Kerry Takes Off

For some years that I was on the Varsity Swim Team, our season was a winter sport, so we put our suits and sweats on in the Locker Room behind the football grandstand then would cross the football field to the pool which was nicely heated and steaming.  One particular afternoon as we were ready for practice to begin, the school buses were lined up at the curb, just a few feet from the fence to the swimming pool.  It was crisp out, and the pool was steaming a little bit, so as quickly as possible, we shed our sweats.

 Kerry was a young swimmer with wide shoulders and a slim waist.  He had what would be called an Adonis physique.  But Adonis was not endowed with a lot of muscle between his ears, so it was not all that surprising, when he got up on the block and stripped off his sweats, that he quickly realized that he had forgotten to put on his swim suit.  His nudity was not lost on the kids waiting in the buses.  With cheers from the buses, and a cold wisp of air, Kerry dove into the pool.

While he was Eddie's little brother, he was never called "little" by his classmates after that.

Getting around... with a little help from my friends

I spent some time in New York City recently.  My favorite mode of transportation were the buses of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).  The ladies and gentlemen who drive these buses work miracles when it comes to navigating through the traffic.  They never hit anybody, they never ran over anybody and they honked their horns every 15 seconds.  Because I was in a motorized wheelchair, the bus driver had to deploy an electronic ramp either at the front of, or in the middle of, the bus.  Then everybody waiting to get on had to step aside while I drove up the ramp, the bus driver took time to see that I was situated and belted in, then resumed the boarding of the other passengers.  It was as if someone walked up to you in the middle of your work day and said, "stop!  I have to help an old lady across the street."  Two miraculous events require mention.  One: The crowd of New Yorkers waiting to board stood patiently aside while I got on the bus.  And two: the bus drivers were all gracious, competent and welcoming as they were getting me strapped down.  Then the regular New Yorkers boarded the bus.  I wondered if the bus drivers had special ADA classes.  But then, I wondered if the whole city of New York had ADA classes.  Because, when do you get a whole crowd of New Yorkers to stand aside patiently?  On one occasion, I was the second chair in the bus, so everyone had to go through this maneuver twice.  

The thing every passenger needs to remember as they board the bus is their destination.  But I am not as accomplished as a regular New Yorker.  So my husband would whisper our destination in my ear as we got on the bus, and if I was fortunate, I could remember it for the 20 seconds before the bus driver asked me for it.  On one occasion, when I could not remember what to tell the bus driver about our itinerary, I shouted out to Tom, "WHERE AM I GOING?"  I guess I have to consider myself lucky that Tom and I were not arrested as part of some worldwide gimp slave trade.

After our New York adventure we returned to San Diego.  The flight arrived at 10 p.m., and we boarded a city bus right at the terminal.  The bus driver said, "Hi, welcome aboard.  I think I have seen you before."  I am not sure if that was true or if he was speaking for his brothers and sisters in New York.

The jacaranda is a large deciduous tree with fine-textured, fern-like pinnate leaves. Young trees are upright but assume an irregular branching pattern that produces beautifully asymmetric open crowns as the trees age. From April to June (depending on species and location) the tree covers itself with showy trumpet shaped flowers that are about 1.5 inches wide and are arranged in panicles (pyramid shaped clusters) that grow at the tips of branches.

The blooms of the Jacaranda tree in San Diego are a beautiful violet color. At this time of year, the Jacaranda trees that line the streets are dropping their blooms and creating purple pathways of our streets and side walks. Purple has been a favorite color of gay people from Oscar Wilde to Harvey Milk. There are stories of men who wore purple socks to discreetly signal to each other in the early 20th century. It seems only appropriate that the Jacaranda would break forth with purple blooms in San Diego this time of year while the Supreme Court makes its landmark decision upholding gay marriage in California. I can believe that everyone wants to get on the bandwagon (except Michele Bachmann) and celebrate the right to marry!

Tari

Tari Lennon died last month; these are some words I shared at her service.

I met her 30 years ago, in a class at Claremont School of Theology. She breezed in, wearing a red wool cape and a matching red fedora. She was serving as the sole minister at a small UCC church in Thousand Oaks. She had received her Masters in Divinity from Union Seminary in New York years earlier, studying with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. She was taking some additional coursework at Claremont to complete a doctorate. I was enthralled by her ability to speak and capture the imagination of her listeners. Ours was a class about the use of story in the Scriptures, and Tari told the story of Ruth and Naomi, in ways we had never heard before.

We were in that class together for a semester and when it ended she and I talked about working together. She invited me to Thousand Oaks to meet a few people. So I drove up for what I thought was an afternoon meeting, which turned into an evening potluck and a congregational meeting. By the end of the evening, the congregation was inviting me to be the second person on their ministerial staff. That was sort of the way things happened with Tari, a meeting turned into a celebration, which turned into a hootenanny! And a job.

When Tari found out how much I was paying for a studio apartment in Thousand Oaks, she insisted I come live in her five-bedroom house with her. I was hesitant and wanted to guard my privacy, but I could see I was going to run out of money at those rental rates. So I moved into 3709 Consuelo. During the five years I was there we had several other occupants; we had a foster child named Casey, who stole the car one night. Hope Badner lived with us for a while, which was a delight. We made a heck of a little family, eating popcorn with parmesan cheese and watching late night movies on TV.

