An Evening in the Land of Lilliput by Constantine Gochis

The location of dad's tale: A restaurant that used to be at 8284 Melrose Avenue, in Los Angeles, Le Chardonnay. It was a dark and comforting beautifully appointed shimmering space. Today, the vegan restaurant Crossroads occupies the corner lot. 

It is rare that I appear in any of Dad's stories. I do remember this particular evening well, and much he relates in his rendition of it. Funny how his bemused critique of me and my spending habits in the context of this story, so many years after his death, still rankles, almost as much as it did back when he was alive. I had to remember, then, as I do now, that he was a product of the Depression and any price above that of the first half of the century would always be understandably immoral to him. And like all human beings, he had his moments of contradiction between word and action.

Allow me preface with a few other things he either did not remember or did not think significant for this tale of two Gullivers. The evening was the result of a bet, about what I can no longer recall, between us.  My father was given to pronouncements about an abundance of subjects and in an impulsive moment in which I disagreed on whatever it was that was causing a debate between us, we bet that the loser would take the other out.  I did indeed pick the place. My father is correct that I enjoyed the restaurant scene, but really, he must have forgotten that he and my mother were the ones who developed those tastes. When I was a child in the Bronx, in the days before the expectations of baby sitters, I used to go with them to various Manhattan locales, like the Rainbow Room, The Top of the Sixes, the Cave Henri IV (37 East 64th Street), the Cattleman, along sometimes with my younger cousins. And, as well, my father was our weekend gourmet cook. I developed an, let's say, "educated" palate way back in the 1960s. It was a source of some irritation for me as an adult daughter, that my father would chide me for being a spendthrift at a restaurant, when my entire immediate family used to go out to the well known eateries on a regular basis as I was growing up, up to and including El Morocco while insisting that I should have known that they didn't have much money.  On the other hand, at this stage of my life, I recognize the gift he gave me in reminding me to save, to make wise decisions about jobs and pensions and medical benefits along with the value of the 99 Cents Store (which I did not concede to until late in my life; alas they are gone now).  God willing and the creek don't rise, should things remain as they have been, I won't be the bag lady he worried mightily I might become. As to the interaction with Mr. Leonard, Dad has it mostly the way I recall it, except, when I saw Mr. Leonard, my father wasn't facing me or him, but looking into the restaurant chasm in a rather distracted way. I had to draw his attention to Mr. Leonard. And it was this quick response when I said, "Dad, this is Sheldon Leonard," and Dad simply uttered, "Tall, Dark and Handsome" without preamble.  I definitely agree that if the ladies with Mr. Leonard hadn't been so downright disagreeable, that Mr. Leonard would have invited us to share their table. 

A note on Sheldon Leonard. He wasn't just an actor with a New York hard edge and accent (e.g It's A Wonderful Life), but he was a major television producer, The Danny Thomas Show, Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle, Dick Van Dyke, I Spy. He also was a director. He was about 90 when we met him. He looked strong and well, taller than his 6 foot frame. I found him charming. I believe he died shortly thereafter. I was surprised since he had seemed so hale and hearty 

Dad clearly enjoyed the meeting and the meal--though as you can see, the tone has always seemed, as it relates to me, a bit of a left handed compliment. 

Given a choice between two identical items, my daughter, Djinna, will choose the more expensive.

It is as if some shadow of opprobrium affixes itself to a bargain.  I feel as if I am engaged in "heresy"; that I am ungrateful, particularly since I have been the beneficiary of this profligacy, to wit, an eight hundred dollar refrigerator, a cruise to Ensenada, a bowl full of book-matches that announce to the world that I have been treated to the most trendy restaurants of this town, and then some.

I am not surprised, therefore, at the oppulence of her choice, one evening, a very French locale, called "Le Chardonnay". The restaurant does not solicit notoriety or patrons.  It has a narrow anteroom, rather like Gibraltar is to entry to the Mediterranean, a Scylla and Charybidis the patrons must pass through before the reservation is verified.  

A well-appointed gentleman arrived just behind us, accompanied by two elderly women, one assisted by a walker. 

"Excuse me," says the more ambulatory lady.  "I'm sorry", says my daughter to no further acknowledgment from the impatient ladies who squeeze themselves to the front, where a Maitre d' posts himself, as if to protect from further assault. 

"Sir", I her Djinna's voice. "I do not generally do this, but are you Sheldon Leonard?" 

"I am", says a very pleased Sheldon Leonard. 

"My father is a long-time fan" she adds, though I would characterize my interest in celebrity as somewhat less than the adulation of fandom, generally people whose names I do not remember, and recognize by associations, a movie, or some other conditioned stimulus.

"Yes", I say. "Tall, Dark and Handsome", which is one of his films.

The pleased Sheldon Leonard addresses the indifferent ladies in a loud familiar voice. "The gentleman remembers a 1941 film!"  My daughter recalls that he refers to it as his first film.  No matter.

The ladies are now visibly annoyed, and make no response.

Sheldon--I feel I may take this familiar tone--shakes my hand.  He has a strong handshake.  He is led--before us--by the Maitre d' but I do manage a parting comment.

"Mr. Leonard, you were indeed a great 'bad guy'".  I know he would like to hear more about the days when his bulging eyes, sneering lips, and menacing Bronx accent brought terror to the screen "good guys", as in this film, Cesar Romero.  I would have liked to have pursued this discussion.  I have always been curious about the female lead, Patricia Gilmore, whom I suspect stems genealogically to the Gilmore Bank.  While I sense he would like to talk about yesteryear, I suspect also that one of the impatient ladies is his wife, and perhaps the other his mother-in-law. What mortal man can deal with this combination? We are not invited to join them.

