William Saroyan’s ‘Young man on the flying trapeze’

William Saroyan’s ‘Young man on the flying trapeze’ may be but a metaphor for Dr. Fred’s ‘The pursuit of happiness in his narrative)“Civilization and its discontents”. 

                                                                                      II

The catatonic ward of the Brentwood VA neuropsychiatric hospital. The cream cheese bandit is taken out of his ego trip.…..the UCLA student attendant ‘s recognition..

A recapitulation of the interior shocks in the Cream cheese bandit’s psyche…. fifty years of role playing, bullying,  emasculating the weak,. The Cream Cheese bandit vulnerability,to their loss of direction..meandering along, beneath the Palm trees and semi tropical weather..

                                                                    III

The catatonic ward of shuffling bodies of a post war reality check…the cacophony of athe choir boy oif anattedant amidst those post traumatic “wounded” veterans.

The “coach” and the choir boy of an attendant, the latter embracing the Dr. Freud catharsis “Civilization and itsdiscontents”.

​                                                                                IV

The two humans stared at each other, the attendant from UCLA,putting in his time on a scholarly part time basis, while the older “cat”  treaded in step, his motion relatively in unison with theattendant, the catatonic ward oblivious to the standoff between the younger  sleuth, searching for the older patient’sunconscious. The youthful sleuth circling his prey!, his mind open..

“What happened? Why are you in this ward? Catatonics!. What did you do on the outside?” asked the freshie attendant off the UCLA campus,. In its Westwood Village ambiance.

                                                                                                                                             V              .

The older man into his role as a patient, stood quietly, his eyes settling on the attendant’s own. “Lissen to me,” he said. “I was minding my own business at the Heavenly Hills tennis club. Needing a game for some sweats we  ran into the actor Burt Lancaster. How would I know he was engaged with his old time amigo Nick from the Bronx. Their yesterdays on the Ringling Brothers  circuit…..Saroyan’s Young man on the flying trapeze playing out. “ 

“The actor into his role whatever….” Dorothy Thompson’s husband artist …Sin…..”                                                                                      

“Ethan From?” asked the bewildered attendant of a catatonic inquisition..

Naah,” said the catatonic. Living out his tennis encounter with Bronx born Burt Lancaster at the Beverley Hills tennis club. “He got an Oscar for his role, realizing his zealous high priest of the cerebral…. Elmer Gantry, But Lancaster identifying with Gantry and his paramour ,played by Jean Simmons, the director’s wife.

                                                                                                                                              

The Bronx born Burt who earned the Oscar for his Elmer Gantry identification had become what Shirley Booth  had predicted in :Come back little Sheba’. . that Sinclair Lewis would characterize the rise and fall of (Bronx born Burt) Elmer Gantry.              

“But the impasse at the tennis court with the actor.  Didn’t you know? Aware he was playing tennis with his  kimosabi Nick? How could you invade their privacy? Al those yesterdays with the trapeze. Up and down the East coast in their jalopy. They were like Siamese twins”.. said the clean shaven UCLA 

attendant, fresh from  Social Psychology  ….Professor Fearing rudimentary La Brea tar pits….Denny the 

Dinosaur’s Ally Oop……. The Mercury theater’s Orson WellesJohn Houseman’s ”Invasion of New Jersey by the ‘ET’ from Mars”.

                                                                                                          VIII

“But the UCLA psych cast as a catatonic attendant, stared into the eyes of the once tennis player. “I was dumb founded by the actor’’s brand. I dared the impossible by invading his realm of reality. What did I know tha0yours truly would interrupt my ego trip and cause an invasion of his privacy. Call out the Heavenly Hills gendarmes and they would commit me to your catatonic ward.”

“The moral of the story is keep your catatonic and ego trip to yourself, Mister.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Aril 19, 2016. The VA’s Catatonic Ward, Brentwood, California

Southern California

“Southern California, here we come, back from where we started from,” in hindsight age 17, a Midwod High School grad 3000 miles away, registering a a UCLA freshman in a world class University, with a campus stretching as far as these agingblue eyes could see…medical, law schools in futuro!

