Tape title stories

  It depends on which size Toyota     This one is typical of Greg making another one of the masses a sort of folk hero. We went together over to the Montgomery Ward store in the Gate when I was shopping for tires on my little Toyota Corolla. It was a warm and dry Southern California morning when folks just move around a little slowly in the bright sunshine. You feel for those who must work on Sundays but when we met the old salesman named John Lind we were in for a life's lesson. John had a sonorous and whiskey soaked voice that slowly pronounced the sales pitches in a stilted but serious tone. We both immediately saw a man who drank too much not only in his capillary rich nose but his frequent trips to the water cooler where he quenched a fire that had been built in the previous evenings tippling. We surmised that an older man who was forced to sell tires in a Montgomery Ward on a Sunday was not a success story but more of a guy hanging on through his experience in sales...

  Bring me tracing paper      One of Greg's early jobs in Los Angeles architecture was with a highly regarded but very brusque German-Jewish immigrant named Abe Shapiro. Abraham Shapiro's designs are historically important and worth plenty today. Abe ran a tight ship in his offices over in West LA just off the San Diego freeway. It was before computerized drafting and everything was orthographic projection, hard copy, drafting pencil to large plans on tilted tables. Greg had to stay on his toes and even though he had Palm Desert experience this experienced professional had little  patience for lollygagging. While young Sheehy did not stay long with Shapiro, Greg spoke of the man with respect toward his knowledge and economy in creating drawings. He described one day when trying to explain a part of the project they were working on Shapiro barked "bring me tracing paper! Sharp pencil!" That meant right damn now and pay attention. Greg quickly grabbed some onion s...

  Joh nny make him wear underpants      It seems only fair that Grace Sheehy be represented as she was the true show-runner on McNerney ave. and never asked for much in return. She made keeping house an art and was a fine cook, excellent organizer and very good backyard gardener. She could give political opinions, grow nice tomatoes and always had fresh flowers about the house. She also was one of the few Moms who worked a real job and looking back it is even more amazing how clean and inviting her home was despite putting in days of work at CalComp. I never in my life ever called her Grace or him John because we were taught to only address our friends parents as Mister or Mrs. It is weird that as a sixty year old man I still called this woman Mrs. Sheehy but that was the only natural way of addressing her. I ate a hundred dinners in the cozy breakfast nook there and enjoyed countless barbecues out back. Grace treated me like I was one of her kids and always made me ...

  Getting Yucky before easter WARNING! this post deals with sexual situations.     This story comes from my brother's late wife and involves the sexual attitudes of boomer women who were good Catholics. One of her in-laws in her first marriage told her of an intimate moment that took place on Easter Sunday before the family was to head off for mass. We were all connected by a common Catholic thread and were offered a rather twisted view of sex by the priests and nuns who schooled us in our formative years. Yet the woman was acting in a more practical way to the demands of a husband who requested "the marriage act" upon awakening on the very morning of Christ's resurrection. It is my guess that he looked down at his morning wood and thought "he is risen" just as it was to be announced at mass. The aroused hubby cuddled with his wife but she denied him his pleasure on this holy holiday. Instead she rebuked him saying she did not want to get "all yucky bef...

  A Mister Luther Dingle      This is just the intro to a Twilight Zone episode that Greg committed to memory but it remains a true mystery. It had to be recited in the voice of the great Rod Serling and a cigarette burning in the hand as Rod did in hosting. Poor Rod was a four pack a day man and checked out of heart attacks at 50. The narration as recited by Greg was "A Mister Luther Dingle...a small man with small dreams...trying to hitch a ride on the caboose of the gravy train of life." It was episode 55 overall and number 19 in season two of the classic show aired in 1959. It is perfectly Sterling and the episode in question was titled " Dingle the Strong " that in revisting seems pretty corny. Yet, we knew Luther Dingle well and used the name in other circumstances. I used it leaving messages for the Bobcat at his studio for example. The odd thing is that if you look up the episode and each is listed in detail on Wikipedia, including introductions it reads ...

  36 inches in a foot right?      This one comes from the deep treasure chest of tales from cousin Michael who like many a Sheehy knows how to spread the blarney. Michael was an adventurous youth and felt travel broadened the mind so his college education meandered through some ups and downs. Micheal himself refers to his college years at Cal Poly as the best twelve years of his life. Besides playing music at a club called "Dave's Lunch" that opened at midnight this favorite cuz among other cool things lived in a dog kennel in Pismo Beach. As the folk song says he had a wandering way and possessed a hankerin' to see South America. Since this required a supply of cash he decided the fastest way to save up enough was to take a high-paying, hard and somewhat dangerous job as an iron-worker. Mostly, this strenuous work involved placing rebar into construction sites and trying to follow the direction of foremen who may not have possessed Michael's eduction or raw intel...

