Tape title stories

 Pete the  Canadian        Ah, the lost Winter of 1974, dwelling in the freeway dominated apartment on Church Lane in Brentwood.  Despite just over two years in the building there are stories galore inside and outside of the eight units that sat alongside the San Diego freeway at the beginning of the  Sepulveda Pass. I moved there when Zeke got a job in Ventura county and I could no longer stay in the wonderful Veteran and Ohio pad that was Greg's favorite spot. Church Lane had it's charms but it demanded you speak and listen louder because of the freeway roaring that went on all day and all night. I moved there on the advice of Susan Roberts who worked with me at the Central Ticket Office of UCLA and I paid the whopping rent of $140 a month that also included me putting out the trash on that day of the week. In the 1970's the West side was the best side and Church was a convenient meeting place for the regular crew of Greg, Smitty, Bobcat, Ed and...

 that's hash in there Greg     During his time at Loyola University Greg made an unsual friendship with a teacher he had met "on the hill" and visited socially. Joyce Groff was an extremely intelligent but troubled closet lesbian who opened her apartment to us when we stumbled around desperately looking for something to do in the early 1970's. She took a shine to this handsome young student and hosted sundry social scenes with a variety of unusal guests who were mostly kind of square but nice. There was a Catholic tint to the gatherings but plenty of alcohol available with cigarettes burning in ash trays. Joyce had a perfectly nice roomate but never showed her any affection during our visits despite the fact they both worshipped at the alter of Sappho. Greg began bringing cousin Kent and me along since we also were searching for some connection to a social life outside of sitting home and blowing pot while complaining about our lack of female companions. Joyce offered...

 Good counsel      Greg earned a reputation of being quite the curmudgeon in his last years. I admit the decription was accurate darn near and sometimes his gruff takes could be over the top. In some ways it was amusing but sometimes Ed and I would just laugh it off with raised eyebrows since hating the Little League world series might seem weird. It is human nature for people to get tired of objects or people getting too much attention and it was completely logical for the guy to claim the Kardashians gave him a pain in the (take your choice.) It would be unacceptable to him to be portrayed as a wimpy sentimentalist but I submit his wise counsel and gentle support saved my mental health many times. Greg was an excellent listener and he was not the kind of person who interrupted and gave silly advise that was just a knee-jerk reaction. He allowed you to spill your guts and waited until you were completely finished before saying a peep. The one thing he  let you...

 Men Down...      To be included in a Sheehy family affair was almost always fun and also a genealogical puzzle as to who was who and where were they connected. There was the Sheehy side with the Five from Florence and the Kenmir group who were connected to a completely different sphere of influence. For me, as a family friend and a kid I was given mostly the never-no-mind treatment by these adults wearing suits, dresses, hard shoes and hats. The Kenmirs didn't know my Dad from Adam but the Sheehys were nice to me because I was Benny's son. Thus, I gravitated toward the Sheehys and Smiths since they were always laughing. Dale had the quiet Dakota wit and Rose once counselled me on parenthood through letters I have kept for forty years. She isssued the deeply wise statement to me "when they make their first one in the toilet it will seem like a gold" I  am proud to say I sat by Dale at the St.Patrick's day party when he had dyed his goatee green. Lawrence was a r...

 Fine foods from Gate families      As the South Gate theme continues I think back on the one constant through all families known by the Sheehy and Creason tribes. Not alcoholism which afflicted many in the group and not racism that reared it's ugly head all over town.  This one is culinary with the memories of the trademark dishes or beverages of the not grand but nice homes of the Gate. It is odd to say the least that many of these favorites do not jive with the idea of heritages of these families. Since these posts are for Greg we  start with Grace Sheehy's renowned Spaghetti sauce that was so loved it was spooned on slices of white bread as a leftovers in the days after the original dinner. The recipe has been passed on to Kit Kat and it is hoped they are eating this one in the twenty-second century. Grace's potato salad was perfection also but it brought strong digestive winds that were created by the recipe. Far less memorable was the lunch staple of...

 Our literary hero      A stuffy, smoke-filled storefront in South Gate educated myself, Greg and Bill Hogan more than any classroom or professor in all of our higher education. Einsels Used Books popped up at 3933 Tweedy boulevard in 1965 and offered a huge collection of classic literature along with a mountain of trashy guilty pleasures. The place was run by an interesting couple, mostly wife Cathelene who chain-smoked while reading thick novels like 700 pagers by John Jakes or Harold Robbins. Her husband Lee worked at Firestone on night shifts but ran the bookstore as a sideline. It was about the time that Billy and I got a lust for reading just in time for Einsel to give us anything we wanted for a quarter. I found Raymond Chandler, read all of  Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos and got classic editions of 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies along with Candy by Maxwell Kenton (Terry Southern). We were regular customers since we had very little money and...

