Tape title stories

 hey hogface        This story is torn from the pages of the Bobcat in Maywood anthology and was a favorite of both myself and Greg. Today our Mister Cat is a sophisticated and successful businessman and Glendale patriarch. When the cat was but a kitten he had his beginnings with a solid family life in blue collar Maywood. The Wood was very similar to South Gate with many Maywoodians plain working folk with down to earth attitudes and genuine family values. Fun fact  In 1919, May Wood, a popular young woman who worked for the real estate corporation developing the 2,300 acres ranch into home tracts, agreed to lend her name to the property.  Maywood!  The Brians came out west from Colesburg, Kentucky in famed Hardin county and Jim found a good job with the railroad. After many years of toil he got work near home and with Isabel he raised two boys and a nervous chihuahua in a cozy home on Clarkson street. Allen and Bob went to St. Rose of Lima and ...

 Are All Five of You Together?      This one still burns a little even it was said over fifty plus years ago. It speaks of the difficulties we all had finding a mate or sometimes even a date. I am thinking it was about 1972 when Zeke, Ed and I lived on Midvale in the hippy crash pad. We had gone to the Troubador one night to see a favorite in Dave Mason. It was memorable since as a prep to the show we sat down before the legendary water pipe BOJO and got so ridiculously stoned Zeke passed out on Santa Monica boulevard while standing in line. We did make it in and were totally blown away by the opening act which was a duo "Batdorf and Rodney." They were young, fresh and very talented guitar players and singers of harmony.  They had several songs we latched onto and dug over and over  “Me and My Guitar”, “Don’t You Hear Me Callin” and “Let Me Go”  Batdorf and Rodney had one small problem which was their songs included spirited jams that made the songs a ...

 quiet curses      One of the delightful signs of a strong friendship was Greg's involuntary silent curses toward anyone or anything that challenged me or friends who he felt were denigrated. In the good old days he would be bustling about the front room, building a fire, fumbling with remotes or tidying up the space when he listened to any tale of woe. Whenever I would inform him of what I considered an injustice he would move his mouth in curses with no sounds coming forth. I could read his lips saying "you god damned son of a bitch" or "god damn you!" when he heard about unfair treatment. I told him how a DWP crew destroyed my front yard garden that contained my Mom's ashes and then ignored my letter of complaint. I believe he mouthed "those dirty sons of bitches!" When I told him how some idiot wise guy at the Coliseum threw a gallon jar of mustard off the 80th row down onto my father standing on the asphalt far below. BC suffered a dangerousl...

 The Magical Land of Atlantic Boulevard     In one of our many discussions of South Gate old days as Lissy called them Greg and I mused over the odd configuration of businesses on the edge of our town at Atlantic boulevard. There was a rather odd layout of streets where Bullis road hit Atlantic but the names and places were burned into our memory. Gate Moms had their markets where they would buy certain stuff but Hirams was where Grace bought canned goods I think. The Sheehy's had a different setup from us where we had milk delivered and they drove to a dairy. Both families visited Ashtons for meat and dumb conversation. Shopping Bag and Shopping Basket were Tweedy establishments in the early days where serious Japanese produce guys offered fresh fruits and the few vegetables people ate in the revolutionary time of frozen food in pouches full of butter. Atlantic had an odd conglomeration of a huge lawn mower shop "King O' Lawn" right next door to "Spider Staging...

  long-haired brothers working      Greg loved this story from my ill-fated venture into hippy "enterprise" that took place in 1971 on the groovy corner of 10th and Pico in Santa Monica. When I was an inside salesman at Van Waters and Rogers Scientific I became the favorite of the burgeoning hippy glassworks operations making water pipes for pot smoking. I was pushing the envelope at my staid company by wearing colored shirts and growing my hair a bit long. I really was fond of my coworkers but I yearned to be a long-haired peace child and being a salesman was not the scene I needed. I had a customer named Tom Augustine who was a charistmatic  dreamer who had rented a large wharehouse in SaMo and thought he could train a bunch of hippies into skilled stained-glass restorers. He also had a kiln where amateurs tried blowing glass. Tom was a nice guy who thought I could help him get his business off the ground but the entire thing was hampered by the bohemians who...

