Impressions of the City of Los Angeles by Constantine Gochis

 My late father only moved to Los Angeles because of me. I had moved here in September 1981 to seek my adult life. I was mesmerized by the place. It was cleaner than New York. The people were friendly. The drivers were civil and respectful of the pedestrian and of each other vis a vis the rules of the road. The weather was perfect. It was a comparative paradise to the streets of the Bronx, even the nicest streets. And it was the source of the Dream Factory, Hollywood.

My father, like most of our immediate family on both sides of the tree, would have lived and died in the Bronx, and been content. He had enough of travel during World War II and liked his immediate environs. But I was an only child and and slow to individuate, so he came out to live here in an apartment I found for him near Fairfax Avenue, only about 8 months after I came here.

By the time he wrote what follows, probably about 10 years or more after our respective moves, and now over twenty years ago, he had come to positively hate the place he had never liked in the first place Although it could be unbearably hot in New York, and add the humidity, he found the ninety eight here, far more intolerable. The traffic on the FDR drive was at least as impossible and unpleasant, but the traffic here he found incomparable. The buses and trains in New York were graffitti filled, even more than here, where it had not quite caught up. Still, Los Angeles wasn't when he wrote this what I had found when I arrived years before. Even I was beginning to see the damage that the policies of our blue state (before we really used the word with such fervor) leaders were causing in a form of destructive pseudo charity, but I was still able to see the beauty in the place. And I had an otherwise satisfactory life here. 

Here was his take:

The City is an illusion.  It is a sign, high upon a hill. "Hollywood" proclaims the legendary sign. Tall tufted palm trees, stretching ever upward in search of life giving sustenance, turning ever brown in the face of the merciless sun. Los Angeles is a desert. It is an area not intended for the habitation of civilized man. It is a place for dying, thirsting vegetation, for burros, and tumbleweed.

Today is another unreasonably hot day.  Ninety-eight. A broiling sun glares at the moving traffic, from the west. Traffic is bumper to bumper, a solid mass of crawing iron inching past the glorious manicured lawns of the Beverly Hills mansions.  In the morning, this same merciless sun flares at the drivers from the East. There is nothing to shade this onerous glare. Occasionally, the flat landscape is interrupted by an illogically placed tall, square building, phallic like, proclaiming the economic macho of an insurance company.

Over the years I have heard of this great climate, the principal reason for our overpopulation.

There is no predictability to California weather. There are months of mornings when a so called marine mist obscures the sunrise. The afternoon that follows is humid and hot. There is the torrential rains, and the overclogged storm drains.

We are building a subway to nowhere. Public transportation is erratic, its buses filthy, it's drivers unkempt, the side doors of the buses reeking of urine.  The children scratch their illiteracy into the bus windows with glass cutters and knives. They dare the passengers to object to their creativity.

The sound of traffic never stops. Every artery is viscous with the myriad of corpuscular spaced vehicles. The city is contantly in motion. The air turns brown in resentment, but the clamor is against secondary smoke.

Beggars infest Fairfax. A sympathetic judge has ruled that their aggressive tactics were assured by the Constitution.

Los Angeles is a haven for the new age of accentuated ugliness. The streets are stained with the escaping juices of "Big Gulps" and discarded tacos and burgers. We are reaching the perfect state of equality through mediocrity. Beauty hides her face.

Desperate immigrants crowd the corners waiting for an offer of a job. It is perhaps fifteen years since I ventured into the legendary intersection of Hollywood and Vine, that fairy tale location where generously endowed ingenues only had to sit on a stool in a pharmacy to be discovered.

I made one previous visit, long ago, not to marvel at the squares that cover the sidewalks like gilded linoleum tiles, but to return a defective telephone. As I waited, I had the chance to observe my fellow man. Dress is casual ugly. Some have the aura of buzzards waiting to pounce on an unwary target. The street people, now ambulatory after a night of cramped sleep in a doorway, or on some desolate projecting pier, search round for some useful droppings of the more affluent. This is the place where purportedly dreams are manufactured, where one can find the "Maltese Falcon", jewel encrusted and priceless.

