Tag: California

At Bedside.

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On the day my mother was inducted into home hospice care, after the oxygen machine was delivered, and the table on wheels positioned over her bed, she asked me to sit down and go over a few things.

She said she woke up every morning, not thinking of death but gradually, as the day wore on, realized she was not going anywhere. Her cancer was in Stage #4.

Inoperable, untreatable, unceasing, spreading and unstoppable.

She asked me to hold her hand. And we spoke of what I would do with the apartment after she died. And I told her how I would keep the photo albums and place them in my house for posterity. She said that my brother and his wife might want her sofa. I knew they didn’t. But I kept silent and listened.

She wanted to know if the money was holding out, and she warned about overspending.

I broke down, as I do often, sometimes for much lesser reasons, and told her that I would write about her, and those sacrifices she made; the long, hard, uncompensated work of a woman who was a wife and mother for 54 years and often neglected her own pleasures waiting and tending to others.

Does it count for something if you remember your mother throwing a ball back and forth with your retarded brother? Running up and down the stairs carrying laundry? Screaming at me for crashing a car? Telling my dying father that she had so much to say to him.

She told me she did not want me to cry and she tried to steer the conversation back to where I was going that night, and what I might do on the way back to Van Nuys.

She spoke next of what she might wear when she was dead and laid out. A Bathing Suit is what she proposed. But then I reminded her that she would be cremated and there would be no casket and no outfit to consider.

Calmly and tearfully, eloquently and closely we tread on an event not far in the future, a dark and silent condition, irreversible.

That most feared moment, interrupting the pressing banalities and bills of life.

 The Young and the Restless tivoed.

Red grapes on sale at Ralph’s.

 Can you put another pillow behind my head?

 Can you get a glass of water for me?

 No I don’t want oxygen!

 When will the landlord be told that his tenant had died?

 Why should you care who visited your mother as she lay ill?

For now, the woman who gave birth to me still spoke.

 

Day at the Races.

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Months ago, inexplicably, I was sent an email inviting me to experience a day of horse racing at Santa Anita Park courtesy of America’s Best Racing.

I was dumbfounded and somewhat suspicious, thinking this might be one of those messages from Nigeria advising me that Dr. Ooeexxlio had been kidnapped and his wife was in need of funds to get him out of Somalia.

I asked the sender of the email why I was chosen– as my knowledge and interest in equestrianism is as specious as my familiarity with Seabiscuit.  “We search for people within each market and try to convert them into new fans. It is all about getting new fans to head out to the racetrack,” explained Chip McGaughey, Brand Ambassador for America’s Best Racing.

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I agreed to go, and summoned up my memory of Cary Grant in the 1946 film Notorious “accidentally” meeting Ingrid Bergman at a Rio racetrack, both dressed impeccably, he in his suit and she in her veiled hat and tailored outfit.

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I put on my driving cap, recently purchased blue sharkskin suit and plaid tie, tie clip, Tattersall shirt, and wingtip leather dress oxfords. If I had to go to this event, I might as well go as if I were performing as the racehorses do, to compete and win.

Arcadia was there as it always is, a gigantic town of gigantic parks under the purple protection of the San Gabriels. I drove into the many square miles of asphalt parking lot, manned by good-looking, Wally Cleaverlike white boys who called me sir and took my $4.

I was met, at the gate, by a young and gracious couple: Jose Contreras and his wife Karina. Karina’s father is a jockey, she grew up in the sport, and her dad was riding that day.  Into the clubhouse we went, our left hands stamped with an invisible seal visible only under black light.

Santa Anita is a lovely old track, so its worn innards have gotten a much-needed facelift.  There are new, bright, white, stylishly designed concession stands serving craft beers, salads, and hearty sandwiches (I had thick sliced turkey on rye). Everyone I encountered at the track had that 1950s gaiety (in its old meaning) with plenty of “sweetie what can I get you” to the cashier who said, “My pleasure sir.”

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I was given a $50 betting voucher, as well as free beer and food, and then Jose and Karina brought me up into the box seats where we passed other patrons in the haze of cigar and cigarettes, beer and bourbon, enjoying the festivities of the impending races.

I’m not a mathematical person, but I caught on, somewhat, to the odds on the board, and used my dismal arithmetic to concoct winnings on 3 out of 9 races.  Jose was diligent and genuine in his love for the sport, and eager to bring another fan into the fold.

More guests arrived, other couples, newly baptized into the horse racing religion.  We cheered as our horses came around the track. As one close race came to an end, I shut my eyes, and squeezed my abs so tight I got a cramp.

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Jose and Karina brought us down to the paddock, an oval area of grass where jockeys and horses come down and parade around in a sort of modeling runway for the four legged.

We went back up to our box seats, and I again brought up my vague memories of old Lincolnwood, IL, where I grew up, and Evelyn Marx, a red haired woman of 50, who weekly drove her gold Sedan de Ville to Arlington Park and bet on horses, a diversion thought unseemly by my grandmother.