How does that saying go--that a prophet is least regarded in his home town? 

We are seated.  Our waiter is French, wise and experienced. His outer conformation, though, gives him the look of an Irish leprechaun. He is formal at first, but seems to warm up.

The splendor of the high ceilings, the enorous plate glass windows, the elaborate wine list, from an already expensive twenty-five dollars, "Ad Astra", to the stars, to the a la carte menu of gastronomic opulence, with their prices to match--I could not have expected less from my daughter.

I do not recall what Djinna ordered.  For me, I saw a futility is looking for moderation on the menu, so I went for the best--a Gibson, with three onions, to submerge intimidation, Lobster Bisque, superb and only ten dollars, Filet Mignon, perhaps two inches thick, a bottle of Puilly Fuisse, wrong with red meat, and likely to raise the eyebrow of the impish waiter, but a wine I like, expresso, two brandies, Remy Martin, the most expensive I could think of, to top it all off.  The cost for two, one hundred and forty nine dollars.  I left the tip, out of mercy. On the way out, a sartorially elegant proprietor beamed and bid us a good night.

Perhaps a matter I should have mentioned previously--Djinna sighted a graying Rory Calhoun at some point in the evening. I am not quick to record these sightings. Still, I have to give her credit, how many people do you know who know who Sheldon Leonard and Rory Calhoun are?

A Fragment of Dad as a Journalism Student

After World War II, my dad finished high school and went to NYU on the GI Bill. He even began a graduate program.  His interest then was journalism. Among the exercises of his class in 1948 were these mini autobiographies. I ran across a part two of one of them, which I include here. By the time he died in 2008, watching our journalistic ethics declining, along with the American civilization, I am guessing he did not regret his ultimate decision not to pursue the field.

The months go by.  Of all the subjects encountered, those concerned with writing seem of lesser significance.  Yes, he would like to write but he is aware, now, of the tons of ore through which he must sift in order to extract the little nuggets of knowledge necessary to make the attempt worthwhile.  He is slightly disappointed in journalistic writing since there seems little about it that inspires him, either because of intrinsic worth or idealistic content.  Still, it has a kind of mehanical perfection, a polish, and it is desirable still, not in its original lustre, for its own sake, but as a tool.

In a short period of time, a kind of haze has been lifted. The events of the past have, for him, a new significance when viewed in retrospect.  Not so long ago, he wandered about the ruins of ancient Cathage unaware of the fact that he was treading on the results of an economic struggle that is still going on; a few short years ago, he witnseed the evidences of an economic, physical and moral deterioration in many of the countries of Europe, with the compassion one allots to a passing tramp. When the fighting was done, he marvelled at the buildings of the Farben Industrie, intact among the most grotesque ruins in history and thought that this deliverance was an act of Providence.

Now he is aware of an intricate maze of knowledge that must be penetrated in order that he might better understand what he can only suspect.  Education, therefore, is what he requires. That a course leads to a Bachelor of Science degree is important only in so far as it is a step in the right direction; that it provides the technical ability necessary to transport sheafs of paper to and from a copy desk means nothing; that it provides a skeleton upon which to build an education, is, nowever, mandatory.  

And so he is content in his choice of Journalism as a major field of study.  For it is a course not given to the exclusive explorations of the abstractions of the ancients nor devoted entirely to teaching the difference between a debit and a credit column.  It is a course that considers the dynmaic contemporary world and yet does not neglect to point out that civilization is vertically dependent on history.  It leads to specialization and yet educates to the overall significance of the interacting forces of civilzation.  And lastly, it provides for the individual a means whereby he can indulge in that driving force that so needs expression--the desire to create.  

The Wine Skin Foot by Constantine Gochis

Dad wrote so many stories that there are actually ones I hadn't really read previouly.  This very short one was, until today, among them. It is dated October 11, 2004. 

There are men for whom war is calamitous beyond destruction and death.  Lieutenant Byrnes was one of these. 

I knew him well.  We were assigned together, after combat, to a support unit in a zone of the Interior. He was not the usual GI Joe.

As to the rest of us, it must be said that Sherman was not totally right.  War is not always Hell. There was food and drink in our new digs and music and dance, a few American nurses and a surfeit of native girls. Often, there was a melange of all mentioned categories for those who would partake.  This assignment was hardly burdensome.

Except perhaps for Lieutenant Byrnes. He eschewed all the available pleasures, save for one, whiskey.  He preferred to remain alone in his room on the second floor of a former Italian Caserna, a soldier's barracks, while below, we were in gaiety, the tinkle of glasses toasting an occasion, then later, more intimate whispers of amity that despite their low volume, filtered through the flimsy walls.

Lt. Byrnes had his respite to solitude in his consumption of a sufficiency of cognac--the only alterntive to the merciful ministrations of an elusive Morpheus.

It is not that the rest of us were unaware of his legendary self-discipline. A kindly disposed soul would occasionally trot an extra signorina or two to his cell for his consideration, but his response was always the same, "My wife wouldn't like it."

Byrnes, in civilian life, was an associate professor of Antiquities at an Eastern American college, which he spoke of modestly in deference to his wife, who was a full professor of Ancient history, and we all surmised, the reason for his solitude and its contiguous chastity. In more visible testimony thereto, there was a plaque in cursive script enshrined on his wall, which he said his wife had given him as a parting gift.  It read:

"Loose not the wine-skin foot, thou Chief of men, until to Athen thou art come again."

We all recognized the quotation to be of intellectual quality, but we had no glimmer of understanding. I was curious, but we did not intrude.  My much later college education abstractedly elucidated its meaning. 

