Just Past Woodstock

Just past Woodstock.

The year 1970 stretched from the Midwest to Hollywood, San Jose, and many points between..
I was working at Matt's Madison Square Super Market in Grand Rapids and by now had become produce manager, of sorts.. I doubt Matt let me order produce. That was his craft and he knew everyone at the produce warehouse.. I do remember ordering cumquats just to hear the sexy voice at the order desk confirm my order.. She had the sexiest voice and turned every vegetable and fruit into something naughty or temping.. A little bit Eve, and the proverbial snake warmly wrapped into one.. 

As has happened to me so many time in my life I had grown restless and change beckoned. My dreams pulled me westward. California called. 
I had family near San Diego. And this is where it gets a bit fuzzy. Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck lived out there in Lemon Grove. 
And my sister Jane lived out in North Hollywood.. I'd almost forgotten that link. Hollywood came later.

Chuck and Sue let me move into what they called "The West Wing." It was the right half of a small duplex they'd created in the back yard. There was a young woman living on the other side and the walls between us did little to keep us apart once we met.
Chuck and Sue and their youngest daughter, Cousin Melissa welcomed me into their lives. Sue was my mother's dear sister and was a favorite of mine. 

I don't know how I got to North Hollywood and the apartment where Jane, her husband Doug, and their two kids lived. I don't know how I found California and navigated the maze that is the L.A. freeway system... 
I left Michigan and Grand Rapids in a tiny '67 VW crammed with all I valued and owned...
I drove long hours and days, and late into the night.. I've made the trip many times since, but this was the first.. Oh, I'd driven the same car from Grand Rapids to Mexico City, and Acapulco, and all over Ontario and Quebec in the late 60's so I guess keeping it pointed west within the US was less a challenge for me than it might have been for others. 

I remember climbing mountain stretches on the highway through the Rockies and watching my gas gauge push the needle on the left side. Late at night after a long day of driving alone cross-country, I started looking for a gas station and some sort of refuge at night. As it got closer to 10:00 I saw a sign for a station and pulled off the freeway. The small gas station sat alone just beyond the tall rocks that shielded the freeway from the hills. The sign was dark and the lights in the building were off and I was running on fumes. 
I pulled up to the pumps anyway, shut off the car, and walked to the front door. I knocked on the door until the light came on the man opened the door to the station.. He told me he was closed and couldn't do anything for me. I begged him to sell me gas. I was on empty and headed west to California with a car full of my life and dreams. He relented and turned on the light and unlocked the pump. He overruled me when I noticed how high his gas was compared to what I'd seen along the way. He insisted he fill it if he was going to sell me any gas. He was right and I was a bit ashamed I'd suggested I only get enough to get me to the next cheaper gas station (my thoughts, not my words). He filled it and I rolled down the ramp back onto the freeway headed west through the mountains and the plains, and deserts beyond. 
It was literally all downhill from there.

My memory of L.A. is surely tainted by images acquired over the years since.. I seem to remember lots of chrome fins and pastel colors. I had long hair and Life was full of promise. Until it wasn't.
I arrived at Jane and Doug's small apartment. I was sure I'd be able to get my footing there before finding work and my own place to live. At least I think that was my thought and plan on the day I arrived. It is obvious to me now that there could be no open-door policy on Willowcrest Street. 
Doug told me I couldn't stay there and I was "encouraged" to get out and on my own immediately. I did meet Edith Head's secretary who lived next door and sensed that Universal Studios was just across the 101. This was way before the working studios became an amusement park for tourists.
So, on that day of abrupt expulsion, I got in my fully loaded VW and drove around L.A. I wandered into Griffith Park where I found another VW is distress. It was a VW van and the couple traveling in it had run out of gas. I took them to find gas and then returned them their bus. We decided to go into the park further and found a green grassy area filled with picnickers on blankets. We had no food, but a group of people nearby offered to share their fried chicken. They also had lemonade they offered us. This was a time when people; total strangers reached out to help others. This group of black and white couples come to my rescue when my VW friends left to head north to San Jose an hour or so later.

"Them's Fighten' Words."

I think as I have heard the story, I was a tiny, underweight, somewhat fragile newborn boy.. The weight gain that might come to most, especially, living on the red meat diet of a rustbelt family, didn't come to me until much, much later.. All through school, including high school I felt singled out and teased because of my slight build and poor coordination..
An aside (as is allowed when writing to an audience of one) I tried and failed just about every sport in junior high and high school.. And I was lousy and tenacious at them all...

Back to the fights.. I don't remember being truly bullied as a little boy.. In fact, I've written about my independence and lack of fear of strangers.. I was beat up by one of two bully brothers who lived just across the small field that was our back yard.. Dale Green kneed me in "the balls" when I was around 10, I think it was.. I suffered great pain, but other than icing me down and perhaps comforting as best she could, my mother did nothing else about the incident.. I don't know if Frank Stephens the chief of police for Lowell was called, or if Dale was talked to..
I don't know why he did it to me.. Or  why he became a local poet of some reknown years later..

His younger brother; half or step, or something, became a bully as well.. One day I caught him beating up on my younger brother Tom out on the edge of our back yard... I was problably in junior high at that point. Tom would have been around 6 or 7 years old.. I was suddenly filled with rage and lit into the boy; Terry Richards, with all the speed and strength my out of control body would muster...
I grabbed him around the neck with both hands and put a choke hold on him until he let go of my little brother. I choked him until he could no longer breathe and until I realized I was about to kill him..
I let him go. He recovered and quietly walked away, back down the street to his home on the other edge of our yard.. He never bothered my brother again, as far as I know...

