger than I was, he was faster as well. I was fast as a cement bag rolling uphill, but when the play broke for big yards, I headed off in the direction of the ball carrier and usually got there just as the play was ending, but nevertheless I did what I was obliged to do.

“Well, those are the five things.”
“You gotta go back to school, Coach. That was four things! Burned!”
“Ok, number five is listen to your coach.”
“You old, Coach.”

The conversation was like none that any of us could have had when I played. I once made a wise crack to a coach and had to crab walk a hundred yards. We certainly didn’t argue with them, especially over rudimentary things. But what was changing, me or them? Society? Sports? I didn’t know. I didn’t even want to apply myself to wondering about it anymore. Would I have spoken that way to Coach Tada or Coach Demaio? Not in this lifetime or the next.
Dad and I would have talked about generational and societal change for days. He would have zeroed in on one simple conclusion; I would have floated and danced around different ideas. But I guess it shakes out like this: back then we never would have challenged instruction from a coach, unless it was amongst ourselves when we were sure the coaches were out of ear shot, and now, 40 years later, a bunch of these kids will question things right in the face of a coach, even when it means the kid will not improve as an athlete.
It’s true that my generation questioned authority, but we had good questions to ask, and when we asked – well, when we were serious – we asked in a sincere and civil fashion.

When I played football we started every game with the same play, slam right, an off-tackle run. Everyone in the league knew how we started a game because the head coach had been doing it for years. Everyone knowing the play meant everyone jumped to where it was going and we were lucky to gain a yard out of it. We questioned this tradition and asked him to run a fake slam that turned into a pass. That would make the defensive backfield desert the backfield to stop the run. He had misgivings but finally relented. The receiver was wide open and we were about to score a touchdown. No one was anywhere near him; nothing but grass between himself and the end zone. He was so happy and excited he dropped the ball. We knew two things: we were right; and Coach would never call anything but slam right to open a game, ever.

“Look, just get off the block and get down there and make a second block. A 15 yard gain turns into a 45 yard touchdown.”
“It’s all good, Coach.”
“Well, but…”

I think that of all the clichés in this world, “It’s all good” is the most aggravating of them all. It means nothing. Well, it means nothing is bad and if nothing is bad then how can there be good? And if there is nothing good, better or best, if there is no measurement for anything, then how can we ever hope to get anywhere doing anything?
Dylan did a song “It’s All Good,” and once again takes us down another desolation row full of cheaters, liars, thieves, depressed people full of despair in a broken world and then he says in the repeated refrain, in which the sarcasm is understated but clear and present. “It’s all good.” Thanks for trying, Bob, but the phrase now passes for something philosophical and wise in some circles. Bobo doesn’t need a coach. It’s all good.

“You all right, Coach?”
“What?”
“You ok?”
“Yeah.”
“You were like, somewhere else for a while there.”
“Oh, it was something from back in the day.”
“Must’ve been something good.”
“Yeah, it was.”

Maybe I just wasn’t a good coach, because if I was I surely would have found some way to more effectively communicate with Bobo. It was my last year teaching and Bobo’s last year playing football. He decided he wanted to focus on choir, which was his other passion in his young life. I hope he listened to his choir director better than he listened to his old coach.