Now I do not wish to suggest that the gods of Olympia might have intervened or cause and effect in any manner, but it seems to me that there is no greater aphrodisiac to many women than a man who refuses to partake of their particular essence.

Her name was Marissa and her form--truly sculpted by Divinity--adorned by long black tresses in the fashion of a then popular movie star, Veronica Lake. No one knows how they met. Some say she haunted the second floor. However they met, they did, cohabitated and soon Marissa was with child.

I was suddenly shipped home.  He said something strange before I left, "Don't judge.  I'll write you."  He did not. I had not judged. I wondered about his need to tell me anything at all.

The rest of the story came to me from his wife in a surprising letter many years later. 

"Brian is dead," she began.  "Before he died he asked me to explain his violation of the oracular script that adorned his wall in your barracks.  I realized after he confessed to me when he returned that he took my professorial joke too seriously, and struggled mightily in that your unit was a veritable oda."

"By the way," she added, "we adopted the child of his one adventure. He is nineteen, a veritable Theseus, an ancient hero who was similarly conceived when he also ignored the warning, '. . .loose not the wine-skin foot. . .". 

I presented to Brian a beautiful daughter. Coincidentally, she is nineteen also."

 

"Tango Anyone" by Constantine Gochis

I am having a terriblly lethargic, probably depressive day. My inclination is to go back to bed. Well, actually, I did try to do that already. My cat even joined me. But after about an hour of occasional drop offs into near sleep interrupted by mind filling discursive thoughts, I got up again. I have plenty to do, and I don't want to do any of it. But I also feel a press not to make this day a total waste. There must be something, something that will be a contribution, an advance, small perhaps, but definite, that I can do. "Ah," I have concluded,  "I have plenty of Dad stories in hard copy still in a drawer. Let me pull one out and put it on the blog." 

The blog has had an interesting phase, no thanks to any significant effort on my part. It is getting a lot of hits lately, over 4000 just this month. For a long time, one of my entries, on a late former co-worker (long gone since 1987) has gotten a lot of interest, because the subject of my memory has a certain fame in the form of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. I should tell you they aren't my theories nor the central theme of my entry at the time. But this doesn't account for the sudden upsurge by itself. I digress, as is my wont. I inherited this trait from my father, one of many I have come to see, although when he was alive I would have denied it. Point is, at least this entry to follow, a story of my father's which I think is mostly true, as I know he once told me about taking dance lessons at Arthur Murray, will not make the day a total waste. Maybe if you are having a lost day, maybe the read will give you a little smile. Remember that period like in the 90s, when Scent of a Woman was a big flash? It was a big flash way earlier than that. 

Tango Anyone?

One of the passions of my youth is the Argentine Tango.  I become an affectionado of the music, particularly of the strict, precise rhythmic stylings of Edmundo Ros and his "compadres" from that mythical "Cafetin de Buenos Ayres" where Tango is a religion rather than a dance.

I never do get to learn the dance itself. Life has a way of interposing so much of inconsequence in the way of truly valuable things in our brief journey.  Now, in the autumnal days of my life, there is a resurgence of the rhythm and the dance. Night clubs are flourishing that provide Tango nights. Several movies have the Tango as the theme and more are in process. For me, the interest is still there, but only in old memories.

I hear there is a senior center near me offering classes of instruction. There seems to me an anomaly about ancient bodies of creaking joints attempting what was once thought a viable alternative to sex--metaphorically, of course.

Tango is a required dance in the annual competitions, the Latin phase of such events. Sadly, the dancers have none of the flavor of the Argentine originals. The couples have adopted jerky head movements which to me seem like robotic gyrations, overstylized and inanimate as opposed to pulsing humanity.

In my teen years I frequent a night club in the New York area that is heavily Germanic in poppulation.  It is called the "Corso". It has a continental ambience, with two orchestras, one given entirely to the Latin dances, the Rhumba, Conga, and most important, the Tango, with one exception--the Viennese Waltz, which could not be trusted to an American orchestra, which might have rhythm, but not a precise one.

In those pre-war days, both sides of the street, Eighty-Sixth, between Second and First Avenues are occupied by Teutonic bistros similar to the "Corso".  One, in particular, hosts the weekly meetings of uniformed member of the Nazi Bundists. We are not angry at the time at Hitler, and war is still very far away from New York City.  The clubs are simply where boy meets girl.  They are universally successful.  The ladies come in pairs or groups and occupy the tables.  The guys cluster at the bar hovering over their beer steins until the music starts at which point they amble in full masculine plumage toward a target of opportunity to solicit a dance.  The boys and girls become very friendly indeed through this very popular rite of Spring.

But I digress.  I started this discourse on the subject of the Tango.  

I do not learn the dance well enough to meet the epicurean standards of the elites who frequent the "Corso", so I decide to get some instruction on the subject. I am usually slow to follow my resolutions so before I do, the war finally interposes itself, I marry, making the acquisition of this skill of less urgency.  It is some ten years later that I catch a television interview with Arthur Murray and his wife, Catherine, in which they extol the virtues of their national dance studios.  I decide to take a few lessons. My wife looks at me quizzically, but I assure her that I will share my newly acquired expertise with her alone.  

I find an Arthur Murray studio on 43rd Street on the East Side of Manhattan. The hostess interviews me in a large mirrored room at a small desk. "Do you dance?" she queries.  I answer with modesty, "Some."

She rises, places a record on the phonograph and invites me to the dance.  The record is of special construct, taking us through a variety of rhythms--waltz, rhumba, fox trot, even a paso doble, then a popular Latin dance.  