  Where's Glen?                          Before DEI there was just connections for the kids of South Gate families. On the grass roots level the system was fixed in favor of those who were here a long time. South Gate was a red-lined city and did not allow black people to  buy property within the boundaries of our humble hometown. I do not use people of color since lots of nice Mexicans slipped through the white filter and established themselves as worthy of owning land, even in the Gate. Part of our white privilege was that jobs opened up where our fathers knew somebody and the status quo went on for generations. With postmaster Sheehy in charge, myself, Bobcat and Johnny Knowlton found well-paid work for the USPO. Greg, Timo and again the Bobcat got cakey jobs with the South Gate Parks and Recreation department as landscapers and I got a great job at the park in the capacity of "recreation assitant." The Parks ...

     Best Damned Painter in America  South Gate was not exactly a place of chatauquas and art galleries so our chances to see original works were slim. Even the Gate Art Gallery (former Public Library over on California street) was comprised of still lives of fruit bowls and landscapes not painted by Turner or Seurat. Wall cover in the McNerney home was pastel shaded family photos that Greg hated. However, despite the current disregard for a liberal education we learned enough about fine art to at least appreciate the genius of the masters. Strangely enough for a guy like Greg who wasn't big on irony or cutting edge expressions he truly loved modern art. He would dig a Jackson Pollock canvas and saw way more in Marcel Duchamp's  famed "Nude Ascending a Staircase" than I did. His taste in art was eclectic and he never put on airs so I am just going to mention a few artists who caught his fancy. Emily Carr- I only single this unusual painter out because her abstr...

 Where's Mike?      Our drug use while nothing to be proud of was just slightly harmful and not financially disastrous. My Mom used to say "you are always broke but you have money for pot" and she was right. Yet, there was one brief period when we flirted with the hard stuff that has destroyed millions of lives and wasted billions of dollars from people who did not have billions to spend. The 1980's was the cocaine decade and eventually we tried it and loved it just for that very short and expensive initial high. While I experiemented with plenty of recreational drugs my hyper-sensitive nervous system was a sort of regulator of excess. I never really used barbituates since I drank alcohol to slow down and my amphetamine use was short and discouraged by an accompanying insomnia. Things like mushrooms, peyote, psilocybin or DMT were really hard to find and harder to trust as genuine. Hashish and good old weed were everybody's pals for our lifetimes without a care ab...

 A Rat Bastard...       I must mention the term rat bastard that was one of Greg's favorites. The term was used around my Dad's rough around the edges pals that he may have met on North Broadway in his youth. A real bad guy might be called a rat bastard which was worse than being a son of a bitch because it connoted an ongoing condition rather that a singular offensive act. If a guy cut you off he would be a SOB but if he was a bum who would steal from a working man or mistreat a woman he might get the worse two word description. This post is an examination of denigrating terms my dear old pal would use in expressing contempt or even pure anger at another person who crossed him or his moral code. There were many other epithets but some may be a bit raunchy and I doubt he would care so on we go: If a guy was just clueless or  was trying to make up rules as he went along he might choose to say "this guy is a real foul ball " A man who was just plain bad in a...

  Hot Dogs and Beer ...     Weird scenes inside the gold mine was sung by the Doors but it describes many sights seen, felt or smelled at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Only Greg could place a black man's sigh of relief in the men's room as part of the rich tapestry. The gent whose bladder was just emptied said with gratitude "man! that felt good!" Greg connected with the positivity of such a statement and repeated it many times in my presence after taking care of his own busniness. The Coliseum was also the place where my stoned out brother hid in the bushes from the cops at a rock festival featuring Janis Joplin. It was where Jack, the Knowltons and I shook the hand of Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960. No, really, JFK. It was where I saw the giant of American music Nat King Cole relaxing with his daughter Natalie while a knuckle dragging racist drunkenly spouted hate in his direction. Nat in some great seats for a Dodger game just lit another Camel cigarette and...

Moving up in class      Greg and I had many conversations about the concept of "moving up in class" that was inspired by horse racing but was also about family dynamics. We used our parents as examples of a desire to see their kids have a better life than they did. In the case of Grace and John, two high school grads produced three college graduates, one MBA, one PhD, and one J.D. The Creason's had never gone past 8th grade until my father's debatable High School diploma in 1930. Then two Masters degrees and honorable professions of service to the people. I always told Greg that for my Dad it was more basic and his concern was that we rose up from his country Randolph, Missouri simple boyhood to the sophistication  he had seen in New York. More than anything he wanted us to know fine dining, the joy of a nice hotel, travel to foreign lands and the ability to socialize with class people. Some of that was found to be unimportant in our love generation morality but by t...

