An Operatic Interlude 1

Maria Callas is one of the most famous opera divas who ever lived.

MANY would argue that her fame had less to do with her vocal prowess and more to do with her temperament and famous (rich) friends.

She knew fashions and fashion designers and she knew how to wear clothes-except on this one occasion:

Since the theatre was full I would guess that there are others who were also in attendance on this particular evening.

The press had noted that according to her publicity people the somewhat mysterious Madame Callas would be wearing a Twenty Five thousand dollar couture ball gown for the occasion.

Indeed she entered in a stunning silk peau de sole gown, lavishly flounced and of a perfect cut, style and fit for her stunning model like figure.

Around her shoulders she had a stolla-a longer than average shawl or stole which was her style-she always wore them for concerts-I thought of the garment as her silk teddy bear-something she could play with, fondle, hide inside rather than using her expressive arms and hands as she might in an operatic performance.

This one was a little too shiny and didn't quite match with the fabulous dress.

As she walked across the stage to thunderous applause the stole began to move and in a long graceful descent, oozed off her shoulders and left a shiny trail behind her across the stage to mark her passage.

Not unlike a snail.

Only at the last second did she feel it going but she avoided snatching at it-simply stopped at the piano and waited for someone to go catch it and return it.

Almost immediately a gentleman in a tuxedo came out from the wings picked up the stole shook it to remove any pretentious dust and brought it back to Ms. Callas.

Instead of taking it from the man she turned her back to him arms gracefully outstretched indicating her should drape her with the fabric, which he did and she acknowledged with a quick smile and nod-

He exited to applause from the audience.

She stood therefor a moment as if by magic once again the stole began to escape from under he left arm heading for the stage floor.

She managed to catch the right end just as the rest plummeted off her shoulders.

Seeing yet another tragedy in motion, Tuxedo Man was already on his way.

Once again he retrieved the stole this time looking at it as rto inspect for hidden threads or motors, gave it a firm shake and when he was sure it was dead he offered it to La Callas who this time took it and deftly wrapped herself in it-the audience once again applauded more for her flourish than his assistance and then massively moaned as the stole again hit the floor.

TWO men showed up this time and picked up the stole-it was obvious that man #2 had something to do with wardrobe-there were inaudible words exchanged Callas took the stole folded it in half, gently laid it on the lid of the grand piano, the 2 men left, the audience quieted and the stole slithered off the piano and onto the stage.

The audience went wild Callas put up her hands in feigned despair Man #2 returned with what looked like a white cashmere stole-picked up the fallen predecessor and drug it, fluttering in protest, from the stage.

Callas then sang Oh Mio Babbino Caro better than she had in 20 years.

It was rumored that the offending wrap was tried for disturbing a diva and fined.

It was never seen again.

JAWS

In 1976 I was in transition from higher education to the next thing and I was looking for a job that I found interesting...but not too challenging.

I had just come off the 3 job, 7 day work week teaching at ELACC, Managing for Basking Robbins and singing at Temple Baptist.

I hated to give up my cozy little place in Beverlywood and the West Side in general with its afternoon fog and insane people.

My pal Rosemary and I went one day to Universal Studios-the tour had opened in 1965 and I had never been out there.

It was no Disneyland but the studio in those days was still mostly a studio making films and TV on a regular schedule.

I let my Dad know that I would like to give tours at the studio, he let Elmer know, Elmer talked to one of the salesmen and the salesman knew George Flaherty who was the president of IATSSE (the 2nd most powerful union on any studio lot.

I got a call from Elmer with instructions to make an appointment with Ricky Bush in Tour Personnel.

It was shortly before Easter week and with the influx of tourists during vacations that was a big hiring season for the tour.

As I remember we had about 60 full time employees year round which swelled to a couple hundred for the summer season.

Properly attired in a blue blazer and khaki pants i braved the hot sun of the Cahuenga pass to meet with RICKY who turned out to be RICCARDA.

Ricki Bush was a fascinating woman with snow white hair in a sort of modified Pixie cut with an intense "locked in" gaze.

She had done many interesting jobs including being the coordinator of the Miss Universe Pageant and forming a care and protection organization for street kids in Quito, Ecuador...how she ended up as head of personnel for te tour I have no idea.

She escorted me into her cool, dim office which featured a glass "ginger jar" lamp on the desk full of actual POPCORN and proceeded to grill me on why I wanted to be a tour guide and wouldn't I rather work in FOOD SERVICES where I would make more money?

What I didn't know was: I was what they called "POLITICAL" that meant I had an in from a higher up person in the studio hierarchy and they pretty much HAD to take me on and in the position I wanted.

Many Movie Star offspring would pass through the tour, mostly as Tour Guides when I started Stacy Webb the daughter of Jack Webb of Dragnet fame and Julie London who was starring on EMERGENCY with her husband Bobby Troupe was a tour guide later Ceilia Peck and her brother Tony (Gregory Peck children) and George Peppard's son (who was a tram driver) among many others came and went.

So, I would have to start the week long training the next Monday-they gave me a large folder (loose leaf) that was the tour "spiel (narration); Ricki gave me one of those "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into?" looks and literally patted me on the back as the sent me out the door.

The spiel was daunting but what it called for was a "ROAD TRIP" so I grabbed Rosemary and we took off on a weekend drive To San Francisco during which she drummed the entire tour into my head.

I had learned Opera Roles and lengthy parts for plays but learning a narration for sometihing you had seen once was a differant animal than any I had known.

Rosemary had a great plan she first made me memorize the tour route first you do this then you go down a hill and then a right turn, soundtages, back through props and greens department across the bridge...I can still do the entire tour start to finish as it was in the mid 70s over 40 years later.

Once I had the route solid she filled in the facts and figures-almost 2000 acres founded in 1917, Carl Leammale, etc etc etc.

The hardest part for me was learning all the current TV shows-I watched very little broadcast TV (still don't) and I had no idea who the stars of ALIAS SMITH AND JONES were...BANACEK? BARETTA? KOJACK?

I could do all the monster movies that Universal was famous for-I used to have breakfast with those guys.

The STING had just been a hit, JAWS was making waves-movies were not the problem-most of the departments I knew from Dad and Grandpa-I knew what a wild wall was and the differance between a carpenter and a grip.

By the time we got back to L A on Sunday I knew the entire tour-all of it, word for word.

Monday I joined a room full of fresh young faces (mostly would be actors and entertainers not unlike myself) and we settled in to learn to represent a major motion picture studio.

Years later when I went to work as a cast member at Disney we had two evenings to get "trained" at Universal you had basically 3 days, the 4th day was testing and uniform fittings and the 5th day you gave your first tour with a trained guide to evaluate you (just in case).

Actually the "test" day was partly on the tram and partly on the walk thru portion at the sound stages.

When I started at Universal Easter Week of 1976 the actual tour was 4 hours so practically speaking you could do 2 tours a day one before lunch and one after.

During peak periods they would speed the whole process up to about 2 hours so you could do 4 tours.

We also had what were called Half tours-you could either do the first half of the tour from the tour center to the drop off halfway thru at prop plaza or you could go directly to prop plaza and pick up a load and do the back lot tour and back to the entertainment center.

During the first portion of the tour you would stop at the dressing rooms and sound stages where you walked your group through LUCY's dressing room )mock up) and through 4 sets on sound stage 32 Matte Paintings ( a really interesting presentation) The "Perry Mason" set where you showed people how settings are designed for filming, a Rear projection demonstration mostly audience participation for laughs and giggles and finally a MUNSTERS based haunted castle set with spooky noises, fire and very little else----these were changed shortly after to a combo set that included the interesting parts Matte shots and rear projection, The BIONIC WOMAN set and a silly presentation at the end based on the BIONIC MAN and that franchise-it included a machine that could show you the bionic parts that had been installed in a guests that got to participate-during training Mark Perillo managed to show everyone in the training class his "bionic Penis" (on a 6 foot overhead screen) that piece of equipment was modified to disallow such showings in the future.

In the busy season we had alternate dressing rooms (Julie London and Bobby Troupe) and an alternate sound stage 31 (we mostly used 32).

Now here's the thing: sound stage 32 was all the nice real sets for the tour 31 was set up for the busy season and might be anything-one year it was set pieces from a forgotten swashbuckler film starring
Robert Shaw (JAWS) called SWASHBUCKLER (how apropos).

