The Trauma of Los Angeles |
Issue 12
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Parents make significant family decisions via intelligence or whimsy, or some ratio of the two. For example, when I was nine and a half, my divorced Mother divined that we needed to move across the country from Rochester, NY to Los Angeles, to be closer to her sister, despite being laid up with compound fractures of her right leg. For the previous fifteen years, Aunt Blanche, Uncle Sam and their two daughters Jackie and Lynn, had lived in Southern California, where my Uncle struggled to find work as an actor, and my Aunt worked as a librarian. Ostensibly the move was to reunite our families. But the bear-fight of their decades old sibling rivalry quickly emerged from hibernation, engendering much conflict and discontent. Even now, the move puzzles me, and seems to be one of those Pollyannaish decisions that ends with “well I did the best I could”—which, these days, is a justification claimed by everyone including neo-Nazis. Nonetheless, my cousins and I did grow into semi-siblingship, so perhaps Mom' reasoning was correct. And after all, California in the ‘60s had become a secular land of milk and honey for many Americans, where even the dark clouds were golden.
Mom’s broken leg was a result of an off-balance fall from a five-foot wooden step-ladder, while trying to use a set of worn pliers to remove a headless nail from a bedroom closet. My Grandparents, alerted by the screams following a body-sized thump, found her on the floor, broken femur and tibia protruding from her leg like spears of meat from a cracked crab carapace. The orthopedic surgeon encased her right leg in a thick plaster cast from hip to toe, but this didn’t stop her from deciding that we needed to move cross-country in the third month of her six-month disability. Intelligence? Whimsy? Who knows? I’ve always wondered if our move was caused by some precipitating event. Perhaps a huge fight with my Grandparents, who lived on the lower level of our house and were my after-school guardians. Like worms in peaches, family secrets frequently gnaw their way out to sunlight, but this one remains in the dark interior of our family fruit. Besides reconnecting with Aunt Blanche, Mom also mentioned the move meant I could attend the tuition-free University of California, although Governor Ronald Reagan quickly put an end to higher education sans tuition. I’m certain Mom had some reasonable rationale for the move, even though the timing still seems crazy given her broken leg. And unfortunately, the move somehow eliminated the physical and emotional wellbeing she’d possessed in Rochester. |
GARY GROSSMAN’s writing appears in 53 literary reviews. Gary’s poetry books Lyrical Years (2023, Kelsay), What I Meant to Say Was… (2023, Impspired Press), and graphic memoir My Life in Fish—One Scientist’s Journey…(2023, Impspired) all may be purchased from Amazon.
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***
So, on 24 December 1963, we left snow-bound Rochester for the clement air and chaparral-covered hills of Los Angeles; and a rendezvous with my Aunt and Uncle at their San Fernando Valley ranch house. Conflicts between Mom and Aunt Blanche emerged almost immediately, and came to a head when my Aunt and Uncle refused Mom’s request to board their rambunctious dog during our stay. About ten days later Mom was knocked off her crutches by the animal, and our cohabitation ended immediately. Mom quickly found a small house for us to rent in semi-rural Chatsworth, in the northwest Valley, and off we went.
The two-bedroom, Chatsworth cottage was a remnant of Valley history, situated in an old olive grove and likely occupied previously by a farmer. This was long before Chatsworth became the center of the adult film industry, and one can only wonder how far the current porn shooting warehouses are from Chatsworth Elementary School where I finished the first half of my fifth-grade year. Out of yet one more whimsy, Mom only kept us in Chatsworth for a month, and then rented an apartment in Sherman Oaks, a tony Valley suburb situated on the northern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains. And so my elementary school career had its omega at primary school number three, Sherman Oaks Elementary. To her credit, despite this and subsequent moves, Mom managed to keep me in the same school zone for my sixth grade graduation and my matriculation at Van Nuys Junior High.
The two-bedroom, Chatsworth cottage was a remnant of Valley history, situated in an old olive grove and likely occupied previously by a farmer. This was long before Chatsworth became the center of the adult film industry, and one can only wonder how far the current porn shooting warehouses are from Chatsworth Elementary School where I finished the first half of my fifth-grade year. Out of yet one more whimsy, Mom only kept us in Chatsworth for a month, and then rented an apartment in Sherman Oaks, a tony Valley suburb situated on the northern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains. And so my elementary school career had its omega at primary school number three, Sherman Oaks Elementary. To her credit, despite this and subsequent moves, Mom managed to keep me in the same school zone for my sixth grade graduation and my matriculation at Van Nuys Junior High.