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As I left Santa Anita, I walked past those 1930s aqua walls, bathed in late-day sunlight, past scalloped awnings and architecturally fluffy touches of femininity: decorative, frivolous and joyful.  Slightly buzzed, somewhat richer, I walked away from a day at the races immersed in escapism.

America’s Best Racing wants to recruit new blood and return the sport to its preeminence. And they’re planting enthusiasm for it in the most un-likeliest of people. The marketing people have something up their sleeves, though I cannot begin to guess what it is.

Last Week on the Equestrian Trail.

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Last week, before the heat hit, late on a mellow Monday afternoon, I went with Andreas for a walk around the old stables, trails and grounds where horses are equal to humans, near Griffith Park, along Riverside Drive.

I hadn’t seen or entered these old places before, places where the noble creatures go trotting, riding and pacing; animals so big, up close, with their long trapezoidal heads and muscularity, emitting an intelligence and alertness, odor and breath; hay, dust and sweat.

The light was rich and deep and golden. We wandered behind one stable, walked over a bridge and turned onto a dirt- paved riding trail running alongside a watery trench. A young group on horseback came down, kicking up dust, laughing and yelling hello.

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Andreas, photographing, walked one way and I went another.

Justin Resnik

And then I walked, alone, out of that trail and back onto Riverside Drive where I came to Eurosport Horses and Justin Resnik, a wiry, tall, greying, boyishly effusive man who invited me into his compound where he keeps exquisite German, Swiss and other European horses in a fastidiously elegant and old-world stable, once owned by Gene Autry.

Seemingly placed on the front patio by a casting director were three good-looking people: a blue-eyed male worker hosing down the plants and squirting water at a playful pit bull, a young Latino student rider sitting at a table, and Mr. Resnik’s young blonde girlfriend drinking beer.

Massive horses, shiny, groomed, overpowering, without a stray mane hair, posed and loitered in their spotless stalls, as Mr. Resnik walked me through his brass-plated and polished facilities. He spoke casually of his Olympic riding, his entrée into high cost horse-trading, his childhood growing up in Malibu, and a multi-million dollar offer he rejected for one horse last week.

I, with $73 dollars in my checking account, was once again conscious of Southern California, the incredible luck of some, mixed with hard work and the right connections, the accidents of geography and heredity propelling taller, better-looking and better-situated people into better lives, even as we outside the gates press our noses through the iron and hope to be taken into their affluence and security.

Ronald Reagan on horseback rode across my mind for a second, singing his encomiums for the Golden State, a place where anything is possible if you can just grasp it when you are temporarily young. For me, an anti-Reagan, An American Failure, I have always looked forward by looking back, from youth onwards. Should I not have learned something from the 40th President? Where are my stables, my advisors, my investments, my followers?

What will become of me after my Pinterest is no more?

California and America always mourning those.

I said good-bye to Resnik and crew and went looking for Andreas who was somewhere up the creek without a cellphone. We got into his car and drove back to Van Nuys.

With a walk and a curiosity we had gone exploring. And come into an old California of man and horse, hoof and horseshoe, saddle and strap, somehow more lasting and more eternal than anything online.

Vanowen, Gloria and Gaviota

Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments

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West of the 405, on Victory and on Vanowen, the vast spaces of Van Nuys open up to parks, golf courses, airport runways, and planes taking off and coming down. The skies are bigger, the vistas wider, the winds windier. And the potential for escape and discovery beckons on foot or bike.

Once this area was the domain of the Joe Jue Clan, a Chinese-American family whose large asparagus farm, near Vanowen and White Oak, flourished from the 1920s-50s. Surrounded by tennis courts, the old family barn still stands.

Van Nuys, CA 91406 Built 1947

Driving east near Woodley last week, I passed 15931 Vanowen, three mid-century semi-detached houses with horizontally paned windows. Lined up like planes in a hangar, the sharp, upward, angled pitched roofs pointed, like arrows, towards nearby Van Nuys Airport.

http://upinthevalley.org
http://upinthevalley.org

Curious, I returned last night, near dusk, with Andreas Samson, and explored the teeming urban apartments and semi-rural side streets along Vanowen, Gloria and Gaviota. And we stopped to investigate 15931. (built 1947)

Van Nuys, or Lake Balboa, as this area prefers to call itself, is deceptive. Along the main streets, the apartments are packed, full of working Latino families, the backbone of California. Last night we bumped into an old friend from the gym, a Guatemalan guy on Gaviota who owns a restaurant on Sepulveda and was returning home, in his pickup, exhausted.

Along the side streets, an old world still co-exists with the newer slum dwellers. There are large, deep, expansive properties, many planted with citrus trees, up and behind fences and gates, behind iron. Armenians, Latinos, and Asians bought up these fortified compounds, built up houses and rental units, or let the dry grasses and dirt take over.

Van Nuys, CA 91406

6709 Gloria Ave

Shamamyan Armenak Residence

Contrasts are everywhere: the picturesque Spanish casa from the 1920s next to the peeling frame shack, the lushly watered front yard of native flowers and the concrete paved SUV car lot. Guns and roses, skateboarders and speeding cars, a man hitting golf balls on his front lawn.