 Blabbermouth soup “The martini is the supreme American gift to world culture.” ―  Bernard De Voto     The power of the martini has been discussed here before and while they caused plenty of grief around the Creason household they had a nickname loved by those circling the Greg Sheehy orbit. The instant and potent effect of the drink made with all parts alcohol often causes mirth and tomfoolery.  Sometimes just the opposite. This gin and vermouth concoction was desctribed as "Blabbermouth Soup" by Greggo who made a powerhouse version when he manned the bar. I do not know who invented the name but it totally fits because the cocktail has a tongue loosening effect that leads to booze induced loqaciousness. Sometimes the "tini" might stun a drnker into silence and occasionally more than one might be a soporific. Certainly our hero learned from one of the grand martini admirers who happened to be his godfather. Olives were just window dressing and mostly ignored by ...

 Greg...man       There was a dilemna we faced living through the later1960's where we wanted to be identified with the hippies and had disdain for the squares or plastic people but liked comfort. Problem was the adults in our lives wanted nothing to do with raggedy looking kids who rejected the depression generation morals, disliked work and wanted to be "free." Even we drew the line and did not want to be the pretentious hippies of Easy Rider who lived on communes, ate brown rice, and stunk like BO tinged with patchouoli. Any gatherings, like the "Be Ins" at Griffith Park were a mixed bag of earnest kids who wanted social change and downright bums who wanted no part of any responsibility. While I grew long hair, I did bathe and had no intention of ever being separated from TV or my Mom's home cooked meals. BC was not ready to house hippies and when I finally was able to grow a beard Grace Sheehy took a look and said "yeccchhh!" Yet, deep down we ...

 Sheehy Bail Bonds       This one involves not just Greg but the entire Sheehy household who came through with green colors when we needed them the most.  I was jarred from sleep one early morning by a phone call from Men's Central Jail where my brother was being released from his detainment the night before. He had been driving with a car full of drunks down the Long Beach Freeway when he was pulled over. by the CHP at the Imperial exit.  He had almost talked his way out of trouble when a besotted damn fool said to the cop "I smell bacon" and suddenly the whole brew soaked crew was in the backseat of a cruiser. Not only did they take my brother to jail but they impounded his car. Being that the man was in the middle of a phase where he was broke most of the time there was no way he had the amount of money needed to get his car out of hock. Banks were not open until 10 but it was a moot point anyway since there was nothing to take out of our banks. It was l...

      Warden Craig By bad luck and stupidity I have been in a jail twice.  There was also this time when I was in lockup by friendship. The first times I was encarcerated through a naivete that telling a judge the truth would absolve me of responsibility for breaking a foolish law. Both times I was held it was for warrants for failing to pay fines on victimless crimes. In Torrance it was because I did not pay a fine or failed to register a motorcycle I had not driven for a year. T he other time was in WLA over a needed car repair.  In both cases the whole scene happened so fast I was rather stunned and expected to be released at any moment. I discussed my bad fortune with an irritated Judge Higgins who was unmoved. In WLA I was bailed out by dear Emily.  In truth I should have been jailed and forced to spend time behind bars for the many foolish times I drove drunk or recklessly by reason of testosterone overdoses. This story is about the time Greg put me i...

 You Are Not Going to Put Catsup on That Steak!                                                  This one goes back to Greg's days as a boy enrolled in our dear Pius X High School. Once a Warrior, you are a Warrior for life! We used to speak glowingly of our shared school and Greg loved his experience in the hallowed halls and even in the model schools experiment. Both of us began our time as sophomores since we spent an unhappy year at other places while yearning to be Warriors. Jack had blazed a trail at Pi-High and was a popular kid who made many friends. Greg did much of the same and actually dated an extremely nice young lady named Lynn Noble. Lynn was a sweet and gentle girl who later married a South Gate close friend named Bobby Whitney. Her life was short but she was remembered as a beautiful soul. As most kids at Pius the romance was completely innoc...

Pleasin' Geezin'       This one is ripped from the playbook of one Bobcat Brian and is an open door to youthful attempts to be cool. In reality we already were pretty cool in the grand scheme of the Amerika of the late 60's and early 70's but never truly believed it. I had my rambunctious brother to guide me and I am afraid I led Greg and Bob onto some side roads that may not have been best for their overall well-being. That being said we had our boundaries and did not cross into life-threatening behaviors or actually illegal (outside of recreational drug taking) activiities. We did try out all types of drugs but mostly to see what they did to us. Also, for the most part we did not take said dope in quantities that were dangerous. Still, with the Times that were a changin' lots of  new and challenging developments were taking place in my gen gen gen-a-ration. Once Craig Felch bragged about some new strong pot-like chemical called "Angel Dust" and I demande...