We return to our interview locale.  She withdraws a form from the desk.  In size, it is 8 1/2 by 11, but unfolds downward until it is almost as tall as I.  I only see such a form when I am still in the military.

She begins to check boxes, mouthing, as if to herself.  "Needs instruction in leadership, balance, has sense of rhythm. . ."

I wait patiently as she makes other check marks with other comments. Finally she addresses me.  

"We have just the course for you," she says. "It is a lifetime course, which allows you twelve social events in our ballroom.  It's on sale now, just eight thousand. . . ." I interrupt.  "I would like five lessons in the Tango."

 

She ignores me.

"Well, perhaps that's a little steep." She then makes a precipitous descent from eight to four to three, all in the thousands. 

I stop the free falls.  "I would like just five lesons in the Argentine Tango."

She manages a few more offrs, the last in the area of eight hundred, and then retreats to a more defensible position.  

"Ok," she says, "if you change your mind you can apply the payments for your lessons to a new contract."

I am led to a private room, also mirrored.  I am introduced to a very short sturdy looking girl.  I was sure that if one took her waist as a point of demarcation, she was divided into two equidistant parts.  We were introduced and the hostess leaves us to our destiny.

The first lesson is a disaster.  My intructress is an addict of the Mambo.  I end up holding her hand as she gyrates around the room to the drums of the ubiquitous Mambo Number Five by Perez Prado.  

I receive five lessons some of which deal with the Tango.  I learn several patterns.  During each session the hostess appears and they hold whispering conferences.  The hostess is checking on her progress in selling me a more advanced course. The last remark, though whispered, reaches my ears.

"Ya wanna try and sell him? You try." She stomps one of her sturdy, short legs for emphasis. 

I use the three patterns I learn to good advantage.  No one really knows what a real tango looks like, so I fake it on occasions when the need arises.

About Arthur Murray and his studios?  A New York Post reporter enrolls in a "Lifetime" course, and discovers that you can use a lifetime up very quickly.  She talks to many elderly ladies, some of whom are on their second and third crack at a lifetime. You see, the charming young dance instructors also lend their skills at the social get togethers and become as necessary to the dancers as a psychotherapist is to modern clients.  Extras diminish the longevity of the "Lifetime Course".  The reporter, I remember her first name, Gail, writes of the higher education of the "Dance".

I wonder if Arthur returns the money laid out for her "Lifetime Course", after she goes undercover.

It's my guess she does not get her money back.  The newspaper gets its expose, but I know of a charming senior lady who reads all the articles and signs up for her third "Lifetime Course" with a smile. 

That Time I Met Loretta Swit

It was summer 1979. I had always told myself and others (for reasons that even in dotage I really can't adequately explain since I had little desire for its inherent contentiousness) from the age of 14 that I was going to be a lawyer.  I had just then finished law school--although my heart was being tugged in a very different direction, concurrently to the idea of working in radio because of my introduction to the Fordham College Radio Station WFUV, and writing speculation scripts for the then many great comedy series on TV because I had been a cast member on the WFUV show Diploma City, written by my college friend, Lenspeaks. I had even compulsively written a few scripts which were produced on the show. I had already fallen in love with Los Angeles on my first visit in 1977. The year 1979 was my third visit and I planned, if somehow I could develop the chutzpah that was not a quality natural to me,  to move there. I would have to pass the Bar in New York, and then in California and get a job to do it, but in a rarity for me, I was optimistic I was capable of it. I had long since fallen out of love with New York in the Koch years, and needed a dramatic change. Los Angeles was in the late 70s and 80s a very different place from New York, even more then than it is now--having now become a crowded, often dirty city, like the New York of 1981 I ultimately ran from. 

Lenspeaks was my travel buddy. We were then writing partners hoping that one of the scripts we had to show our abilities (including for MASH, then long popular in the culture) would launch us out of the regular working world into a little writing cottage on one of the studio lots. He had already made the acquaintance of another Fordham alum, Thad Mumford, (see an earlier blog entry on him after his too early death in 2018), who, having read our stuff, was very encouraging. Thad offered to show us one of the studios we would have killed to work out of (well, I would have; well, ok, not literally; it was a fantasy that had some promise of reality), this one where MASH was made, Twentieth Century Fox on Pico Boulevard. Thad was a writer, and later a producer, along with his late writing partner, Dan Wilcox, on the show. It's been 46 years so I know the details of my memory are less vivid; but not the feeling of that day, one of two aspiring Hollywood writers getting a personal look at how the script sausage got made. As we were walking in not far from the front gate where the Hello Dolly! elevated train station still sat completely (Len says that a portion is still there but I can't see it as I pass by in my car these days) intact. Thad, Len and I approached a man eating a yogurt cup. I can't swear to it, but I have had the name stuck in my head from that day and time, and had not previously been that aware of him, and I have confirmed by Google that he was indeed on that lot at about that time, but it was Marshall Brickman, the writing partner of Woody Allen. Thad said some really nice things, the swell your head kind of things, about our bright futures in television. I can't give you exact sequence right now but I think one of the first things we did was to get a quick view of the writer's room, where Thad and his partner worked. The thing about studios I have always liked and the reason I know I would have felt at home on one of them (aside from having a great creative career for which I got paid), is that they feel like a college campus. Effectively, they are. And the little cottage in which Thad and Dan worked made me feel so comfortable. I imagined myself trilling away (this was pre-computers) on my typewriter in that great space, taking a break to enjoy the Commissary, which was our next (I think)  stop, for lunch. I swear I remember Walter Matthau at a nearby table, but since Len doesn't remember that (he saw other folks on another visit of his own) maybe it's my imagination, along with the fact that I think I had a Cobb salad, because at some point, there, or elsewhere, I quipped about a Lee J. Cobb salad. (I know, buud a bum). 