An elderly handicapped man wheels his electric conveyance with madcap verve among the people waiting for the bus.  Suddenly, he stops beside me, looks up and says, "In six months you will be riding one of these!"

Rages suffes my being. I am speechless. I want to kill him. But he is gone.

The next day, having deferred to the idea of forgiveness, I am out again. 

He was pushing a Ralph's shopping cart filled with his desultory accoutrements. He was tan, open shirted, sandalled and mustached.

Suddenly, he fell, actually, he collapsed in the manner of a body abandoned by the failure of musculature. In so doing he pushed over his cart, and its contents, a motley assortment of plastic bags and rags, followed by a collection of aluminum cans. 

A companion came to his aid. He righted the cart, gathered the jetsam and lifted the prostrate figure to his feet.

They did not hold. They collapsed like rubber. 

I approached to see if I could help. The most helpless figure raissed his head, supported it with the palm of his hand, and spat out an invective in my direction with a slurred but comprehensible imprecation.

"What d'you want, man?" he shouted, his head wavering in the unsteady hand.

"He is drunk," said his companion, clearly. "He drinks too much."

The companion looked at me not with an apparent sense of penitence for the offensive truculence of his friend. Still I offered him a bill. He refused. He was calm, and gracious, and conscious of the offer to help, but he was asking implicitly to be left alone to deal with another of life's depradations in the pitiless streets of Los Angeles, "La Reina del Cielo", the city of the Queen of Heaven. 

Well, Dad's been gone for nearly 14 years and I think even he would be startled about the level of decline in this state and city, accelerated if it were possible to do so, by the nearly two years of mandates for the rule following ordinary resident, but not for pretty much anyone else beyond the middle of the bell curve. Secondary smoke is not ok for cigarettes, but it is the beloved perfume of pot. Graffitti fully wended its way to the West Coast, for a while dwarfing the problem in New York, though now the delights of New York's policies have restored that city to its Koch era ruin. I am not sure he'd any longer find New York to his liking. A friend has said to me about dad's response to the world, the nation and the states of his former residency, were he alive, would be to have a heart attack. 

Apropos of nothing, perhaps, as I was writing today, I heard that the trial of Jeffrey Epsteins liberated right hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell, which is beginning, is not accessible to live view, which of course means that whatever is going on is being kept from the public who we are ordinarily told deserves to see everything, and here's a factoid--the prosecutor is the daughter of James Comey.

Don't ask any questions. I'm betting though my father would be sitting down and writing an observation about all of this, were he here, which for his sake I am grateful he is not. This is a very hard time to bear. 

Once Upon a Time by Constantine Gochis

 It is time, I think, for another Constantine Story.

Mr. Randolph was one of my father's favorite customers.  It was not that he was a big spender. In fact, he was one of Papa's elite clientele whose nature was never to carry cash, or anything heavy. "Put it on my account, and have the boy bring it up," was the usual interaction. In my pre-teen years, I was the "boy".  But this was not the essence of their close association. 

He was a person who exuded elegance, although somewhat worn. He was carefully attired, carried a can and wore a soft felt hat, tan in color.  He wore it contantly, regardless of sartorial color conflicts.  To my youthful eyes he too seemed somewhat worn, probably not of the very affluent of the neighborhood.

Mr. Randolph was friendly and garrulous. Whether he bought something or not, he frequently became engaged in philosophical discussions with my father. Papa always addressed him as "Professor Randolph" althought he was in fact of more pedestrian accomplishments.

To better understand this application of distinction, it must be explained that my father applied his own value to states of accomplishment.  "Professor" was not a title of reverence for him.  It was a challege, and invitation to a joust. In the society of grat minds, he felt sure that ony the vagaries of early deprivation separated him from the heights of learning.