      I guess every family has one or more of hangers on who contribute little to nothing but are always asking for something. They pray on a soft-hearted (what used to be called Christian) family with no shame or remorse. Russ Higgins has already been mentioned and in my family my Dad would invite a lonely old horse-player named Coonie to Sunday dinner and then I would have to drive him all the way back to National boulevard where he kept an apartment. The drives seemed interminable as a 19 year old wannabee hippy attempted to make conversaton with an unemployed one-eyed  sixty-something gambler. In the before times BC let him stay out in the rumpus room for a few days that turned into about five months with him eating meals with us and taking up a space we wanted to keep for ourselves. He became known as "the Man Who Came to Dinner."  Looking back this was good charitable gestures by my Dad to help those who did not have the good fortune we had. Being selfish ...

You'll tak the high road and...                                             the battle of Cullodin A song that gained a great response from Greg was the old Scottish tune "Loch Lomond" that most Americans enjoyed for the sweet melody and wistfull lyrics. Our entire lives we heard the song and thought it was a tribute to the Scottish countryside. That is until Greg heard the true story on a piece done for NPR by pianist Leslie Howard in 2005. Like the folk song Shenandoah it is really a tragic tale and Greg often retold the story with reverence whenever I put the tune on our shared playlists. The song was written or invented way back in the mid 18th century, most probably around 1756. It involved another uprising of the Jacobeans in Scotland led by Charles, son of James (Bonny Prince Charlie) who were fighting the Protestant government from the House of Hanover who were oppresss...

 he first-downs it       One of the strange and singular parts of growing up in LA was the presence of broadcaster Bill Welsh. Bill, by any standards was a terrible announcer. Yet he was ubiquitous on TV throughout our childhood and into our adulthood. It was a common thought around McNerney that Bill was married to the station managers sister at KTTV because there was no way he could be holding the job due to merit. However, Bill Welsh was most definitely as Los Angeles as Joe Pyne or Bob Kelly who we loved just for their identification with our city. Bill Welsh was around when I was a toddler but Greg probably started to hear the voice in the mid to late 1950's. Welsh was a fixture on Channel 11 from 1951 forward and somehow was made director of sports and special events for the powerful local station. He always did Rose Parades and even beauty contests where he might speak off the cuff stuff like "she has rather big nose but  she is beautiful!" Legend has it...

 Lads in the Land of Lincoln                           beautiful Utica       The caveat here is that I was not privy to the stories here but only heard tell of  them from Greg after one of the great American Road Trips with Cousin Kent. It has been discussed how the young men set out to "all come to look for America" as Simon and Garfunkel sang on a tape playing in the Datsun rolling east. On this journey the fellas were going to visit Utica Illinois were one of the long line of Patrick Sheehys laid an American foundation for these Irish peasants as Greg called his ancestors. As was also the custom  Lysergic acid diethylamide was ingested and when the young men arrived in the ancestral land the drug or the residents gave a distinct impression of inbreeding in this rather unremarkable town now known as "the gateway to Starved Rock State Park." As both Greg and Kevin described the unsightly inha...

 Mike Phipp"s fluttering footballs and the fury of  John Francis Sheehy        The scene is the front room on McNerney and Greg and his Dad are watching a college football game with a winning football card in the balance. The father has seen the Purdue Boilermakers with their All-American quarterback Mike Phipps upset last years champion Notre Dame team and has an inkling they will also ambush another powerhouse Ohio State coached by the biggest prick who ever stood on the sidelines named Woody Hayes. It is November 17, 1969  and the college game is pure and powerful, more interesting than any NFL bullcrap. The Buckeyes are a juggernaut with Jack Tatum, Rex Kern, Jim Stillwagon and an offensive line that was a ton of trouble. John, leaned back and lit another tareyton and confidently awaited a Phipps led upset and money flowing in from the smug bookmaker. It was cold in Columbus, about 23 degrees and also windy with a twenty-mile an hour bluster making...

