Something Completely Different

NOTE; In browsing around in my new neighborhood, getting to know it, I recently came across a store that has second hand books for sale (well, more than one such ‘thrift’ shop; but I refer now to this particular one), and, as is my wont, I gave that section a lookover; when what to my wandering eye did there appear but a copy of a novel by Pat Conroy, that I never knew about.  That soon figured: he wrote it, I discovered in a quick check, in 2009; well after I had time in my life for reading fiction.  At some earlier point I still had occasion to read simply for the pleasure of reading, and few authors have moved me as much as Pat Conroy has.  He is, simply, a born story teller.  I wish I could invoke the same sorts of feelings for my new-old home town, of Long Beach, California, that Pat has for his home town of Charleston, South Carolina; way over there on the other side of this magical, mysteriously textured country that is America.  I’m no Pat Conroy.  Though I could tell you about the pelicans, with their curiously bent-down beaks, that appear at feeding time just offshore; seemingly circling aimlessly, and then peeling off suddenly and diving straight down into the water, wings folding sleekly to their sides just before impact; with a small gull invariably racing over, looking to cadge an easy meal from beaks that sometimes can’t hold more than their bellycan.  And other detail stuff like that.  But I don't think I will.  Comparisons, and all that.  Still, was it Emerson who said that 'comparisons are odious'??  So I'll give it a go.  If only as a report, however brief, on how life is and was, from the shore on this side of the continental divide.  As a bookend, however inadequate from this end, to the national bookshelf.  So I would like to share, at this point, some reflections on my return to Long Beach after nearly 60 years away.  I penned this (in basic form) soon after I arrived back, but am inspired to insert it here in my blog site after getting into this - latest?? - of his offerings to the quality literature scene of America.  Its title is ‘South of Broad’, and it opens with a nostalgic description of the newspaper delivery route that his protagonist is covering through the streets of his part of town, on what is to become a particularly special day in his troubled life.  As I say, I’m no Pat Conroy; but, for what it’s worth: herewith.  

     (I also insert it here because my recent offerings on this blog site have been rather heavy-duty, and I’m feeling the need to ‘flesh myself out‘ a bit more, to share the whole of me; not just the part that is so passionately unhappy with the way my home country is going that I could well appear to be just a boring old Johnny One Note.  That is a part of me.  And this is another.)   

Wednesday 25 April (the cruelest month)

Yesterday I took a trip back in time to where I grew up, lo, these sixty-plus years ago now.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, except that, based on what I have already encountered in beautiful downtown Long Beach, there would be many and substantial changes.  I wasn’t, in the event, disappointed; so to speak.  

So, off I want to the Metro base point downtown (all new) for the proper bus, up heavily nostalgic Atlantic Avenue.  Ta-da!

First, the litany of familiar street names (at least those were still there; I still had the basic template to go by), which included, then, the recorded female voice announcing: “Next stop: Poly High.”  Ah, so.  My former high school (named for Polytechnic; with a jackrabbit - still - for its logo.  Go, Poly, go!).  And looking still the same, from the outside, at least; and with the same motto carved in stone over the entrance: ‘Enter to Learn Go Forth To Serve’.  (An admirable sentiment; and one which has served me well in life.)  Plus now a new sign, off to the side a ways: ‘Home of Scholars & Champions.’  And may it ever be so.  (Invokes a former honor student/student body president, and member of a league championship ‘B’ basketball team...)

And then on, straight on up north, like an arrow, or heat-seeking missile; over the hump of Signal Hill (with still some of its oil pumps, dipping gently, patiently away like iron horses for drinks from the earth; though no derricks around them now) to Wardlow Road, the southern boundary to Duane’s World. (A nickname change has entered the scene since those days; occasioned when I went into the Army for my two years of national service (there’s that ongoing meme of my life again), and was too embarrassed, in that macho world, to go by my given name, feeling it a bit effete-sounding.  Sure, there’s Duane Eddy; but he can get away with it.)