http://www.mojvideo.com/video-bob-dylan-it-s-all-good/f369156a41a8ccc486e4

Rex, the Hippie Dog

Lenny dubbed our Saturday football games the Continental League, and we called him the commissioner. Nearly every Saturday of the 15 week football season for a dozen years, Lenny managed to assemble at least 14 people who were willing to play tackle football in jeans and t-shirts or when it got cold near the end of the season, jeans and sweatshirts. The commissioner assigned himself a certain amount of authority. He would name the day and time of the next game. He would make phone calls to the forgetful. He brought new players on board, and if anyone brought their friends along to play, they had to get the approval of the commissioner. He called timeouts, penalties, halftimes, and if things were getting out of hand he would end the game. He kept the teams evenly balanced talent-wise, made substitutions as well as critical out of bounds and possession calls. Like any autocratic football commissioner, he made, modified, and got rid of rules.
We played at Verdugo Park, at first on the Verdugo Avenue side just east of the gym, then on the California Street side at the south end. We played several games there until Jerry Bailey took a hard hit right at the sideline, which was the sidewalk. He fell face first on the concrete and began crying like a kid whose parents took him to Disneyland and told him he had to wait in the car and that they’d be back in four hours. I felt horrible. I either made the hit or was the second man on the scene, but his head bounced off the concrete and he sat up and threw the ball away, toward us, into the ground and bawled. Before I could think of something sympathetic to say, Lenny—who was also in charge of nicknames—dubbed him Crybaby Bailey, and the name stuck for the next ten years. So Jerry Bailey, so before we go any further with the story I’d like to say… wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, whether you barely remember the Continental League or being tagged Crybaby Bailey, I am saying now, today, this hour, this minute that having had your head bounce off the sidewalk certainly merited long, loud crying and you certainly did not deserve to be treated derisively or stuck with a derisive nickname.
“Come on, Crybaby Bailey, get up.”
“Fuck you,” Jerry said, and cried even louder, and remained seated on the sidewalk.
Which isn’t to say that Lenny was a commissioner with a heart of stone or the common sense of a drunk monkey, because it wasn’t very long after the Crybaby Bailey Incident that he relocated our playing field one block north to an oversized patch of grass where the sidewalk was a good ten yards away from the sideline boundary. A pine tree marked the back end of the south end zone; everything else required more distant markers—a house on the other side of a fence was in line with the 50-yard line, for instance. There was an uphill grade going south to north but we didn’t mind. It was a good field, wider than a regulation field, more like a frontier than a football field, and we played on that field for years.
Usually we had enough regular Continental League members to have a game, but every so often the commissioner would have to recruit on the spot and for the most part he did a good job. He could tell good, clean football players by looking at them and engaging them in a little conversation. That’s how the Newman brothers joined the league. They were from New York and loved the Jets. How could Lenny have said no to those credentials? The Newmans brought innovation to the game in the form of one simple play: handing off to the fullback and going right up the middle, something not usually done in pickup games and in fact usually not allowed. But Lenny loved the Newman brothers so much he not only allowed it, he began running it himself. Thus I became a featured, if not slow-footed running back. There were half a dozen classic 3 hour battles pitted the Newman brothers against Lenny and his quick-as-molasses fullback.
Sometimes people would sit under the trees off to the side and watch a game, even those who had been cut by the commissioner. One Saturday there was a group of four or five guys and a gigantic German shepherd were loitering by the trees, tossing a Frisbee around. From the radio of what I assumed was their Dodge van I could hear strains of “White Room.” It was the manic guitar break and the dog seemed to be bobbing his head to it.
There was something distinctly not Burbank about them. They had an authentic hippie aura about them. The local denizens grew their hair out, put on paisley shirts—heck, I had paisley shirt on the first day of my 8th grade year—and played the Revolver album in the 4 track of their Mustang or Impala, but you could still see Burbank in them plain as you could see our white picket fences in front of humble houses on tree lined shadow blanketed streets. Not so this bunch; I was sure they were from San Francisco, right from the heart of Haight Ashbury. If I had any money I would have bet a hundred dollars on it. They wore the clothes de rigueur but it didn’t look like a costume; it looked natural. They were skinny but not fragile. They were barefoot and they seemed very comfortable and at peace about who they were and whatever it was they were up to.
Lenny was furious that day because several Continental League players who said they would play didn’t show. We would be stuck playing a watered down, passing league version of the game where defensive linemen had to count, “one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi” before rushing the quarterback. It was that or go upstairs to the gym and play basketball, or just go home.
“I’m not playing passing league,” I said to Lenny, “I hate it. You can’t hit anybody. Nobody to block.”
“Don’t panic, Jack. There’s always somebody who wants to play football.”
“Yeah? Who?”