I am not sure how it happened but as we were walking to the set of the SWAMP, there she was, Loretta Swit, Hot Lips Houlihan herself, with a bit of an entourage that included a handsome man of about her age, that I somehow decided she was attached to in some way socially. I mention in passing that it has occurred to me it might have been her only husband, Dennis Holohan, whom himself was a lawyer trying his hand at acting, with whom I had acquaintance over the years in another arena entirely. However, I don't think she had met Mr. Holohan at that point in her life or career. He would later be on an episode of MASH himself, playing Margaret Houlihan's love interest. So, I can only say there was someone with her. We were briefly introduced. I remember her as prettier than she sometimes seemed on the screen, and breezier. She was in a good mood, and was ever too briefly introduced to us. I would have loved to chatter but everyone was moving toward the set. Along the way, we got a wave and hello from Harry Morgan, and somebody introduced us to David Ogden Stiers, but mispronounced his last name, which he corrected in the patrician manner one would expect of Major Winchester. 

We spent the next I can't say how long watching the cast film part of an episode called, "Mr. and Mrs. Who", with guest actor, James Keane (from the Paper Chase TV show). I was entranced by the complete design, the detailed design of the SWAMP and the medical bay. I am always amazed by the talent of the artists who create the scene for the actors to do their part, the part that is always most noticed, but not always the most spectacular, although I was a fan of the talent of all these actors. 

At a break, Len and I were able to say hello to fellow Fordham alum Alan Alda, Hawkeye himself. He looked exactly as he does on screen, then with a wash of black hair that fell onto his forehead and in the surgeon costume. When we told him we were also from Fordham, he asked what year we graduated, and upon our 1976! he said that we were babies compared to him a late 1950s grad. 

I can't remember how we disengaged from our visit there, but it has always been a happy memory. Alas a television writing career was not mine to be had, and Len went on to another partner. Still, it is not small source of pride and delight that I had two connections with a groundbreaking show, one, a friendship with the late Thad Mumford, (we watched the last episode with him and his late love Roz Doyle in 1982 at his lovely little house) and a passing visit to a pretty big bit of television history.

RIP Loretta Swit and those who went before you from that time and place. 

Crimes and Misdemeanors by Constantine Gochis

After yet another lengthy hiatus, I am back to looking at Dad's stories and culling them for this and other efforts at letting the world see what otherwise would remain anonymous--his writing talent.  As I am the last in the immediate family line, there simply is no one to whom to leave anything of Dad's or of mine. My extended family is large, but my parents, for reasons of their own kept me separate from nearly all of them when I was growing up; of the few I did or do know, our contacts were limited over the years. There were efforts at recontact, but once we all hit adulthood, relationships just did not develop. No one to blame. Just the way it was. Still, I have always been interested in the posterity of others, family or otherwise, especially since I read the Alexander Masters book "A Life Discarded". The book tells the story and speculations about a series of diaries found in a trash bin in England, and about the person who wrote them. I am fascinated by the stories of others, and I guess the truth is, I hope somebody or many people will be fascinated by my father's and my stories (I have inherited the rather undisciplined desire to write). While I am a fervent believer in God, Providence and Eternity, and the Immortality of the Soul, I admit that I resist the idea of people being forgotten in this life, particularly after those who knew them are themselves forgotten. 

This story I somehow never read before. I have no idea if it is true. Was my father arrested as a sixteen year old for a failure to have a license to sell peanuts? Could be? His stories usually combined facts with fiction. And political lament. 

 CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

In the summer of 1934 I was arrested by two plain clothes detectives in front of the entrance to the Bronx Botanical Gardens.  There was no such thing as a Miranda right in those days. The charge was peddling peanuts without a license.

I was husteled, unceremoniously, to a holding area where there were corralled several dozen miscreants of a similar category--peddlars of all descriptions, from frankfurters to ice cream pops.

It was noon when I was deposited among this crop of criminals, most of whom were much advanced in age beyond my sixteen years.  I was received with parental like concern.  I learned my first lesson in dealing with the "Cossacks", the appellation then current among those downtrodden.  "Ya shdda said you was fifteen", I was advised. "They don't pick you up if y'are under sixteen."

We were being held for Night Court.  It was not until the sun was deep in retreat in the sky that the ominous vans arrived to transport us to the western "Chateau D'If", the Tombs, that forbidding tower of justice for the iniquitous.  We were herded into the black panelled vehicles for the ride "downtown."  

It appears there were no gradations of criminality of criminality at the Tombs. We were packed into already overcrowded cells, occupied to satiation by every category of felon, to await adjudication, to bgin at 10 p.m., traditionally.

Then, we were led before the 'bench' in groups of twelve. As instructed, we offered our Constitutionally endowed plea of "Guilty" in a chorus.  There were no dissenters. We were fined, "Two dollars or two days."

I chose the two days. Two dollars was a mighty sum in those days. Perhaps it would be best to end this narration, but honesty compels me. . . I was retured to the cell where the residual, unprocessed criminals were housed. I learned about "craps", the cubes that Julius Caesar is said to have thrown. I lost the two dollars I should have used for the fine in one roll. 

But these were days of promise. There was nothing to fear, as the sainted Franklin intone, "except fear itself.'  This had a sonorous ring, almost equal to the deposed President's offering, that engineer whose expertise could feed the starving revolutionaries of the Soviet Union, but was ineffective to stem the burgeoning bread lines he created, "Prosperity is just around the corner!" Neither phrase were the palliative equal to the "Chicken in every pot!" offered centuries ago by a Roman Caesar. But I guess it was better than Bread and Circuses. After all, this was America.

