Tape title stories

 Doctor's in Sweden!                                             in the den      Again to the little room where I spent my teenage years. This bedroom became a full bar when my Dad got rid of me after college. It was a prime spot and was kind of pool-side where one could hear the swing-shift whistle from the Purex Plant or drunken punks clanging around the rocket ship in North Playground at the park. When I got my first real job as a salesman at VWR and moved to my own pad,  my Dad quickly had the wall taken out and a sliding glass door put in across from a fully stocked bar. So, eventually the front room at 9230 Annetta was replaced by this small mini-tavern at the rear with a color TV, wood paneling and booze a-plenty. There was a cozy couch and chairs enough to comfortably seat maybe a half dozen old people and in Summer you could just slide right out...

  When Greg was Gary and Barry     If anyone used the wrong name or blundered in describing a person or place that would be embedded in Greg's mind forever. Thus Kevin was Kent, Greg was Craig, a bedraggled JV football player Sheehy was Vince and Then Came Bronson was A Boy Called Hardin (see post). There were two occasions however when he was misidentified to his chagrin and to his benefit. The first was that somehow in his Sophomore year at Pius his photo was identified as Gary Shuck . No one has ever explained where the name came from or how it appeared on his photo. As high school kids are very excited to be represented in their yearbooks the mistake really "Frosted my ass" as he described it. There was no boy named Gary Shuck at Pius nor was there one anywhere in the entire Southeast as far as we knew. Even today, when you are searching for Greg material on Ancestry.com you will find him for one year as a Shuck and not a Sheehy. On the other occasion, the bold young ...

 ...you can't do that!     One of my favorites of all Greg's stories was a gem about his Dad who was loved by all the guys that stopped in on McNerney for gab and sports on TV.  Each weekend during football season the men played what was known just as "the card" or football card where you were given a choice to pick teams with odds on an actual cardboard entry form. There was both college and pro teams on the cards that were marked with the meaningless "business stimulator only" and "not to be used as a Solicitation to wager." You got them under the table from the agents of local bookmakers, often local sporting goods stores. They were really a way to heighten interest in the games and give men and boys something to get excited about since most of these games meant nothing outside of cash-extraction from amateur gamblers and facilitators called touts. Winning was very difficult and often the payoffs never happened over many years. To win the card ...

  On Yak tinkle trail     I have always found an easy bond with Ed and Kathleen Sheehy while hanging out with their parents at home or in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The kids like their Pop are easy to make laugh and once you get them going merriment can continue as long as the imagination keeps clicking. On this occasion it was one of Lissy's grueling mountain enduros that the entire family took part in while their old friend wheezed along trying to keep up. We had the finest little trail doggie that ever put paw on path in Clairie and the Froml fam set a brisk pace. Just to get the kids laughing I insisted that the trail we were on (I think it was Cardigan) was called "Yak Tinkle Trail" which was complete nonsense but fit the temper of the youth ready for silliness. Dad Sheehy and I were lagging behind a bit since our old hulks had taken a few too many puffs on joints and quaffs on the old John Barleycorn's potions.  The day had many an adventure and very...

  What a stupid haircut      From the mouths of babes often comes the truth, even if it hurts. This bit of brutal candor came from dear Elise of Kit Kat's good pals. Elise was a frank speaking kid who had as much fun at Bear Cove as any human ever did in the camp's one-hundred year history. It was a year when I received an invite to visit the Ziesing's camp in the forests of New Hampshire and was to be an adult airline flight companion to little Elise who provided charming company and a ride to the airport by her Dad. A week before the takeoff I decided I was bored with my fading presentation and asked Layla, my great hair stylist to give me something a little more youthful up top. Layla dutifully gave me the beau monde style cut close to the scalp with a kind of cowlick in the middle of the head. I was still an over-the-hill gent but I had a thirty-year old hairdo on my sixty-year old head. It was a shock to everyone except the cutting edge hip Perla who was in show...