He turned to the hippies suddenly, considering for a moment.
“Oh not them. They won’t ….”
“Hey,” Lenny shouted in their direction, “you guys wanna play some football?”
“What?” the tallest one called back.
“Wanna play football?” Lenny repeated, tossing the ball as if it could entice them.
“Where you guys from?” I shouted out.
“San Pedro,” another one answered.
I was crestfallen. Not only were they not from San Francisco, they were from a grubby harbor town that permanently smelled of fish and ocean sewage.
“Like it matters,” Lenny said to me, more annoyed than before.
“San Pedro?” I said resentfully, “What’re they doing here?”
“Who cares?” he answered.
“Like us against you,” the tall guy called out.
“”We’ll figure it out,” Lenny called back, “come on, we’re ready to start.”
He held the ball aloft, and then waved it like a wand as if he were hypnotizing them.
“Cool,” the tall one said, and they—along with the dog—started moving in our direction.
Introductions were made. There were four of them and Lenny started assigning some of the regulars to their team to balance things out. They were still a man short and Lenny didn’t like unevenly matched teams.
“Oh it’s cool, man,” the tall one, whose name was Allen, said, “We’ve got Rex.”
“Rex?” Lenny said.
“Yeah,” Allen said, “he’s pretty smart. He plays real good.”
“The dog?” I said incredulously.
Rex, who had been sitting, stood up and eyed me up and down as if I had insulted him.
“Yeah, man” Allen said with much pride, “after a couple a beers.”
I was sure Lenny would veto the notion of a dog playing in the Continental League, even temporarily, even if it meant coming up one player short and not playing that day.
“Yeah, all right,” he said despondently.
“Cool,” Allen said, “we’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
They walked back to their original spot under the trees, cracked open two bottles of Olympia beer and poured it into what looked like a very large pie pan. Rex began lapping it up with considerable gusto.
“You’re letting them put a dog on the field. Are you crazy?” I asked Lenny.
“What’s the dog gonna do, run a square out? Besides he can’t run. Even if he could hold the ball in his mouth. He’s drunk. Two beers is like ten to a dog, don’t forget.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s the same as dog years, Jack.”
We looked over by the trees. Rex was weaving and barking while Allen and his friends were trying to rev him up, asking him if he wanted to play ball.
“We’ll kickoff,” Allen said while putting his hair in a ponytail. Rex barked enthusiastically.
“We don’t do kickoffs,” Lenny explained, “We’ll just put the ball on our own thirty. Gotta get to the 50 to get a first down.”
“Oh,” Allen said, dejected, “sorry Rex, no kickoff.”
Rex whimpered.
We got in the huddle and for the first play Lenny called a delay screen to the fullback who would set up to pass block and then drift off to the right, catch the pass and take off, having caught that side of the defense napping.
“Rex is on that side. I’m not going to try to fake out a dog,” I said, not mentioning the fact that the dog was the size of a small pony and probably wasn’t at all familiar with the concept of unnecessary roughness.
“The dog won’t know what to do or who to chase. If he chases anybody he’ll go after Ricky ’cause he’ll be running a slant from the right side and go right by him. Just tighten it down Ricky. Make sure he sees you.”
At the snap of the ball I set up my fake pass block and snuck a peek at Rex. He was standing stock still at the line of scrimmage. I drifted out, turned back and the ball was on its way. So was Rex. Next thing I knew the dog threw himself at me and I went down hard. Rex slapped five with several of his teammates. Two plays later we punted. Rex was the Fearsome Foursome all rolled up into one.
On offense he wasn’t as intimidating, but still effective. He was the lead blocker on a sweep and none of us were willing to go through him to get to the ball carrier. They ran three sweeps and then burned us for a touchdown on a reverse. Rex played out the fake and when Allen trotted into the end zone, that damn dog barked his head off. I know without a doubt he was talking trash in dog language.
“Hey Allen,” Lenny said right after the touchdown, “the dog’s gotta go.”
“What for?” he asked.
“He might bite somebody or something, you know?”
“He don’t bite unless someone’s trying to cheat.”
“Well we’re not playing with a dog. We’ll give you another guy off our team and you’ll have a one man advantage.”
“Oh wow man, that’s a drag. Hey you know what? We’ll just call it a game.”
“No, look. You’re up 7 nothing. First team to fourteen wins.”
So Lenny gave him Ricky, a speedy wide receiver. We took the ball at the 30 and Lenny engineered a drive that would have impressed Johnny Unitas. He called everything in the arsenal—sweeps, dives, reverses, short outs, screens, draws and a flea flicker for the score. When they got the ball Allen lost his cool vibe. He was really grinding. He wanted to win the game as much as Lenny did. I thought maybe it was because he was mad about Rex getting the boot but maybe he was just a competitive guy who loved football. We stopped them though on our own ten and then went the length of the field, uphill to about their 20 and scored the winning touchdown on a halfback pass.
“Good game,” Lenny said in a deadpan voice.
“Yeah, helluva good game,” Allen said.
I looked over at Rex but he was flat on his side, stretched out, asleep. Allen called to him, then went to him and roused him by taking hold of his ears and shaking his huge head. Rex finally got up, shook himself and moved lethargically toward their Dodge van. He looked like an old pugilist who stayed in the game too long, out on his feet. I watched them drive away. Rex the hippie dog became part of Continental League lore. And who knows, maybe two beers really are like ten.