Last Cup of Tea at Una's Cottage

Una's little home on a corner lot in Los Angeles sold quickly. No doubt a developer will demolish it and put up one of those square monsters which rents for something between 3,500 and 6,000.00 a month or more.  I cringe, but all things pass and sometimes you can feel a harsh wind as it does, slamming the door of a beloved past.

Una's daughter, Joey, one of eight raised in that very house, had lived with Una in her last several years. Now that Una is gone and the house sold, and she was ready to leave Los Angeles to be closer to one of her own two daughters in another state, a couple of us wanted to take her out for a proper goodbye lunch. And, to be frank, to have one last look at the house in which many of us had gathered for parties, and brunch and spontaneous cups of tea on any random visit. I always feel a little guilty about this, as I said in a prior entry, because I can't imagine what it is for an already large family to have to share her, that all over the place there are people who had adopted Una as their surrogate mother. And just as the kids, at her funeral, pointed out that they vied for her attention growing up, I think it is likely true for some, ok, many of us, that we vied for her attention as well. And it was always special when we got it.

The house is pink, inside and out. Una loved pink, and if you visited, you loved pink also. I closed my eyes and imagined where things used to be as I walked on the wood floors that now echoed the sound of my footsteps. To the right of the door, a baby grand piano, overflowing with photographs of children, grandchildren, nieces, friends of long standing. In my memory, the piano wasn't played much, and every time I saw it, I told myself that one day I'd go back to lessons and retrieve the skill I had begun to have as a child. To the left a hand made tapestry of Una and the names of each of her children. A large side table filled with alcohol that only came out at the St. Patrick Day parties. And next to it, a grandfather clock that bespoke days gone by, a time of gentility and family. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. On an opposite wall, near the entrance to the dining room, a tapestry church chair, with high back, that Una's Monsignor Uncle had given to her years before. I had never really noticed the lovely fireplace at the long end of the room, complemented by two French doors. At the main one opaque wall a couch, pink of course, with country scene paintings above it. And a large cocktail type table in front, also full of things that reminded of friends and family, little gifts, or vases of flowers. Then you'd move into the heart of the house as I reckoned it, the dining room, the place of weekly Sunday dinners, and the repository for chili and roast beef and turkey and ham with the trimmings for frequest party buffets, and of course, for the spontaneous cup of tea when you visited. Every time you visited, pretty much without fail on the delicate Aynsley bone china, a Pembroke reproduction of an 18th century design, feature flowers and a perched hummingbird. I mentioned last time I wrote that it was lese majeste to place a carton of milk on the table. Always the milk or half and half had to be in a proper comparable china dispenser. Another rule, we all knew, bar none, was that no cup went without a saucer. Mugs just weren't done. On sunny days, everyone went outside to the patio, surrounded by high hedges and offering a fair amount of grassy ground for a house in Los Angeles. I hear the cross mixed voices and the laughter of people that have long passed. And now, so too is the house. One day I will pass the monstrosity that replaces it (I do hold out hope otherwise, but it is a remote one), and it will be as if it never were there---except my memory will know, and the photos I took to preserve the visual as best as I could. In one of the back rooms, my companion and I noticed a box with the remnants of the china, some big plates and saucers for the tea cups. There were no tea cups. I really wanted to ask to take one or two of those plates as a memento, but I was afraid to ask. Happily, my companion did, and we both took with us evidence of a lovely, warm memory. 

As we left, on the way to Hugo's for lunch, I noticed that some of the multiple rosebushes at the front of the house (and there were many at the back), were gone. I did ask about that because if the china was one of the material items that evoked Una, so were the rosebushes that gave the most splendid blossoms. Since Joey wasn't leaving until a few days later, I wanted to see if I could come back and take a small one for my little terrace. And it would be another chance to say a goodbye to Joey before her adventure to a new chapter of her life. 

So on April 1, I came by, and was given entry by one of Una's sons who happened to be removing rose bushes in the back, I assume to be planted at his house or the homes of one of the other adult children who live in the area. Joey was doing some last minute errands and I sat outside on the patio, as I had done many times before and could not imagine I would not again after today. Joey returned and asked, "Do you want a cup of tea?" I could barely restrain a tear as I can barely restrain as I write this. Una's very words. The usual china was gone now completely, and what Joey had were mismatched pieces I didn't recognize. There was no milk but Joey had a liquid vanilla extract with Bourbon, which we used as a substitute. And was quite tasty. We reminisced on the patio where endless numbers of people had gathered over the 70 years that Una owned that house. I had been one of them. It's a fact I will cherish. 

The last cup of tea at Una's. I was honored. 

And I got a small rosebush. I am not sure if the transfer will allow it to survive, and I've never had much of a green thumb, but today I notice a bud. And it makes me very happy. 

The cottage itself, home for 70 years and the site of much joy.

The path to the front door

The back patio

Joey

The dishes of wonderful memory 

Many of us helped wash dishes after a gathering here~

This chandelier hung above the dining table

Una (Devlin Lynch): A Remembrance

 How many times have you heard an elderly person say, "Everyone I knew and loved has died!" 

As the years pass, that phrase has begun to resonate with me.  I realize that I have been losing people I care about since I was quite young, since the day my mother died at age 48, when I was 20. As likely do we all, I had the illusion that things which had been so seemingly settled for years, and the people that populated my days, would always be there. And then they weren't. And as I get older the losses increase as they inevitably must. What was it that Edna St. Vincent Millay (I think) said:  I know. I understand. But I am not resigned. 