***
Life in the San Fernando Valley in the 60s, meant beach trips via twisty Topanga and Malibu canyons, the gingered smell of the few remaining citrus orchards, and smog. Oh, and car culture. You were your car, be it chopped and channeled greaser hot rod, or hippie VW van. The first thing that caught an aspiring actresses’ eye (this is LA after all) was make, model, and age of one’s vehicle. Not as much as a wink for us poor boys, in a city where everything was just twenty minutes by car, even when it wasn’t.
Citrus orchards aside, I remember days in both elementary school and junior high, where outside play was banned during lunch and recess because of dangerously high levels of air pollutants. Smog alerts arrived whenever the atmosphere morphed into a palpable and greasy brown gas, obscuring even the nearby 2-3000 foot peaks of the mountain ranges ringing the Valley. I am sure this contributed to my allergic asthma, as did Mom’s second-hand cigarette smoke.
Citrus orchards aside, I remember days in both elementary school and junior high, where outside play was banned during lunch and recess because of dangerously high levels of air pollutants. Smog alerts arrived whenever the atmosphere morphed into a palpable and greasy brown gas, obscuring even the nearby 2-3000 foot peaks of the mountain ranges ringing the Valley. I am sure this contributed to my allergic asthma, as did Mom’s second-hand cigarette smoke.
***
Shortly after I entered Van Nuys Junior High, Mom’s mental problems surfaced like a breeching humpback whale; and thus began her long slide into the valleys of psychological illnesses. One day in spring I returned home to find Mom unconscious on her bed—a trail of blackened, dried blood, running from nostrils to chin. I tried shaking her and wiping her face with a cold, wet washcloth—I tried every way I knew to rouse her, but all failed. Crying, I picked up the phone and called the operator, asked for an ambulance, then phoned Aunt Blanche who drove to our apartment to help. Mom’s broken leg had never really healed properly and she frequently had painful swelling that turned her leg into something resembling an overripe sausage; high blood pressure for sure. Since our move to California, she had been through several jobs, and soon developed a peripheral neuropathy that limited her manual dexterity. This ailment certainly contributed to her general dissatisfaction and departure from multiple administrative jobs, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Given her health problems, it wasn’t unusual to have four or five pill bottles on her nightstand, full or empty, and I never learned whether she attempted suicide or if this was the result of an unforeseen drug interaction.
Nonetheless, she was sufficiently depressed to be seeing a psychiatrist (Dr. Dichtum) and both he and my Aunt threatened Mom with involuntary commitment to a state mental hospital if she refused to check herself in. The real-world difference between voluntary and involuntary commitment was much more substantial than just the prefix in. An involuntary commitment meant that Mom could leave only with the approval of Aunt Blanche, Dr. Dichtum, and the hospital staff; whereas, with voluntary commitment she could leave whenever she felt ready. Despite some half-hearted protests, Mom voluntarily entered Olive View Hospital in the late Fall of ’67 where she spent some time in counseling, and much time in “occupational therapy”; eventually returning with a car-trunk half-full of drably glazed ceramic ash trays, and woven plastic lanyards for keys. Shortly after her release from Olive View, Mom purchased a small house for us in Mission Hills in the North Valley and I was enrolled in Sepulveda Junior High.
From what I was later able to piece together, my Aunt and Dr. Dichtum decided that caring for me was too much of a burden for Mom, and that the essential factor for her return to mental health and release from Olive View was placement of me in a foster home. At this suggestion, Mom’s anger erupted like a pot of over-boiling rice, and she refused to act for several months. Consequently, I was taken in by my Aunt and Uncle, who were none too happy to have their den occupied by a teenage boy. To reach school at Sepulveda Junior High, I rode the bus for about an hour. There was a regular bus-driver who specialized in morning non-sequiturs such as “Do you walk to school or bring your lunch.” One time, when no one else occupied the bus, we made a quick stop for a coke and candy bar to go.