You pulled up to the sound stage area and the "lead" would wave you to you first stop-usually in front of the dressing room.

Next you would walk your group through the dressing room and stop at the back-then through the various stops inside the sound stage and finally back out to pick up a tram to continue the tour.

Flashing lights let us know when we had a few minutes to wrap the spiel and then move when the light went out-each stop was about 12 minutes or so...12 minutes in front of the dressing room 12 minutes behind 12 minutes for matte paintings, 12 minutes for Bionic Woman `12 minutes Bionic BS and out to the pickup area where a tram would normally be waiting to board.

Except in the summer:

In the busy season they usually crammed TWO tram loads into one "shared" experience and the two tour guides took turns so the tour guide out front did the front of the dressing room stuff (where ya from, rehearsed jokes, what are we doing? Let's look at a dressing room) tour guide two would meet them out back form them into a mob (in the sun, no shade, no water fountains) and tell them what was filming currently and about who they might (never) see walking around the lot the the first guide would wave them over to the first set in the sound stage and so on till they were back on the tram.

TWO things were different the "stops" were now 3 to 5 minutes and there were many more of them.

You could stop twice before the front stop at the dressing room and twice or three times afterwards before getting to the sound-stage where they were whisked through only to find 3, 4, 8 stops outside to get back to a tram.

In the summer on the asphalt in the afternoons the temperature on the back lot could hit 110F or even 120F easily and because of the way the studio lot sat in a sort of bowl canyon there was little or no breeze.

Stopping hot thirsty tourists from Atlanta to yell BS at them was not real popular so we collected many mostly true "fascinating" anecdotes about MOVIES to share with our unhappy guests.

A truly fine tour guide could keep them happy and engaged all the way through the process-one guy named Steve Towsley was a genius-he had a square jaw, perfect white teeth and a sort of "handsome Kennedy Brother" vibe-plus a great voice for public speaking-he could keep them mesmorized heat and discomfort aside.

A sad event was a newish blonde surfer girl guide who just happened to get a large pod of French tourists on her tram-French Tourists were not our favorites in those days-they were delivered annoyed and would shortly become surly when they found there was no FRENCH speaking tour guide (preferably just for them) and downright mean when they insisted about 10 minutes into the tour they were done and wanted a full refund.

In the new girls defense she really THOUGHT she could speak French...after all she had almost a year of it in High School.

The French are very nationalistic, especially about their language.

Let's leave it at the FRENCH people got their refund and the newish tour guide spent the remainder of the summer in a shop that sold surf type clothing...rumors of blood and dismemberment are mostly exaggerated.

Mad Dog Mitchell (as he came to be known) was working the penny pincher in the entertainment area when he lost all control and BIT a female guest on her POH POH.

Exactly what portion of the guest was considered a POH POH was never revealed.

I myself on a particularly 120F summer afternoon while waiting over 1/2 hour to see the 3 minutes JAWS rubber shark attraction went sound asleep in the tour guide seat and drooled for my guests.

The only reason I awakened was the driver seeing the drool "popped" the clutch causing the tram to jerk.

He later told me he had hoped it would knock me completely out of my seat (the drivers were not entirely fond of the tour guides).

By the way in the slowest months-like January all the rush rush of the summer would turn into an enormous slow down and those 12 minute stops could become 30 minutes each.

On a rainy day the tram could be loaded with as few people as one family-I literally had a tour with 5 people on it on a cold rainy day-I never picked up the microphone-I sat on the from seat of the tram with them and acted like I was taking reletives through the studio-they all got to do everything and take pictures in the process-I even talked the driver into stopping the tram so they could get a family photo on Beaver Cleaver's front porch.

All joking aside the Universal Studios lot was amazing in those days and I always thought it should have been preserved as a National Landmark.

The beautiful Colonial Drive was a shady leafy avenue of homes from many famous shows like the Minsters, Marcus Welby, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew (older folks might recognize Marnie, Harvey, Monster on the Campus and many many others).

We had a drive through of the prop warehouse and sets from Spartacus and the old horror films.

Among all these actual filming sets were a collapsing bridge, a rock slide, a flash flood-the famous red sea crossing where the tram drives through the lake putting the tourists at eye level with the waters surface and the avalanche tunnel.

In later years other attractions were added and some taken away-JAWS came along and was an "expensive" addition to the tour with a large rubber shark that sort of attacked the tram.

Seriously its first incarnation was pretty embarrassing and some guides refused to do the spiel as written opting instead for much funnier versions that were less humiliating.

Finally after threats of firings and having each tour guide "tested on their JAWS spiel-they did improve the attraction somewhat and it became a "camp" favorite for many years-they even built a more elaborate version at their Florida theme park.

By fall of that first year, since I was full time-I was offered VIP tours which were stressful but at the same time so much better than a tram full of 120 bored tourists.

We had a little "trolly" style vehicle with seats both inside and out and we could seat about 24 max-usually the VIP tours were 10 to 15 in the cooler months and might have a few more in the summer.

There were usually 2 a day, occasionally a special tour often presented in a limo or the front unit of a tour tram for larger groups might be added; in the summer 4 to 6 tours a day.

When you were on VIPs you also worked the info booth where they signed in for the tour, answered the info lines and above all got to spend the day in AIR CONDITIONING.

I met some amazing people over my years on VIP tours, Jean Genet the writer of many classic plays. Lotte Lenya and Signe Hasso two famous actresses who had both played lead rolls in the musical CABARET, Tip O'Neil, Jimmy Carter, Jane Fonda, Prince Faisel of Saudi Arabia, The king of Thailand---that one I can tell a little about.

Dana Wilson (a senior guide) and I were assigned to the king's tour:
The day started with us being strip searched in the locker rooms and then escorted to a highly guarded Tram unit which was crawling with armed security.

It was a slightly rainy day but away we went on the tour-Dana sat in the tour guide seat-I sat on the motor cover-the king was in the middle of the front row-my head refused to be lower than his and I couldn't sit on the floor of the tram so I had to slump to maintain protocol.

On either side of the kind were large red faced men with aviator sunglasses each with a portfolio in his lap and in each portfolio was one of their hands holding a gun-one pointed at Dana, one at me one at the driver and an extra one just in case.

All I could think of was one backfire and we're all dead.

The king was a jovial man who apparently spoke little English since a translator in the seat behind him maintained a constant dialog into his ear for the duration of the tour.

The remainder of the tram seats were his family members and staff all book ended buy guys with guns.

At the end of the event we were presented with gifts-mine was a bone handled knife wrapped in a $100.00 bill-so hazard pay was the name of the day.

I was at Universal from 1976 to 1979-I might have stayed longer if I had seen any chance for advancement-it was a fun job-you would think that having given the tour over 1,000 times it would have become boring but we found ways to make it fresh, there were always new shows and new movies to promote-we had some great perks like we got to see advance previews of new films in the screening rooms on the lower lot.

During a VIP tour where I had some people from Disneyland and some Imagineers I was offered a job doing tours at Disney-a business card and a number to call...it was a long way to Anaheim and I had other offers, the park wasn't hiring male guides at that time so I went in other directions.

My oldest nephew Jonathon worked at Universal using a recommendation from me (so he was political) where he worked on the JURASSIC PARK attraction.

The stories he told after he worked there were very similar to stories from my day-the Tyrannosaurus got cranky and threw up hydrolic fluid on a row of guests, some tour employee ran mad in the heat and was pouring ice water on random people, the French were not good guests...not much had changed.

One memory that I have is how wonderful Australians are as tourists-I was a favorite guide for OZZY groups, the tour escorts would ask for me by name and we always had a wonderful time-they were happy, jovial and fun loving-always just a little "lit" by 8am when they arrived but they took being on HOLIDAY seriously-if they liked you they would give yo little gold kangaroo stick pins-we would put them on the wide lapels of our ORANGE wool peacoats-I had over 100 kangas before they limited us-told us to accept the pins and then remove all but one at the end of the tour.

I was annoyed but it worked out well-if you only had one Kanga it needed friends so we got MANY more pins from our tour guests (even a KIWI or six) ad in 1979 I had over one thousand marsupials and 100 birds or so-in a cigar box...one of my favorite mementos of the tour.

