Tape title stories

 That's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it     The line is poached from a Monty Python scene where death visits a dinner party and ends up taking the host with him to the underworld after much polite conversation. It seems this is the way that the god damn reaper has quietly fucked up my golden years since many of my precious memories can now be shared only with the dead. I suppose it all started with my friend Teresa who was taken by brest cancer in 2000 after really giving the disease a battle. Teresa and I had some really rough fights in letters but we remained close because we knew eachothers weaknesses and lived with the flaws. We had the rare pleasure of saying our last words together as "I love you." I let her in and she knew the soft spots and the ignorant parts. I was lucky enough to have a good group of pals that I knew had my back but I never thought about them not being there when I turned to them. When I got a worried call from Nick Caskey I...

    My Randall Knife      There is a song I love by the great Guy Clark called "the Randall knife" that explains a lot about a relationship between sons and fathers. The knife symbolized his father's humanity and when he died the son wanted only one thing from his legacy.  I was there when my Dad spit out the bit but I did not cry or moan in grief like I did when my Mom did the same. The relationships my brother and I  had with my Dad was complicated and far from ideal because he was a great provider but not an ideal role model. It is a huge cliche about how your father gets smarter as you age but in my case it is all about my understanding of his struggles with his role in polite society along with the weakness for gin that demolished part of his family life. My brother has never forgiven him for his abusive reaction to being shackled to respectable behavior that restricted his true self. He was soft in self-control but powerful in the ways of c...

 ..to live like a Lord                                       the white cliffs of dover 1967      Anglophilia had spread across America in the mid-sixties as the British Invasion flowed from radios and TVs into the old Yankee colony. I was always fascinated by the accent and the fact I had a quarter of English blood in my own veins. The coolest cat in the world was James Bond and the Beatles could do no wrong. As I finished High School and stopped and started my studies at Compton JC my English fever heated up like the weather never was in the old country. At Compton in 1967 I was very fortunate to take a class in English History from the greatest teacher in my life, the venerable Doc Umstead who made learning like listening to a favorite song. By the time Doc took me through the War of the Roses and the evil of Oliver Cromwell I just had to get to Great Britain. The topper ...

 Finish your coke...       I am from a family of eavesdroppers and this dates back to my Mom who would repeat what the clueless dopes at the next table said when we went out for dinner. It was a little treat to drive over to Long Beach blvd. for the old-fashioned Cantonese Chinese dinner at Hao's that gave her a break from cooking and pleased we spoiled kids who learned to love Egg Fu Yung, almond chicken, fried rice and dry noodles for an appetizer at a great spot in Belmont Shore. You had to stand in line for that place but Hao's was an easy walk-in. The acoustics were ideal for listening in also. We sat in a booth next to a threesome of an old depression generation couple with a neighbor. It was obvious the old man had no interest in this exotic fare and looked miserable, slumped on his side of the table. Mom was berating Pop for being a culinary stick-in-the-mud telling her lady-friend "All Paw wants to eat is ham n' beans, just ham n' beans." The sentenc...

  Dear...were you menstruating?      Strange how mentioning things that were unheard of back when they happened are now commonplace. Even in the let the freak fly 1960's it would be quite rare to speak about women's private parts or men's "business" as my Mom called the package. The P-word was quite jarring outside of boys who were not near females and being boys. In my senior year of High School, the chapter on Human Reproduction was removed from the Physiology book and left at school. You would not want the boy pervs masturbating while looking at those diagrams of fallopian tubes! What was even more rare was our parents talking openly about sex and their attitudes about forbidden topics were downright prudish. If you put five boys in a car on the way somewhere the conversation was all about sex in the vernacular but at home the mere mention of a penis would cause terrible embarassment. Even when one of the dogs let his "flashlight battery" stick out i...

 when tripping... part 2                                                                 the way back     The over three hour hike back towards our camp was some of the most grueling steps of my young life. Several times I felt I could not continue and suggested they leave me behind to die. My ankle was puffed up and my tank was on empty. We had left the creek far behind and dehydration was a factor in the exhaustion. Instead of the wonders of nature it was just rocks, dirt, dust and wheezing hikers. I was the only one lagging and felt like a hike failure. There was no more liquid in my body to sweat out the acid but after an eternity Ed's VW was in sight. I  desperately lurched into the back seat toward the cooler and found a can of actually cold Shasta Root Beer that tasted like an IV of sugar life. I inhale...