Aside from ever present feelings of abandonment and the tensions originating from unpleasant interactions with Aunt Blanche and Uncle Sam, I did garner a small benefit from living in Tarzana. My uncle was a part-time salesman for the World Book Encyclopedia Company, and my “room” was where he kept all their publications. During my multi-month residence, I read the entire World Book encyclopedia, and the World Book’s Biography set, and whatever else was around, including a 1919 “marriage manual” titled Sane Sex Life. Why not?
While combing the World Book’s 20 plus volumes, I discovered it had misidentified a picture of an Oceanic Bonito as a California Bonito, and promptly wrote the company a letter identifying the error. This resulted in a correction and thank you letter from their ichthyological consultant, Dr. C. Lavett Smith an ichthyologist at the American Museum of Natural History. I never forgot his kindness and honesty and a decade and a half later, now finding myself an assistant professor of fish ecology, “Smitty” and I became colleagues and friends.
Nonetheless, she was sufficiently depressed to be seeing a psychiatrist (Dr. Dichtum) and both he and my Aunt threatened Mom with involuntary commitment to a state mental hospital if she refused to check herself in. The real-world difference between voluntary and involuntary commitment was much more substantial than just the prefix in. An involuntary commitment meant that Mom could leave only with the approval of Aunt Blanche, Dr. Dichtum, and the hospital staff; whereas, with voluntary commitment she could leave whenever she felt ready. Despite some half-hearted protests, Mom voluntarily entered Olive View Hospital in the late Fall of ’67 where she spent some time in counseling, and much time in “occupational therapy”; eventually returning with a car-trunk half-full of drably glazed ceramic ash trays, and woven plastic lanyards for keys. Shortly after her release from Olive View, Mom purchased a small house for us in Mission Hills in the North Valley and I was enrolled in Sepulveda Junior High.
From what I was later able to piece together, my Aunt and Dr. Dichtum decided that caring for me was too much of a burden for Mom, and that the essential factor for her return to mental health and release from Olive View was placement of me in a foster home. At this suggestion, Mom’s anger erupted like a pot of over-boiling rice, and she refused to act for several months. Consequently, I was taken in by my Aunt and Uncle, who were none too happy to have their den occupied by a teenage boy. To reach school at Sepulveda Junior High, I rode the bus for about an hour. There was a regular bus-driver who specialized in morning non-sequiturs such as “Do you walk to school or bring your lunch.” One time, when no one else occupied the bus, we made a quick stop for a coke and candy bar to go.
Aside from ever present feelings of abandonment and the tensions originating from unpleasant interactions with Aunt Blanche and Uncle Sam, I did garner a small benefit from living in Tarzana. My uncle was a part-time salesman for the World Book Encyclopedia Company, and my “room” was where he kept all their publications. During my multi-month residence, I read the entire World Book encyclopedia, and the World Book’s Biography set, and whatever else was around, including a 1919 “marriage manual” titled Sane Sex Life. Why not?
While combing the World Book’s 20 plus volumes, I discovered it had misidentified a picture of an Oceanic Bonito as a California Bonito, and promptly wrote the company a letter identifying the error. This resulted in a correction and thank you letter from their ichthyological consultant, Dr. C. Lavett Smith an ichthyologist at the American Museum of Natural History. I never forgot his kindness and honesty and a decade and a half later, now finding myself an assistant professor of fish ecology, “Smitty” and I became colleagues and friends.
***
Despite the presence of my cousins, Jacquie and Lynn, I was lonely and lost at Aunt Blanche and Uncle Sam’s, where, in contrast to their natural kids, I was treated with disdain. Eventually Mom relented and agreed to my placement in a foster home. I was taken to a prospective home in Woodland Hills, checked into Woodland Hills Junior High, and a week later “returned” like a defective toaster, to whatever agency handled Foster Care for Los Angeles County. There are few stresses more significant than jerking the hearth and home out from under the feet of a young teen, but that’s what the Woodland Hills foster parents did.
My foster care caseworker quickly located another home in Van Nuys and I was reenrolled in Van Nuys Junior High for the remainder of eighth grade. Although I was too young to understand how the psyche fights for survival, I responded to these repeated woundings by suppressing the pain and chaos I felt, while presenting a stoic and comedic face to friends, adults, and teachers. I am sure many, perhaps most, children of mentally ill parents have portraits that are underpainted with shame and woe—unable to believe that none of this is their fault.