  Something on television that is absolutely unbelievable     Somewhat historical is this sentence taken from the beginning of a phone message I got from Greg September 11, 2001 around 6:30 am. It was unusual that he would call me so early but the tragic events in Manhattan were still unexplainable and the entire country was about the face one of the worst days in our history. Somewhere I have the recording from a perplexed Greg as it happened. At that moment no one knew that these airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers were motivated by terrorists who murdered because of their absurd fairy tales. Before the hour was out the entire country was glued to TV sets all over America trying to figure out what the hell went on at the World Trade Center. Everyone now knows that 110 stories of steel, concrete and glass came down not once but twice and the wounded country obsessed on who and why. Once again the sick minds of true believers drove fools to take lives to make a useles...

  "You Know What You Can Do for Me Young Lady      Antother tale of the family joys of Christmas, this one starrring BC in probably the worst holiday dinner of all yules. Greg liked this one because it amplified the sometimes slumbering anger of the old patriarch who used Christmas to make up for all other slights in the year. He liked to spoil his girls and especially his baby Chrissie who almost did not make it home from the hospital after she was born due to a childhood ailment. So the old man focused on his girls at Christmas and everything went wrong about 1980 (subject to editing) when his baby was off with her Air Force husband Mark stationed in far-off Germany. Even though she was cooking up  grandson Shaun there was no way she could make it to Terraine avenue for the traditional Creason holiday hoo-rah attended by the entire family. The crowd was relatively small in that day as only six grandkids had been produced and we had a sit-down dinner in the din...

 Look at this fucking wise guy       The education of Greg Sheehy was not all accomplished in classs rooms and lecture halls but some of it came in the front seat of a Mercury coupe with John F. Sheehy at the wheel. Greg told the story of how his Dad lost track of time and missed their normal Sunday mass at St.Emydius so he decided to take in the next one at St. Helen just across the small town of South Gate. The Gate was always divided between the two parishes and all of us knew the terrifying sight of Monsignor McGuiness at Emydius or the wise gaze of good Father Kelly at St. Helen. On this particular Sunday morning John took the regular streets to St. Helen, heading north on Otis up to a left on Southern and then a right at Madison. He wasn't in a hurry but found some wise guy teens intentionally causing him to slow down as he headed west on Southern. The driver noticed a full-grown man at the wheel of the Sheehy car and decided to do what teens do whenever they h...

 Midnight Mass at the White's    A glorious Christmas tradition enjoyed by everyone in Greg's circle and mine was the traditional post Midnight Mass celebration at Sighela and Doctor White's house oat 10504 Walnut  in South Gate. It worked for many years and was the place where Sighela made her famous and effective Irish Coffees that caused us to be merry and bright. The old people, in this case the like 50 year old adults would gather in the front room where Sighela held court and the unsupervised kids hung in the back where there was a den with space for smoking, drinking and  playing a sort of pool. Night Owls from all over the Gate showed and partied on after most Christmas eve situations were well over. In my case, my family's Christmas eve gig ended well before 11 and the trip from Long Beach crossed over into the neighborhood where action continued. The White house was a warm and inviting pad with plenty of food, booze and freedom to express yourself with...

  Jesus Freaks and Candy asses     It seems appropriate in the season of Jesus celebrating to bring up one of Greg's very favorite movies, the deeply dark "Affliction" with the unforgettable performance by Oscar winning  James Coburn. The authenticity of the anguished man was increased by the constant pain of rheumatoid arthritus the actor sufffered at the time. Coburn plays a bitter misanthrope who only loves hockey, hating humanity and booze. Greg really tapped into the farther reaches of this destroyed personality and enjoyed hearing Glen Whitehouse mutter and issue all sorts of negative pearls of wisdom. Sometimes it might just be him holding out his hand with a shot glass in it to get whiskey poured in or the trademark description of his family as " That's what I've got for children. Jesus freaks and candy-asses!  " The story is told  by a successful son about his struggling brother played by Nick Nolte and the family gathering together to bury th...