And then the discovery of, if not brutal reality, at least the truth to Thomas Wolfe’s admonition, or at least assertion, that You Can’t Go Home Again.  Yes, the dry cleaning   

establishment is still there; and still, somewhat surprisingly, off on the edge of the residential area. (Whose counter gal I dated a couple of times, during my college days; but that anecdote would take too long to go into, and furthermore is not properly of the earlier years of my life in that area that I was primarily there to be reminded of, and reminiscence about.  That was more of the verging-on-adulthood me; and needs its own blog for exploration into.  Maybe.  Gotta keep something back, for the mystery of it.)  But gone are the markets, that I used to bike down to (once for tomatoes, as I recall, and came back with a number of other items but, and had to be sent straight back down for by my not-totally amused mom).  Gone is the gas station on the corner of our street and Wardlow; where the owner (Don Slocombe, of his Texaco Service, and company logo-badge on his shirt like a sheriff) gave our mom a job (pumping gas and cleaning windscreens) after she divorced the man who was her ticket to southern California from the boonies of Idaho and a chance, however slight, for getting into ‘the movies’.  Gone is everything of recollection; including the drugstore, a few blocks on down the main drag (such as it was), where I used to read the comics (for as long as I could get away with; learning not to be too greedy, and outstay my nice-little-kid welcome); and the one catty-corner from it, where I used to have lime or lemon phosphates at their soda fountain.  Or a cherry coke (in the cool little shaped glasses with the Coca-Cola name on them).  Or a chocolate soda.  Or, if I was feeling particularly flush, with lawn-mowing and allowance money, either a hot fudge sundae or a banana split (one scoop each of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate.  And of course with nuts.  Why would some people not have nuts on either their sundaes or banana splits??  They were free).  And where I used to buy sheet music for the latest songs out, to play on my clarinet...

...which caused me to get into trouble with my mom when one of the summers we were up north spending it with our dad or paternal grandparents, he bought me a black, ‘real’ clarinet, from the thin metal one that my mom had bought me, to get started on the childhood ‘thing’ of learning to play a musical instrument.  When one day my mom saw me practicing with the new one and asked me where I got it, I told her; and when she asked what had happened to the other one, and I told her that (it went as a trade-in), she just quietly said, in her simple, non-emotional way, “I bought that other one for you.”   So??  I shrugged.  “Dad wanted to do something for me.”  She just turned and walked out of the room.  That was the sort of communication we had between us...

At least the neighborhood park was still there, further down the road; with a waterworks at its back end.  That has been upgraded from the old days - all steel pipes and such now, from the old-fashioned reservoir that used to be there (that you could look into, through the wire mesh screen windows, and feel the coolness inside, and hear the occasional soft sound of dripping water).  A sign identified it as Reservoir Park.  I don’t know if that was its name in our time; we just used to call it by its street name.  Where often, in the evenings, there would be a movie, sponsored by the local merchants (with short, homemade ads for their businesses at the beginning).  This was all before the culture-changing advent of TV; which came in in our area around 1949.  The year, as well, that we moved from that home up a few blocks and over just to the other side of our real main drag of Atlantic Avenue.

But first, a trip down Memory Lane, in the - my - form of Lemon Street.  As I approached the house where I had spent the bulk of my formative years - from the 3rd grade through my 9th grade - I had no expectations of particular feelings, except fond recollections.  This was, e.g., from where I first set out on a car date; driving my mom’s sort-of sleek black Plymouth.  (And of which she was very proud.  It was the first major purchase of her life, on her own in life by that time.)  And immediately I had troubles, with the car bucking and balking, like a reluctant horse.1  I tried ‘tuning in’, in my young man’s way  (I would have been 16 at the time, with a newly minted driver’s license; very wet behind the ears), but just couldn’t figure out what was the matter.  But time was a’wasting - and I certainly wasn’t going to go back into the house and ask for help from my mother (not just for the ignominy of it; but what if she wouldn’t let me drive it??  ‘Hello, this is Duane; I’m sorry, I won’t be able to pick you up for our date after all...’) - so off I went, bucking bronco or not.  At some soon point - I’m sure before I got too far; and with the smell of burning rubber by then - I ‘got‘ that the hand brake was on.