Perhaps Dr. Dichtum and Aunt Blanche were right, and Mom’s illness was partially a result of the stress of parenting. My own response was to roll my fear, shame, and guilt, into a softball-sized sphere, tucked up between my liver and spleen. Nonetheless, with therapy, daily exercise, self-introspection, and luck, I was able to dislodge and rid myself of this toxic sphere later in life; expiating unwarranted guilt and shame, and freeing myself for meaningful and loving relationships with my wife and children. Good fortune indeed.
I suspect the motives of my foster-parents were good, but that didn’t assuage the internal and external shame of being a foster child. The Coopers had two children of their own, a three-bedroom house with a den and at least two other foster kids besides me. We shared rooms and the only really unpleasant thing I remember, besides feeling abandoned, was that when our foster parents left the house we were not allowed to remain inside. If it was raining or cold, we had to huddle in the garage, but in Southern California there was little rain in spring or summer. I returned home in the summer of ’68, reenrolled in Sepulveda Junior High and reclaimed friendships that had lain dormant for half a year.
My foster care caseworker quickly located another home in Van Nuys and I was reenrolled in Van Nuys Junior High for the remainder of eighth grade. Although I was too young to understand how the psyche fights for survival, I responded to these repeated woundings by suppressing the pain and chaos I felt, while presenting a stoic and comedic face to friends, adults, and teachers. I am sure many, perhaps most, children of mentally ill parents have portraits that are underpainted with shame and woe—unable to believe that none of this is their fault.
Perhaps Dr. Dichtum and Aunt Blanche were right, and Mom’s illness was partially a result of the stress of parenting. My own response was to roll my fear, shame, and guilt, into a softball-sized sphere, tucked up between my liver and spleen. Nonetheless, with therapy, daily exercise, self-introspection, and luck, I was able to dislodge and rid myself of this toxic sphere later in life; expiating unwarranted guilt and shame, and freeing myself for meaningful and loving relationships with my wife and children. Good fortune indeed.
I suspect the motives of my foster-parents were good, but that didn’t assuage the internal and external shame of being a foster child. The Coopers had two children of their own, a three-bedroom house with a den and at least two other foster kids besides me. We shared rooms and the only really unpleasant thing I remember, besides feeling abandoned, was that when our foster parents left the house we were not allowed to remain inside. If it was raining or cold, we had to huddle in the garage, but in Southern California there was little rain in spring or summer. I returned home in the summer of ’68, reenrolled in Sepulveda Junior High and reclaimed friendships that had lain dormant for half a year.
***
The new house Mom bought after leaving Olive View had ample space, three bedrooms, and the deal-clincher, a built-in photographic darkroom. During the ‘40s Mom had become an excellent photographer and had purchased a pre-WWII Leica 35mm camera. She was entranced by the evocative and emotional photos of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Walker Evans. Our house was filled with prints of landscapes and people Mom had photographed while in France and Germany after WWII, where she had worked resettling the Displaced Persons (mostly Jews) from the Nazi Concentration Camps with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency. It would be natural for her to assume that something she loved (i.e., photography) would aid her emergence from the dark cavern she was in, but at thirteen, I was somewhat oblivious to her emotional ups and downs. Like so many who experienced what was then called “shell-shock”, her mental struggle likely held some residue of the crimes against humanity she had viewed after WWII.
But back to Mission Hills. Besides the darkroom, our house had a large fenced yard filled with fruit-bearing apricot and plum trees and guava bushes that lined the wooden fences. The Grossman “orchard” produced both copious fruits and conflicts, because I had little desire to be a farm hand, caring for a yard filled with rotting fruit. Our fruit war reached a head in summer when I caroused the neighborhood from sunrise to sunset, regardless of smog levels, with the local pod of kids.
San Fernando Valley schools were all fairly similar, many built in the ‘50s and ‘60s with pastel stucco exteriors and flat-roofed passageways between buildings supported by metal pipes, painted to match. The halls and classrooms smelled of child-sweat, dirty fingernails and the industrial-strength antiseptic soap used for sterilizing floors and walls. I was coasting along in ninth grade when in the spring of 1968, it was déjà vu all over again, as I returned home from a weekend stay at an old friend's apartment in Sherman Oaks, only to find Mom passed out, lying in bed in a pool of vomit and diarrhea.