 

Morey’s House

October 1965

The house on the southeast corner of Catalina and Verdugo was Morey and Edie Millerman’s. Morey sold used bikes and broken down cars that sat in disarray all around his house. A decrepit old DeSoto had the words Winternationals spray-painted on the trunk as if it were a participant in the Hot Rod Association’s gathering in Pomona. It was a three-bedroom house. The master bedroom was relatively clean and orderly, but the other two were makeshift warehouses for car parts. There were engine blocks and transmissions in one room and stacks of tires and car batteries in the other. The living room did have two oversized chairs but the rest of the space was devoted to bicycle tires, chains, tires, fenders and a variety of tools scattered here and there. He had two garages jammed full of bicycles waiting to be restored and sold. The only thing he didn’t sell was kittens; those he gave away but only to people he thought would properly care for the cat. I believe I got my first cat, Whiskers, from Morey.
He sat on his front porch like old King Cole; except that this King had several broken or missing teeth, shaved maybe once a week, changed clothes less often than that, and smelled like dirt, axle grease and some other unidentifiable but pungent odor that was uniquely his own. It didn’t matter, though. He would pontificate regularly, his hands shook and his eyes had a kind of shine to them. It was fun to sit on the porch and listen to him, even when I didn’t know what he was talking about. I could never hop off the porch in the middle of a diatribe, no matter how close to dinnertime it might have been. And most of the time I had little or no idea what he was talking about.
“You can’t trust nobody downtown, you know that, Jackie? Can’t trust ‘em. They ain’t nothin’ but a pack of lyin’ dogs, ‘at’s all. Ain’t that right, Edie?”
“’At’s right, Morey.” She would nod her head vigorously.

Sometimes he would tap his suspenders or scratch his arm as if it were the only way his knowledge could be released.
“There just doin’ like them big boys in Washington, just smaller. Can’t lie as big, can’t screw as many people over.”

