Am I there yet?

The thing about writing about who you really are is the memories are not always pleasant and often painful to recollect. As I’ve mentioned before I was destined to follow my heart to become an artist, and like many artists our passions are so deeply and selfishly centered to where we don’t always have control over who gets hurt.

Urges… well, they have their own Agenda One never starts out to be mean or selfish it just happens, somewhere on the road to satisfying those ubiquitous urges. My apologies to those caught in the headlights of my ambition.

As a child I was cast into a fairly dysfunctional family, my mother's third husband, my father was trying his best to keep all five of us kids housed and fed, my brother Bob and I were his biological kids, the two older sisters and brother were from another father, which made for an interesting dynamic. We first started living together in 1942 when my dad accepted a job in LA, CA. So January 1942 the whole motley brood of seven boarded a diesel locomotive on the Southern Pacific railroad and moved to Los Angeles. America was just being drafted into WWII.

Arkansas had little or no opportunity for raising five children, it seemed a bold move, but my parents both had gypsy souls I think. They recognized an adventure in the opportunity. Consequences be damned, they can always be resolved.

It seemed a clear choice for pulling away from a life destined to forever being poor white trash. We literally lived on the other side of the tracks. Yes, it’s a true metaphor, we lived in what was called a shotgun house, that was to say if you opened the front door and the back door you could shoot a bullet clean through and not hit anything, except maybe the outhouse in the back yard.

It was a big adventure and there were a lot of us Oakies and Arkies, as we were dubbed, flooding into the promised land of Sunny California. No doubt escaping the mess the depression left us in. It seemed we moved a lot those years in LA, we lived in three different houses in 9 years, and I had three different schools to acclimatize to. Each house we lived in had its own suitcase of memories.

The first house, on Trinity Ave. was only a baby step up from the one we left, only bigger and the outhouse was now inside on the back porch. I was lucky enough to share a double bed with my older sister Anna Jane, she loved to cuddle, until an incident of Godzilla-like proportions happened. I was 4 and really had to pee, I slipped out of my nice warm bed onto a freezing bare wood floor, heating was a luxury forgone at night, I crept down the quarter-mile-long hallway, anticipating the relief I was about to have, passing my brothers, and then my parent's room, onto the back porch and the icy cold toilet, I distinctly remember climbing and scooting onto the wooden toilet seat and finally the great release, and immediate satisfaction. Until. A blood curdling scream woke me from my sweet dream, yes the whole trek had been a dream and the screech was from my sister after getting soaked with my pee. I was abolished to sleep in the living room on a horribly scratchy mole hair couch. That might have been when I started having troubling dreams.

It was also my first experience of being duped. The son in a Mexican family that lived in front of our house asked me if I wanted a pony ride, I was four, of course I did. He conned me into letting him hold the ‘diamond’ ring my Aunt Doris had given me, while he took me into his private sanctuary, laid me down on the couch and proceeded to ‘ride’ me like a horse. He was about seven so really didn’t know what he was doing but whatever it was I didn’t like it and ran screaming out the door never to see my ring again. And unfortunately not much wiser either. We moved to a different house soon after.

The second house was on Imperial Highway, though the street was just a regular street. That’s where I started kindergarten and I didn’t like it at all. My earliest memory of feeling abandoned was being left in such a foreign place with no familiar faces. I believe that was the beginning of my preference of being the loner I am to this day.

I was introduced to the movies at five, my brother Bob would walk us to the huge overtly ornate theater, and sit me down in the first few rows and leave me there…alone, I still don’t know where he went but, again after a while, I had to pee and headed out into the lobby, looking for the bathroom, at five I didn’t know how to read and saw the name above the door was short so I thought it was the girl's toilet, it was smelly and very funky and had no toilet seats or doors, just bare bowls open to the world, but I had to go so climbed up on a bowl and relieved myself.

In no time at all a very large black man stood in front of the doorless stall and said in a resentful gruff voice, “What are you doing in here” I don’t even remember if I wiped or not I ran out so fast completely humiliated and so mad at my brother for abandoning me. He was always doing that to me. Once, he tricked me to go into the basement promising me with some phantom lure, I’m so gullible or was it trusting? I’ve never learned the difference. As soon as I was all the way in he ran back up the ladder and locked me in the pitch black, dank frightening place. It hurt my feelings, I felt and still feel that I am not someone worthy of being cared for.

We moved again to South Central LA, 84th St. this time the other side of the tracks was now considered anything north of Watts, 119th St., the black section of LA. There we considered ourselves on the first rung of being upwardly mobile, we bought the house. Though my parents worked labor-intensive jobs to make it happen. Both getting up at five AM to travel an hour to their respective jobs, Mom was a seamstress in a factory, Dad was a road construction worker, it just occurred to me that he was probably a ditch digger. Hard life. He worked his way up to foreman in time.