My last day as I walked to the parking lot I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders but at the same time a deep sadness that a significant part of my life and career was passing-i kept many friends over the years from the tour days-Martin one of my good friends sold my house when I moved from Burbank to where I am now-he was a very funny guy and turned into a fine realtor.

Even now putting down these memories I would love to give one more tour of Universal-even as it is today-I could tell the people what they are missing and what use to be where....

For my friends who have heard other stories of the tour and find them missing-I think you'll understand why I have left them out and maybe they will show up in the "BOOK" version

What a shame

It was like some huge Science Fiction/Disaster film gone wrong except...we are still waiting for a happy ending.

I had moved to Glendale in the early 1980s and had a busy schedule-I always filled my days too full back then.

I was finishing up a small theatre run of Side by Side By Sondheim, my Dad was sick, I was looking at a new "real" job working for a corporation-just lots of new in my life.

I noticed a lot of people I knew were not feeling well, nothing specific but weird.

A friend of Aunt Mildred's died at City of Hope in the late 70's of a strange form of Cancer.

In San Francisco they were talking about ALIEN viruses , strange imported tropical diseases, the CIA-all sorts of conspiracy theories...

My friend John was still working at Universal Studios Tour and he was worried that there seemed to be "something" going around-lot's of people that I knew were still at the tour...

It seemed to only be targeting men and of course that in itself was reason for even more conspiracy talk and wild rumors.

A fellow I knew had asked me to do some art work for him and when he dropped by I notice he had dark brown blotches on his arms and one on his cheek-when I asked about them he said they still weren't sure but it might be some "Greek" disease...he didn't seem sick it just looked scary.

As time progressed suddenly people were very sick and even started to die.

A friend was in the hospital complaining of severe headaches and other symptoms.

Lot's of the people I knew worked for Hollywood Presbyterian and Children's Hospital on Sunset Blvd.-Lucky for them they had good coverage and often the hospitals just put their employees who were ill in for tests quickly.

"David" my sick friend turned out to have a fatal infection inside his brain cavity of some kind of strange fungus.

Kaposi Sarcoma became a common disease-a skin cancer that was for many years rare and confined to the Mediterranean area was popping up all over.

Pneumocystis Pneumonia also was common and doctors were talking about GRID (gay related Immune disease): they thing was, YES, many gay men did have the disease but it was also hitting drug addicts, people with blood diseases...its was scary, didn't make sense and no one knew how it was transmitted...one brave soul ventured that if was air borne the human race could be doomed.

In 1982 the disease officially became AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

The disease was traced to a virus and it was known that the virus was mutating-there were at least 2 strains HIV 1 more virulent than HIV2.

More than anything else-people were terrified-with a lack of information, contradictory tales from many sources and a code of silence from the white house the numbers of sick people rose and the quantity of real solid information dwindled.

I found myself visiting hospitals more than any other social activity.

Conditions in some places were horrible-since patients were sequestered, quarantined urban hospitals filled quickly.

Patient care was spotty: the condition came with nasty side effects like diarrhea and the drugs acerbated this problem-also vomiting, night sweats-it was horrible.

Hospital workers refused to change or wash patients-in some hospitals patients meals were delivered to the door of the room where the tray was pushed across the floor into a general proximity to the bed....these people were SICK they couldn't get up to get a tray-many were too weak to lift the meal trays.

It became obvious that it was up to friends and family to do what they could for people they knew and cared about.

So I changed my friends, got them fresh hospital gowns, fed them, sometimes with other friends, sometimes alone.

One memorable night I was struggling with a friend who was about 6 foot 4 and although he had lost lots of weight he was still a big fellow-i was huffing and puffing and my back was killing me, I was tired and angry and disgusted and guilty; finally I dropped into the bedside chair and just cried...a very kind man came to my assistance and together we made my friend clean, comfortable and fed.

I found out later that he was one of the most prominent brain specialists in the country.

Many of the patients had been abandoned by their families especially in cases where they had been living closeted/under the radar lives-a diagnosis of AIDS was a cruel way for the family to be informed.

MANY drugs were tried with some success but also the costs were enormous and often not covered even by those with good insurance.

At the height of the plague I had 26 friends who were seriously ill and in and out of hospitals-all of them would ultimately die-since I was not sick I took on a lot of responsibility and besides general care I arranged funerals and other services as they became needed.

I learned how to deal with the Veteran's Administration and found one man with a sensitive ear and broad shoulders-he helped me when many others would not.

This was also a time when one heard things like "It's killing all the right people.", "It's God's Wrath on the sinners", "They deserve to die...".

Later when children, women and general population members, even a few nuns became infected did the slurs diminish but the anger and vitriol was still directed toward the Gay community.

If you are interested in what went on at this period I recommend "And The Band Played On" which was produced I believe by HBO in 1993-a docudrama it gives a fairly comprehensive overview of this time in history.

Other films like "Philadelphia" with Tom Hanks and "Angels in America" also offer views of life in the time of HIV/AIDS.

Eventually a cocktail of drugs was found to work best but there is still no cure or vaccine against the retrovirus.

As of 2016 almost 700,000 people have died of AIDS in the United States-the disease is still running rampant in Africa, India and other 3rd world countries.

Death rates have gone down but not fast enough-the disease was declining in the US but has started to rise among young people (under 20) and seniors (over 55).

Since the virus can lay dormant for several years unless people are tested they may not know they are infected: Immigrant populations, minorities and ethnic groups such as Muslims where taboos against homosexuality are strong are at high risk.

The virus has continued to mutate and many specialists feel that what started as a virus in nature has been tampered with; perhaps even weaponized...and there is still the chance that it could mutate into an airborne strain.

Since bisexual men can carry it to their female partners and the disease has been introduced to the general population via blood transfusions it is important that everyone gets tested and regularly especially if you are sexually active (at any age).

Many public health clinics and almost all Gay Community Centers offer free or low cost testing and usually do a mouth swab first which is painless and initial results are given very quickly and confidentially.

We are beyond throwing epithets at each other and blaming people for how badly the epidemic was handled-most people don't remember that the Reagan Administration refused to even say the name of the disease in public and mostly ignored it.

IGNORANCE is a horrible thing it feeds the fire of PANIC with so much unknown people need to understand that we must remember but perhaps the time of blame is over?

We have so much more information now but we cannot rest until we have a vaccine and a cure-do all you can to make sure your Senators and Representatives know your feelings at both the state and Federal levels.

People still die from the disease it just takes longer and the medications are still far too expensive-the tradition of Big Pharma adding in the costs of R and D to each dose raises a pill that could be produced at a modest price to a platinum drug and this isn't only for AIDS meds its for any disease in the USA....people in other countries often get drugs for a fraction of what we pay here.

The effort you put forth may benefit a member of your family.

My Mother couldn't understand why all her friends were dying when she was nearing 80; when I reminded her that at 40 many of my friends were already dead she didn't seem to connect to the concept.

Those of us in the ARTS community especially were hit hard by AIDS related deaths and a syndrome called AIDS Related Isolation Syndrome has been recognized-the fear of rebuilding a social circle only to find it taken away from you by disease.

Better to be alone than to live in fear.

If we all work together we can end this horrible disease in my lifetime----I would really like that.

Not only for myself and those who have passed but for the children of my nieces and nephews and all the children yet to come...

Out for a RIDE

We didn't go for a ride every Sunday but we looked forward to going when we could.

There were still many odd and interesting things to see along the roads in Southern California and the local news made tourist attractions of natural and man made disasters.

One year the waves were huge and were tearing away at the beaches and beach shacks around Redondo and Manhatten Beach-of course we went there as soon as possible.

We were in time to see a huge wave snatch a house and drag it out to sea.

At a young age you have trouble knowing the difference between real and make-believe, scary and just plain dangerous.

The lure of waves and destruction last just so long and luckily the heavy seas didn't close down the other tourist sites like te Ocean Aquarium and the side show-WILLY THE WHALE WITH THE DETACHABLE TAIL.

A poor sea mammal had been the victim of a run in with a boat propeller and died when its tail was neatly severed-a clever showman had the carcass taxidermied into a 25 cent tent show with the whale-obviously a juvenile and its tail on display seperated by a young lady in a bathing suit who was happy to smile and pose with you in a photo (for a small additional fee).