I inhaled deeply as I fought the gravitational pull of sun shame, and phoned Dr. Dictum who immediately drove over to assess the situation. Within an hour, Mom was fully conscious and repeating phrases like “I thought you’d be better off without me” But after conversing with her psychiatrist, we all agreed that despite this attempt, Mom's best option would be intense outpatient therapy, a new course of antidepressants, and a quick sale of the house. In a matter of two months, we moved into an apartment on Nordoff Street in nearby Sepulveda, and I remained a student at Sepulveda Junior High. Mom never attempted self-harm again. Nonetheless, the suicide attempts and foster home experiences left me steeping in a tea of abandonment that continued to flavor intimate relationships. Out of self-preservation and a need for my own continued emotional growth, my relationship with Mom became one of aloof and independent child and semi-functioning parent.
There is a point in many children’s lives where they suddenly realize their parents are both fallible and mortal. Of course, with Mom’s suicide attempts I was introduced to mortality much earlier than was healthy, but when I entered high school I had grown six inches taller than my five foot tall, zaftig Mom. My growth spurt, coupled with a regimen of weight-lifting, and loss of preadolescent baby fat, suddenly made me much bigger and stronger than Mom. This was helpful later on when Mom’s parental repertoire began to include physical abuse.
But back to Mission Hills. Besides the darkroom, our house had a large fenced yard filled with fruit-bearing apricot and plum trees and guava bushes that lined the wooden fences. The Grossman “orchard” produced both copious fruits and conflicts, because I had little desire to be a farm hand, caring for a yard filled with rotting fruit. Our fruit war reached a head in summer when I caroused the neighborhood from sunrise to sunset, regardless of smog levels, with the local pod of kids.
San Fernando Valley schools were all fairly similar, many built in the ‘50s and ‘60s with pastel stucco exteriors and flat-roofed passageways between buildings supported by metal pipes, painted to match. The halls and classrooms smelled of child-sweat, dirty fingernails and the industrial-strength antiseptic soap used for sterilizing floors and walls. I was coasting along in ninth grade when in the spring of 1968, it was déjà vu all over again, as I returned home from a weekend stay at an old friend's apartment in Sherman Oaks, only to find Mom passed out, lying in bed in a pool of vomit and diarrhea.
I inhaled deeply as I fought the gravitational pull of sun shame, and phoned Dr. Dictum who immediately drove over to assess the situation. Within an hour, Mom was fully conscious and repeating phrases like “I thought you’d be better off without me” But after conversing with her psychiatrist, we all agreed that despite this attempt, Mom's best option would be intense outpatient therapy, a new course of antidepressants, and a quick sale of the house. In a matter of two months, we moved into an apartment on Nordoff Street in nearby Sepulveda, and I remained a student at Sepulveda Junior High. Mom never attempted self-harm again. Nonetheless, the suicide attempts and foster home experiences left me steeping in a tea of abandonment that continued to flavor intimate relationships. Out of self-preservation and a need for my own continued emotional growth, my relationship with Mom became one of aloof and independent child and semi-functioning parent.
There is a point in many children’s lives where they suddenly realize their parents are both fallible and mortal. Of course, with Mom’s suicide attempts I was introduced to mortality much earlier than was healthy, but when I entered high school I had grown six inches taller than my five foot tall, zaftig Mom. My growth spurt, coupled with a regimen of weight-lifting, and loss of preadolescent baby fat, suddenly made me much bigger and stronger than Mom. This was helpful later on when Mom’s parental repertoire began to include physical abuse.
***
I entered James Monroe High School (10th-12th grade) in fall of 1969 as a 10th grader. Monroe was a middle class, suburban high school; an unassuming white cake mix topped with a few Latinx sprinkles. Like any teen, I was embarrassed by Mom’s behavior and tried to shield my friends from her. I rarely brought buddies home, and never girls, although I’m sure that was true of most teens regardless of parental sanity. After a year of puberty, I was feeling male urges that I didn’t quite understand; urges that were beyond Mom’s knowledge, despite the fact that she was a liberated woman. A male role model would have really helped here, but I hadn’t seen my Grampa in a year, and given that he was born in the 19th century I doubt he was well-educated in teenage male physiology or psychology.