“’At’s right, Morey.”
“It’s like the church, Jackie. Don’t do nothing for you. They don’t care nothing about God. Can’t learn nothing about God there. A building is all it is. All’s they want is for a fella to cough up the dough. Hand over the money. Then after that well, whuddya think, Jackie, whuddya think they want then? More goddamn money. They got their hands out, see what I mean? They’ll take your last dime, when all along God’s not even there in that place. Don’t matter if it’s a church or a synagogue; all’s they want is your money. Learn about that, Jackie ‘cause they ain’t gonna teach you none of that in school. School learning’s ok but they won’t teach you none of that.”
“At’s right, Morey. All’s they want is your money. ”
“I can talk to God anytime I want, Jackie. God’s right here in my house, so why I gotta go to them goddamn thieving priests and rabbis? God don’t like them guys that steal from people that’s trustin ‘em, supposed to be with God when they ain’t. Why I gotta go somewhere and give ‘em my money when God’s right here and I can talk to Him whenever I want? God’s right here with the cats and the cars and the bikes. He don’t live in one place or another, He’s wherever you are. There ain’t no charge for talking to God. Once they start asking for money, they’re lying. You understand me Jackie?”
“Um, I guess.”
“It’s like them butchers over there at Saint Joe’s. Cut you up like you’re a hog on the butcher’s table. Don’t mean nothing to them. You come out worse than you were before except you’re all cut up and you owe them a wheel barrel full of money. They take that money, they ain’t thinking about you at all. I been in there so many goddamn times and they cut so many goddamn parts outta me that there ain’t nothtin’ left. I made them guys rich. Butchers, nothing but butchers.”
“At’s all they are.” Edie stood with her hand on Morey’s shoulder. Her hair was dyed nearly orange and her make up looked like a 2nd grader had put it on. Outside of affirming Morey, I never heard her speak.
I guess Morey trusted the neighborhood kids, or believed trick or treating was an honorable tradition; his Halloween treat was a fistful of pennies. He’d sit on the porch with a gunnysack full of pennies and he’d reach in the bag with his chubby, calloused, working man’s hand and say, “There ya go! Happy Halloween!” and he’d dump the pennies into each kid’s bag. We liked it because at the time there were still penny candies to buy.
I was walking home from school one afternoon when I saw my mother and Edie standing in the middle of Catalina Street. It was the first time I had ever seen her off the front porch, and her head was not nodding but shaking side to side like she was trying to shake off a mosquito that had landed on top of her ear. As I came closer I heard a low unintelligible sound coming from Edie, and went I was finally arrived where they stood, I could see that Edie was crying and her mascara had made her face into a map of black rivers. She was neither sobbing nor wailing; it was more of soft droning “whoo, whoo, whoo” that went on for long stretches and then stop momentarily and started again. Mom had her hand on Edie’s shoulder. She patted Edie’s shoulder and then turned to me.
“Jackson Boss, tell Edie you’re sorry for her loss,” and then when she saw that the expression was not registering with me, “Morey passed away this afternoon.” Edie looked at me with a face that was almost clownish, like Red Skelton’s exaggerated sad face, and nodded but without the enthusiasm of her former role as the amen chorus for Morey.
My first thought was People die? Then I realized that what I meant was People that you know die? And of course I immediately knew that the second thought was as ridiculous as the first; everyone dies, so it stood to reason that someone I know could die.
“I’m sorry.”
“Whoo, whoo, whoo,” she whimpered, while Mom gingerly patted her shoulder.
I couldn’t imagine the neighborhood without Morey up on his porch, trying to sell a bike or give away a kitten or sell a rusted out shell of a car. “Fifty bucks and you can haul it away,” he would shout. I could not imagine Edie living on without Morey. Would she stay in the crumbling wooden house? Would she clear out the bedrooms full of car parts and the kitchen full of bicycles? What about the dozen or so cats?
It was much slower than the seasons, so slow it could not be seen immediately, and maybe that’s why we don’t notice it when we’re young. The neighborhood changed. Along with the Millermans, the Buckleys, Strangs, Rowlands, Wards, Weinsteins, Catrows, and Auperles all left Catalina Street. Only Helen and Marty Cooper and the Chavoors stayed. The Millerman’s house was not leveled as I thought it would be. A Ukrainian family bought it and remodeled it themselves. They put a wall around it and never spoke to anyone. Such goes the cycle: we arrive, stay a while and leave all in a certain era, and then a new one begins. But Morey Millerman was some kind of throwback; a lot more jack– of –all—trades from the depression era than mid 60’s suburbanite. The house that Morey Miller built was unlike any house in the neighborhood, and because of that he gave Catalina Street memorable impressions that linger like the smell of dirt and broken down old cars on a warm autumn day.