Both loved country music and had friends they partied with on weekends, they knew how to have fun. Since I was the youngest I got to go places with them, canasta parties, I had to sit in a room alone for hours while they played with their friends. I got a package of Planters peanuts and a coke and a place to sit. This was before TV was in every home. Ever the experimenter I dumped the whole bag of nuts into the coke and drank the disgusting mix, deciding that one was a failure. Since my parents were always gone during the week I was left unsupervised which meant I had to feed myself. My brother would make himself a plate of scrambled eggs and never offer me any so my breakfast consisted of margarine and white sugar sandwiches. I put on weight. I went from a skinny seven year old to a chubby preteen. Mom took me to a doctor to see if I had a thyroid problem, never considering it was my lack of real nutrition.

Elementary school, still very much a loner, with no clue about social or personal interaction. Some light showed through when in the fifth grade, I discovered I had artistic sensibilities and managed to find a modicum of self-respect. I survived and graduated the sixth grade moving on to Edison Jr High at thirteen.

My Jr. High year was an interesting montage of, violin, piano, tap dancing lessons, chorus, and Saturday matinees. My mom was big on giving us every opportunity to meet our creative passions. The movies as it turned out was my favorite. It was NOT piano, violin, OR tap dancing but the chorus was more my style of expression. It was the height of the movie musical era and when I wasn’t playing Betty Grable or Judy Garland, reflected in store windows, I was dreaming of a life in art.

My sojourn in the chorus was however fairly fruitful, our school was part of a competition for city schools to compete for an opportunity to sing with several other different students, it was 1952, we won our competition and went along with 500 other winners to sing at the Hollywood Bowl under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. Wow, that was a rush, the sound we made is still lingering over Hollywood somewhere. 500 sweet young voices, full orchestra singing “Nita…Juanita” and Jerome Kerns “I was up with a lark this morning” it was an exhilarating experience.

I think that may have been the time when my folks took off for a weekend in Las Vegas because they didn’t attend. I was more than used to doing things on my own or with my girlfriend Glenda Gross and her parents. We had our routine, Glenda and me. Saturday morning we watched Draw with Frank Webb. Hers was one of the first families on the block to own a television. Glenda had an accordion lesson in the afternoon, and in the evening her folks took us ice skating in Paramount. Glenda was good at ice skating she could do a figure eight and speed skate. I, on the other hand, could barely let go of the handrail. Agility was never my forte. That was where I discovered my first true, undying passion for love, his name was Ronnie Mullens, I was 13 he was 19, and a sailor, I had a thing for sailors from then on. It turns out my love was in vain, for Ronnie only held my hand and told me pretty things because he needed a ride back to LA. Oh well, I’ll never forget him. My first love, it lasted three whole hours.

My brother was the creative one, whatever he chose to do, he was excellent at. He went on to have an illustrious career in music. Becoming quite wealthy, bought a Farm in West Stockbridge, MA and an apartment on Central Park West in NY. And opened a nightclub in Puerto Rico.

Unfortunately, he and I were like oil and water growing up. He told me much later, he resented me. Until cute little me became daddy’s girl, he was the the favorite. I can’t blame him but the way he treated me turned me into a brat which took years to outgrow. He called me Butch. And punched me a lot, for which I took full advantage of and screamed like a Banshee. One time the neighbors called the cops, fearing I was being bludgeoned to death. I may have deserved It. See what I’m saying? Recall has its moments.

I managed to get my revenge though. He was a popular guy in high school. He was also my mother’s favorite for which I was forever trying to get even. My revenge took many forms but one, in particular, happened when Bob was having his teenage friends over for a party. It was exactly like the teen parties in the 50’s movies. Hot rods, rolled-up shirt sleeves, Brilliantine pompadours, penny loafers, and duck bill saddle oxfords. These were our less than haute couture fashion modes. I offered to make some sandwiches but instead of tuna fish I used cat food. Strange...I was the only one that thought it was funny.

I had almost completed my 9th year at Edison Jr. High about to start 10th grade as a freshman, when my parents decided after their weekend in Vegas that we were going to move there. That was a Bummer! Just when I was starting to find myself after the awkward transition from grade school to Jr. High, who knows where my singing career may have gone. I’m smiling because I know it’s BS.

In the interim my brother Bob had gone on the road with the Bob Brahman Trio traveling all across the states, playing upright base, which was an odd choice since our older brother Bill had accidentally cut off Bob’s ring finger in a freak lawn mower accident when he was five. He only had the first two fingers on his right hand to play a stringed instrument and did so, very well.