I suspect that it was Mr. Randolph who introduced my father to an aphorism that my father employed, throughout his life in many dissertations on the profundities of life, one that varied lightly in syntax, "Stay on your feet and limitations," or "Lay on your feet and limitations." It became his paradigm of universal application. 

When he was confounded by the logic of an adversary, he resorted to his store of illustrative fables. It was his riposte. His most pointed rebuttal lay in the story of a man who was sitting on the branch of a tree and sawing it from the inside.  A "professor" who was passing, cautions him that if he continues his action, he will surely fall.  The man, who always replies with pique, responds, "Professor, if you are so smart, tell me when I am going to die."

I do not mean to disparage, though I was told by unimpeachable authority that the high note of his early education in the old country was his feat of tying his master to a tree.

But I temporize.  It seems that in one of the many dissertations with Professor Randolph, the subject of a magical substand, "ergosterol", was revealed to my father. Ergosterol is an enzyme that humans posssess beneath the skin that produces Vitamin D, but only when exposed to the sun.  This revelation had evil consequences of some severity for me.

On the next day after the epiphany, my father directed Mr. Hagiopolis, his employee, to take me to Long Beach for a sunbath.  I was, consequently, badly burned and blistered.  My mother, not yet instructed in the salutary effects of "ergosterol" opined that the event was caused by the "Matia", the evil eye cast upon me by her sisters in law.

The patriarch, however, inspected the areas of holocaust and was pleased. He was of the philosophy that medicine that tastes good is bad, hence, the discomfort of minor burns had to be equally beneficial.

He directed Mr. Hagiopolis to take me back to Long Beach the next day. 

Today's Tale of the Saavy Virus and the Never Ending Proscriptions and Restrictions

I have today, once again, been a good compliant citizen. Frankly, I hate myself for it. And wonder whether there will ever be a time when I will stand up and say "No! This far but no farther!" I went to my local pharmacy and took the booster shot to prop up the vaccination that lasts maybe eight months, but is the sine qua non of permission to move about in our society. 

As I walked to my appointment, I noted the majority wearing their masks outside, though that mandate has not yet been reinstated. I was quasi-amused by a woman who reached her car fully masked and then as she opened the car door, pulled it down and let out a great sneeze as I crossed her path. I noted the streams of dog pee from every planter in front of a commercial/residential building, over which I stepped carefully. But there is no dog pee contamination emergency, so all was well. I was a little early to the courtyard where my pharmacy is, so I sat in one of the public chairs and people watched and read the ever increasing signs on various businesses. One of course, was the requirement to show a vaccine card to staff for indoor dining, where one will still have to wear a mask while standing, but not whilst eating. As I have, and others have observed, this is one heck of a saavy virus, from a medical point of view, because it knows when people are standing and sitting, and when I sit and eat without a mask, the virus is very empathic and does not invade my body. Is that not the science? Airplanes I hear are variously strict (depending on the company and whether the staff were former hall monitors) but when one bites one's meagre food offerings or the ones brought from home, one may lower the mask, but immediately replace it while chewing. That will keep the virus at bay, I have no doubt. Not.

Anyway, back to my people watching. A couple sat next to one another. She was wearing her mask. He was not. They are in love; the virus knows that. It won't allow him to be get infected.

Then my favorite walked by. It was young woman fully masked, again, remember, outdoors, wearing an "Obey" T-Shirt. 

I leave you a link to one explanation of the OBEY shirt line. It was, as I thought, a way to project that you were non-conforming, questioning. 

https://www.highsnobiety.com/tag/obey-clothing/

In the young lady's case, it is a literal truth. Obey. Or be banned. And here, she didn't need to be wearing a mask, outside. But she was. To be fair, as needs I must be, perhaps she has another very good reason for her obedience. But I could not help a slight shiver of cognitive dissonance. 