One of the most reliable of the people in my life was Una Lynch. The idea that she wouldn't be there as long as I was, was one I pushed aside. I already knew her for nearly 40 years. She was tough. Stalwart. Bounded back always. 

I would say that she was the "mother of us all", all being the community of St. Victor Parish in West Hollywood. I tend, as I am guessing many of her friends did and will continue to do so, to consider her in a most proprietary way as a mother substitute-- just for me. 

Una was the niece of one of the early long running pastors of St. Victor's, Monsignor John Devlin.  I don't have all the details, but she left Ireland in about 1949, when she would have been just 23 years old and came to the United States. Whether she intended to stay I do not know, but she did, and became an institution at St. Victor's and in the lives of those who met her there (and elsewhere). 

My introduction was circa 1986, when I decided that my reversion to the Catholic Faith and to regular attendance at Church was firm enough to become an active part of the parish. I met Una at one of my first immersions into some group, and there was Una. With a reserved, but definite warmth, she invited me to have a "cup of tea" with her at the local IHOP just down the road off Holloway Drive, where the Church is situated. I don't recall what we spoke about, no doubt she inquired as to my history somewhat, and I don't remember if I actually had tea, being an inveterate coffee drinker on my father's side. (My mother, a first generation Irish American woman, was the tea drinker in our family, always from a large Russell Wright mug, which I still have). But not long thereafter, I was invited to the Sunday dinners at her little cottage on Orlando Street (in my podcast I said that it was West Hollywood; she would be scandalized for she was very insistent that it was the border, and in Los Angeles). It was there I became acquainted with about five of her 8 children. I was a little embarrassed at being Una's friend. Not because Una wasn't spectacular, and kind, but because it seemed rather odd that, though I was the age of most of her kids or in the vicinity, I wasn't one of their friends, but the friend of a woman my late mother's age. I thought they might think me a bit what? frumpy? Nerdy? Yeah, in those days such things still worried me. But I was mesmerized by the liveliness of these dinners, and that all sorts of people, friends of the kids, other friends of Una's, many from St. Victor, were also invited on a regular basis. I understood later on that Una's mother had been an unusual working mother, in Ireland, where Una was born (County Cork), and it sounded as if people coming and going socially was not a huge part of Una's young life. Una took the opposite approach. She opened her home to all her friends and her friends' friends.  "Come over and have a cup of tea!" was a refrain. A comfort to hear always. 

Her children grew up in that not so little house, of, let's see, five? bedrooms, but still crowded when it came to 8 kids. And she was, in the 1960s, a single mother. Although I assume that she had the support and help of her uncle should she need it, Una raisde them all alone. Finances were tight she always said, but she was proud of the fact that she managed to assure all of them had an education. Like many a mother she would joke that "none of them is in jail" or some such mini-prideful comment. In fact, among the vocations are lawyer, journalist and entertainment producers in the mix, and fathers, and wives and children and grandchidren. The line of Una Lynch is guaranteed for many a year going forward. 

She was a bookkeeper for some Hollywood folk. She was for a time the Principal of the Saint Victor grammar school though she herself, I believe, had never gone to college. She was for years secretary to the parish priests. She was deeply involved in charity, especially St. Anne's for pregnant women. For years, she ran the parish rummage sale which never failed to raise a tidy sum to keep the Church lights on as it were. 

The most important saint in her lexicon was St. Philomena, a Greek princess/martyr, of whom little is known, but is credited with many a miracle. 

Her faith was, in my opinion, heroic in the ordinary way of a Teresa of the Little Flower. It was also pure, uncomplicated. She simply seemed to understand that God's gaze was always upon her, and she quietly and respectfuly loved Him in return. 

Una managed to help out in the Church office until just around the time Covid hit in 2020. After that, she tended to keep to home, but after all she was going on 94 by that time. Her daughter, Joey, made sure Una got outside with a little table for the teapot and the china, so Una could watch the world go by. Una still encouraged visitors to come have a cup of tea. Even as she became unable to walk, and her hearing became worse and worse, she encouraged people to surround her and bask in her kindness and strength. On August 28, 2024, a small group of friends gathered in the dining room that was comfortingly the same as it had been when I attended my first dinner there in the 1980, to celebrate her 98th birthday with her favorite Princess Cake made of Marzipan. I only came to like Marzipan because of Una. It was lovely with that cup of tea. I think many of us knew that this would be the last birthday we would share with her, but it was as life giving as any gatheriing, especially her yearly St. Patrick's ones, she ever had had. 

Una died on December 3, 2024 in her own home, where she had raised her children and welcomed her friends. She died with love and prayer surrounding her. 

One of her friends, a lovely Northern Irish lad named Donal, said, and we all know it is no cliche regarding her, that "we shall not see her like again."  He said it in the original Gaelic. 

Each person I have lost in these last years, that many of us have lost, Fran, Bill, my father, Noreen, Erica, Bill, Barbara and I realize, those that I lost when I was younger, my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousin Barbara, and more, have closed a chapter that I can't, that none of us can turn the page back to---and it reminds us with the joy of having had them, there is the loss-- a loss that was not intended when we were created. Having them, having Una, was a glimpse of Paradise. 

The Mind Boggling Experience of One Los Angelean Amid Wind and Fire

As I write, it is January 16, 2025, one week, two days after the beginning of the conflagrations known now variously as the Palisades Fire, Eaton Canyon Fire, Hurst Fire, Sunset Fire and more.