That "show" lasted for a few seasons before it disappeared-I found it as part of a road side attraction on the East Coast in the 1990's-same ole Willy and his Tail without the bathing beauty for added punch.

Auction City was somewhere over by Maywood/Bell-from the front it looked like a carnival and inside it was tents full of merchandise and men who were willing and able to reach right into your pocket and take your money....in between were pony rides and high diver acts and occasional ferris wheel or merry go round and food trucks.

We didn't go there often-it was a sort of rest stop on a circuit route of free stuff.

In 1959 the WATTS TOWERS built and designed by an Italian immigrant name Simon Rodia became big news and a hot flash point in Los Angeles.

The site had been quit claimed to a neighbor by the artist in 1955 when he moved away to take care of his sister.

His little shack on the property where he slept burned in 1956 and the county or city condemned the structures and threatened to tear them down.

It all came to a head in 1959 when the city broke a couple of pieces of heavy machinery trying to pull the towers over and they became a historical landmark and an art center in this area.

In the 60's Watt's would explode in race riots and local citizens protected the towers from vandals.

The Watt's Towers like The Underground Gardens in Fresno were the work of a solitary man with a vision and both became lasting monuments to the immigrant spirit and vision.

The towers were constructed of rebar, cement and bits of broken pottery, glass, tile, shells and anything else he could use to encrust them.

When we went there on a Sunday drive you still couldn't get inside the fences to walk among the towers.

The had once been a Buffalo Farm in Orange County and in the mid-50s an alligator farm opened near Knott's Berry Farm.

We never went to the Alligator Farm because there was an admission fee-my Mother had lived in Florida-she had seen all the alligators she wanted to so it was not on the Sunday Drive list however in the old Days much of Knotts was open and free to wander around-the ghost town Walter Knott had built to attract people to his berry farm and Chicken Dinner Restaurant was one of the original themed parks in Southern California and drew large crowds of tourists and locals.

It is now owned by Cedar Point-the amusement Park Corporation-there is a Ripley's Oddatorium down the boulevard from it, there used to be a large Hollywood Wax museum which has faded into history and other various tourist stops come and go.

My Mother had found this book of places that were inexpensive or free in Southern California and we visited many of those spots.

One of her favorites was the Wayfarers Chapel at Portuguese Bend- a glass church covered in climbing vines that has long been a favorite spot for weddings-the scenery in the area is some of the most beautiful in Southern California but sadly the terrain is highly unstable and is slowly slipping into the ocean.

Near that chapel was a business center with some shops and galleries that featured a fountain with a stature of Neptune-it is still there and one of my favorite places to visit.

We seemed to stay within an area that was not more than maybe 45 minutes from home and we usually went towards the sea rather than inland.

Many of my friends would talk about going to Coragan Ville-a movie ranch owned by "Crash" Corrigan that would later become infamous during the Manson Trials-further our was Jungle Land where many movie animals including Cheetah Tarzan;s Chimpanzee were warehoused.

When we would go to visit Fran and Elmer in the days before freeways took over L A I would beg to go home via Riverside Drive a road along the Los Angeles River that passed through many tunnels.

Like caves I have always loved a good tunnel...

In later years, when my Mother live next to me in Burbank I would sometimes take her for a ride-I would drive by our old houses in Lynwood and Pico Rivera...familar sights from the old days.

The Whittier Downs Mall where she had taken us to see personal appearances by Sherrif John, Skipper Frank and engineer Bill Stella (local kid's TV personalities)....

In the "old days" when gas was 23 cents a gallon and a McDonald's Burger was 15 cents hitting the road on a Sunday was a great way to have family time in a family where the father was only available on Sundays.

It's odd that I don't have lots of fond memories of these Sunday outings-more of a melencholy nostalgia.

I'm always happy to see my old friend Neptune but not because of happy memories-mostly because I really like that statue...

the 1950's - a sordid little interlude

The men came back from the wars and were supposed to instantly become church going husbands and fathers, up standing citizens and pillars of the "morality" and "ideals" they had fought for.

The United States is one of the most sexually repressed nations on earth even today.

It's OK to snicker behind closed doors with your pals, share a dirty joke in hushed tones around the coffee counter in the office, stop by a strip club on the way home so long as the "little woman" doesn't catch you...

Elmer was decidedly "naughty"-early on he used to show "stag films" on a wall with a 16mm projector in their back bedroom during family get togethers.

Years later my Mother would grumble about him showing a very "nasty" film that featured a white lady and a black man...she watched it, she didn't want to be a "wet blanket"...but I never figured out of the "grumbling" was for show or for real.

Elmer and Fran's house was full of those naughty little treasures people (mostly men) collected in those days-the mule you loaded with cigarettes and then when you wanted to dispense one it would slide coyly out the animals backside; the man in a barrel that when you lifted the barrel would "spring" an enormous erection...lenticular pictures of winking ladies and cootch dancers, "pin up" match books and high ball glasses with girls n sheer nighties and when the glass got wet the nightie vanished...

It was all boys behind the gym kinda stuff-more naughty than nasty but then in those days I didn't know where the nasty stuff was hidden.

We would go on family outings on Sundays and almost every souvenir/novelty shoppe had a section of naughty little mementos-one of the most memorable the ashtray with a lady recling with her legs in the air fanning herself-when you touched the legs or the fan they would actually move-this was so iconic a piece of smut that in the late 1900's they made reproductions of it-you can probably still get one along some interstate even today.

Another similar ceramic "novelty" was the BOOB salt and pepper set...I couldn't imagine why anyone would want one-would you actually put it one the table at Sunday dinner? Pass the pepper boob please...it defied any logic or reason...so you paid for a little memento of your trip or bought a bit of tat to take home to your pal and then what?

The obligatory laugh and it goes into the bin-or the high closet over the fridge with the two year old bottle of scotch that you bring down for a drink with your chums and the naughty condiment set can season the snacks?

I suppose it was all harmless fun in those days-women were mostly the object of the jokes-the men had come back from places where prostitutes, strippers and a foreign idea of what Americans would pay money for when looking for fun and recreation had slanted the retail market toward sex.

The GI's brought their girlfriends silk kimonos or other traditional souvenir wares and stashed the sexy goodies at the bottom of the bag for the party pals.

Tourist areas in those days were veritable warehouses of this war era stuff which was either left over or re-imagined for export; Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, The Pike in Long Beach anywhere the carriage trade would tolerate and support it-IT would be available.

At the same time, or somewhere in that timeline, the Marilyn Monroe nude calendar made its appearance and any guy who didn't have one seemed to get one somewhere...Vargas and Petty had been the artists of "that sort" of calendar art- but who wants a painting when you can have the real thing.

Elmer gave my Dad a calendar than I was fascinated by-not for the nudity more for the novelty-it was a lady draped in jewels and filmy fabric but all that was printed on a clear cellophane overlay that could be lifted so one could behold all the wonders that had been hidden.

Playboy was starting to make a buzz...I wouldn't see one till I was about 13 or so-one of the boys I knew stole one of his fathers from under their bed...

In those days it was all airbrushed and the ladies nether regions were as smooth as Barbie-but I wasn't interested in the dewy perfection of some altered, smoothed out centerfold or the bountiful assets of a B movie Hollywood starlet-there was an arresting pictorial of well posed and lit women in copies of Paris Fashions but instead of silk charmuse or peu de sole the dresses were made of clear plastic with coloured accessories-chic, slick, imaginative-it was clear than in order to sell me sex it had to be presented with class.

So at that point I made the connection-the bare breasted showgirls and scantily clad dancers of Vegas and Paris shows were the sisters-in-kind of the naked ladies in transparent fashions-not presented to be laughed at but celebrated, adored even worshiped in a way.

You didn't see that sort of packaging in the joke and novelty aisle-that which was lacking was the more opulent accouterments, the silks, satin's and furs with just a tasteful peek of pink tinted sex.

Jasmine perfume instead of Evening in Paris.

A Pink lady in a delicate glass instead of beer from a bottle.

The movie MILDRED PIERCE does a good job of exposing the differences of high brow versus low class-Vida goes off and works in a Tiki Bar on the pier singing snappy snogs and wearing a grass skirt-I can guarantee to you that the souvenir shop next store had all those naughty little goodies that you saved for the annual office part or celebrations at the Moose Lodge.