The other prominent sign on pretty much all the transparent doors was the one that said "Help Wanted" for pretty much all jobs. Now, some people say that the reason for there being a job glut in this arena is that people are getting paid not to work. I buy that this was true, for a while. But many people are no longer getting the hefty unemployment. My personal sense? Since people have to work in hot kitchens and run around serving people at a quick pace wearing masks, I think that they find that impossible. I don't have such a job but I find wearing the mask to shop, when I am compelled to go inside any establishment (as I did to get the booster) tormenting, not a mere inconvenience, which I have been told I must believe it to be.For fifteen days, that might have been a reasonable remonstration. But not going on two years. Sorry. No. But people looking for a job can't say what they think or feel because it is verboten. A friend told me yesterday that someone she knows flew about 5 or 6 hours wearing a mask as required, and when he took it off, the area behind his ears were badly irritated. Too bad. So sad. Right? 

My appointment time arrived. I masked up. My free booster. But you see, it's really not free, any more than the original vaccinations were. It gets charged to all those entities which insure me, and you, and for which our hiking taxes go. Medicare if you are that age. Your company's insurance company. Your third party provider. I showed all my documents, my license, my vax card, my insurance cards. Question. As voter ID is considered heinous, how are those folks without identification getting their shots? Maybe there is a program where you can say, "I have nothing to show you but vax away!" And I must assume that none of these people buy alcohol, at least in California, where you must show ID even if you are Methusaleh on a walker. 

The staff makes you wait fifteen minutes, as you know, after your shot. They hold the vax card until you have attained the full fifteen minutes. After that, you can collapse freely, should that be your fate. No liability for the pharmacy! 

I was hungry before I went for my shot. I was hungry afterwards. I really wanted to get something. But, this little hill I have been sort of standing on---imperfectly, as I showed my card at a nursing home the other day, and on a social occasion I had agreed to attend, though once inside most people weren't wearing masks and no one interdicted, and I will rise above my principles, yet again, when I go to another social occasion in December--I said to myself I can resist it here, now. No shwarma. I love shwarma. No Wokcano. I could go for their hot and sour soup. Nope. Nope. Not even Starbucks. No drive in here, which is what I usually do. No browsing at the modern furniture store that I'd usually do. Small resistances for this girl who always has obeyed authority, who thinks we are being groomed for ultimate control. There will always be a good public health reason.

For example, today I heard that there is a new variant out of South Africa, that has a mutation or more than one mutation causing "immune evasion". 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/25/world/covid-variant-south-africa-immune-evasion-transmissibility/index.html

Did you know that the measles is coming back? You know why? Because during the Covid pandemic lockdowns, parents weren't getting their children vaccinated against the measles.

I believe that when the society tolls all the deaths from "Excess causes" down the ahem, "scientific" road, we will read (if the social media and MSM censor trolls don't limit the views) that more people died from other causes, loneliness, suicide, untreated diseases, than from the public health crisis of "Covid". And every freedom that ever defined us will be gone, given to an administrative state for which none of us voted, even the progressives among us. 

For now, most of my "resistance" is verbal. I know what is happening to us. I feel it in my bones. I am among many who do. But unlike others, I am still conceding to getting my vaccinations and this booster. I am in some form of solidarity with them in so far as am avoiding as much as possible going into places that require the proof of vaccination (HYPPA SCHMPA where some bureaucrat says so). But since I do go to nursing homes to visit friends therein residing, and because I have always taken whatever vaccinations required, I have complied. But if, as I expect, I will hear another booster is required, or an entirely new version of the vaccine is necessary, or that there is a mutation that re-requires lockdowns and masking outside again, and not seeing anyone, I will have to reconsider, because then I will be sure of the game I already believe is being played to test the resolve of the citizen to be free. Will I? Probably not. I am a coward, truth be told. That's what the ubiquitous "they" count on.

But I can always wear an "Obey" T-shirt and pretend I am brave.

Los Angeles, Modern Town Without Pity (or, Don't Be Old and Need a Restroom Fast)

 I am sure I am going to hear the argument contra. No need. I know what it is, or what they are. It's because of Covid and it's unsafe to allow. It's because of the homeless. It's unsanitary. 