It is a quintessential California, Los Angeles day, the kind that enticed me on a first visit now nearly 48 years ago. I came in the summer then, so it's a little cooler today, but as then there is that crystalline blue sky and crisp colors of the God Made hills and the man made buildings, and the ability, to enjoy the mostly always temperate weather. I was on my terrace as the sun went down. My hummingbirds seemed unaffected by the trauma many humans and animals have experienced over the last week and two days. I felt even greater warmth for their comforting presence. They were dive bombing each other as usual for that last sip of nectar before the sun sends them into their nightly sleeps in the trees. Happily our trees, though many blown to kingdom come during the wind that fueled flames all around us, were still intact. Tonight, it looked like those of us in West Hollywood were safe enough. Elsewhere the two biggest fires I mentioned, Palisades and Eaton, were still not fully contained, and the destruction they have already wrought has left some of the most beautiful topography and homes in war like desolation. Too many families have lost their loved ones as embers, then flames overtook them. Those who survived lost the artifacts of their years' long memories, more important to most than the valuables left behind that other disgusting human beings have begun to pillage. 

A friend of mine, Andrew McCarthy, also a transplant from New York many years ago, said it best. At once what we are experiencing in this County and City is Paradise and Apocalypse. Even for those of us that were not touched or lightly touched by the experience, there is an almost ungraspable incongruity. Over here, things are as always, driving on the local streets, Santa Monica Boulevard, Fountain, even Sunset, which runs from the ocean to downtown. Much of it is closed in the west. Most is still open on the east side of things where ordinary commerce continues. Over there, there are ashes. There is also a ripping away of the veneer of safety we in America have tended to enjoy--until a disaster strikes and reminds us that our lives are on loan from God, and if you don't believe in God, from the Cosmos.  And if you don't believe in any order at all, from Chaos.

My experience of the fires began on Tuesday last, when I was driving to Santa Monica to visit with an elderly friend who was in rehabilitation from a broken hip. It was about 1 p.m. and I noticed on the horizon a black and white cloud that I assumed was some kind of structure fire.  Once I got to the facility, though, with everyone, from staff to patients watching the TV in the lanai, I first became aware of the Palisades fire. By the time I left at nearly five p.m., the whole sky was blackened. The fire explained why the power was out in the rehab facility, given the closeness of the Palisades to the it. But at that point, there was no indication that there would need to be evacuation, and, strangely and happily enough, though the facility remained in the warning area throughout, there was never the need for its evacuation. The fire remained north of it, though other parts of Santa Monica were threatened. My home is less than 12 miles from Santa Monica, but I was still surprised by the intensity of the traffic as I wended my way home. I assumed they were seeking to get out of the area and well we all needed to do so.  It took an hour and a half for me to make it home, trying all sorts of short cuts in which I ended up blocked. When I looked back through my side view mirror, I saw this:

If there truly is any such disposition, we are "used" to fires and earthquakes in California. There are endless numbers of homeless living in the hills and brush who have tent households and tempt the pagan gods of fire with their cooking, people throw cigarette butts out of their car windows, and broken glass that litters the ground can focus the sun to an ignition of the brush that environmentalists discourage being removed. (I believe the climate changes. It always has. The dinosaurs and other extinct species could testify to it, if they were here now--long before humans had the hubris to think they can dispose the climate to be more cordial).  And wind? Well the Santa Ana's begin in around September and go on through May so, January would not be an unexpected time for a burst that would fan flames. The word was, however, that these winds would be unlike any other, and sure enough they were. On Wednesday, the view from my little West Hollywood terrace (so calm today) was thus:

Malibu and the Palisades were already being consumed. And, like everyone, I was hoping and praying that people and places would be spared. On a glorious sun day, there is nothing like coming out of the tunnel from the 10 to the Pacific Coast Highway and seeing the sparkle ocean and the lines of houses along the beach, and hanging at some of the restaurants that abut the beach. But now, it seemed little was being spared. And there seemed to be surprise by our leaders that it could get so bad, even though there had been advance reports of the wind, and long knowledge of the nature of firestarting, accidental and wilful. Oh, yes, we have those creatures who just like to burn things, called arsonists. 

I watched the live news concerned for others but not particularly concerned for myself or my immediate neighbors. And then they reported there was a new fire, in the hills, less than a mile from me, the Hollywood Hills, Runyon Canyon, and it was sweeping down toward Hollywood Boulevard. That friend who described LA as Paradise and Apocalypse was ordered to be evacuated. The area from there to Sunset, which I abut on my block, was a mandatory one. I was on warning, but it was only one block from mandatory. My HOA folks were walking the roof because embers could easily flee the hills and rest on our building. I would be leaving, though some of my neighbors chose not to do so. I would take my friend to a safe place with my friend Len, relatively safe in the Westwood area, and return to be with my cousin, not too far away, such that she too had a go bag, just in case. I hustled my startled cat into a bag and waited as Andrew walked to me because the traffic had already jammed in his area, and mine was on its way to gridlock.

Two things mitigated that fire such that it was out by the next day. The winds quieted briefly, and the Lake Hollywood Reservoir was nearby for the large air drops from helicopters. I learned about the app Watch Duty and read every update, and listened to KNX 1070 through the night in which I hardly slept. I was lucky as too many people were not.  But for the first time in my life, I had a small sense of what a refugee experiences taking the few belonging they can and escaping the potentiality of destruction--hopefully escaping the potentiality of destruction. 

Days of danger and darkness. They are not necessarily gone. But today, a peace and quiet, at least in this small pocket of Los Angeles. 

I could imagine that it never happened. But it has. A pretty good close up of hell.