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.

Grapes

When I was a boy, our home was located in the midst of vineyards, Thompson seedless table grape vineyards, to be precise. I loved these grapes. When you pop one in your mouth it provides an explosion of refreshing flavor.

Viticulture was originally brought to California by Spanish Franciscan friars, who in 1769 began cultivating grapes at California missions in order to produce sacramental wines. It was not until the 1800s that the production of table grapes became popular.

So picture me if you can, a skinny boy of 11 or 12. I would go into the vineyards after the pickers were done. This is what the Bible called gleaning, (Leviticus 19:10), a noble tradition where the pickers would leave some of the fruit on the vine for hungry peasants like me who came along.

I would trundle home with my box of grapes and sit in front of the TV, eating as many of those delicious morsels as I could. I would stuff a handful of grapes into my mouth and chew and swallow while sitting in the cool breeze of the air conditioner. This was a little bit of heaven on a hot June afternoon. Of course within an hour I felt a little bit sick to my stomach. I guess even a little bit of heaven has its costs.

Speaking of costs, prices for table grapes in recent days were approximately $701 per ton. I don’t think I ate a ton of ‘em, but I probably owe someone some money.

Exams

In 1989 I took the exams to be a licensed marriage and family therapist. I had spent three years getting a masters in marriage and family counseling, and the license would give me the authority to practice independently in California and bill insurance for my work. I passed the written exam first time, but the pass rate for the oral exam was about 50%. Needless to say I was nervous about coming this far and not making it. I took a prep course that was widely touted as the best in the region. Tom and I were living together by then, so he helped me study my flashcards. By the time the test came around he could tell you almost as well as I whether a concept was Freudian or Jungian, and whether a Satir intervention would work better than a Minuchin intervention with a particular family.

The Oral exam was being held in the Hilton Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. Since I needed to be there early for the exam on Friday morning, Tom and I went to the Hilton on Thursday night and took a room. I was very nervous. He did what he could to calm me down, shoulder rub, back rub, foot rub; enough said. I was fully prepared and completely relaxed in the morning. The exam went smoothly, I made no obvious errors. And then the waiting began

I don’t know if it’s better today, but in those days waiting weeks and weeks for the results of the exam was just what we had to put up with. It was during that waiting period that we sold our house and moved to San Diego. The idea was if I had passed my licensing exam, I could more easily find a job and make a living for us in San Diego. Tom would be making more money in his new job but it was still necessary for us to be a DINK (Dual income no kids) couple. So we moved into the future on faith, faith that I had passed. When I interviewed for possible jobs I told them that I had taken the exam and was still waiting for my result. I must’ve looked competent. I got a job offer. A month later the test result arrived in the mail.

I passed. I gave Tom full credit… and from time to time you can still overhear him quoting the great therapists of our time.

Ships in the Desert

A month ago my husband and I, along with two of our loyal friends, went to Coachella Valley High School, to join in the celebration of its 100^th anniversary. The school's steel reinforced concrete walls look very much like they did when I was in school in the 1960s. One feature I enjoyed even as a student was the way the campus was designed around a collection of connected quadrangles. As I recall, a lot of the student life could be conducted outside in the shade of the quads, because the weather wasn’t oppressively hot until June when school was out for the summer.

During our visit to the campus I was struck again with the design features at the entrance; large concrete structures that sweep up and over the roof look like the superstructure of a ship. And the corners of the buildings are rounded as if to cut through the waves more easily.

My understanding is that the architect of the original Coachella Valley High School was E. Charles Parke. So the design features that reminded me of a ship in the desert came as no surprise. It was E. Charles Parke who designed my grandparent’s home in Thermal in 1939. And that home certainly had some ship-like features. There was a round porthole window in the front door, a second-floor deck that wrapped around the east side of the house, rounded corners on the exterior walls, and a glass brick window in the stairway.

Parke was a Canadian, born in 1886, he became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. and moved to California where he set up offices in Riverside and Chula Vista.

Information about Mr. Parke is thin. I can only guess that the man who grew up in Ontario, Canada, was more accustomed to lakes than sand. But when he encountered the waves of sand dunes in Southern California, he couldn’t resist designing around some nautical inspirations.

The Floor and I

I grew up in a 900 sq. ft. house that my father had built with the help of his brothers. They installed radiant heating, a series of hot water pipes, in the concrete slab. On cold winter mornings the floor was toasty and warm. When I was 10, I must have weighed all of 65 pounds, and I was frequently cold in the winter. So in the mornings I could be found on the floor in the bathroom where the radiant heating worked most effectively through the linoleum. My sister would pound on the door and shout “Ronnie, get out of there; I have to get ready for school”. Sometimes my brother would join me, and then we were twice as difficult to budge.

In the 1970s I developed a primitive practice of yoga. I learned to take the position of the plow and stretch my legs and back. I was taught in the course of actor training that the floor was my friend. I was encouraged to get friendly with it and know where it was at all times. I’m not sure what actor training is like today, but in those days we spent a lot of time on the floor, being snakes and bears and what have you.

In the 1990s as MS began to impact my locomotion, I developed methods to assist myself. I would lean on furniture and eventually had grab bars installed in the bathroom. But like most humans, I get distracted. One weekend Tom was away from home visiting his mother in Florida. I was transferring from my chair to the bed with the aid of a tall pole installed in our bedroom. I could usually make the transfer in one smooth movement, but my legs didn’t really have the strength to hold me up. So on this particular evening, I pulled my pants off and accidentally slipped to the floor. I couldn’t get back up. I tried to crawl up into the bed, no dice. My arms weren’t strong enough. I thought about spending the night on the floor, I could pull bedding down on top of myself, but I would still have the same problem in the morning unless I wanted to spend three days on the floor. So I reached the phone off my nightstand, and called my next-door neighbor, the San Diego police officer. He came over and got me into the bed, and told me I would be surprised how many times the police get called for similar situations.

I don’t spend much time on the floor anymore. Today most of my transfers are assisted by someone. But if I make a misstep, my old friend the floor is still there, waiting to embrace me with open arms.