  When McNerney was a Christmas war zone     The fact that our boy was a Christmas baby is documented and it has also been mentioned that he was an appreciative if unemotional gift acceptor. He always was an interesting mixture of an outdoor and indoor kid who was comfortable throwing the old Sheehy pigskin out front, sitting in the front room in front of the Sylvania console watching Christmas specials or putting a model airplane together in his bedroom. Maybe it was the airplane glue but he was much more of an introvert than many dumb kids roaming South Gate at that time. Yet, another fact about the dear lad was that if he liked something he could keep doing it repeatedly, I mean repeatedly. If it were a book he liked (See a Fan's Notes), a PBS documentary on Robert Moses or small toys for little boys that make noise when they are used. This was a year when Greggy asked Santa for a deadly little contraption called "the Bangsite or "Big Bang" Cannon" which invo...

 Kneeling Before the Tree      This one is in the spirit of holiday magic be it real or be it fake as a nativity scene. Christmas was a grand time in South Gate and everybody in our neighborhoods participated with lights and trees and parties where adults got soused and played the fool. We have some great 8 mil home movies of the old gang including John and Grace, Winny and Gordon, Bud and Barbara, Boss and Connie, Duane and Betty, Bill and Madeline getting into a yule mood with plenty of booze and cigarettes in front rooms that were part of the American post war dream. You had the dream and now you had to show it off was the theme of many of these couples. At my house BC went full  blast into celebrating the birth of the christ-tyke but in reality he didn't really have a religious bone in his sinner's body. He went on with the show to give the kids that platform of respectability. He made sure the house at 9400 Annetta stood out from the crowd of tract homes cr...

  Vitalis Christmas      A story unproven over sixty years past but often giving laughs to my old buddy Greg as we reminisced over Yuletide fails. My brother was a newlywed and exited about his new life and wife who was close to the old holiday classic Scrooge in her giving attitudes. He had little money and at the last minute he claimed he was in a Department store ready to buy fine gifts for the family and his wallet was stolen. He swears on his atheist creed this is true but we all had some doubts about the veracity of this version of his light wallet. In those days it was just Mom, Dad, me, Cheryl and Christine to buy for since none of us had produced any g-kids. What big brother did do close to the big night was to go down to the Sav-On Drug store on Tweedy boulevard and buy some gifts totalling out at about five bucks. Christine who was a kid got a plastic poodle on wheels, Mom got a canned fruitcake (she hated fruitcake) and I got a small bottle of Vitalis ha...

Gee, thanks for the parka     This is one of my holiday stories that involves the disappointing Christmas gifts in my life. Although Greg was a literal Christmas baby and deeply loved what he called "winterfest" he accepted whatever he was given without much emotion. In my sad case the quality of the gift was often interpreted as the amount of esteem in which you were held by the giver. The year was 1965 in very flush times for the Creason family and my senior year of high school. I had gained my precious driver's license in the previous year and was priveleged to drive a fairly new Volkswagen beetle to school in my Junior and Senior years. I was so naive and spoiled I had no idea what was involved in acquiring and frugally spending money. It was there always and you spent the stuff freely was my idea. While a VW bug was a great little car and perfect for a punk like me I tried to jazz it up by putting decals on the windows saying stupid slogans like "genuine VW part...

  One forlorn Saturday     A sad fact of a young man's life is that eventually his friends find other ways to spend their time and leave the circle of safety he has enjoyed. That bubble of security also is a way of avoiding the struggle to find a mate or discover a way to cope with loneliness and self deprecation that comes with being single. In our early 30's the dominoes began to fall and the happiness and percieved contentment of making romantic commitment became an urgent need.  Timo lead the way, twice. I put the right gold band on the wrong left hand in 1983 and Greg looked around with unease at the possibilities of love in his shrinking social circle. It was discussed ad nauseum about finding wives or girlfriends but it was never easy despite the handsome and educated kid's possible partner bona fides. As he moved into his 30's he had experienced several affairs but had never cohabitated and never got down on a knee to propose to any lucky lady. To such a gent...