Tenth grade seemed to fly by, I had a mixed bag of teachers, and aside from several excellent English and Science teachers, remained mostly unburnished by my high school education. In the summer between 10th and 11th grade, Mom managed to talk the manager of a nearby grocery chain into hiring me as a grocery bagger, even though I was only 15; below the minimum age for work. It was a union job and I blossomed in the independence and responsibility my new job brought me. By this time Mom was unable to work, primarily because of her peripheral neuropathy, and had applied for Social Security Disability. We spent a few months on county welfare, but eventually Social Security came through and provided a stable lower-class income. I remember feeling both lucky and humiliated while grocery shopping as I tore our cheerfully colored red, orange and blue food stamps out of their book to pay for our nutrients.
Attending high school in the late ‘60s was exciting and frustrating. Mom became very active in the Vietnam Anti-War movement and took me to a number of demonstrations including ones led by Joan Baez, and Tom Hayden and other well-known antiwar activists. In 1968 Nixon had been elected President by promising to end the Vietnam War and instead, surreptitiously invaded Cambodia in 1970. Kids who got caught selling weed or joy riding in stolen cars were offered the choice of jail or the Armed Forces instead—some ended up in body bags flown home from ‘Nam.
The country was divided, young against old, black against white, liberal versus conservative, and “All in the Family” was a benign but not inaccurate portrayal of societal conflict. Nonetheless, most real-life conservatives had better talking points than Archie Bunker, not that we listened. Although MAGA hats were just a mote in a young Donny Trump’s brain, “America Love It or Leave It” hats, tees, and bumper stickers, were common, even in trendy Los Angeles.
Of course, our social circle was bedecked with peace symbols, and my friends typically had rock posters rather than American flags on their bedroom walls. I was my Mother’s son and felt the injustice deep in my being. As my call to action, I founded a student union at Monroe High and became active in student government, eventually being elected to the Vice-Presidency of Monroe in the fall of my senior year. My term was filled with passed legislation empowering students, over the roadblocks and objections thrown in our way by the conservative faculty sponsor of Student Council, Mr. Smith of the LDS church.
Tenth grade seemed to fly by, I had a mixed bag of teachers, and aside from several excellent English and Science teachers, remained mostly unburnished by my high school education. In the summer between 10th and 11th grade, Mom managed to talk the manager of a nearby grocery chain into hiring me as a grocery bagger, even though I was only 15; below the minimum age for work. It was a union job and I blossomed in the independence and responsibility my new job brought me. By this time Mom was unable to work, primarily because of her peripheral neuropathy, and had applied for Social Security Disability. We spent a few months on county welfare, but eventually Social Security came through and provided a stable lower-class income. I remember feeling both lucky and humiliated while grocery shopping as I tore our cheerfully colored red, orange and blue food stamps out of their book to pay for our nutrients.
Attending high school in the late ‘60s was exciting and frustrating. Mom became very active in the Vietnam Anti-War movement and took me to a number of demonstrations including ones led by Joan Baez, and Tom Hayden and other well-known antiwar activists. In 1968 Nixon had been elected President by promising to end the Vietnam War and instead, surreptitiously invaded Cambodia in 1970. Kids who got caught selling weed or joy riding in stolen cars were offered the choice of jail or the Armed Forces instead—some ended up in body bags flown home from ‘Nam.
The country was divided, young against old, black against white, liberal versus conservative, and “All in the Family” was a benign but not inaccurate portrayal of societal conflict. Nonetheless, most real-life conservatives had better talking points than Archie Bunker, not that we listened. Although MAGA hats were just a mote in a young Donny Trump’s brain, “America Love It or Leave It” hats, tees, and bumper stickers, were common, even in trendy Los Angeles.
Of course, our social circle was bedecked with peace symbols, and my friends typically had rock posters rather than American flags on their bedroom walls. I was my Mother’s son and felt the injustice deep in my being. As my call to action, I founded a student union at Monroe High and became active in student government, eventually being elected to the Vice-Presidency of Monroe in the fall of my senior year. My term was filled with passed legislation empowering students, over the roadblocks and objections thrown in our way by the conservative faculty sponsor of Student Council, Mr. Smith of the LDS church.