The sad moral at the end of this tawdry little tale is that nothing has changed-the coy lady on the ashtray had become "vintage" and a genuine period piece fetches big dollars, The Boob Salt shakers are KITSCH and they too have joined their compatriots on shelves of trendy shops in better districts along with pin up calendars and bare busted women on match book covers...burlesque is over-the sly tease and lavender spotlight that turns dark blue at the climax is a thing of the past except where modern woman have embraced Burlesque and made it an anti-body shaming activity-men now go to see ALL NUDE-ALL LIVE GIRLS, meat on a plate with no garnish served luke warm at high prices.

Nudity has come to television but only on cable channels where the FCC isn't too closely involved-it still costs a hundred thousand dollars if you say the F word on a radio show-ask Howard Stern he's paid his fair share of fines for "vulgarity".

Movies still fight the "R" rating but that's because a PG-13 makes for better box office and its usually violence and language that tips the scales although 2 cowboys in Love on a Mountain almost became X rated not that long ago and few remember that although it was a best picture "MIDNIGHT COWBOY" was also X rated.

This is AMERICA-cowboys are clean, wholesome, patriotic souls like John Wayne-they protect their best friends they don't sleep with them.

I long for the day where the movie opens on a guy waking up in bed who scratches his balls, yawns and climbs out of bed with his meat and 2 veg swinging in the wind and goes off to take a whiz-I don't know anyone who lives alone and drags the sheet with them when they arise to guard the sensibilities of an unseen audience.

OH, by the way-have you looked at a fashion magazine lately-that's where the gritty, edgy cheap sex is now selling-not always but too often...

Dreams

I have some very strong opinions on dreams; please don't think I am totally insane.

I actually have run these by a few folks like Therapists and Scientists who specialize in Physics and was surprised how many of them agree with my beliefs at least in theory.

I have been a very active dreamer since I was a little person and I tend to remember most of what I dream especially the lengthy, vivid narrative variety.

But let me break down my theories first: I think there are (at least) THREE kinds of dreams:

1. THE BRAIN DUMP

Did you ever have one of those "why am I dreaming this?" dreams? The sort of jumble of stuff where a purple snake with green spots rolls itself into a hoop and runs down a pink doughnut with worms for garnish on a sunny street in who knows where and then a witch disguised as a teddy bear asks you what you want for lunch...

Neither have I but you get the idea-its a bunch of stuff which has little or no relation to what comes first and what comes after-I think this is the normal overloaded brain getting rid of its "cache" so it has room for the next stuff.

I think these are the dreams we tend to not remember or we wake up laughing or shaking and we say "it's just a dream" then we go back to sleep and forget the whole event.

2. The "MESSAGE"

This kind of dream is disturbing in some way-mine are often dark places where I am wandering-I know where it is in theory but the visual does not match my beliefs-so I am in my HOME but it is NOT my home and a series of things happen which are somewhat related and even have some sense  to them on some level there may be transportation or mechanical devices, a problem to solve that can't be solved or the famous trying to run but unable to get up any speed for some reason or flying.

This is the kind of dreams psychologists like to help you understand-the dream analysis version I sort of have faith in is the one that says anything with a house has something to do with your Mother, Cars and mechanical stuff is your father (either of these can be MOTHER FIGURES or FATHER FIGURES); Darkness is frustration , lack of understanding, confusion and so on...you take the dream and condense it down to a few symbols which then make sense.

Your Mother was the disciplinarian so you would escape to your father and he would solve the problem---or whatever.

3. The VIVID dream

These are often very disturbing-they can be very complex, have a cast of hundreds or thousands and often morph from familiar places to strange landscapes-bright colours or no colours and can be confusing because what seems to be a dream symbol is not it's just what it appears to be-we some times get lengthy information or counseling that we don't remember or we will have a conversation with a long departed friend or relative-we can wake up from one of these dreams go back to sleep and the story continues and these dreams can have physical effects like heat and cold, taste etc.

I also am coming to believe there is another level which I call:

4. HYPER Realistic VIVID Dreams

In this scenario we are someplace we have never been but it is so very detailed in may actually haunt our waking hours for several days after...often we interact with people we don't know but they are very complete in their personalities AND we can sometimes go back to these places over a period of day, months, years or even throughout our lifetime.

Levels 3 and 4 I believe are some form of inter-dimensional crossover-we are in a deep dream state but part of whatever makes us who we are (soul, spirit, dream traveler) actually is traveling away from the confines of what we consider "the real world".

Also I have to say I don't think religion or space aliens have anything to do with these experiences.

While either religious icons or Alien scenarios may occur I think it has to do with parallel dimensions more than metaphysics.

Since childhood when someone I know passes over (dies) I usually have a visit from them within about 6 weeks in one of these vivid dreams, let me cite an axample.

When I lived in Burbank we became friendly with a lady and her adult daughter who lived a couple doors over from us.

We played cards with them and went down there for dinners once in awhile-they would watch our house and feed the cats when I was gone on trips-nice people.

The Mother was in her 80s and the daughter in her mid to late 50s.

Unexpectedly while we were away doing business the daughter had a stroke and died suddenly.

We always called several times a week when we were traveling and this shocking news made us consider returning to California immediately but we were assured there was nothing we could do and feeding the cats would give the Mother something to distract her.

Some time after we returned home-maybe a month or so, I had a dream in which the daughter met me at a bus stop (?, I never used busses or bus stops, nor did she) she was wearing a very attractive "jackie Kennedy" type suit in a pink bouccle  fabric, gloves and a very distinct thing that you had to live through in order to understand how strange it was:

I guess it was the 50s when POP IT beads were a fad-they were plastic beads that you could pop together to make necklaces or jewelry, they came in many colours and styles mostly pearlescent or sparkly, round or ovoid and the selling point was by combining sets you could make jewelry that exactly matched your outfit and accessories...later in this same line they sold a sheer scarf like, triangular piece that was perforated along the top edge and by "popping" it onto a bead necklace you could make a "dickie" that looked like a sheer gathered "blouse" to fill in under a jacket such as a pink bouccle suit....these scarves usually were worn in white or a soft colour with pearl pop beads.

So in the dream she had one of these "pop it scarves" under the suit and in the course of our interaction in the dream she told me the suit was too warm to wear an actual blouse and this scarf was a great solution.

She also mentioned she needed to stop by and see her 'MOM" but she was busy getting settled and some other personal things.

Her "bus" came and she left....then I walked down the shady street a bit and woke up.

I wasn't sure what to do with this "information" so I asked MY Mother what she thought and she said to wait till an appropriate time (appropriate? when would that be?).

As it happened we were invited down for a visit and the subject came around to the daughter and I told the "MOM" I had a dream about the daughetr would she like to hear it? when she said she would I said let me tell you the whole dream before you say anything and I started off on the entire narrative trying to make sure I didn't miss any details.

When I finished I looked over at the Mother who was pretty pale and a little upset.

Apparently that pink suit was a garment the daughter had called her "jackie" suit after Mrs Kennedy and she always wore it with the POP IT SCARF because it was too hot to wear with anything else.

Foe a period of time when she didn't have a car the daughter took a bus from a street near where she lived which was shady and "leafy".

There was also some valuable information in the converstaion especially the name of the Credit Union where she had savings and a burial policy.

So what do I make of all this?

She needed to get info to her Mother and I happened to be receptive enough to meet her at the "bus stop" before she finally moved on to whatever the next thing is?

Let me say at this juncture that I think we come back many times and live many lives-I don't know why I think this but in a way thats a lie because I will share a bit further on about that part.

When My Dad was in his last days I was living in Glendale and my Mother was still living in Pico Rivera.

Fran had called me and told me things were bad and maybe I should go down there.

I called my Mother and asked her if she wanted me to come and she said no, not today, wait, and she finished with "I may need you more tomorrow".

Later in the day Aunt Mildred called and said they had taken him to the hospital and this was the end-she said I should probably come but I told her what my Mother had said and left it at that.