I was left not with the sense that my power to hurt Terry had saved my brother, but a sense that my power would hurt and even kill.. I never let that physical anger act out again.. And Terry became one of my best friends for years after that.. My brother did not...

A few years later as a young high school student who weighed in around 90 pounds I again faced a bully in school. I was teased by one boy who loved saying "Maybe they call him "Van" because he's big as a truck." "Van" was the shortened name a coach had given me. I suspect all boys with long Dutch names were saddled with that lazy label bestowed by those who couldn't remember or spell their names..
In later years I used a cartoon I drew of a moving van as my signature for my art...in the highschool yearbook..

Now the "fight." One day as I walked outside the new elementary school building, I was confronted by one of the more popular boys.. He may have fancied himself as athletic and popular with others on the sports teams.. In the most cliched of conflicts he demanded I give up my lunch money. At least that's what I remember as the target of his assault... I told him I didn't have any money to give him. (I usually worked in the cafeteria  to earn my lunches and had no money independent of that to pay for them).. My refusal enraged, or motivated him.. He struck out at me; puching and swinging as any aspiring bully might do.. But, I was faster. I blocked each of his fist punches with my bony forearms.. He flinched and cried out as he stuck bone, not tender flesh.. He struck at my arms not my confidence.. He continued to try to hit and strike m, but never was able to get through my defenses. Then he gave up, complaining the he'd never anyone with such skinny arms...
He never bothered me again.. We did not become good friends..

Many years later as a returning veteran during the Vietnam era (I never fought there or saw combat anywhere) I was living in the biggest city near where I'd grown up; Grand Rapids, Michigan.. Life there is another chapter I'll share at some point.. College girls dorms next door.. Cruising boulevards in my 60's Baracuda, and making friends with future jailbirds and blonds..

One night pulling into the eastern terminus of the cruising route I was entering the parking lot at the City Library..And I was entering in the "Exit" drive just as another car with 3 guys were leaving.. I had chosen clearly the wrong way to leave.. And this upset them... I was with a friend who was very popular on the surface with the girls we met while in our clean fast cars.. I say "on the surface" as there was little substance to him other than his job at the railroad.. Even his hot looking Mustang GT fastback was phony. It had only a 6-cylinder engine under a huge hood scoop that suggested something much more agressive... He still fancied himself quite the player.. At least when he came out from him mother's home to socialize..
So; the guys in the car facing us were quite upset. The driver was so angry at my refusal to back out and reenter using the "Entrance" drive ( I told him, I'd left using the "Entrance" drive earlier, so I was using the "Exit" drive this time.) I must have sounds obstinant though I doubt he'd ever uttered that word.
First the driver got out of their car and then the other two followed.. He came over to my window and demanded I get out of my car and face him... He told me if I didn't come out he would pull me out of the window... He reached in a pulled my out of the window.. and onto the pavement of the parking lot.. Meanwhile, my friend with the phony hood scoop sat passively in my car.. I was alone facing 3 bullies who were itching for a fight... While the two sidekicks stood back, the well muscled driver in his tight T-shirt, started grunting and spitting out Asian words that must have sounded like the script of a Ninja movie, but to me it was all jiberish.. And I told him so.. "I can't understand a word your're saying man, but if you want to beat me up go ahead. I have a medical disharge from the service, but you've drawn quite a crowd here and they expect something out of you. Go ahead.. " Well, he stopped his hatchet chops and grunts and sheepishly climbed back into his car. The others got in as well and he backed up and left by the Entrance drive.. My friend assured me he would have joined me had the ther two joined in the fight as well...
Later driving through town the driver pulled up next to me at a light and could barely look over at me.. I learned that for me fighting was done more with words than with muscle.. One I had in surplus. The other was yet to come...

Maybe because or despite my visits to Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.) as a child I have always been filled with wanderlust... While a paperboy at 11 years old, I signed up enough new customers to win a trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the Milwaukee Clipper. I don't remember much about that boat trip across Lake Michigan, but do remember being confronted by the choice to see the Milwaukee Braves play or to go to an amusement park.. The Pinocchio in me persuaded me to take the tickets to the amusement park. I would later regret not seeing such Hall of Famers at Henry Aaron and Warren Spahn play.. And as our curfew ( remember I was 11 at the time) approached one of the other boys gave me tickets he had not used. My mind was spinning with choices of rides; roller coasters and others to ride before we were herded back onto to the bus for our hotel... I rain out of time and left with a pocket full of tickets with no time to ride..
Years later I would return to Milwaukee on the Clipper, with friend and high school classmate Tom Davis.. We booked a hotel for a couple of nights as we planned to see Chuck Berry play at a local night club.. And we did see him. We sat in a small bar at a small table about 10 feet from this amazing musician and soaked up the famous cords from his guitar as the worked his way through all his hits; Maybelline, , Johnnie B Good, and Rock and Roll Music... I was 17 and Tom was 18.. He was old enough to drink according to Wisconsin law.. I was not.. He drank and relished asking for mixed drinks like "Tom Collins" and "Old Fashions". I just "grooved" to the music. It was a preview of another adventure Tom and I would have north of the border in Quebec a year later..

The year after my cruise with the paperboys to Milwaukee I won a trip to Florida for signing up more new customers than any other paperboy in the state, except one.. More about that next time...