***
All during junior and senior high, Mom encouraged my love of the outdoors by taking me fishing. On our rare vacations, we visited beaches where I could surf fish or mountain areas where I probed the streams for trout. But Southern California was a haven for salt-water fishing and most of my fishing pursuits occurred on weekend days, sometimes with friends. Mom knew all the best reading benches on Redondo, Santa Monica, and Malibu Piers, while I fished for surf perch, Halibut and Calico Bass. King Harbor in Redondo Beach was a favorite spot, because a warm-water outflow from a nearby power plant attracted open-ocean fish like California Bonito, Pacific Mackerel, and Spanish Mackerel (actually a jack not a mackerel) where they were easily caught from the rocky jetties.
I pursued these fish with freshwater spinning tackle, 10lb test line, and a technique called fly-lining, where live anchovies were cast into the greenish waters of the harbor on unweighted lines. The anchovies swam around freely, until seized by one of these two to five pound predators. When a fish hit, line literally leapt off the reel and after a pause, I would carefully close the bail and set the hook. The rod bucked and reel screamed as these small tuna made run after run. Eventually they tired and I would grab them by the tail, whack them over the head, and place them in a burlap gunny sack kept in the water for cooling, until we headed home.
I taught several of my friends to fish and fifty years later one still remembers our outings as the high-point of his high school career. Mom and I ate fish often: baked Bonito, grilled Spanish Mackerel, fried Bonito, sautéed Pacific Mackerel, poached Pacific Mackerel, yes, of course we were sick of fish, but kept eating because it was healthy and cheap protein.
I pursued these fish with freshwater spinning tackle, 10lb test line, and a technique called fly-lining, where live anchovies were cast into the greenish waters of the harbor on unweighted lines. The anchovies swam around freely, until seized by one of these two to five pound predators. When a fish hit, line literally leapt off the reel and after a pause, I would carefully close the bail and set the hook. The rod bucked and reel screamed as these small tuna made run after run. Eventually they tired and I would grab them by the tail, whack them over the head, and place them in a burlap gunny sack kept in the water for cooling, until we headed home.
I taught several of my friends to fish and fifty years later one still remembers our outings as the high-point of his high school career. Mom and I ate fish often: baked Bonito, grilled Spanish Mackerel, fried Bonito, sautéed Pacific Mackerel, poached Pacific Mackerel, yes, of course we were sick of fish, but kept eating because it was healthy and cheap protein.
***
Despite an environment tinted green with the odor of weed and humid from the sweaty exertions of the “if it feels good do it” credo, high school was a less than utopian dream. There were major cliques: hippies, socialites (soshes), jocks, and low-riders present, but spatially segregated on the grounds of Monroe, especially during lunch-time. Fights occasionally occurred but were fought after school at the oddly named “ups and downs”. I never had a fight and to this day am unsure of the actual location of our pugilistic arena; the only fact I remember was its location was somewhere outside school grounds but near the fences. I belonged to a self-named group of male and female friends called the Tree People, because we gathered at lunch around a large California live oak tree planted between class room buildings.
Within our social group, friendships varied in intensity and honesty and at times I was excluded, as were others, from various group activities, such as weekend visits to one rich kid’s family farm in San Luis Obispo. The real stratification in high school was economic, although there always was a whiff of “Mean Girl/Boy” activity present. My middle-class friends wore real Pendleton shirts, while I wore button-weak, poorly dyed, imitations sold by stores like Penny’s, which forced me to develop a self-protective, sarcastic sense of humor. My friend’s parents bought them cars, paid for gas and maintenance, while I purchased my own fifteen-year-old Dodge Dart, and paid for my own gas and insurance. I held a job while my friends had substantial allowances and were required to pay for few necessities. All of this helped build my life-long sense of independence, and self-sufficiency, but also inserted a psychic barrier between me and the friends who never had to work for what they had.
In the spring of 11th grade Mom’s depression surfaced again and at 15 I ran away from home. I didn’t really run away, because I kept showing up for my shifts at the local market while staying at a friend’s house. This lasted a week or so, and ended when we sat down and reached an agreement to not live together starting the next summer. I would try living in a foster home until I entered college the next January, and was placed in a home twenty-five miles from Monroe; a home with cockroaches, deep-fried starchy meals, and one too many toddlers with dirty diapers. I lasted about a month. It was particularly taxing driving the miles back and forth to my job but also to a summer honors creative writing class that I was attending. I still remember writing lessons from the class, but was overwhelmed by my life situation and had trouble fulfilling all class assignments. Perhaps my absence helped Mom regain her mental balance, because her behavior improved after I returned home and we spent a relatively unremarkable next six months.