The date itself was didn’t go very well either, as I recall.  In fact, it was a bit of a disaster, now that it all starts coming back to me.  (Mostly to do with my trying to figure out how to hold her hand and keep the box of popcorn between us at the same time.  And then, upon getting her home, ringing her doorbell - for something to do; not sure how to go about trying to get a kiss - when she had specifically warned me not - to...)  - and then, there it was.

I remembered it well.  I don’t know if it still had the little internal wall ‘box’ by the kitchen for the milkman (Mountain View Dairies for us)2 to put our milk order in - and the iceman too, come to think of it; but it was basically the same as it had been.  No basketball hoop over the garage door; but the tree in the backyard was still showing, that I used to climb to get to the garage roof, and sit awhile for privacy.  And at one point, from where to receive calls from a fellow a few houses up the block; the older brother of a kid in my class in school, who was something of an electrical whizz (he had made a crystal radio at the workspace in his room.  Intriguing business, all this.  And then TV, too.  Would wonders never cease...).  He strung a copper wire between his house and our garage roof, and attached a listening device to it, that in my limited understanding of such things, was the equivalent of a tin can...     

I touched a Hello to the two trees curbside,3 and went on up ‘our’ street, to the top of it a few blocks up, where I presumed there would still be - given the power of ‘sex’ in our lives4 - my old elementary school; alongside of which was a junior high school, that had been built after my time in Longfellow Elementary, and which I was familiar with from my days living somewhat nearby in the house that I was headed for next in my exploration into my past, and its present.

And yes, they were still there  First the junior high - now known as a Middle School, I noticed on the name sign.  I had caught it at its recess time: the school grounds were teeming with kids  Two differences immediately noted: (1) It had been added on to, since the days I used to go over there in my summers from college and shoot some hoops; and (2) the racial mix.  In my day, it - meaning the neighborhood as well - had been almost totally white; ‘it’ was now a ‘healthy’ mix.  Obviously a White Flight hadn’t happened here. Yet.  Hopefully, the mix would hold.  No one wins from such dynamics as takeover consciousness.

And the mix was prevalent on the grounds of Longfellow, too; just across the adjoining street.  Only these days, that street had been blocked off permanently.  For safety purposes, obviously.  Too late for me.5   As for my school: it looked much the same.  The old softball backstop & diamond were gone, and so was the basketball court; and the kids were playing a less satisfying-looking ‘game’ of shooting a ball into a big plastic contraption that sent it out in various directions through holes.  What fun??  And the metal swing rings in their circular sandpits were gone.  And the slide into sand. What’s with this modern fetish against sand??  Is it, rather, against ‘danger’ altogether??  Did one too many sets of parents (or one too many of the single-parent ‘family’ parents that are so conspicuous by their omnipresence these days sue the education authorities for schoolground injury to their little Jack or Jill, in this litigious era, to try to soak ‘them’ for  all ‘they’ could get out of ‘them’???

And where did that attitude come from, he asked rhetorically, in the era as well of huge bonuses for bankers for taking huge risks in order to make themselves and their masters huge amounts of money; that now being the name of the game, rather than simply providing one another with goods and services out of an understanding of what life is actually for...

But to move on, to the piece de resistance: my last, real home in life.  Across Atlantic (and the Atlantic, from where I have lived for nearly half of my life.  The Atlantic separating my life into two nearly equal parts, just as this Atlantic separated my coming-of-age youth into two nearly equal stages.  Curious, that.  Another of life's little mysteries...).6  One block west of; and there it was.

The same. And not the same.  Some owner since my mom moved out (while I was away, for two years, in ‘the service’; and just before that, a year spent living in New York City, following my passion for getting to the Truth of things) - having remarried and moved to former orange grove country near Disneyland - had added a story of their own.  Also, it was now gray (from its former color - which I had helped in a repaint - of white).