  Change my poop      Once upon a time there was a beloved TV show hosted by Art Linkletter called "Kids will say the darndest things." It was corny cute but provided honest pure laughter. Many a tape title has been provided by our children or our own generation when we were children. My friend Lucinda's grandma used to say los borrachos y los ninos dicen la verdad  and she was a hundred percent correcto. The Sheehy heirs are among my favorite kids of all-time and that should easily last until I join their Pop in the afterlife. They were always good children and almost never misbehaved. That is not to say they did not behave like children because after all they were children. One of my favorite scenes took place in the old "dump house" that was a perfectly nice home Lissy wisely purchased when she came to live in the southland after completing courses at the UCLA school of Architecture. Teaming up with another archy was wise decision number two and she and her G...

  Yours is for a little girl    Greg loved BC stories as the man was his godfather and the fact he had the guts to start his own risky business with 5 unappreciative family members riding on his back gained the godson's respect. Christmas was always a special time for both generations and BC used the holiday to express his love for family to make up for his absence of fathering for some of the year. His precious "purrrr-fect little daughter Chrissie was his main focus on the big day and he showered her with gifts. One particularly memorable South Gate birth of Christ was known in family lore as the Paddock shop Christmas where the doting dad gave newly equestrian daughter about 12 major packages under the same tree where I received the dreaded parka jacket (see upcoming post) Truthfully, BC loved to spoil the girls and really enjoyed giving them girly gifts. He got stuck on Lanz nightgowns that were passed out long after the girlies wore any garments to snooze in. I may b...

  Back fat and flank hair     We often referred to our tender bodies as our machines and discussed the inability to stop father time from ravaging our mortal shells. As boys we could not wait until we had wispy mustaches, baritones, man-size shoes and the coveted pubic bush. We tried to emulate men and took up smoking or choked down any number of potions that signified maturity. I was asked for ID when I was thirty so as a late bloomer I thought I would not age like everyone else. Hoo boy! Greg was a hairy teen and those sideburns he was so proud of took shape in high school. His voice took a while to lower but soon he sang like Gordon MacRae and not Shirley Jones. Our drug and alcohol soaked brains sat up top of our machines  and watched the body human submit to gravity plus the poisons we breathed or ingested in our clueless trip through our 20's. We thought nothing of eating greasy fast food after 1 am and sometimes experimented with drugs that could have caused p...

  Mister Akins I really admire your Poli-grip commercials     A constant source of amusement has always been the absurd picture of America demonstrated in television commericials. Many a silly statement was adopted by Greg and other friends who turned them into explanations for our very different societal experiences. Nobody's wife gets a $65,000 automobile with a bow on it out in front of a cozy snow covered homestead in our SoCal. We don't go to Morongo Casino to win and get laid and smoking Winstons did not make us cool in the doctor's office coughing up phlegm. There is also the phenomena of slightly famous or actually unknown stars shilling for products we probably will never use. Cases in point Rula Lenska for VO5 hairspray, Buddy Greco in his dressing room like he was Frank Sinatra. Greg often committed to memory local commericals and could recite dialogue from Zachary All, Earl Scheib, Felix Chevrolet and the beloved Alka Seltzer commercial with George Raft. In th...

 Hey Creason...get a hard-on and I'll ring ya'! No warning since this really is not about a sexual situation      This goes back to South Gate lore and my depression generation father's idea of making men out of his sons. My poor brother who bore the brunt of most of my domineering Dad's over the top insistance that we be tough and strong was the victim. BC did not have much faith in book-learning despite Stephen's exceptional brain and drive to succeed. Since there was one gay man in the family that BC had to help out he feared his boys might be too weak to kick the hard, cold world's ass. He frequently forced us to do things we hated because it would toughen us up or teach us the value of a dollar. I was much wimpier and less brave than my big brother but observed some of his suffering with forboding. Stephen was forced before me to go sell  programs at the Coliseum where you would be guaranteed to get beat up sometimes by poor black kids who really needed the...