Within our social group, friendships varied in intensity and honesty and at times I was excluded, as were others, from various group activities, such as weekend visits to one rich kid’s family farm in San Luis Obispo. The real stratification in high school was economic, although there always was a whiff of “Mean Girl/Boy” activity present. My middle-class friends wore real Pendleton shirts, while I wore button-weak, poorly dyed, imitations sold by stores like Penny’s, which forced me to develop a self-protective, sarcastic sense of humor. My friend’s parents bought them cars, paid for gas and maintenance, while I purchased my own fifteen-year-old Dodge Dart, and paid for my own gas and insurance. I held a job while my friends had substantial allowances and were required to pay for few necessities. All of this helped build my life-long sense of independence, and self-sufficiency, but also inserted a psychic barrier between me and the friends who never had to work for what they had.
In the spring of 11th grade Mom’s depression surfaced again and at 15 I ran away from home. I didn’t really run away, because I kept showing up for my shifts at the local market while staying at a friend’s house. This lasted a week or so, and ended when we sat down and reached an agreement to not live together starting the next summer. I would try living in a foster home until I entered college the next January, and was placed in a home twenty-five miles from Monroe; a home with cockroaches, deep-fried starchy meals, and one too many toddlers with dirty diapers. I lasted about a month. It was particularly taxing driving the miles back and forth to my job but also to a summer honors creative writing class that I was attending. I still remember writing lessons from the class, but was overwhelmed by my life situation and had trouble fulfilling all class assignments. Perhaps my absence helped Mom regain her mental balance, because her behavior improved after I returned home and we spent a relatively unremarkable next six months.
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I would be remiss to not mention the ever-present drug scene in LA high schools of the 60’s and 70’s. To provide myself with free materials for self-medication, I bought pot and hash in quantity, and sold the rest to friends. A kilo of decent Mexican weed cost around $130 and was plentiful throughout Southern California. An ounce of hash ranged from 60 to 125 dollars, depending on whether it was normal Moroccan Green or higher quality Lebanese Red. I was risk averse and only sold to people I knew well, but one time was placed in a quandary by a friendly high-school teacher who wanted to buy some pot. I had been to his house several times and couldn’t believe he actually was a narc. After our monetary exchange, I left an ounce of pot in the glove box of his car at school. Nonetheless, I don’t think I fully exhaled for at least a week afterwards Similarly, I had a drop spot near my apartment where friends could pick up the pot they had paid for earlier.
Perhaps my riskiest behavior was attending weekly student council leadership breakfasts (I had been elected Vice-President of the Monroe student body) with our high school Vice Principal, while stoned. Mr. Foster, our Vice-Principal was an ex-marine and frequent wielder of Monroe High’s punishment paddle (corporal punishment was still legal in LA schools). Because I always changed clothes and used Visine@ to chase away my red eyes, I don’t think he ever caught on. At times, it was difficult to not break out laughing when Mr. Foster detailed what he believed to be the most significant problems of the current student body.
I finished Monroe High School at 16, in the middle of my senior year, and immediately enrolled in our local university, San Fernando Valley State College. Fifty years later I have just retired as Professor of Animal Ecology from the University of Georgia.
Perhaps my riskiest behavior was attending weekly student council leadership breakfasts (I had been elected Vice-President of the Monroe student body) with our high school Vice Principal, while stoned. Mr. Foster, our Vice-Principal was an ex-marine and frequent wielder of Monroe High’s punishment paddle (corporal punishment was still legal in LA schools). Because I always changed clothes and used Visine@ to chase away my red eyes, I don’t think he ever caught on. At times, it was difficult to not break out laughing when Mr. Foster detailed what he believed to be the most significant problems of the current student body.
I finished Monroe High School at 16, in the middle of my senior year, and immediately enrolled in our local university, San Fernando Valley State College. Fifty years later I have just retired as Professor of Animal Ecology from the University of Georgia.