I guess he forgot to tell us when he was coming home, because as soon as our house sold we packed up and moved to Vegas. Bob got off the train at Union Station around midnight, caught a Trolley Car and lugged his upright base up to the front door to find an empty house having no idea we had moved. I did say dysfunctional didn’t I?

So Wow! Las Vegas, it wasn’t the Barbie Doll theme park of today, in 1954 it was more like a Roy Rogers movie set. One-armed bandit slot machines that only took silver dollars, no sales tax, no paper dollars, country music, cowboy boots, and five-gallon hats, blazed the rodeo trail.

It was total culture shock, but still pretty intriguin. We rented one half of a duplex a block from the high school. And since they didn’t have Jr high school. I went right into the tenth grade, without having graduated the ninth. I was so unprepared for that change. Las Vegas High was the only high school so I was dropped head first into a school peppered with wealthy Casino and Hotel owners kids. There was a saying. ‘Vegas high is where the students drive Cadillacs and the teachers drive Fords’.

Huge pecking order. I wasn’t the least bit style-conscious but soon learned about cashmere sweaters, poodle skirts, and saddle oxfords. We weren’t in that price bracket but my mom was an expert seamstress so In time she made me some pretty spiffy outfits, that was fine but I had NO idea what Chemistry, Algebra or French classes were so learning came painfully hard. All I can remember from an entire semester of chemistry class was Prof, (that’s what the kids called the teachers) Prof tossed a hunk of red meat into a glass of coke and next morning it was gone, the coke dissolved it. To this day I won’t drink Coke, I don’t care if it is the real thing.

There was a plus though because underage kids weren’t allowed in the casinos to see the lounge entertainment, the hotel owners arranged for their talent to play at assemblies a couple of times a month. We were entertained by stars like The Four Freshmen, Sammy Davis Jr, and other assorted celebrities, we had everything but the booze and the glitz.

I didn’t make it to the twelfth grade at Vegas High. I hated school, I ditched classes so much that I was failing 11th grade. I always felt like an extra thumb, never knowing the rules. I wasn’t interested in school activities other than drama class and painting scenery and props. My very cool teacher Mr. T, let me use it as an excuse to get out of Algebra and work for him. Oh, those creative urges again. To me it shouted who needs algebra to make art?

It was the summer of 1956, I was an usherette at the Guild Theater downtown, we had a couple of movie openings, being Vegas and all. We premiered Pete Kelly’s Blues and Land of the Pharaohs, big galas each, I saw Peggy Lee and Jack Webb. The Land of the Pharaohs ran for eight weeks, I got so sick of that movie. The few friends I made in school appreciated my status so much they let me sneak them in the balcony at no extra charge. The balcony, considered plush oversized seats to be first class so cost more, they were called the Loges. Great place to make out. But that was the extent of my popularity in high school. I was more into flyboys, Nellis Airforce Base was close by, I was almost 16, I preferred guys, not in high school.

I made a good friend named Punky Loveland, she had scoliosis as a Child and was slightly disfigured not enough to be ugly but enough to make her self conscience. Her parents owned a market in town and were strict faithful Mormons. In an effort to exert control over Punky’s soul they bribed her to attend the Mormon Temple, or whatever it was called, for religious training. So she did, every morning a hour before school. They were strict but generous.

They bought her a brand new 1956 Plymouth, it was Pepto Bismal pink with white sidewalls, a white hard top, and the most audacious fins. Well, these two chicks had more fun tooling from one drive-in restaurant to another 'til we made the rounds. Then we'd ‘tool' the strip, and start all over. She was the original Fun Fun Fun 'til her daddy took the t-bird away girl, except she complied with her daddy’s wishes and faithfully kept her promise.

But boy did we have fun, we took it to LA, and stayed at her Granny’s house in Venice Beach and tooled the drive-ins there. Mel’s Drive-in was the hot spot. We went to a French movie called Diabolique, you had to be 17 to be admitted and sign a waiver to not disclose the ending. It was a very scary picture, the French were so daring, this was considered to be more horrific than the Blob or the Thing. That was America’s idea of horror, this was post-war France's psychological horror. It was five years before Psycho came out.

So we dressed up and put our hair in beehives, lied about our age, and signed the waiver. To this day I don’t remember the end but I remembered being so shocked that when it showed on TV years later I refused to watch it.

Culture shock has been the foundation of my growing up years. Mostly not understanding the rules, wishing someone or thing would clue me in at least enough to fit in. Making Faux Pas might have been my main path for learning. I’m old now, no longer even young at heart, this missive has had its moments but I’m happy about who I am and have a great appreciation for the right and good things in my life. It is because of these screwball admissions I who I am.

thank you for reading my story.