Tape title stories

Telegram to the tent      It is easy to remember the exact date since it was one day before my 5th birthday. August 26, 1952 to be exact. One of the most delightful vacations for my family was to visit Yosemite and stay in a sort of glamping setup with a deluxe tent in Curry Village where we could all smell the pine trees and witness the  amazing fire fall in the evening. It is not like we hiked up El Capitan or rode rapids but we did drive out to the dump and watch clueless bears rummage through human trash to find something to eat while clueless humans took photos from their Kodak brownie cameras that would show a speck that was a bear in a blured background of redwood trees. It was thrilling nevertheless and despite the ecologically wrong thing to do we watched happily as some ranger started a huge mound of bark on fire and got a team to push the thing off the edge of Glacier point. Actually it was bark  f rom older trees but we accepted the fact like it was ...

  And so it began      I wonder if Derrick Garbell knows he changed my life one afternoon back in 1975. It was a tumultuous time when I managed to lose my job, sprain my ankle badly and get dumped by a girl friend who was too  good for my behavior. I moped around my apartment on Church Lane, getting high, listening to music and avoiding work as best I could. Then Derrick popped up with something cradled in his jacket. It was a tiny Russian Blue kitten with personality plus. I had never owned a cat and even the ones that were always around our homes growing up were not in my care. I was a dog guy 100%  I named this little gentlekitten Johnny Cazar after a ridiculous roller derby character played by a struggling Mickey Rooney who had run out of silly musicals and was trying to reinvent himself on the screen in "The Fireball!". Unlike the Mick, Cazar was wonderfully loveable and won over everyone immediately. After a week I could not imagine living without the...

 I aint no hodad... man      A very pleasant part of my tween years was the Summer family rentals at Surfside Beach Colony in a small cottage on the B row. Surfside was created in 1929 as a resort and incorporated as part of Seal Beach in 1930. Originally, the colony was to exist on both sides of Pacific Coast Highway but that never happened. In WW II there was an ammo depot built across the highway and this altered the coastline there and caused erosion problems that existed into the1980's. The mother city Seal Beach has a colorful history back to when it was called Bay City and was infamous for gambling, carrousing and illegal boozing. The Big Red Pacific Electric Streeetcars could get you there from LA in 45 minutes or so they said.  In 1962 however, Surfside was a wonderful place with two rows of cottages that were cozy and just like part of the Pacific Ocean that was a few hundred yards away, protected somewhat by a sort of breakwater that failed in 1953 an...

  One of Greg's radio rages...                                           Gonzer...man      Greg's intimate relationship with the radio went back to his taking a transistor to the bunk beds on McNerney to ease himself into the land of nod. It is not so much he got attached to on-air personalities because he was there to dig the sounds like "Classical Gas" or "Love is Blue" and dream of cuddling up with a chick like Janet Leigh. As a matter of fact he listened but thought that most DJ's were horses asses and heaped his youthful scorn on guys like Casey Kasem or Sam Riddel. Dick Clark sort of became a balance with American Bandstand that had begun to fade even in my time and when Greg put his head on the radio pillow it was "Boss Radio" or the cutting edge hipness of KMET. Some jocks were kind of cool including Emperor Hudson, Humble Harve and H.H. (Hunter Hancock) ...

 Some kid busted his arm over on diamond 2...       A real plus to living near the South Gate Park was that it afforded ways for kids to get a hold of some cash money. I had a big brother who taught me the ways of the Park world but in a society made up of brats abundant you learned fast or stayed broke. One of the first ways to get  change was collecting soda pop bottles which could be redeemed for 3 cents each or 5 cents for a much more rare quart bottle. Boys would try to make a bit from odd-jobs and Billy Hogan and Greg had after school sweeping tasks at the Owl Drugstore that made them some filthy lucre. Johnny Knowlton got on the ground floor at the Arena bowl and kept score for beer guzzling men who could not focus on rolling and writing. He got a quarter a game. When we reached the teen years the park also offered modest part-time gigs like keeping score at SGJAA baseball games and some pretty serious fast-pitch softball tilts on diamond 1. The Sports Of...

 From a sap to  a sock       Language is not static and over time phrases get changed by a newer generation. Modern English is filled with sayings and words that users really don't understand or appreciate. A guy says "the whole nine yards" but he had no idea if it comes from a football reference, the length of a machine gun ammo belt, the size of a grave, a bolt of materials or a nautical term. The great linguist Richard Lederer wrote nine columns on this one phrase with no solid answer. In Sheehy linguistic history there were many phrases said that we did not understand but loved to hear. John used to twist the old saw "colder than a well-diggers's ankles" to "colder than a well-digger's ass." One of Greg and I's favorites was "the snow was ass-deep to a tall Indian" but no one had a clue about tall Indians or snow depth. My Mom used to describe anything assembled in a hap-hazard way as "whopper-jawed" and when   my si...