What am I talking about? I took a very old friend out for lunch this week. 93. Had a stroke last March. Uses a walker. Want to make her life a little like the days when she could go out on her own. When she was independent. When she wasn't invisible to the world that claims its great woke-ness, but lacks even the most basic common sense or decency. 

We were on our way, in an area near the Hollywood Bowl where alas there aren't a lot of choices for the bladder emergency of anyone, let alone an old person. I slipped into the one mall that I immediately saw. It had several well known entities, one independent restaurant and a mini mart. All have to have restrooms for the people who work there. And yes, I know, those bathrooms are not generally open to the public. That's fine. But in this strip mall there apparently was not one available place to pee. In one, a major chain, the sole employee, with my elderly friend standing on her floor holding it in as best as she could, said no, it's not open to the public. "I understand," I said, "but this is an old person with an emergency." "I can't," she said, "I'd get fired". This was already my third place. We got back into my new leased car, and tried two other places I found along the way. Same answer. I made a turn on Cahuenga that other drivers found offensive in order to try to make it to the Starbucks down the way that the two clerks told me really did have a public restroom. 

My friend made it. As you may recall Starbucks that HAVE restrooms (many don't) got zapped a while ago for not making their restrooms open based on claimed racial bias, so happily this one did and it was open. 

Let us look at the choices in this situation where we are protecting restrooms from the homeless and Covid infection. My friend could have lost control, easily, or anyone in this situation could lose control in this situation, and just let it flow. How is that sanitary? How is that a protection against Covid? And about those homeless? They are right outside your local establishment peeing and pooping on the sidewalk. And we cannot say a word about that because our wise leaders claim we are giving the homeless their dignity. Now before you say that I don't care about the homeless, over the years I have done my share to try to help. And I know it's a complicated problem. But trying to treat everyone exactly the same has resulted in treated many people, including the homeless, badly.  The dignity of my older lady friend be d---ed. And common sense, that's in another universe.

If a homeless person pees in public, nothing generally happens. I know nothing generally happens because I've seen plenty of homeless people with their pants down pooping and not out of sight.  But if my friend had to find an. . . .emergency place, an unauthorized place because finding an authorized place if you are a regular citizen is impossible, you could get arrested. And given what I have seen these last few years who gets arrested for what in this nation, I would almost expect it. Oh, yes, there are defenses. But it isn't going to help in the moment of need, is it?

I wonder what I would have done if I were that employee in that fast food place with a little old lady and a panicking friend on the edge of her own dotage before me one of whom really had to pee. Lord, I hope I would have taken the pity that the society will not. Would anyone have known if she had helped? Probably. Because there are cameras all over the place these days. So a good deed would be considered a bad deed, and thus we find the reality of our world. 

In some states, there is a law, called Ally's Law, which applies mostly to people with Irritable Bowel Sydrome. Like old people, they never know when they will have to go. In those states that have this law---California, the wokest state outside of New York does not--your doctor provides a card which you present (assuming you have the time) in order to be allowed into a bathroom. 

So, here are the choices when you are old.

Never go out again.

Go out and hope you don't need to pee or poop in an emergency. In legal terms we call that impossibility.

Always carry a small portable potty (a bucket with accoutrements to help you break down and carry away the remants) in your car when you are driving an old person around. Of course, even if in a bucket it would probably still be considered public indecency if not public urination. 

Hope your family doesn't believe in euthanasia when you get old and your body starts inconveniently to break down and things get a little. . . .unsanitary. 

You think I'm exaggerating? There is current talk of "rational suicide". There has been such talk for years, usually in relation to the elderly. If you get to old age, in 99 percent of cases, there will be health and other problems. It comes with the territory of life and death. I know and you know for a fact how many children refuse to take care of their elderly parents. So do you think in a world where an old person is refused the bathroom that I am exaggerating?

I don't think Orwell himself adequately predicted the insanity of our modern world. 

My view? I got a dose of reality about our state, our nation, our world without pity, the other day that should make all of us sick. 

