Tape title stories

   Big Game...Big Kick in the Balls      This is one of those tales that traces misguided good intentions by BC who set me up for a crash landing at the Coliseum. It was big game week in 1979 and I was buoyed by the fact I had been hired by LAPL to begin my library career that month. UCLA once again had a mediocre team but was showing some life by winning their last two games including a rout of Oregon up in Eugene. BC invited me to come down to the old venerable gridiron and watch the big game with the help of the UCLA ticket manager who provided me with a lost-seat location pass. The lost seat location pass was a scam that got you through the gate but did not provide you with an exact seat every time. To top off the deal BC gifted me a bright, baby-blue windbreaker with a bumper-sticker plastered on the back that said UCLA #1  What the fuck! I was always proud of my graduation from the school and was fanatical about the sports programs which at that time ...

 Lud...       Growing up in South Gate, boys took for granted the blue collar sweat that kept the city thriving and  Tweedy boulevard becoming the pumping heart of what was once an old dusty ranch. My Dad and John Sheehy were outside the norm in this city encircled by factories and the hard jobs handling steel ingots, building Chevrolets, putting truck tires through their stages or standing on a line putting hot water heaters together with numbed brains. I have gone on before about our neighbors. a plumber, a meek assembly line tin can maker, a bread truck driver and a beer soaked butcher named Jack. BC had his pals but these Anetta street guys were not in his social circle where you might find salesmen and civil servants. The richest men in South Gate were realtors and the two gents who operated funeral parlors. It amazes me to this day that in this white enclave the men behaved no differently than they would have if they had remained in Iowa, Missouri, Michiga...

    “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” ―  Maya Angelou   I guess I got my librarian gene from my Mom who held onto things that reminded her of softer times when there were no kids or a man in her life. There were a few strange traits I had as a kid that forshadowed my adult personality. I was a nester early on and tried to create my own apartment in the space behind our bathroom windows on Annetta street. I also loved to collect cards and marbles. I was mostly content to amuse myself and when my Mom said "Glen always played really well by himself" my brother said "he's still playing with himself Mom!" The 1950's were a time of collecting for kids, especially baseball cards but when 45 rpm records came out it was a kind of status to have a Dot label record. As kids, we loved to listen to an odd collection of records that had accumulated over the years and if it were raining or some other reaso...