  Hey baby let’s go see Blind Faith      This is a story that Greg loved about a South Gate character we called "Horse's Ass" or "H.A." I  will leave his full name out since most stories about the guy are filled with ridicule because of his inflated sense of self. H.A. was a bit older than us and was really a friend of our good pal Bobby Whitney. I will call the kid Mike to make it short. There are several very good tales from our childhood about the guy and our time shared with him stretched from St. Helen to Pius X and a bit after. He matured way ahead of us and was always trying to not just fit in but stand out from the crowd. While he was not terribly athletic or academically gifted he dressed flamboyantly, tried to smoke cigars and was banned from my household because my Dad thought he was gay (which he was not) and a loser (which might have been). He was the first of any of us to drive a car and he christened his drivers license by taking us all to A&W...

  Dropped it right down on stuckeys’     From one of the legendary transcontinental road trips that two cousins took across America in the middish 1970's. Kevin and Greg gathered up a few necessities, including a camp stove, a tent, recreational drugs and these new music delivery systems called audio-cassettes. The boys were like like Simon and Garfunkel sang:  " Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike They've all come to look for America All come to look for America All come to look for America"      As the years went by Greg seemed to remember every day of these trips in detail and kept reminding us about "on July 17th. 1977 in Utica, Illinois...etc etc etc Their days on the road were remembered not just for the places they visited but for the actual voyage on the wheels of a little blue Datsun. It was the beginning of one of my life's favorite hobbies that was making cassette tape mixes of sounds and songs pleasing to friends. In the case of "H...

  Buddy Mac White      This is a bastardization of the true quote "Buddy, White, Mac" that came out of the long-running cohabitation of Sheehy and Brian on Saturn street in good old Los Angeles. The two tight buds lived in  harmony for years in an old luxury apartment in what is now called the Pico-Robertson neighborhood on the planet inspired street that stretched from west of La Brea all the way past La Cienega. The Saturn street pad was a cornucopia of stories and sayings but this one was a simple note left by the Bobcat reminding Greg about trash day. While Greg was not a guy who forgot such things Bob wanted to make sure. To break down the sentence. "Buddy" was a common description of a roomie to a roomie. Greg was buddy to Bob and Bob was buddy to Greg. They were actually such good buds that Bobcat was Greg's best man in his historic wedding to Lissy. "Mac" was another word for a friend but more generic since here it means "your attention ne...

  Clarence Goodacre’s fingertips      Once more into the treasure chest of Sheehy family history and another of the rotten apples who snuggled in with the fine folks we knew and loved. Grace was one of the four Kenmir sisters and at one point  her older sis known as Aunt Edith chose a charming gent named Clarence Goodacre as her inamorato. He seemed nice when visiting and wore the typical loose fitting suit when courting but his dark secret was t hat he was a convicted hotel thief and did time in the big house for his felonious pilfering. Mister Goodacre billed himself as a publicity writer  but sneak-thief would have been more accurate. Greg used to muse over the term "second-story man" as used in regard to Goodacre that really only meant he entered his victims rooms by windows above the ground floor. In the depression many a fellow resorted to means of supporting themselves outside the law and Clarence felt it was an easy way to make a living. Yet, hotel ...

  Stay away from the losers, they’ll kill you    To be part of the world of BC was sometimes like a Damon Runyon novel. Now most young folks would have no idea who Damon Runyan was but in his day he was a wildly popular writer whose novels were filled with New York City characters. They might be considered underworld but not in a seedy way but more as loveable figures with vibrant language skills. Runyon became even more famous with the popular Broadway show "Guys and Dolls" that drew from his many stories. BC, having spent a lot of time in the Big Apple met and befriended some genuine characters and it was to his credit that he loved to mingle with these unique gents. Duke Raye would be the top of the list but his stories are worth a book and not a blog. There was Hickey, Monte,  Lou Silver, Bill the Builder, Jersey John, Cooney (the judge), Jake the Belcher and even Slim Benny who later became my Father. Many East Coast transplants came west when big league sports ...