But the most important thing in the world here in California is wearing a mask and getting a Covid vaccine. You will be happy to know then that my friend and I are both properly vaxed. That and 1.75 I think it is will get us a ride on a Metro. I wonder how they view it if an old person can't hold it in on the bus? 

https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-07-25/public-restrooms-are-disappearing-here-are-survival-strategies

Shatner's Crossing of the Karman Line to Space, the Final Frontier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6S0ykPrxKE

I have always loved Star Trek, in pretty much all of its iterations on the big and little screens. I was probably more a Spock fan than a Kirk fan, and definitely more a Leonard Nimoy fan than a William Shatner fan. You hear the Hollywood talk of who is nice and not so nice, and, Mr. Shatner is not known for his warmth and generosity to his co-stars of the Original Series. Whether there is truth or not to these stories, alas, they have an effect on one's perception. And sometimes, as in my case living in the vestiges of the Dream Factory,  you know people who know people who reside near the "stars" and the reputation for getting along with neighbors is not exactly pristine. 

But you cannot help respect a man who has reinvented himself multiple times in making his living in the industry from his youth to 90 years old. Well, I can't anyway. To me, also, there is always a bit of a pleasure in the meeting of fiction (Captain Kirk) with reality (a trip to the edge of outer space, some 62 miles ABOVE the earth) with non-fiction, that is, the short but dramatic ride of the actor who played a Star Ship Captain in a rocket seeing the earth below and the darkness of space above. 

I hadn't really planned to watch any of it as it was occurring at 8 thirty or so Texas time, and 7 thirty mine, and I am not an early morning riser. But I just happened to wake up, and thought I'd watch. You Tube had a couple of channels devoted to the event live. What first caught my attention and to me was a mark of our rather dismal if not horrible times were the live comments being made by those with their feet on terra firma, mostly cracks about Shatner, about Jeff Bezos, about space, about the earth, nearly almost all smug and snide. Lots of talk about how this wasn't really a big deal, since it really wasn't space that Mr. Shatner was going to, and of course, lots of talk about his feuds that have become so public over the years. The usual comments about billionaires and the waste of time and money to think about outer space---that's a spirit that wouldn't have taken us out of the age before fire was invented.

We wouln't have all those darn space shows if people didn't look to the wonders of the universe outside of our own and seek to discover and coexist with them.

Lots of talk included his appearance. He's got a stomach, Mr. Shatner. He always battled his weight. Don't you? Don't I? And I don't know, how many 90 year olds do you think look as well as he does, or still rides horses, and shows them, and still works? And seems to enjoy it? Whatever else he is, he is one of the most alive people I have ever observed from afar. 

And to do what he did, at any age, particularly as the nay sayers were insisting that the rocket ship (which like five year olds people like to note is phallic) and process might be compromised, was extraordinary. I barely can fly in an airplane 30,000 feet up. I can't imagine being shot into space 62 miles up! I'd be dead just hearing about it. 

To me, and I know that my opinion doesn't matter, though I hope it is kinder than so much of what I saw this morning, this ordinary an, an actor, is to be admired for this thing he did. Now, I know, in this society, unless other human beings denominate that you are perfect, as they are perfect, you get torn down, both literally, if you are imaged in a statue, or figuratively, if you are a flawed person who happens to be in the public eye. 

I would love to have the courage that this man had to grab a piece of space and time that few men have or will ever do. This man has voyaged well. And it tickles my imagination. It's a nice moment in a really difficult time. 

Panache

 I think it must be that I am either in, or close to, my own dotage, that I feel a certain urgency to get as many stories of my father's on the ether here. Will it last? Will it get seen 50 years from now, or beyond? I don't know. When I am gone it won't matter. It only matters now, and I do what I can do, albeit not much to give my father (and at some level me) a bit of earthly immortality. So, yesterday I posted one. Today I post an even shorter one.