                                        II

Neither Howie Goldman,(a transferee from Midwood High School in Brooklyn) nor his parents, his pops the Adam Hats manager at Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar, could have known  as they put us up in their Mariposa apartment, off Holywood Boulevard and Normandie) until we could find a room near campus and register as a post war freshman in Westwood village, the site of Joe E. Brown field, cross country running, football scrimmages for a pot Rose Bowl flurry in Pasadena, the regular season fought out in LA’s Coliseum and the Pacific Coast Conference home turfs..

In the meantime How, a student musician at Hollywood High School and hi amigo Jay, also a musician at the High School, showed us around the perils of Hollywood.

Ken Murray’s “Blackouts” an original of busty Marie Wilson .A starring role for the natives and USO ‘s  returning emancipated GI’s o the tyranny of war, into the GI Bill of Rights, and reentry into civilian life…

                                           III

Retuning to campus in Westwood, we became acclimated to theROTC building, the many tennis courts, Jane Withers home above the athletic fi.. off campus  on a hill, above SunsetBoulevard.

Needless to say, our energetic recovery from Typhoid Fever coma in Brooklyn at age of nine, living in Venice and Santa Monica six years earlier. (Charlie Chaplin finding his persona)

                                             IV

UCLKA’s music library named in honor of the Vienna born12 tone Arnold Schoenberg (Alban Berg ‘s “Lulu”), the Psychologybuilding and the men’s gym….quotes from Plato and Socrates along the pathways and Jan Steps, leading p from Westwood Boulevard to the quad and student parking lots.   

                                                  VI

In this environment of returning GIs, competing high school grads from the California secondary schools, we were thrown into lecture halls and blue book essay examinations where wetreated a shaky line. writing essays…. nearly flunking out.

Professor Graham (the gossip coluumnist’s pops), Sheila by name. Lectured about historical military

Clashes.. ”man’s inhumanity to man” . (Brooklyn’ Midwood High School was never like this academia … (the cosmos come crashing down).

We were out of their level, trying to grasp the esoteric vision of his diction.. …Psychology with Professor Fearing….. the study of rhesus monkeys and apes, in building their own La Brea tar pits, way beyond our 

ken.

The Political Science (Governor Warren, “Goody’ Knight, Lt. Governor) lectures with Professor Jenkins, about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution blew our minds , in his Royce Hal lectures,  educate students to the details of blue book exams…Englis also too our  breathes way and if not by some lucky coincidence by Chancellor Dykstra and Al Lapin, a Far Rockaway transferee, and the pioneer (with brother Jerry) the ‘House of Pancakes’ on Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake, near the haunts of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Olivia de Haviland…….3 Stooges Moe Howard and son Paul, a cartoonist and Air Forde Reservist from Deering Avenue in Canoga Park. A UCLA water poloist, his daughter working for “Star Wars”, George Lucas.

                                                 VIII

That we tried to be a sports scribe in football for the Daily Bruin, our sports editor having the same name of Senator AlFranken from Minnesota ,a standup comic in a previous life, to be sure.

                                                     IX

Subject A was remedial, a compassionate graduate student administrating the remedial work for our getting back in UCLA’s good grace. Bill Ackerman, the graduate manager and tennis coach I his Kherkoff Hall penthouse office, with pictures of all his tennis teams on the walls. Harry Morris, the publications guidance officer, Wilbur Johns, the basketball coach and friend, who heard of our dead eye two handed set shot on the Joe E. Brown courts (and later Athletic Director, on signing the immortal John Wooden from Indiana, Wilbur’s initials . (God’s Way)

Dr. Wenger in Psychology 1A, Dr. Abe Kaplan in Philosophy. Dr. Kostineck in Political Geography…. Dr. Booth in English.. Dr. Sam Selden Theater Arts…(critiquing Danny Fuchs our “Mozart and Mushroom 

Barley”, MGM preview sheets, our “Mr. Novak” vis a vi MGM (, Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, Borhamwood Studio, London).…..Dr Grant in Business and Government….tumbling, swimming Chairman of Physical Education.

Dr. Charles Titus in Politics and Legislature and Legislation. Dr Frederic Woellner “Sociological foundation ofEducation….Sociology one A…. Physical Education (minor)… Tumbling, basketball one on one drills, free shooting….swimming and rescuing drills with Davaage (DaveMinor) Political Philosophy 

John Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau)th Professor Jenkins.
Don Ashen, treasurer for football ticket collecting jobs, at the Coliseum’s games.