  Three cheers for Art Sutton      Mister Art Sutton was a talented bartender who was hired by Kevin Welch for Kevin Smith's bachelor party held just blocks from the Sheehy mansion on Frances avenue in La Crescenta. The Welch family was a rather colorful bunch on their own but Kevin was balancing on a razor thin wire between normal and fucking insane. His bizarre, inebriated shenanigans and statements at this party are remarked upon to this day.  However, he did host a soiree for Kent and it was attended by all of the better gentlemen in the Smith purview. Sutton, a flat-topped mixologist wore a dinner jacket and made damn sure everyone was well oiled as he would move around the area with a jug of wine in hand re-filling any glass that looked close to empty. He would crisply say "more wine gentlemen?" and then pour the vessel full. To top off his perfect execution of the bartending tasks he also removed a pair of musical bones from his jacket and spoke the words...

 Yer Bonita's a fightin' fish     Just a sentence  typical of Greg's love for the sound of words and the richness of language. This was just an offhand remark that tickled the imagination of the man and was used randomly over decades. For Greg, phrases were like loved pop song lyrics that might resurrect when you were in the shower or driving home from the store. These words came from the Bobcat who was chillin' on Clarkson one day when his brother Allen returned from some fishing off of Huntington. It could have been from a boat or the pier. A.B. as he was known let Bob know "yer bonita's a fightin' fish!" He may have described it that way since most fish caught from the piers or surf fishing were not the kind of prize catches you might take on a deep sea fishing boat. The Paciific Bonito (almost always pronounced bonita in California)  are tuna-like fish with a cigar-shaped body, a large mouth, and a pointed head.  They have a dark blue upper body th...

  Lucius Parmalee’s wet ink      Just the name holds some mystery but Lucius Parmelee was a Canadian writer. Unfortunately what he wrote were bad checks. As far as I know he was not related to anyone in the Sheehy family but was referred to as a man who had strayed from a righteous path and never gave up his larcenous ways. When John Sheehy told tales he sprinkled in the names of people we kids would never know in person but only in legend. There was  T.H. Ledesma, a man who could tune a car with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, there was daredevil Harry McMillan who we mistakenly said died in stir, Mike Pecarovich who coached the 29-30 Cathedral Phantoms and confidence man Lucius Parmalee. It may be that he ran afoul of Lawrence who was in the banking business or even the family of the Canadian lady who was his bride. It is somewhat likely he ran into grandfather Cyril Penzer who was a first-class barber at the Empress hotel in Victoria who possibly told the...

  Wecho’s cocked right    In most circumstances a family black sheep might be ignored or ostracized but for Greg his Uncle Al was a fascinating and loved figure. All of the five kids in John's family were raised on a dairy farm in Florence, part of Watts. When Al was small boy he was kicked in the face by a cow, losing an eye and suffering a disfigurement. This injury doomed him to abuse from his peers and a life on the fringes of sociey. While Al was highly intelligent he never reached the middle-class status of his siblings and often wiped his brow with the devil's kerchief. I cannot possibly scratch the surface of Al stories but he was a skilled street fighter and as one of his family said he walked around with his right hand cocked, ready to deck anyone who gave him any guff. His nickname was "Wecho" which is Mexican slang for a rambunctious and ornery kid. It literally means "rascal" and Al was every bit a wecho in his neighborhood and at his school. By...

  Humpton’s wisdom      This is both an animal tale and some lexicography. The term Humpton dates back to the depression generation in relation to some guy they called Lump toe and then the word mutated into Humpton. Somehow Humpton became a word that filled in for the times when you needed a descriptive word and could not think of one. As the Ziesing family uses the term lear , the Sheehy tribe used the word humpton. It can be used for the name of a person or an object needed. The old saying is that if you said the sentence "Hey Humpton" at a family gathering six guys would turn around and look at you. If something was extraordinary it could even be expressed as "humpton on the humpton" or even the much more rare "humpton on the humptonette." For the most part a humpton was a rather positive term and if you were called a real humpton it was a compliment. In that use it might be equated to a mensch in Yiddish.  Humpton is a word that is falling out of us...