But then I am also...

And so it went, for a few more blocks of time.  And speaking of which: ‘The Clock‘ drive-in on the next corner up and back on Atlantic - where I had enjoyed many a burger and hot deep-dish cherry pie with a slab of vanilla ice cream melting on top - was as well gone with the wind.  Likewise the two cinemas in the area, a few blocks further up.  Although I did see, on a wall, a faded sign for one of them.  The Crest, when it opened while I lived in the area, was touted (in a name contest) as ‘the Crest of a wave of the future!‘  Alas, that wave has long broken. 

But there are signs of it still.  If only in faded remnants on sidestreet walls.  And in the fond memories of an old bloke, living his life out in the sun of a new day. 

---

footnotes:

1 As had happened to me for real a few short years previously when I had gone out to the edge of town with my brother and one of his buddies to a horse riding stable, and my mount just didn’t want to go. Whether I wasn’t being ‘in charge’ enough or not, I don’t know; just know that finally I turned it around the few feet that I had managed to travel, and spent the next hour waiting for the others to return.  

     I remember spending most of that time watching flies getting zapped by an electrical machine of some sort, and wondering how it worked.  How did it attract the flies to it in the first place??..ah, but I digress.  A little...

     ...but some years later, I knew how Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher In The Rye (over there on the other side of the continent, where they had similar experiences in growing up as ours over here), felt when he wondered/worried where the ducks went - from the Central Park pond - during the winter.  

     Life’s little mysteries......  

2 There was another main competitor of theirs, but I have forgotten their name; and am not sure precisely how we chose the one we did.  I do know - I think - why we chose to be a Langendorf Bread family, rather than a Wonder Bread one: it was because Red Ryder was their man, and he was a real cowboy (the power of branding sufficient to cause me to get a Red Ryder BB gun a little later on).  As opposed to The Lone Ranger, who, it seemed to me, could have been just anybody behind the mask; the slickest of city slickers.  Although indeed, he could ride a horse (‘Hi-yo Silver - awayyyy!’)  Which did play better on the radio serials, I will have to admit.

     And don’t get me started on the radio serials of the day or I’ll never get through this thing.

3 I’m pretty sure that we had palm trees there in our day; the same as the rest of the street(s).  But even then they were beginning to be diseased; and now were all gone from the street, save as a distant memory.  (They are certainly still around in the downtown area; and in abundance.  Don’t know why they disappeared from the neighborhoods.)  But a tree is a nice thing to say hello to,  Or hug...

     Do you ever get the feeling that trees (like everything else, I guess; to varying degrees.  See, e.g., Cleve Backster’s work with plants) know precisely what’s going on around them?  They obviously don’t understand the languages being spoken, but they know your feelings.  Definitely not to be ignored, these wonderfully patient beings.  There are lessons to be learned under their boughs, and in their presence.

4 (Read this later; it’s a real aside.)    

     Eating my lunch - i.e., an apple - outside of the City Library the other day (after another frustrating bout on the public computers there, trying (a) to effect a money transfer from my Scottish current account to a new one I have opened up in my new-old home town; and (b) to create an email site; for which I am still awaiting, after some days, a telephone call of confirmation.  The world of commerce doesn’t appear to have much time for those of us misfits in the new era who don’t have a mobile phone), I noted the action going on around me in the nature kingdom.  That is to say in our kingdom, too; but, in this instance, in the realm of pigeons. 

     One would land - obviously a female, from what was invariably about to ensue - and then another would choose to occupy the same ‘territory’.  Perhaps in part for any ‘pickings’ possible from the human animal there, engaged in what can only be that universal thing known to all and sundry creatures as ‘eating’.  But very quickly, if not from the very beginning, the attention of the second bird would be on something else.  In a word: sex.  