Colonels Bing, Ferguson for advanced Ai ROTC, with likes of Ducky Drake (trainer ,track)

Westwood village haunts with Sonja Henie’s ice skating rink,Tom Crumplar’s malts, UCLA and across the way the two movie theaters..The Bruin….Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, “Spellbound”…..Hamburger Hamlet, Lord and Taylor, the Post Office.  (Wooden P.o. in Reseda.

La Cienaca Tennis Courts, (Kent Taylor ‘Boston Blackie”) Alan Joslyn, Beverly Hills and Mrs Latker’s student rental, North Hamilton Drive .. several streets from Igor Stravinsky’s North Wetherly Drive”The ” home..”The Rite of Spring”  “The Fire Bird” (Rimsky Korsakov his Moscow mentor)

April 15, 2016  The City that never sleeps.

   

Dr. Sigmund Freud’s ‘Civilization

Dr. Sigmund Freud’s ‘Civilization and its discontents’

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement- that they seek power,  success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life’.

                                                  II

Growing up in Flatbush (Brooklyn), the farthest thing from my coming to grips with Dr. Freud’s ‘Civilization and its discontents’.  Collecting garter snakes, listening to the “Witch’s tales”  “Reed” Barber announcing the Dodger games at Ebbet’sField. 

The subway rides, elevator apartment lifts, Belt Parkway weekend visits to our cousins in Bensonhurst d Bay Ridge and Avenue T’s Sheepshed Bay.

Renewing public library books off Avenue J and East 12th Street, above the bowling alley….”Farrell’s “Studs Lonigan”. Ping pong a Tony Viola’s Parkville, our older brother Joel, the tennis pro at their eight courts, on Ocean Parkway, adjacent to the Metropolitan cemetery, where our grandfather David and grandmother Dora, are buried.

The delicatesns, Al Padow’s drug sdtore(Mr. Padow the Midwood High School Physics and chemistry teacher, the candy store at corner of Coney Island Avenue and Avenue J Opposite the  Dime Savings Bank.. Waldbaum’s grocery store before WW2 when it emerged as Waldbaum’s super market (her son, a clarinet player at Midwood High School.

                          Between Mr. Shapiro in Science, Mrs Nellis in Art nd Mrs Harder in Geography or Home ropo, the kip rope, hop skip and jump, the Yo yos (the Filipino), the relays, dodge ball, basketball free throws.  Monopoly, gin rummy card games, twenty one, pinochle. Pick up sticks.

Intramural basketball basement gym at Avenue I and Coney Island Avenue. Flatbush Jewish Center.…the Gremlins, Comets from Avenue ‘J’…...                           

                                                             III

The new Midwood High School on Bedford Avenue and Campus Road at Brookly College. Tubby Ross principal. Julie Raqski, head of Bos P.E. Henry Fuchs, Seniuor English and adviser to the newspaper rgue and the Epilog Yearbook. Interviews WOR sports Editor Stan , Ala Young radio comicfrom Canada.

Ick up sticks.Ivy League admission tests, acceptance UCLA….Western Union gold staqr mother trelegramsduringWW2…. Living opposite Art Carney and his parents above the Bohack Aartment,across the street. Carney, Jackie Gleason’s bus driver Ralph Kramden of Bensonhurst….Edward R. Murrow and  his ghost writer Raymond Gram Swing of CBS…”Let’s Pretend.

Civics and te4nnis coach and Bridge virtuoso Murray Eisenstadtand hiwfe Kappie, celebrating 185 years of birthdays..he 95 ,.she 90. He tennis coach, also..Mr M<annheuimer o the ropes, trapeze, chinning bar…..

                                                  IV

Back in Fatbush, Wingate Field. Basketball, tenis, handball, baseball, track. Judge Wingate;s son, Surrogates Cort..our father propbate administrator a, clerk interpretor for 36 years. (Barbra Striesand father’s estate. His “What’s in a name? at President Truman’s library… Independence, Missouri.

The Plymouth and NaSSH   driving on the West Side Highway, the Palisades…the summer Hay Fev er relief visits to the White Mountains, Nw Hampshire and the village Bethlehem…..Berniue Sanders Burlington, Vermont……the son of immigrants wo two!

April 12, 2016    Dr. Sigmund Freud’s ‘Civilization and itsDiscontents’