Tape title stories

  David Watkins hero        The glorification of imbibing seems a bit foolish looking in the rear view mirror but Greg always viewed  his drinking as a part of the good life. Many of we South Gate lads had Irish blood and were proud to be sons of the olde sod. We revelled in stories of people who enjoyed the taking of spirits and sometimes quoted Willie Nelson who wrote "there are more old drunks than there are old doctors so I guess I'll have another round. Unfortunately the unstated importance of moderating the intake got lost sometime over the years. There was Jimmy Tomorrow in the "Iceman Cometh" who had many memorable quotes to demonstrate his need for spirits and the great Fred Exley who observed happy hour for all of his waking moments. I liked to tell the story of the sad Englishman David Watkins who was banned from using alcohol in his own home by an teetotalling wife. There was no information why she found the ban necessary but it must have had a ...

 shake' it down dragline                  This one is a line from one of the best films of the 1960's with everything you could ask for in terms or cast, script, score and cinematography. It featured the great Paul Newman at the peak of his career and a once in lifetime performance by George Kennedy as Dragline. It is set in a miserable Florida prison but the focus is on the brotherhood that forms around one Lucas Jackson who galvanizes the barracks full of hopeless criminals sentenced to hard labor. It was a movie we all saw more than once and quoted repeatedly for the next few years. Strother Martin was brilliant as usual saying "what we have here is a failure to communicate" that stuck in the public consciousness as a motto for a generation. Somehow the film seemed to be anti-establishment which is why it appealed to us so much at that time of our lives. Jackson just will not give up trying to escape while out on the road gang and ask...

  Can’t a fella have a biscuit      This was a story I shared  with the cousin-team of Greggo and Kent who both loved all uses of the English language. When I say English I mean the use of the King's or Queen's English as spoken by our British brothers and sisters. When we read the great literature or heard snippets on PBS we admired the dignity of our friends across the great pond. Sometimes this crossed over into self-parody especially in the affected speech of the upper crust. The story goes that after the War many an English estate was too ponderous to continue in the traditional manner with many servants and high upkeep. The stories of pampered nobility getting their just desserts were leaking into the press to the delight of the hoi polloi. There was no internet to hand us information but we read magazines and newspapers with delightful anecdotes of the fall of the proper British aristocracy. One such lord of the realm was given the grim news by his solici...

 Flash him the deuce Stevie            This required a great amount of research and consultation with Professor Bobcat to unravel an oft-repeated phrase used for many purposes. The saying definitely comes from one of Greg's favorite television shows from the 1970's called "The Streets of San Francisco" and doubled down by starring one of his most revered character actors Karl Malden, he of the bulbous beezer. The show may have been attempting to cash in on the Frisco fever wrought by the great action film "Bullit" that was also a Greg fave. San Fran was certainly a hot commodity at that time as many of the Gate crew moved up there and the city was THE place in the hippie era. Greg soon set up his pad at Clark and Powell streets where the slapping of cable car cables would challenge sleep but add local color. Young Sheehy had a love affair with that city by the bay so when the new show started up on ABC he was there every week checking out the scenery a...

  Rams are in white      To be a true Los Angeles Rams fan was frustrating and fun. As kids we never wavered from loving our team with the really cool helmets and mostly crappy won-loss records. When I paged through my Dad's old game programs I used to dig seeing Crazy-Legs Hirsch, Deacon Dan Towler or Tank Younger from the brief time when the team dominated and actually won an NFL championship in 1951. My first football game was the Rams-Redskins charity game where the teams played with a white football since it was uncharacteristically played at night. After the 50's  however it was always a journey of disappointments but heroes in horns always emerged and were loved. Jon Arnett was an idol and we heard the old people talk about Bob Waterfield, Tom Fears or Vitamin T. Smith. By the time we had a television we could at least see the gridiron men on KNXT (channel 2) and knew we were not as good as the Colts or Packers but the Rams were OUR team. Management was t...

  He looks like a schmecky to me     Life with a street-savvy depression generation father was always a learning experience and opened us up to all manner of expression. Part of this "education" was learning the slang words these old guys (and women) threw back and forth that had been forgotten by the youngins like Greg and myself. They might say someone was a pip or a pantywaist or a mope and we just kept listening to get an idea of what the hell that meant. My Dad had been in places and met up with people we would never be able to see and hear. He had been in life and death struggles and was a veteran of hard living we could only guess at in our suburban bubble.  Despite his excessive use of gin and the nightly inebriation he seemed to require he never smoked or used hard drugs. Except maybe for a little bit of opium in the old and free-from-police Chinatown where today's Union Station sits. None of these world worn men were ones to repress their opinions about the...

  Get a cramp in your foot you bum      A trip to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for this one in the dark days of Rams futility. However, the gist of the saying comes from one Louis Gold, aka Lou Silver who was one of my father's pals from his days in New York. When BC visited the Big Apple in the 1930's he  found like-minded young gents who lived by their wits and found re-selling tickets to be a way to squeeze some dough out of a failing economy. There in NYC he met Hickey, Monte, Duke, Lou and many more who were living Damon Runyan characters that  enlightened the kid from LA in the ways of hustling sporting event tickets. Lou was not one of the guys who lived by his wits since he was rather intellectually challenged and had once been illiterate before he learned to read by picking out words in the Sports pages. Yet, Lou was a powerful and fearless guy who would be called "muscle" in mob movies. There are stories about his hard right hand and use by t...