 You know what this is...                                                                        It was during the doldrums of my 20's when I endured a trauma that completely shocked me out of indolence while leaving an emotional scar that took many years to heal. I was wandering listlessly through the days of prime youth and had managed to get fired from UCLA, lose my apartment, scare off a nice girlfriend and become mired in a funk that was only partially alleviated when my father put me to work in his ticket office. On one hand I knew I did not have the guts to take over his business which required no bullshit gumption. I had very little ambition but I needed money to survive and the Ticket Office offered me just enough to get by and stay high. My heart was never in it but I could do the basic office r...

 Spoiled...       Close friends know that button they can push that really elicits a red hot response of anger. Mostly they do not use the button because it normally will cause a rift that might put such a friendship on hiatus for some time. Yet, my good pal Paul knew the spot on my hide that when touched it stung. Paul and brother Johnny were restrained by their place in a large family with little excess of cash. They made do when I had things they could not afford. I remember one baseball season when Paul could not play because they did not have the dough to pay for "insurance" which was a bullshit thing to protect the city from law-suits.  The city never got sued but someone somewhere said it might happen. Anyway, when my Dad started his ticket business the Creasons had an influx of money, evidenced by a swimming pool, new cars and nights out to restaurants. While Johnny and Paul never complained the secret weapon was kept in the vault that I could be called...

 My First Princess      It was Halloween, 1957 and I had been the costume winner two years in a row. The scene was the playground at St. Helen school in South Gate where my 5th grade class was ruled by Sister Balbina I believe. Halloween was a big deal at the school and the kids, imprisoned in drab uniforms all year came out of their cocoons and expressed their dreams on that day. One year I was a giant with a mustache and anothter I was a Mom pushing a baby carriage. In a baby boomer neighborhood there were lots of props sitting around in garages next to Japanese combat helmets from World War II and out of style clothing created by enlarged parents living the American diet dream. The excitement was palpable since our parade took over some class time and instead of boredom there was downright exhilaration. I was confident and looking for a threepeat with a costume made up of grown up clothes. There were Supermen, cowboys, baseball players, ballerinas, nurses and one...

 No Guts       While I have few regrets about how my life turned out I have to think back to an opportunity I had in 1970 that might have steered me on another path. I was surprised to get a letter from UCLA letting me know I had graduated and my goals were to avoid being drafted, to escape getting tied down to a job and somehow finding a girlfriend while sitting around smoking joints and drinking beer. I wanted badly to grow my hair out and be a hippy but there was the impediment of my residence with my parents and the towering presence of my father's rules of the house. I did get a degree in English Literature without a clue as to what I would do with that sheet of paper signed by Ronald Reagan. Getting high, drinking brewskies and hanging out with other like-minded educated bums seemed like a terrific plan. However, BC had other ideas and he let me know I had an appointment with a business acquaintence of his named Surl Kim who ran a high-end travel agency that fo...

 Charline...what's Johnny's number over there?                                                                       LO-67773      What may have seeemed maddening then has evolved into one of those delightful snippets of our youth in South Gate. The sentence itself has meaning and humor to probably five or six people. Yet, it resonates through many decades including the 1950's when the question began to be asked. I have mentioned the strange way BC and John became pals in the hallowed halls of Huntington Park High School where Mr. Sheehy was doing "post grad" work in clerical skills to insure he gained employment that did not involve working with cows. The surprising part is that BC was there since he ditched often and found his way down to the Pacific Ocean where he frolicked with fellow miscre...

 The Leak of Love...      This is a story of uncluttered love, the kind that was not complicated by prior missteps or broken hearts. It was a time of glorious possibilities and the kind of happiness you cannot reach alone. Nancy was my very first true love and while I was 20 years old I was about as sophisticated as a grammar school kid and had absolutely no idea how I was to proceed with the girl of my dreams. The really wild part of this romance was that she seemed to feel the same way about me and that was a truly novel situation. My home life was not warm and fuzzy and I was climbing up a wall of poor self-esteem that was full of emotional pitfalls and a lack of healthy role models. But when cupid fired his arrow it struck me in the heart, dead center and I was in a dizzying catbird seat. Despite my maddening immaturity we were able to go on lots of fun dates with my parents helping me with great relief that I liked girls. Nancy's parents trusted me and they had ...