I had a terrible time getting to sleep that night and finally about 4 am I fell deep asleep and almost immediately I was walking down the hall of a "hospital" and into a room dimly lit as if by that blue, early morning light around dawn...my DAD was in the bed with his eyes closed and standing nect to the bed was an "ample" white haired lady in a very stylish black and white flowered dress of a style from an earlier period-she was gently rubbing his head in a soothing way-as I came in she turned and looked at me, smiled and put her finger to her lips-the symbol for " shush...be quiet" and turned back to what she had been doing.

I was awakened from the dream by knocking at my front door-I grabbed a robe and opened the door (at 5 am) and it was my Grandpa Elmer, my Dad was gone.

I didn't tell the dream immediately-it was a few days later in the evening when my Mother, Grandma Fran and Aunt Mildred were sitting at the kitchen table in Pico Rivera that I saw a place that the story would fit...so as I always do I prefaced the tale with Let me tell the whole thing before you say anything and i tearfully told the dream...even today it is hard for me to get through telling the dream without choking up-it's just that powerful an experience.

When I was done my Mother broke the silence and said (as close as I can remember her words from  1982):

"He was so sick and in so much pain...I asked God to take him and nothing happened...so I said NANNY (dad's Grandma Grey, Fran's Mother) if God won't take him, please will YOU come get him?"

Grandmas Fran said:

"She came, that was the dress she bought in Bullocks the day she died...she couldn't tell you she came so she told Buddy (thats my nickname) in the dream. AND, she wore that dress so I would know it was her."

Grandmas Grey was quite a charecter, she was married 8 times and was buying the dress for #9 when she had a heart attack and died "instantly" In Bullock's downtown L A store-he sister Florence Teal Watts (also known as Aunt Puss or Aunt Floss was a choir director for n African American Church is south central L A until she was well into her 90s.

I was a very small child maybe 2 when she died, Grandma Fran always said she worried about who would take care of me after she was gone-so Grandmas Grey and I had a connection beyond life.

I firmly believe that when I was about 5 and stayed for the first time with Grandma Fran at her house in Van Nuys, Grandma Grey stood at the foot of my bed every night-a glowing white "lady shaped" apparition---Grandma Fran heard me talking to her one night and came in to see what I was doing-I remember she came into the room took one look , turned and left-I guess she could see Grandma Grey too.

Now, whatever your beliefs are, there is something mystical in this event.

A friend told me it wasn't his grandmother it was an ANGEL disguised as her, another told me the whole story was demonic and thats not how death works and yet another said she told me to be quiet because if I had spoken a single word I would have died in my sleep and been trapped in Limbo.

I chose to believe that I was there for the passing from this dimension to the next and was a messenger-what i dreamed seemed to help not only my Mother but Grandma Fran as well who was guilty for many years that she hadn't been with HER Mother when she passed over.

One last story, this one is about me directly and I will have to condense it a bit because its a story that spans about 10 years.

I was interested in the concept of past lives and reincarnation for many years starting when I was maybe 13.

When I was an adult a friend of mine who was also interested in the subject by skeptical asked me to go with him to visit a famous "passed life reader" (thats how he spelled it passed not past) here in Los Angeles.

Much to his annoyance since he had paid the guy-my friend was largely ignored an the reader had a great deal to say to me.

He told me I had lived 7 lives as a woman and this was my first as a man in all those incarnations.

I had been "not very nice" to men in several of those lives and this life was to attempt to learn how to deal with men from a different perspective.

He closed with a cryptic message that I would get two more "puzzle pieces" and those would leave me with absolute proof that we have lived before and will live again.

A couple years later I was invited to my friends Don Waldrop (a brass player) and his wife the late Marcelle Zonta (an operatic soprano I had worked with several times) for dinner at their home on Franklin in the Hollywood Hills.

We ate and were doing coffee and chat in the living room when Marcelle brought out a small gift wrapped box:

"Don't ask, we don't know why you get a gift but we were in an antique shoppe while we were on vacation and both Don and I saw this independently and we kept coming back to it till we bumped into each other and decided it had to be yours-so Happy whatever!"

Inside was an unusual piece of jewelry...a stylized feather made of clear material with a marcasite in silver mount which hedl a rod upon which was an arrowhead of the same material (marcasite in silver).

"We don't know what it is-it seems to be missing a part"

Without thinking I pulled it from the box and said,"It's a hat pin, see the end unscrews like this and you stick the pin through...I used to wear it on a black velvet beret."

There was an awkward silence and when I looked up they both had that WTF? look on their faces.

Don said, "Well it must be yours because no one else could figure out how it worked."

With that I packed the pin up and it went into my "jewelry box and was forgotten for many years.

Along the way I saw a past life reader in Denver that told me an almost identical story to the first and finally a very famous reader in Dallas, Texas who my friend insisted I had to consult and again the story was very much the same.

I figured puzzle piece number one was the pin but I was waiting for piece number two.

I had a dream in which I was walking down a street in the late afternoon-I could tell the time from the angel of the sun-in the dream there was a young woman on one side of me and a slightly older young man on the other-I could look down and see breasts, I could see red curls under a bonnet style hat and I was having trouble breathing because the corset was too tight and hurt my ribs, a horse an carriage rolled by on the dirt street and a young couple waved...I know the young man next to me was my brother and the young woman his fiance - I also felt they were supporting me and I would not have many more such walks. With that thought the dream ended.

I had this dream several times and it never varied and was like a snippet of a film where I was the camera.

In Europe, in Paris for my first visit, I found that I wanted to wander around an look at neighborhoods and architecture more than the tourist spots.

I felt almost agitated and on several days at various times I went walking dragging friends along and pointing out nothing so they would not think I was running mad in a strange town...one particular street felt like "home" to me but at the same time "WRONG".

We were getting ready to go back to London and I took one last trip to that street at about 5 pm and as I was walking in one area I had a dizzy spell and a moment of what is described as "BILOCATION"  a feeling or hallucination not unlike deja vu where one location at a different period in history was superimposed over another.

I had hit the exact spot from the dream at the same time and the lighting was what triggered the event.

I was able to find out that the street was paved about the period of the civil was in the USA, that neighborhood was considered "the country" in those days and frequently "invalids" were sent there for better air, sunshine and a quieter atmosphere.

Was this puzzle piece #2?

Back in the USA a couple years later a costume design friend asked if I knew about a limited edition book about Ziegfeld that was available at the downtown library by appointment?

You had to reserve a time, wear white gloves to look at it and you only got an hour with the book at any one viewing.

The lure was many one of a kind book plates of stage shots from the various Ziegfeld shows as well as very rare photos from a private collection.

I made my appointment and went downtown to see this rarity and alone in a reading room with my white cotton gloves started through it.

Very shortly in there was a photo on a page, a now sepia toned black and white newspaper shot of Florenz Ziegfeld, Billie Burke, some of the various follies performers and showgirls and off to one side a small dark featured little woman in a black dress with a fancy lace collar and cuffs, and a black beret, velvet with a very unusual hat pin....a feather of clear glass with a marcasite fitting that pierce the hat end ended with a marcasite arrow head.

In the caption she was identified as: UNKNOWN

Into the womb...

“We are not meant to spend the rest of our lives underground. We need to go home and tell a strange story that no one will believe.” 
― Courtney M. Privett, Cavelost

I have had a long and sometimes tense relationship with caves.

My first vivid memory of a cave experience was when I was about 10 or 11 and we were on vacation in Sequoia National Park-there is a cave there that is open to tourists.

It's down a descending path of almost a mile as I remember it and at the end of the path you are facing a reasonably sized indentation, a true mouth of the cave in a cliff face.

At some point a person of some style and whimsical cant filled the opening with a huge iron spider web fashioned into a barricade that opens like a gate in the center-this if the cave is "closed" according to some rangers whim, the spider wed will keep would be spelunkers out.

The web lends a somehow artificial, amusement park, roadside attraction aura to the cave and the cave deserved better-it's not the entrance to cave-land, there are no plastic cavemen battling audio animatronic dinos inside-its a genuine cave.

I'm not sure what separates a cave from a cavern perhaps one is the same as the other or one can be either or both.

This one is called a cave, Crystal Cave.

When I visited there was one tour-the cave was lit with coloured lights and was of a size that didn't make one feel either overwhelmed or claustrophobic.

Scientists, some of them anyway, will tell you that we, humans, love caves because we came from caves-we were at some point cave creatures.