Tari took a sabbatical and did some studying on the East Coast; I flew back east to drive with her home. We stopped in Akron to visit Tari’s parents, Tilford and Ethel. I had heard stories of Ethel and Til, so I wasn’t looking forward to meeting them. We survived, and we escaped to continue our trip west. Fortunately, late in life, Tari reconnected with her sister, Corinne, and I know it was a great comfort to her.

After her time in Thousand Oaks, she served the Congregational Church in Laguna.

I know she made some good friends in Laguna; some of them are here today.

I'm something of a quiet person; I don't make too many waves. Spending time with Tari was always a good antidote, she had a talent for rustling up excitement. There were times in Thousand Oaks when she would drive up to my office in the late afternoon and ask ‘you want to go to dinner?’ If I said okay we might be off to Los Angeles for Indian food and a little known film. Five hours later we’d finally get home, and that's how the adventure would go.

I was so happy when Tari and Norma decided to combine households. I could just tell that Norma was one of those people who in the whirlwind of excitement, could remember where she put the car keys. They were a good team together, loving and careful, and laughing often

I will miss Tari, her perceptive political questions, her laugh, her big warm embrace. Have a good rest Cynthia Anne, you deserve it.

The Oscars

Several years ago, Tom and I got to go to the Academy Awards presentation at the Shrine Auditorium thanks to my brother Ric. We both wore our black tuxedos (I bought mine at a church rummage sale and it was in surprisingly good shape, just a little hole in the pocket.) We walked up the red carpet and into the auditorium. I could hear the people in the bleachers outside pointing and asking, "are they somebody?" Once inside the grand foyer we mixed easily with the honored guests. We saw Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, hanging onto each other as they stumbled to their seats. Tom bumped into Lynn Redgrave, literally. They both almost landed on the floor. This is in the days before Lynn had started Weight Watchers and was a more treacherous wrestling opponent.

Our glamorous evening was before the Academy had arranged for its new Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The Shrine comprises the single largest proscenium style stage in North America providing more than 6300 seats. Over 60 years old, the Shrine is recognized as a historical monument. The original auditorium was completed in 1906 and burned to the ground on January 11, 1920. It took six years for the new auditorium to be completely rebuilt on the same site as the original.

Tom and I found our seats and enjoyed the show. Watching the Oscars in person is less convenient than watching them at home. You can’t pop up and make a snack whenever you like. During the commercial breaks, the lights go off on the stage and everything comes to a halt. You are warned about moving around during these breaks. People called seat warmers are scurrying to fill the seats of stars who get up for a restroom break. After his run-in with Ms. Redgrave, Tom was nervous about getting knocked over again.

It was a kick in the pants to see the stars in person, even Jack Nicholson was present to accept his award for “As Good as it Gets”. I guess the Lakers found a way to carry on without him that night.

The most enthusiastic winners that night were Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. They won the Oscar for their screenplay of “Good Will Hunting”, and while they may get nominated for more Oscars in the future, I can’t imagine they’ll be more excited than they were that year.

Aladdin Theater

When I was a senior in high school I got a job at the local movie theater, it was called the Aladdin, and was decorated with Arabian style carpets and paintings. I was pretty stoked. I thought having a job at a movie theater was the best of all possible worlds. After all, I liked movies and how hard could it be asking people to show me their tickets?

My duties in the new job included: taking tickets at the entrance, picking up cigarette butts out of the urinal, walking through the theater with a flashlight instructing people to remove their feet from the seat in front of them, urging rowdy children to be quiet, and during Saturday matinees-selling snacks and drinks to the crowds of kids at the candy counter. I didn't get to see that many movies from beginning to end. This was the old Aladdin Theater before it had been subdivided into smaller spaces. So there were a lot of seats to supervise and a lot of cigarette butts to pick up.

Mr. Van Gortel was the manager, an imposing gentleman of some girth. He would come through a couple of times each evening to make sure we were doing our jobs. Every once in a while he would send me behind the movie screen where extra supplies were kept. There was a big storage space behind the screen. The amazing thing to me was that you could watch the movie from behind the screen, albeit in reverse, and smack dab in front of the huge speakers. It was a little like being in the movie, like I could just ride the horses across the stage in once upon a Time in the West, or sing with the Von Traps in the mountains. The less attractive reality behind the screen was the open boxes of popped corn. These were for our busy times when Mr. Van Gortel would bring the already popped corn out and add it to the popcorn being warmed in the popcorn maker in the lobby. If you ever wondered why your movie popcorn was a little stale or chewy, consider this.

Every now and then a fight would break out between some high school boys in the theater. I could usually quell their enthusiasm with my flashlight, or a promise that the police were on their way.

My experience as a movie usher came to an end when I started to make real money as a pool lifeguard. But I’ll never forget my job at the Aladdin, and I’ll never eat movie popcorn again.

Going to the drive-in

In the late 1950s my family and I went to a drive-in theater to watch a movie. My father was substituting for the regular projectionist who had taken a two-week vacation. I don’t remember what movie we saw, maybe Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. The whole experience of watching a movie in the car was so unique. We three kids would go in our pajamas so that when we fell asleep in the car, our parents would just have to carry us to our beds upon our return home.

The drive-in was a fascinating experience. With the little metal speaker that would hang in your window, the big snack bar at the back of the space, the playground under the screen for the little tykes before it got dark. And then there were all those people sitting around you in their cars, in the dark. It was as if you were alone in the middle of a crowd.

By the end of the 1960s there were 220 drive-in theaters in the state of California. Today about 20 remain open. Home entertainment centers have changed our lives, but the drive-in experience is a memory that will be hard to erase.