  ...Strictly Cash and Carry       Living in Los Angeles you are bound to run into some genuine movie stars. They might be nice or they might show themselves to be real bastards or bitches. Going back to the beginnings of Creasons in So Cal we find BC working as a boy extra on the old Our Gang Comedies. This was not the version with Alfalfa, Spanky, and Stymie but the 1922 silent shorts with the same subject matter but different kids. In BC's day it was a chubby kid named Joe Cobb who was the ring leader and target of abuse by the street punks who populated the old sets. BC made a dollar a day and got a box lunch which was better than his Dad made working for a paint factory. The story of my Dad's life was that he went where the money was and when Our Gang changed casts with sound in 1929 he was long gone and selling newspapers around downtown LA. However, he never gave up making a few bucks as an extra and he had friends behind the scenes who would let him know when...

 Maybe Not Mark Spitz      We are heating up here in So Cal and I can't help cast longing thoughts toward the cooling waters of Squam Lake. I am remembering an event with some humility that took place out in the lake during one of my early trips to Bear Cove. The thing about camp is sometimes physical strength and  stamina would be tested and you never knew what kind of shape you were in until you took out a kayak or tackled a trail with some unknown altitude. You really had to dig in a bit sometimes or look ahead huffing and puffing at one of women or children in front of you who had not even broke a glow. On this Summer's idyll Emily's daughter was joining the fun with her very cute and very tattooed friend. They brought youthful energy and were young enough to cause camp men to hold in their bellys when taking to the water in sagging trunks. I was able to tolerate that first invigorating leap into the cool water and make the short swim to the float without b...

 The Nose Knows     It is strange how little boys seem to have hormones that cause them to laugh at other's misfortune and pain. When a kid takes a bad fall his buddies guffaw as he writhes in pain. Punching eachother was considered good fun and there was even a stupid game where you would fake hitting a pal and if he flinched you called "FLINCH" and punched him in the arm. On the playground education I received the worst thing you could be would be a crybaby or sissy. Deep down I was both but could never give in to that weakness in front of my peers and be stained forever in the male stupidity club. So, this tale concerns my  great friendship with the Whitneys and Bobby who was not only a schoolmate but in High School lived right over our back fence. In this boy dominated family only Bethy Doll was holding out against the testosterone driven behavior, although John and Bob were not mean in any way. John was a studly kid with broad shoulders and a powerful chest. He ...

 Lloyd and Gladys Purdy with a California Twirl      I can't say enough good things about the superb South Gate Parks and Recreation department that employed me in my late teens. The programs they created and maintained were an example of the right way to run municipal services. Early on, the one hundred acre park and all the activities therein were the pride of the Southeast and all of the kids in the city participated in one way or another. One of the special spots for recreation was the WPA built auditorium that was at the far end of Hollydale Park where I would be assigned to oversee the Square Dances on Saturday nights. The dances were beloved by the local yokels and they were hosted by the Gladys Purdy and her husband, the accomplished caller Lloyd Leroy Purdy. It is all too appropriate that Lloyd literally died with the Square Dance Microphone in his hand, mid-call one Saturday night in 1974  well after my role in the frolics there. I believe it was Coach...

 One day at Wrigley Field Los Angeles      I was lucky enough to attend many games at Wrigley field over on 42nd and Avalon when the Pacific Coast League minor league Angels were out favorite team until our Dodgers came out from Brooklyn. It was a cozy place with room for about 20,000 fans and power alleys at 343 feet. The LA Angels were big time in town during the mid-1950's with stars like Steve Bilko and Gene Mauch. However, the club was owned by cheapskate William Wrigley and their major league affiliate was the perpetually crummy Chicago Cubs. So, while much can be said about Wrigley and Gilmore field across town where the Hollywood Stars played this little story is about the brief period when Major league baseball was played in Wrigley. Walter O'Malley ended up buying the park and trading the land to the city of Los Angeles for the land at Chavez Ravine where he built magnificent Dodger Stadium that opened in 1962.  BC had excellent connections with the Ma...

 Jesus...who spit that bundt cake ?!       My brother fled civilization after his divorce and sure-to-fail residence in cookie-cutter Mission Viejo. He took a cabin up in Silverado canyon that was 17 miles from a main road but was where the actioin was in the hippy years that stretched for decades up there in the mountains above the city of Orange. His place was the very essence of a hippy crash pad and was constructed of outside the  building code materials ranging from river rocks to ramshackle wood planks. There was a bucolic charm to the place as it sat near a creek in a canyon far away from the city. It was boy rules all the way plus open recreational drug use and boozing de riguer during weekend revels. My pals and I visited many times throughout the 1970's and 1980's which explains the many stories remembered that took place within those flimsy walls. The plumbing in the kitchen was a bucket under the sink and the housekeeping was not meticulous. Women w...