I think that may be true of some of us and I think there are others who lived on plains where everything was flat and grassy and you could see Mastodons and other critters coming from far away.

Still others were water people living near streams and beaches, fishing.

My feeling about caves is that they are places of power, they wre where we go to reevaluate our place in the scheme of things...to put ourselves through some sort of reverse birth where we go from the light into the dark.

I am drawn to caves in a way but it's a Disney, Knott's Berry Farm way-they both had caves-remember the glow in the dark water of Rainbow caverns? The mine train at Knott's has an organ pipe cavern that equates the shapes of the formations with a holy place, a cathedral and pipes in organ music to push the point.

These artificial caves were very well done, convincing.

Pacific Ocean Park-the now gone seaside attraction in Santa Monica had a wonderful man made cave that held Neptune's Kingdom complete with Neptune and slowly swimming plastic fishes-eternally circling overhead.

To the boy me-the differences between the manufactured caves and the nature made version were subtle and perhaps the fact that this one would prove to be colder and much larger would be the most outstanding feature.

With my Mother and Dad and Little Sister close by me we explored the cave with a park ranger-tall and with a dull nerdy voice but behind that an honest excitement and fascination with the subject he was sharing despite the fact that he had done this spiel a million and six times before and may be still doing it even today.

I didn't find any strong feeling within myself that made me want to line an alcove with furs and settle in for the winter, nothing that spoke to my inner Neanderthal urging me to take up residence.

The next cave we visited some time later was a great roofless sea cave with the surf pounding through the entrance-not a labyrinth and singular experience and one that I didn't like-I wanted to be out of it and quickly.

We spent a late afternoon in the underground gardens in Fresno.

For some reason eccentric Italian men came to California and built even stranger things-that Watt's Towers in Los Angeles and these catacombs carved from the hard-pan of the central valley and re-purposed to grow exotic plants and produce.

Virgin Tear Grapes-an actual grape in a tear shape that when ripe is almost transparent and you can see the seed suspended inside-this man knew something about plants-he had grafted trees that bore several kinds of fruits and vines that ran rampant across the walls and overhead.

He had lived in his cage-his dream to have a restaurant down in the cool of his underground home away from the angry summers of Fresno.

As an adult I began to have panic attacks often connected with caves and tight spaces so I stopped going to real caves-I had seen all I wanted to see of them-I failed to see the uniqueness of caves I saw the sameness.

There came a day when I was driving across the USA in my brand new Plymoth Voyager-seeing the sights, headed for Walt Disney World which was still newish-only 2 parks and the promise of a third.

Carlsbad Caverns is in New Mexico...it is also a National Park, is never referred to as a cave and has no iron spider web across the natural entrance-it actually has several entrances.

My Mother was along on that trip and she had been there before a number of years before with my Dad-but she was eager to see it again since, as she explained, they had taken the elevator down which is sort of like going to "cave land" you emerge in the "big Room" where they sell souvenirs, food, have restrooms...its like, well, Disneyland or Knott's-BUT-you have another choice-the natural entrance...

It's HUGE...you don't realize how huge the opening is till you start down the switch backs that lead you always downward for over a mile into the earth-down 750 feet to the bottom of the cavern where the big room is.

Very shortly you notice birds fluttering about the entrance and darting in and out and a strange smell that gets stronger and stronger till you no longer smell it however hours later you will notice it again as you leave the park and find it clinging to your clothes.

Bat Guano-once a valuable by-product of bat infested caves-a valuable fertilizer that was mined like gold.

You walk down and in and towards a great dark place thats the entrance to the bar cave-you aren't allowed to go there-instead you turn back and continue down, under the entrance you came in and away from the sunlight-into the earth.

The first view of the trail down, switch back upon switch back stacked down a sloping cliff is daunting-not for the faint hearted-only made possible by being downhill-having to walk up that slope would be too much for most people.

Like a little boy, I took my Mother's hand and we walked down together, chatting about anything and everything other than our descent into, for me, the unknown.

Later we sat in the amphitheatre above the natural entrance and viewed the spectacular BAT FLIGHT at dusk as all those little Guano makers leaves their cozy home to find bugs in the night-you are warned to not look up with your mouth open since bats like humans share a common ritual upon arising.

Years later I would repeat this descent with a friend and at the point where they have a wooden sign that tells you how amazingly tall the room is from top to bottom and how you have room to bring in the Queen Mary and then turn her around-I had the Mother of all panic attacks.

Because of the temperature and humidity one is always clammy in a cave (cavern) I was pouring sweat like oily cold beads from every pore---you can't turn around and go back the only way is down.

I didn't ask for permission-I found a rock and sat down and started slow breathing and meditation and prayers-had I had incense I would have lit it.

My friend, Richard was concerned but had no idea what to do other than be calm and wait...

As I sat there contemplating my possible death in a famous National Monument, "do they have to bury you if you die in a CAVE?" and with another part of my mind I was trying to count my racing pulse....

We had passed numerous large...well, burly...Park Rangers...all women.

The kind of woman you want with you if you are faced by a mountain lion, Grizzly Bear or rabid tourist from New Jersey.

Women with names like DEL, SAM and DUSTY...androgynous leaning towards masculine...humorless, efficient and all business-they would know what to do.

As I ran the mind film of the coming events in my head I heard ":Fat Boy down on the blue tour trail bring a litter and 3 rangers and we will get him out of here so he can be someone else's problem."

That fantasy was enough to galvanize me into motion-I stood up said a low gruff "come on" and looking down at the path and my feet I power walked the remaining 40 minutes or so to the bottom.

Once there I had a diet coke and a Xanax (or two) and would have liked a blankie and a nap, maybe some soft harp music...but alas the 1.25 self guided trail around the big room and adjacent chambers awaited.

I was fine till I had to enter the crowded elevator to go UP to the surface-the elevator is the only choice-in my condition I saw cables snapping, electricity failing, gravity brakes disappearing.

"Of course they ate the Fat boy it was their only chance luckily DUSTY knows how to cook tourist-they used a bad of Cheetos for seasoning."

I have been through Carlsbad Caverns twice-I will not be doing it again-I do recommend it to others as a matter of fact I almost insist-as recently as earlier this year I virtually forced poor Monique and her husband Eelko from The Netherlands to walk down, smell the bat shit and all the rest-they liked it but they visit caves in Germany and I would expect that American caves are superior and larger so there you are.

I am not, myself, Bat Shit crazy-I don't think that the sturdy employees of the National Park Service would have eaten me nor do I think they would have embarrassed me in any way- MALE park rangers would do that not women.

I suppose I have inferred they were at least semi-lesbonic and I assure you I don't have a problem with that-finding myself alone on the street at 2 am in a bad part of town I would take a couple of really butch lesbians over a whole bunch of other choices.

If a lesbian is your friend she will die protecting you whatever your gender-or at least that is my fantasy-I could be luxuriating in my comfortable erroneous zone.

So in a way I have proved that CAVES and wombs are connected in some ways and having had many experiences with them I think I will now abstain in my old age.

You can figure out which one I am referring to.

Christmas in the 1950s

Dad built a Christmas tree stand that allowed the tree to revolve and still have lights on it-think about it-that was pretty amazing for those days...what do you do have a very LONG extension cord that wraps around the tree till it gets to the end and then reverses directions.

Dad had that talent-he would envision something and he could build it.

Frequently the studio would come to him with a problem and he would solve it...

There was a movie called FROM HELL IT CAME which involved a tree monster with a beating heart-Dad solved that problem....also the marching wooden soldiers in THE MUSIC MAN and quite a number of others issues.

Since at the beginning he was not in a union they had to play it all very close to the vest but later he became a member of IATSE and could do more out in the open.

Dad approached Christmas and Christmas decorations like a B Movie-he didn't have a "A" budget so he used his ingenuity to create the effects he wanted.

It all started when Frank Mazotta (neighbor to the east) asked him if he was going to put up lights "this year"?

That somehow motivated him to think about holiday lighting and the possibilities therein...

We had a Christmas tree routine early on-the BEST trees came from Firestone Blvd in Downey-so said my Uncle Donald and he had MONEY and a tasteful home so he knew his trees.

We would go as a family on the tree hunt-not unlike the Griswold's in a urban setting or Ralphie and his old man-it was US against THEM and we had to come out on top.