Panache

I recognize him immediately as he descends the stairs of my building to greet me. It is my old street-bum friend Diogenes, who I have not encountered for more than a year. He is greatly changed. I sense this immediately since he does not extend his palm and ask for spare change immediately.  I am concerned for my old friend.

"Diogenes," I sy warmly ". . . it is more than a year since your last visit. I sense there has been some travail in your life."

"Indeed," he replies, "I just return from New York, where I spend the last eleven months in the pokey.  I get one month off for good behavior."

"How horrendous," I say, "does the IRS get you for tax evasion?"

"I will tell you, but first, can you advance me a few bob, as you are the first friendly face I see in these warm environs.  I get a chill in New York one January night and have not felt warm since."

I hasten to accommodate my old friend as he continues.

"I get caught in a blizzard in Washington Heights so I seek shelter in a posh apartment house lobby. It is one o'clock in the morning.  I am wearing an old pair of Italian shoes which I find and is no protection in snow. I notice that the tenants leave their galoshes and rubber boots in front of their doors, as they do not wish to track in the snow. I find a pair of Western boots that seem my size, so, I appropriate them. The long and the short of it is that I get a twelve month stretch."

He recites his tale with a kind of humility. Diogenes seems chastened. I am curious as the Diogenes I know is a real bum, but he is honest.

"What makes you do such a thing?" I ask.

"I do it because I could," he answers, looking me directly in the eye, though I am almost sure there is a tear breaking in the corner of his left eye.

I feel that a little more spare change is in order. Somehow, there is something heroic about the act and the manner in which he faces up to sin. I watch him depart, his shoulders bent, disconsolate but courageous. There will be no memorial library for him, but he does have an air of greatness, a kind of panache of great rogues.

Written May 2004.

Diary by Constantine Gochis

My dad was an early perspicacious observer of the evolution of too much government, particularly of the administrative kind, at among its earliest iterations, back in the 1960s. Not merely was it of "too much government" but government claiming conscience and having none. 

Where are we today? Lots of money has been thrown at helping the communities purportedly served, like education. Has education gotten better in the last over 50 years in any big city? Much has been thrown at homelessness and now homelessness is out of control. Where did the money go? What is it always about? The feudal fiefdoms of too many professing concern for the citizenry but in truth and in fact shoring up their wealth while taxing the rest of us. That's what lots of us think. 

Dad's subject, his story revealed in a few fictional diary entries, is a neophyte New York City manager in the early halcyon days of the superagencies that now populate multiple cities in which death and destruction and poverty reign. This particular man might not exist, but he could be any one of the leaders of a certain age, who dismiss the populace with their multi versions of truth. Dad has been dead over 12 years. Even he could not imagine how bad things could become and how bad they are, except that he knew something was coming. 

The short short story is called "Diary". Dad wrote it over 25 years ago.

You must not ask who he is or how I came to have access to his diary. You see, he is currently among us, very active in his chosen profession of politics.  In fact, he occupies a seat in the current Congress--much older, though still unregenerate, opportunistic, a mountebank and a scoundrel.

I have decide to share with you some pages from his almost daily recollections, assiduously and unreservedly recorded.  The copy I have is a part of a set, though it covers a period in which we were both employed in the first years of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"--in fact at one of the first social agencies to be funded to distribute aid to the poor, circa late 1965, to begin with.

There is probably no story here.  Some of the entries are banal, perhaps even uninteresting. I selected them probably because the settings and the incidents are largely within the ambience of the times and places and the ritualistic universality of the activities described.

December ---, 1965

I finally got my interview today. Deputy Commissioner Long said, "Read your application with great interest. We need men like you in these revolutionary times." I smiled modestly and thanked him. Privately, I felt it was the extra 100.00 I had to pass on to the "Man" in City Hall.  Thankfully, it was the last of several expensive paving stones.

I don't recall that he told me what my job would be, but the salary arrangements were as promised.  Anyway, the "manna" came in the nick of time.  My last year was the seventh of those scriptural lean ones.  Now, I have a job, an office and am the head of a Department. 