 I'm the biggest asshole...   “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” ―  Albert Camus      Greg liked to play the role of the curmudgeon and in the last decade or so of his life he did so with an asterisk behind the description.  He had had enough of the idiocy of his fellow Americans and cursed loudly at his television during political programs. These howls of contempt increased in direct proportion to the coming of the biggest fool who ever stood on the  public stage.  Yet, Greg used to actually invite fury by watching Sean Hannity who he assailed with every dirty word in his full vocabulary. When you came right down to it though Greg was not a guy who could be cruel to individuals face to face. When his emotions boiled over and he had to speak out forcefully he often called me to describe how "badly" he had behaved. This might be flipping off someone on the street, shouting out his car window at fellow drivers, abrupt han...

 Comfort at Cliffords Gone, gone, gone. All vestige of gracious living! Gone completely!- Miss Alma "Glass Menagerie"       Greg and I often mused about the wonderful places from our past that were gone forever. Even in a town like South Gate there were restaurants where you experienced a feeling you would find nowhere else in the city. There was the Taco Kid, the Crystal Room, the Pancake Corner, the Stein and over on Pacific boulevard in Huntington Park a wonderfully traditional caffeteria called Cliffords (no relation to Clifton's). It hit the sweet spot for Greg and I loved visiting the place for breakfast. When I was a saleman  on Friday evenings I stopped in for the sirloin tips on rice. In the mornings the place was immaculate and smelled divine, like bacon and maple syrup drenched flapjacks. Behind the buffet counter were the efficient ladies in starched white uniforms who ladled with care the dollops of scrambled eggs, pork sausage links, short stacks a...

 The Twin Titans Together “Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.”- Shakespeare       It is a lucky man to have a best friend in this life. I have to say I was twice blessed as I had two best friends who stood by me literally until their last breaths. While I hate to think about going forward without Timo and Greg I don't have much choice except to just continue to remember those times we shared without a thought toward damn mortality. There was a time when Greg and Timo spent lots of time with me together and that was in the years at Club Virginia when best friend Timo gave me a roof and comfort in the bottom scraping years from 1976 to 1980. Greg had graduated from college and was out in the world putting down stakes at Saturn street and making desert stops. Club Virginia was a true bachelor pad without much house cleaning but with plenty of smoke, wine, TV, music and laughter. It was during one of the great women droughts for me but Greg...

Hey Buddy don't sit there                                         This one is just another adventure in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the golden years of the Coliseum and Arena Ticket Service. Before we acquired our season seats in section C occasionally BC would hook Greg and I up with a little deal called "Lost Seat Location." What this really amounted to was the  ticket manager (who was a pal of the old ticket broker) would write a slip that was intended for an unfortunate season ticket holder who had forgotten his paper tickets but had paid for the privilege of attending a Ram game. When the ticket manager had unsold seats he could just write the lost seat location and still count the seats as unused plus do a favor for his broker bro. So, it was a good league game and the place was pretty full with Greg and I fired up for some Gabe-led Ram football. It was a fairly w...

 Turn on tune in and drop out  fellas!      The use of vitamins L S and D have been discussed here but most of the tripping took place in the 1970's while recreational experimentation continuted onward and upward. Most of  the psychedelic pals of Greg left thier space voyages behind with married life but they still talked about places and creatures they met in the hallucinatory world. I will just focus on a short Sheehy tale and leave my Sespe camping bloodbath, Bobcat's rice crispies and Cousin Kent's Yes concert for full posts someday soon. Since Greg is the focus here I start with his solo drop in Palm Desert when he took back some green booger to his little trailer where he lived while working for Evan in the Coachella valley. For some reason he decided to liven up a Saturday afternoon by dropping and taking a drive out to the Salton Sea's splendorous surroundings. The once resort has fallen on sad times and what used to be picturesque has become more ...

 You Got a Late Start but...      Greg loved stories about the characters in my Dad's life. One of those loose screws was Russ Higgins who was allergic to work and familiar with the race track. BC felt sorry for some guys and his inclusion of Russ went back to the 1930's. Lou Silver said of Russ "he don't pay his old debts and he lets his new ones get old." Higgins as he was mostly called hung around Santa Barbara and made a few bucks as a scalper and the trunk of his car was always filled with goods that may or may not have been pilfered. At one time he was driving down to Tijuana and buying cheap plaster items (like piggy banks) and hawking them outside sporting events. In other words Russ Higgins was a loser living on the fringes who also was grossly overweight with a huge bulging belly. BC would sometimes help him out with a few bucks to make the rent or place a bet. Once, I was in the ticket office talking to Lou and Russ arrived in his old car and got out an...