 When Tripping...be prepared and be careful- part one     In 1975 when I was a lad of 27, living on Church Lane a camping craze had gripped the fellas and the addition of psychedelics made even a mundane spot seem like paradise. As has been mentioned youth and drugs together often included poor planning and bungled results. However, if the camping trip described here lacked good sense it did provide great stories forever. In my short experience of hippy living as a part of  the Augustine Glass contingent I camped out with parts of that crew in the wilds of the Sespe Condor Sanctuary out near Filmore in the canyons of the Topatopa mountains. The wilderness area was once home for Chumash indians who named the place Sespe meaning "kneecap" in their language. Since I just followed some seasoned hippy hikers in my previous trip I had no real idea of what such a trek would entail. We got our hands on some blotter acid and drew a group together that included me, Zeke, Ed...

 A rain of pears       Just a mention of Uncle Hank's farm put me into scenes from the good old days in Paso Robles. This is one of Greg's favorite stories and as I have heard it butchered by some before I want to set the record straight. A great bit of Creason archiving is the historic 8 mm film of our visit to the farm back in 1955 which is full of the essence of  Paso Robles farm living. There was a large barn that was home for about a dozen milk cows that had to be milked earch morning early. There was a corral attached to the barn where Carl the bull roamed and Dandy the horse had a stall. Not far from the other side was a cinder block structure that contained a rudimentary but very effective Sulphur hot springs bathhouse where visitors could sink into relaxation unknown in the big city. Far beyond that point was the water treatment facility with stories attached for later. Near the farmhouse there was a wood shed and vegetable garden and across from the ba...

 There's a pig in the bathroom!!!      Let's take a trip up the 101 to Paso Robles and Uncle Hank's farm where many a memorable family yarn unfolded. The time span for me ranges from 1955 to the time Katya and I wandered the remnants in 1993. To this day I have the farm house porch light shining above my front door.  Uncle Hank or "Henry" as Aunt Lucille called him met her while working at a nice restaurant called Paulais located on Broadway near 7th. Henry Schauf was a Wisconsin Catholic and joined the LA Fire Department later, working hard until he had enough grubstake to buy this farm in Paso Robles where the heat was fierce and the growing slow. Aunt Lucille found work in "the city" at a bakery and "the farm" was a place we might visit so my Dad could visit his only sister. Despite the antiquated attitudes of the patriarch, there was a magic to having these many acres to wander and animals to hang around with during the Summer days we spen...

 Glen Drank Poison      Part of this story I cannot complete since I was a toddler with limited recall, especially when this memory involved great trauma. Looking back over 75 years there are gaps and unexplained circumstances that make no sense but everything here is as it was told and how I lived with them these many years. Somehow I was home playing with just Stephen and Cheryl in the front room of our Annetta street pad. My Mom was out and we were under the supervision of my Dad who was in another room busy with adult stuff. I cannot explain why or how but it was suspected that I drank from a green bottle of ant poison thinking it was coca cola. From a very early age I loved Coca Cola and my Mom did not routinely fill the fridge with soda pop.  The greatly desired Coke was only available on special occasions and was sipped like a fine Cabernet for kids. So when my brother referred to this poison kept on the window sill in the kitchen as the forbidden nectar ...