On Kittridge at Gloria, ferocious pit bulls kept by a friendly, toothless woman behind a broken-down dirt yard sit next to an Armenian owned limousine company, a home business behind lion bedecked gates and stucco pediment and columns.

Rich or poor, native-born or naturalized, the predominant domestic style is violence deterrence. Gates, alarms, barking dogs, steel, concrete, cinderblock, “no trespassing” signs. Each property, born sweet, evolves, like an enlisted soldier, into battle-hardened, tactical, offensive, lethal toughness.

Van Nuys, CA

Van Nuys, CA

At 6652 Gaviota, one unfortified mirage appeared: a sweet, middle-aged woman on her front lawn in a house-dress, watering a large tree with a garden hose.

We stopped to talk to her, startled by her openness and friendliness, her casual banter (“I was born and raised around here. I have been renting this particular house for 32 years”), intrigued by her whole retro setting and persona: white frame house with porch, tree swing, steel awning windows and asphalt driveway, and her manner of attire, mid-century Kansas farm wife. An American flag on a pole stood off in the distance, a skinny rail of a young man came down the driveway to fetch mail from the mailbox.

We took some photos of her, and continued our walk, ending up, as all walks in Van Nuys must, in the presence of the Holy Trinity: La Iglesia, La Lavanderia, and El Licor. (Allan’s Liquors).

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Allan's Liquors

Iglesia

Taps and Lights Out….

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Another nail in the coffin of commerce on Van Nuys Blvd: the 63-year-old Van Nuys Army & Navy Store, Inc. at 6179 will close down in a few weeks.

Standing on the SW corner of Delano Street, the distinctive store with its red, white and blue lettering was one of the last remaining outposts of the old Van Nuys, a loner amidst pot shops and bail bondsmen.

The Army and Navy store, opened in 1950, held its ground against blank faced government buildings, retail white flight, and another human invasion from sub-Americana that dare not speak its name.

Inside the store were stacks of Levi 501s, military dress pants for $5.00, dark wool pea coats, special forces and 82nd Airborne caps on shelves, munitions and camouflage vests, rubber boots, Anti-American Confederate and Pro-Communist Che Guevara Flags for those of exotic political tastes; Vietnam era bumper stickers still silently yelling hostility and anger 45 years later, ammunition cans and olive drab parachutes, scratchy wool blankets in plastic, cotton Marine t-shirts, and survival kits for backyard campers or overseas fighters.

This was a store where friendly faces sold goods once used to fight enemies. It was a democratic place where the solemn savagery of war was put on sale for anybody to buy at rock-bottom prices.

It was a piece of Van Nuys when this boulevard bustled. Now it’s another dying locale on a street were even the litter is moving on.

Voting Day in Van Nuys.

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It was voting day today, and like many Americans, I walked over to cast my ballot at the Voyager Motor Inn, joining men and women from my community, including unrentable females not normally seen on Sepulveda.

My neighbors up the street were coming out of the motel, and warned me that one door was green and the other red, and you did not have to wait in line for green but nobody would tell you.

I didn’t know what the hell that meant, but I walked into the crowded smelly motel and tehraned myself to the front of the line, walking past others waiting, and into the room where I handed my ballot to a volunteer at a table.

My name and address were clearly printed on back…. so the young lady asked for my name and address.

I signed my name into the book and was handed a long, skinny ballot which I then placed into a voting booth whose poster board walls would blow down if I sneezed.

Misinformed, manipulated, misguided, prejudiced, biased, open-minded, incisive and ignorant, I had already made up my mind about the propositions and what they really meant.

Two of the measures would provide funding for all children in California schools, 50% of whom are here by way of undocumented parents. There are 7 billion people on Earth and I wonder what would happen if any one country could just settle all its citizens here?

But I better not start that argument.

Another measure promised to stop union contributions and seemed backed by the Republicans who only believe that large corporations and CEOs should have a voice.

Mercury Insurance sponsored another ballot.

Warren Buffet’s partner’s daughter poured $100 million into Prop. 38 funding early childhood education. And I wondered why she could not have spent $100 million to redesign our voting ballot to make it graphically clear and readable.

Prop. 36 made the three strikes law only applicable if the last crime was violent. That made sense to me as my neighbor was almost imprisoned for life after he had two non-violent strikes and one DUI.

I almost voted to overturn the Death Penalty (Prop. 34), which I know does not deter crime, and is barbaric, but then I realized that we are quite a barbaric state, with people who tag church walls and murder congregants who step outside and confront. I think death is deserved for some, even if it is not logically warranted.

And I did not think it enforceable to require condoms on set for adult performers. (B) And I voted yes to accelerate public transportation because it is both a job creator and a civic necessity, bringing cleaner air and better development to Los Angeles (J).

Finally, or to begin with, I voted for the Presidental candidate who killed Osama Bin Laden, extracted us from Iraq and will do so in Afghanistan, saved the auto industry, and tried and partially succeeded in reforming our health care system which is so unfair, expensive and monstrously geared to the 1%.

I am all over the place, a liberal and a conservative, tolerant and racist, traditional and progressive.

I guess I am just a Californian.