  My name is joey joey This one has rather sad genesis but it involves a larger story of experiencing the tragedies of urban living in a big city.  Back in our younger years we ventured all over the city and stayed up late trying to squeeze some fun out of our hum drum lives. There was lots of pot smoking and a little drinking as beer or wine were more or less just a whistle-whetters for cotton mouth. As mentioned before the weed induced munchies were a common occurrence and sometimes that would drive us into the night in search of gustatory satisfaction. Maybe it was misplaced libido but we stuffed our guts with unhealthy junk food without a care for stomache health or the future. This might include full plates of Mexican food at 2 am, Topps chili burgers after the Oar house or the people's pastries known as donuts in the wee hours. There was a favorite in Greg's neighborhood on La Brea and Pico (maybe Kent would remember) and I swear it was called Toluca Mart but that is not...

  A bewildering and stupendous dream      Greg adopted this phrase to describe the wonders of the life he was priveleged to live. The full quote is from the great writer John Cheever  “Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream” The point for us was that art, especially the written word was the medicine that cured us from the sick society we had to see in our experiences in a big city. Art showed the beauty of life and the possibility of noble endeavors by we humans. The bewidlering and stupendous dream could include having dinner with friends, sitting in the stands at a ballgame, watching your children enjoying themselves, feeling the warmth of someone who loved you or just relaxing in front of an engaging program on TV. The dream for Greg included music, the theater, recreational drugs, the freedom of an automotive trip, the sight of the mighty Pacific ocean or ...

  You’re going to make him sore     One of my favorites that I passed on to Greg since his version of my Dad's speech was spot on. It was a lazy Summer afternoon in the last stages of my parents living in South Gate. Stephen and Barbara had stopped by to visit with Cheryl and the family had gathered in the small den in the back of the house. The den was equipped with a fully stocked bar in what had been a closet in my bedroom. As soon as BC saw me out of the house he "redecorated the old room and made it into a man cave with color TV, glass shelves of booze and plenty of ash trays for all the smokers. The "girls" took to some day-drinking and by late afternoon Barbara was pretty well-oiled and feeling no pain. I believe Christine joined later with baby Shaun who was being oohed and ahhed at by all in the den. It was somebody's infant, maybe not Shaun but... The now pretty sloshed Barbara, being an accomplished Mom scooped up the baby and was swaying a bit as she ...

  Almost great      Any passing remark in this carnival we are visiting can be kept in the vaults for repetition into eternity. Such is this snippet that was just some part of a critique voiced from the crosswalk in Westwood Village in the mid-1970's. I had worked at the time with a rather self-obsessed and desperately attention seeking woman named Susan. She had been in the movies as child but nature had not blessed her as she grew older and now she was an office drudge like me at the Central Ticket Office at UCLA. She was highly intelligent but also highly neurotic. Susan was melodramatic about things she liked. Actually, everything she liked she loved. She had become somewhat "stout" in her middle age and was delighted if she could  tell her stories of brushes with greatness anytime and anywhere. Despite her insecurity I liked Susan and tried to be as nice as possible since she lived in the same building as I did at the time. Greg revelled in the emotive styl...

  I aint gonna chase you      This was a tale told by Greg from his travels to the city of big shoulders and visits to interesting family friends Kathy and Walter. Greg loved Chicago and the apartment of old friends of Maureen who led a very urbane lifestyle. Walter was a professional man who was such a gentleman he shaved and put on a fresh shirt to come to the dinner table. There are a couple of tape titles from his utterances on the list. This may have occurred on one of the famous road trips but Greg found himself alone on the street in Chitown where he was approached by an older panhandler. Being the son of a true liberal man Greg did not ignore such down on their luck people normally but he was moving toward an agreed upon meeting. He accelerated his pace a little and the old mendicant said in a tired voice "I aint gonna chase you." Greg slowed and the man told him "man I just came in from Cincinnatti, I've been walking all night!" Now Cincy may be 300 mil...

  That’s Disneyland Jake      What happens when you combine best friends, LSD and the Magic Kingdom? The line seen here is but a small but memorable snippet of a day we will never forget. The strong acid was taken by Smith, Creason and Sheehy but the Bobcat  was there with his cool cousin Linda from Kentucky. It was circa 1975 and we were three girls short of  date-normal. The day had it's ups and downs like any psychedelic journey but for the most part of the trip,  this time at Walt's Fort Knox was four stars in outer space. We were very high and just the people at the park were entertainment/bizarre enough but the rides were bonus times among the hallucinogenic chemicals. We could not stop laughing and in our youthful self consciousness that was sometimes hard to suppress, like when a humanitarian group lead some severely mentally challenged kids past us and we were guffawing about some inside joke. We had to zip it or have them feel like we were la...