January ---, 1966

It has been a pleasant holiday season. There isn't much direction or organization. I have a Secretary, named "Deelores", an unusual spelling of a familiar name.  I call her "Dee". She has a maximum output of perhaps two letters a day, or three memos, with never less than three misspellings per sentence.  I am constrained by the proprieties of the time to accept this minor impediment. If the matter is important enough I retype it myself.  Dee does have a placard on her desk that announces her name, and her title, Executive Secretary.  It seems to fulfill her aspirations at the moment.

October---, 1966

The Agency is growing. We now occupy several floors of a city-block skyscraper. My windows look down ten floors to a very busy Church Street. I can see the turn of the century watering hole, Bar, to the uninformed, where I generally stop for a quickie, before the long subway ride back to Queens, and the walk up I share with the mother of my children.

It never ends up just one, as I am usually joined by Kevin Rauch from Public Relations and Sam Starns whose function is locating new Federal Grants.  Sam is tolerable, though his drinks magically appear on my monthly tab. I don't like Kevin, though, till today, I had no tangible reason for my dislike.

There's always a story to tell.  Today it was my turn.  I relate my adventures rarely. But after two martinis I become very voluble.

"It was right there on the top of a very full in-box. A check for seven million dollars from Washington, no note, no explanation, nothing indicated on the check, except "Office of the Mayor" and an address.  I spent the day going from Commissioner to Commissioner trying to get someone to take responsibility for the item.  It's kind of revelatory--and a little discouraging. One of those New York Post reporters that eavesdrop on our dialogue--see--there's a hot shot reporter from the Daily News. Boy would he like to get a whiff of how the Agency administers government money. Don't look now, but if he leans any more toward us, he'll fall off the bar stool."

Kevin asked if I had solved the problem. I said I hadn't, and the check was still in my box. He said, "Bring it over to my office". I knew immediately why I didn't like him.  Arrogance? Some advantage of angle? I'll have to watch this bum.

December --, 1968

There won't be a Christmas Tree in the East side home of my Boss, Commissioner Rawlings.  At our first conference together, I had the feeling he should never have come East for this job.  First of all, most appointees don't know anything about the jobs they inhabit. Rawlings knew less than most.  What he khew least about is the insidious virus originated by the serpent in that famous garden.

Her name was Sheba, as apt a name as is possible to describe her. I can imagine the throes old Solomon  might have suffered at her blandishments.  The original Sheba, I mean, of the Book.  

It was not an affair. Sheba did not believe in long term associations.  From what she told me, it was a series of intermittent meetings for appropriate consideration, from which Rawlings ultimately tired.

Whether she was invited to the party he threw for his staff last month, or not, she was there. She came, wearing a satiny white garment that clung to her body like natural skin. It was sheer enough--I suppose not sufficiently woven by a modest Arachne to obscure the triangular shape of her very black underpants.

Rawlings resigned today.

I do not know if he will rejoin his family whose transport West I arranged last week.

January --, 1969

Replacing a Commissioner is no problem. They are lined up like ticket seekers at the Roxy for any available spot. Rawlings' replacement was on board before the fizz left the champagne of last week's party. He came with an entourage. How to describe him? Anti-civil service type might be appropriate. His Administrative Assistant is an exemplary specimen. Rose. She is married to an author, who has just published a paper back called "Street Corner Pimp".  She is proud of her literary spouse and has distributed many copies of the book.  Her assigned office has achieved notoriety as a result of the banner that occupies the wall behind her desk wth its pithy challenge to the Patriarchy, "F---- housework!"

I met my new boss and his acolytes at a party in Soho, which is nothing more than "South of Houston Street". This once industrial center of New York and its empty warehouses now house the avant-garde who convert the expanses into bizarre living quarters.

It is in one of these apartments that Seymour Barber, my new boss, introduced me to his dependants--one of whom he announced would be my deputy. 

He said I would find her interesting. "Very cooperative and forthcoming", as I recall, were the exact words.