 It seemed like a good idea at the time     In the simple "Leave it to Beaver" life of childhood in South Gate, a Saturday matinee at the Allen Theater was part of growing up Gate. In my day it was 20 cents admission and there was an actual candy shop next door to the theater where you could buy racist candies called "chocolate babies". The Allen was a true kid-friendly entertainment as it was on Tweedy and so easy to reach Mom's could just hand their sons and daughters a couple of dimes and get them out ot their hair for several hours. We never bought "refreshments" in the  lobby since they were exhorbitant (10 cents for a candy bar.) Yet, there had to be the baptism of the big screen where an older sibling or neighbor would take you to this place of film marvels. In my case it was my big sister Cheryl with a family friend from the Sheehy household, Maureen. The movie was geared at young audiences and was a little more serious than the hundreds of mon...

 The Measure of a Man This story goes back to the days of  Club Virginia and my struggles to restablish the beat up ship of my self esteem. The buzz of West  LA had worn out and Timo had left to spend the rest of his days with Disa. I was alone in the back house where the idea of conventional dwelling was disturbed by the bad neighbor Blackie, a jail-bird with a foul mouth across the fence and an apartment building behind me full ol losers staying where the rent was cheap and so were the people. It was not that they caused a lot of problems for me personally but you never could feel completely safe with these types of fringe dwellers around the neighborhood. My landlady was Crazy Mrs. Coulty who poisoned my cat but charged only $140 a month for a 3 bedroom pad that was built by her husband after World War II. I really did not clean the grimy walls and floors but vacuumed the thrift store rugs I put in and had a jerry-rigged washing machine where clothes were made ready fo...

 historical Lynwood haute couture       Sometimes being poor stretches the creativity of a person and despite my privileged upbringing I was downright poor in the early 1970's. My family and friends had been carrying me and my sale of weed kept me loaded in the evenings with no concern for the future. While my Dad offered me easy ways to make pocket change I was  too lazy sometimes to even drive a few miles to perform actual work. So, by my early 20's I found my way to the venerable thrift shop Value Village at 10450 Long Beach boulevard where discarded treasures awaited and a hobby was born. Most of my friends and especially my parents would not wear used clothing but in the hippy days that kind of stuff was stylin. The place became known as La VV and I was one of their best customers starting around 1970. The bargains there seem impossible now but in the late 1960's a good number of World War II veteran's widows were unloading junk they did not want to see aga...

Platinum Blonde and a flamin' redhead 🔥       If you are from LA and explored the almost 500 square miles you cluck your tongue when the New York Times gives some scribe a week to capture the essence of the city of the angels. When we were young we tried to explore as much as we could of this weird and occasionally wonderful place in our beat up cars while taking consciousness expanding drugs. This meant anything from watching polo played at Will Rogers Park to Mexican Midget Rodeo in Pico Rivera. However, one city that is different and a place of its own is San Pedro or just Pee-dro as locals call the place. In my youth Pedro was known as tough town where longshoremen with chips on their shoulders sat in hard-ass bars just waiting for a clueless guy to say the wrong thing. There was a story about Jimmy Harriman, a Pedro prick who claimed to have had 200 bar-fights in the harbor area without a defeat. He also entered the ring at the Olympic where he was not quite as succ...

 La  Habra Corn Festival Love Lesson       BC decided to move to La Habra in 1959 and build a custom home to his specifications which the rest of the family felt was a flaming pit of hell. The sole purpose for the area originally was to grow Hass avocados and La Habra Heights was the only geographic point of note until realtors realized they could meet the demand of white flight from Los Angeles and make the flatlands of La Habra a suburb. It was a struggle for everyone in the family except Christine who just blended in without trying for the most part. Despite producing desperate attempts to make myself accepted I was always a shrimpy kid who accepted the role of class clown since I was not good looking or mature enough to be taken seriously. I still had my roots firmly in South Gate but 12 year olds don't make decisions  for the family. It was a time of resentment, acting out and the worst boozing my father ever indulged in as we raised the Creason flag o...