In order for the turntable to work out properly the tree had to be almost perfectly symmetrical-no artistically shaped Picasso trees would do....AND, Dad liked to revolve his tree colour options.

In the 50s someone had the bright idea that as long as one was flocking a tree one might as well make it a colour that would go with the décor-the most up to date colours were in the better neighborhoods so when Turquoise and Coral was a "thing" in the colour scheme sense you could find BOTH choices and even a combination on Firestone Ave.

They also had these huge abstract trees with ,long needles that were more like a giant bush that a traditional conical Christmas tree-they often appeared in picture windows over in the better neighborhoods festooned with ONLY RED glass balls (or only silver or gold or blue) shimmering in the changing light of a "color wheel". Those were actually created for Aluminum trees which could not have lights on them because of electric shock hazard but they worked well for the Big White bushy trees as well (here's a little known fact-some people bought several and when they clipped to gather the colour wheel portion instead of red, blue, green, yellow they might do red, green, red, green making the whole effect even more decorator designed.

GLITTER-especially big, chunky Glitter became a thing (for a small extra fee) in about 1955 so a white tree with silver glitter and silver balls on it with a properly programmed colour wheel was "almost like having 4 trees (or so said one of our neighbors).

Dad wanted a cone with traditional lights and decorations BUT it could be (and at some point was) baby Blue, Pink, Lavender and his favorite: Triple Flocked Champagne beige with iridescent glitter.

He tried to buy a black tree with black glitter one year and my mother pursed her lips and just refused-I guess that vision was one he just had to use for his private musings.

In the 60's I feel in love with a day glo pink and orange monstrosity that would "glow under black light" we didn't get that one either.

Once the tree was tied to the car and driven back to our home the REAL stress began.

The tree had to go up first before anything and everything else-that was a rule-tree stand, balance the tree, do an electrical check for rotation check lights one at a time-discard frayed or non working strings (this also included the every debated problem : Bubble Lights or NO Bubble Lights).

Once it was spinning and lit my DAD and ONLY my Dad would add the icicles ONE STRAND AT A TIME---in those years they were still the old fashioned ones that could break and had to be hung carefully for the proper effect-since my dad came from a mostly German background he considered himself an expert on icicles and their application. one layer went on BEFORE the various ornaments and then a finishing layer after-he also had a NO PLASTIC rule on his trees-so the "cute little plastic crap had to be used elsewhere.

This process from search to finish took about 4 days-usually right after Thanksgiving.

Next my MOTHER would do the mantle piece: Light up plastic church on the right end, Nativity Scene on the left end something festive in the center and then add in the various traditional bits.

She had some pieces that only she was allowed to touch these included 3 angels and 3 choirboys with red flocked costumes and that petrified lace that is dipped in ceramic and then fired-they had gold painted details---1 choir boy and 2 angels by the nativity and 2 choir boys and one angel by the church.

There was also a ceramic Santa in bright green long Johns that HAD to go on the mantle and one of those gold candle things that spins and makes little chimes when the candles are lit-it all was displayed on a base of sparkly cotton batting "snow".

I have neglected to mention that we did not have a fireplace---for the first few years we had a cardboard fireplace that could be assembled and displayed at the holidays against the grey and maroon jungle wall paper with a little battery light and a crinkly wheel of red foil that gave a "cheery" representation of a fire burning.

Later on since it seemed so important to my Mother's enjoyment of the holidays, my Dad installed an actual mantel piece that was made of Plaster or something similar and at Christmas we had a plug in version of the fake fire for a short time-it actually caught fire and was never replaced-nor did they ever invest in a REAL fireplace.

At this point in the decorating there was garland on the Swag lamps, little knick-knacks on the various tables- a runner and more tat on the coffee table and in later years even a Christmas village on the bay grand piano that lived where the dining room had once been,

It would now be about the 2nd weekend in December and dad would start on the outdoor lighting-it started with that one string of lights and the eaves-it followed with more and more lights, lights in trees and bushes, a string a giant light up ornaments that spelled out MERRY CHRISTMAS across the porch-2 giant candles which he made out of Carpet rolls, a light up angel and a cute Santa face (they found that on sale) also a light up-festive bows on the street lamp and finally the crown jewel of his decorating schemes-SANTA in a FLYING SAUCER.

Now this was no small effort the saucer was about 9 feet in diameter had chasing red lights behind a scrim around the rim-the actual gunners bubble from an airplane located at a war surplus store and a cheerful Santa inside-NO ALIENS....it weighed about half a ton-it lasted exactly one year but people stopped to see Santa landing on our lawn for the month of December.

My Dad took special delight in lurking near the picture window t the holidays and counting the number of cars that SLOWED down or stopped in front of our house to admire his handiwork.

He was up against two fellows over on Washington Blvd-one of them an electrician who seemed to have bottomless pockets when it came to Holiday Décor and for about a decade or more those two waged a friendly war against each other as the two most decorated homes in town-they also won the annual lighting contest so Dad wouldn't even enter although the flying saucer was tempting.

The next year a sheet of plywood appeared an I has enlisted to render a portrait of our family as Snow people which was painted and jig sawed out and displayed where the saucer had been with appropriate spotlights and glitter accents...it was too traditional even considering the French poodle snow animal I had included and I remember it only lasted one year as well.

Donna and I had school stuff and as I got into my singing and performing years I was very busy at the holidays-we had people in but didn't do so much visiting until Christmas Night.

Christmas Eve was for family that would include Aunt Mildred and Fran and Elmer-with them came a veritable tsunami of gifts-the living room would be nearly full on Christmas Morning-when we were older the Grandparents started showing up EARLY on Christmas day instead-then we would do the rounds of the rest of the relations-usually at Rosemary and Bobs although occasionally Jean and Larry's.

Then it would be over, the cleaning up started Jan 2 and the house looked sadly bare without all the stuff-it was so bare my Mother started collecting "STUFF" for Valentines Day, Easter and Halloween which could double for Thanksgiving.

For most of my formative years Thanksgiving was at Grandma Fran's in Van Nuys and Christmas was at our house---we had to be careful because holidays included High Balls and Grasshoppers and Martinis so the drive home became treacherous if one wasn't careful.

Grandma Hilliard was not a fan of hitting the bottle-she was temperance and had been for many years (except for the Manischewitz Concord Grape wine she took for her nerves) and she was fond of sharing her views on WHY the "folks" went on weekends to Las Vegas-most of it was about sin and degradation and the yawning jaws of hell-not suitable for a piece on the cheery holidays-she did have an ally in Nina Souard and Christmas she could hunker down with her in a corner and skillfully destroy the young folk and their deteriorating morals.

New Years was never a huge thing for me-the "folks" went to the Moose Lodge or a house Party somewhere-one banner year there was some special event and my Mother had a new white chiffon, waltz length dress that showed quite a bit of skin-matching
glass" slippers with flirty little rhinestone butterflies on the toes-diamante jewelry and he mink stole-she had done her hair a strawberry blonde and the latest Italian cut-Grandmas Hillard was livid and inquired if Mother was going out in public so exposed? and did she intend to consume liquor in this costume?

The legend is she an Aunt Mildred drove at a high rate of speed through the quiet streets of Maywood while "tipsy" and Mother landed a bull's-eye on the WAGON WHEEL INNS aptly designed sign with an empty Old Crow Bottle at 50 MPH-first attempt.

Other holidays come and go but Christmas is still the one I like the best-its an excuse to roast a turkey-I don't know why we don't do it the rest of the year?

In good years we would have special fixings like pickled watermelon rind and both mashed and candied potatoes and even a ham and a Turkey-I was amazed to find that some people in the world eat Roasted Beef or Duck or Goose-I thought all those went out with Dickens and Scrooge.

Speaking of A CHRISTMAS CAROL-even today I have to watch at least one version and sometimes more of that story-it caught my fancy early on and has never faded as a Christmas Tradition for me.

Back then everything was decorated for the holidays-the malls, the parks even the markets: they say it wasn't as commercial and I think that's because it was more hand made and glued together than it is now-I'm sure if you look you can find a ready to switch on Santa in a flying Saucer maybe even a drone version but back then the process was as important as the product even more important and I fear that magic is gone forever.