     Around the first ‘bird’ (and what an appropriate nickname that is to us creatures) he would make his move: prancing and cooing, puffing out his finely-colored and iridescent breast; trying his best to make a spectacle of himself.  Likely as not, at that moment he is spurned.  (‘Cool it, lover boy.   Can’t you see I’m busy?  Take your business elsewhere...later with that.’)  The males chance their luck on telephone lines, too.  (‘Hey babe - are you receiving the message I’m sending; you know what I mean?  Dig this display, honey buns.’)  And likely as not, the female can’t be boverred, and flies off, none the worse for wear, as it were.  Sometimes the male, ardor aroused, chases after her; sometimes, ardor cooled, he doesn’t, and goes after other quarry, in the form of either prospective food or prospective ‘mate’.  We’re talking about, then, instincts in general, and ‘the mating game’ in particular.      

     I know that some species of fowl mate for life.  But the point I mean to make here has to do with the power of that urge.  Next to food and water, it is the most powerful urge of the lot of all creatures, great and small.  But what if, for the human animal, there is another urge as well, almost as powerful (in this time and place) as the sex drive?  One that could be called - speaking of - the urge to fly (so to speak)?

     Reflecting the fact that life is a school, and the purpose is to graduate? 

     Is to cease ‘being’ on this creature level?  Is to go up in consciousness to a higher level - or levels - than just to remain stuck, going round and round and round, on what has been called the wheel of rebirth??

     The Ferris wheel of The Pike at Long Beach has, over the years, lost some of its charm.  And in the grand scheme of things - of the unfolding of Time - that is, all things considered, no bad thing.

     So at some point, we need to stop being ‘on the game’ - displaying our plumage, and playing hard to get, and so forth - and start going for the real thing.  And I mean, the real thing.

     Which is the whole point of the exercise.  The exercise of experiencing separation, in order to grow in consciousness.

     Since the universe has Purpose.

     And - not so incidentally: that Purpose is Good.
     (This point is worth expanding on, a little.  I don't mean to just lob it in and walk away; none the worse for my wear.  My point is that we experience growth through freewill decision-making; since opposition sparks growth.  To a certain extent.  And then cooperation takes over.  Harmony.  Unity of purpose.  
     Which is where we're at, in the unfolding of history.  As we speak.  The New Age.  To be characterized by another motive than 'money' - than money-making.  Than the profit motive.  For greed - not a high quality to cultivate - is built into this current system.  It's how you grow money.  I would grow 'it' - the equivalent in the New Age - by, in a word, love.  The system functioning on the energy of gratitude (a far higher quality than greed) to our Creator for life with meaning.
     But now this is beginning to be another story.  For another time.)  
    

5 In my day at Longfellow, when what is now that Middle School site was a huge vacant lot, we guys started going over there to play, having - with the help and blessing of our teachers - marked out a softball diamond and several touch football fields.  So that street began to be chained off during school hours.  But not before I found that out the hard way, when, in turning into it as usual one morning - on the red bike of my youth (so sort of a Red Rider I was) - I encountered said chain, which caught me chest high, and swung me first forward with my momentum, and then back, as me and my trusty steed parted company; my bike proceeding steadily on without me for a short distance, while I, rather stunned by it all, ended up on the street with a few abrasions.  Mostly, I have to report, to my pride (with some kids witnessing my inglorious dismount). 

     It was, incidentally, the only day I ever missed attendance at school, including on through high school.  The school nurse felt that I had had enough of lessons for the day.

     This event also occasioned another lesson for me later on, deep into my high school days, when a female classmate, who had a job at the school helping out in its record-keeping section, reported to me one day that she was very impressed that I had “never missed a day of school, ever”.  

     - But what about that day in elementary school, when...???

     The doings of the adult world - where, e.g., schools get financial credit for the number of pupils who are actually in attendance each day - were still ahead of me, in life’s little bundles (not always nicely-wrapped presents; but usually somewhat concealed) of mysteries. 




6 What is it about the Atlantic that is niggling away at my mind...ah yes.  Conroy again: "...which in its immensity and silence, waited for all things."  Including my return across it to this distant shore.  Not the distant shore.  But close...