 Greg's deeply flawed hero      Greg was a true sports fan but never made his identity as part of a team. He loved the Rams, Bruins and Dodgers but you never saw the guy decked out in team gear at the stadium or  Coliseum. He may have had a UCLA hat but they probably gave it to him for being sucker enough to pay for season seats to that ride on the Titanic. Forget the pretty boys of sport, the Garveys, the Namaths, the Tom Bradys. For Greg, his real hero was a forgotten figure from the early 1950's named Bobby Layne. Just remove all social correctness from a man and you would have the tough bastard QB who dragged the Detroit Lions to three NFL championships while never acceptng excuses or softness in any teammate. Greg loved a story where Layne slugged a lineman in the huddle because he missed a block and got Bobby sacked. I happily tickled my buddy-boy's fancy with anecdotes from Layne's booze-soaked, colorful and unbelievable 86 years of roaring through life w...

 A Disgraceful Double-Header                                                                Sudsy                                                             Grabby       This is a good example of an afternoon when we thought we were cool but actually just the opposite. The particulars in this scene were myself, Billy Hogan, Jack, Johnny Knowlton, Zeke and a young Greg tagging along. The Dodgers were in the franchise rebuild with an OK team but still offered major league baseball at about a buck and a half to bake out in the bleachers. We were all just barely legal able to drink and were excited to over-indulge at every opportunity. The idiotic plan was to drink ...

 Seeing Stars     Despite that damn liver Greg was a healthy guy with very strong mental health. While I spent countless hours on psychologist's  couches (actually none of them had a couch) the old rage spouting gentleman never seemed to be depressed or anxious for that matter. However, when he was ill or injured he did those in a big way. He broke an arm playing baseball, broke an ankle playing football and somehow fell through a shower door that caused such bloodshed that he could not talk about the event. Later in life he had some mysterious rashes that made Doctor Heather Butler one of his heroes. She had a pricey ointment he called the magic salve that cured all dermatitus. You know you are best friends when your pal sends you photos of his grotesque skin rashes with challenges thrown to Doc Butler. Somehow, he evaded chicken pox as a kid and caught a brutal dose of it when he was in his 50's. Somewhere there is a photo of the man that causes me to laugh morbid...

Glen Plays Siskel and Ebert If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story .- Orson Welles       We must return to the merrymaking at Bear Cove in the precious few years I was able to join the Ziesings and Sheehys by the sweet  waters of Squam Lake. Center Sandwich is not exactly like Orlando, Florida so entertainment can be limited to swimming, hiking, eating and drinking. Of course, many veterans of the place might bring a book to the dock. The greatest jollification of camp is conversation and yarn spinning. However, when night falls and adults might take a bottle of wine out to sip under the stars the kids became restless for amusement. At the time one possible was to drive to Center Harbor and rent a film which the good children there (Ed, Kit, Em, Elyse) would become mesmerized by and eventually doze off to.  Good choices might be Toy Story, the Incredibles, Shrek or any of the approved classics from the Boomer adults in ...

 Kevin is Dead     It may be hard to imagine the cane wielding old grandpa Kevin Smith (aka Kent aka Kent Schmidt) as  a hippy space cowboy but the big fella led the way for our set of psychic explorers. As stated before Greg and I started our acid careers one night on Seminole in 1971 but I am unsure about Smitty. However, he took a liking to hallucinating and dropped often in his perigrinations around West Los Angeles, Ventura beaches and the Conejo. I believe I shared the spaced places with him maybe a half dozen times but today's tale was one told by the man to his young cuz who shared it with me. At the time which I am going to guess was 1974 we were all enamored of a prog-rock group "Yes" who had a psychedelic album called "Yessongs" and two songs that were played often in "Long Distance Runaround" and a long one called "Heart of the Sunrise." We had become believers in the band from an earlier LP called "Fragile" that was one...

 That's what happens to you if you don't read books      There is no man other than my Dad who had a greater influence on me than John Sheehy. There are so many of my best qualities I learned from him as a mentor and he was just a fun man to be around. He told great stories, he laughed easily and I never saw him in his weaker moments that his kids may have experienced. My love for the English language and storytelling is something I took from his Irish gift of gab. Also, many of my first experiences in the adult world were experienced with his guidance. My first Ram football game, my first trip to the race track and one memorable day in downtown Los Angeles were enjoyed under his wise care. The day in DTLA was an urban road trip that included myself, Jack and Greg sometime around 1960. We took in some big city attractions that John felt were important for kids growing up in the city of the Angels. The first stop was the Laurel and Hardy steps that were extremely lon...