Paradise lost,Verdugo Hills High School,1955

“Beam me up, Booty Jr High.. all children smile in the same language”...an Iago in disguise, dissembling thru his PSAL medal....fastest 12 year old in the 60 yard dash under the doomed roof, Iago shrewdly splitting out of his Devil’s pleasure palace to the school auditorium.....cast as George Washington in the all encompassing 8th grade “Father of his country”.


II

“Oh my goodness” “Heaven forbid” “Him again” none of the PTA monotones suspecting the masochistic sadistic motives playing out......

So what if the bullying fire escaped East 4th and Avenue P street urchin needs constant approbation.....

Is he pushing Abe Reles out of the Half Moon Hotel on Surf Avenue? mowing down innocents in Pakistan? Wiring suicide bombs in “Thief of Bagdad”?

“Raise yer hand, ” said the head counselor Missus Roberts, thinking to herself.....the big kid adults wolfing down their amnesia not unlike a dementia masking as an Alzheimer....

As a tradeoff , I kid you not dear reader......

III

The “father of his country” goes cross country, Rudolf Valentino’s “Sheik”.... emerging as “the cream cheese bandit” in a City of Angels Safeway market...kiping a midget sized Philadelphia cream cheese into his foul weather jacket., the ceiling mirror capturing his petty thief’s soul...morphing into nickel and dime aggressions, the bully finding his own web site...

Twenty five years after the fact..... oblivion

IV

Missus Roberts, the counseling honcho, migrated across the Continent as a ”Miss America .Go west, young lady” her Ucla backpack ....Brenda Joyce, 1945 ....

Saddle shoed sorority sisters yearning for their break on Hilgard’s sorority row, open to the gentle winds of an ominous lyricism..... Deanna Durbin in disguise

A mescaline shrieking hoop de hoop ..... juiced up m.o.t’s near Albuquerque, freaking out on a stoned Andre Agassi euphoria .

“Y’hear Tristan&Isolde, don’t you Gov’nor?”

V

In asthma hay fever smog free Sunland Tujunga... driving up from the Valley , she discovered Shangri-la’s Verdugo Hills High School........directing the cumulative record sweep from kindergarten thru Verdugo Hills Junior High into the Senior High of raging hormones Friday nighters and hot rod cruising Smother brother flicks.

Diane Keaton’s transition to “Annie Hall”........Glendale Pasadena La Cresenta Flintridge, publisher Manchester Boddy’s gilded orchids beyond the school’s ....

“The last of the Mohigans” Henry Fonda, Binnie Barnes.

VI

Her classroom appearances gave her a tactful prescience....”Dr. Jink Fish, a psychologist, doing her PHD thesis on childhood realities..... morphing into grown up fantasies”.

Having access to Lenny Ross’s yearnings, Ucla ‘s Fearing Gingerelli Wenger’s data bases.....Fearing of Hadley Cantrel’s “ Social Psychology”....

Later mowed down by a car at a pedestrian crossing.... San Vicente above Wilshire (the Air Reserve Center) below Bundy, Freud’s “Civilization against the discontents” playing out

VII


Lenny’s appearance on the $64000 question.. Thru graduation to Reed and Yale Law School, his tenure: editor in chief, the law review...

Then Governor (aka attorney general) Jerry Brown’s Nuke Prof. at Boalt Law School, regulating utility rates from Sacramento.

Resolving his demons......climbing a fence, surrounding a motel’s swimming pool, finding his nirvana, his sponge like lungs breathing their last....an unfettered nemesis, conquering his giant retentive soul.

VIII

When Jinx Fish’s husband Dr, Jekyl wasn’t tethering Oscar nee Hughie Hughes, the pet ape they adopted from the Edgar Rice Burroughs compound. in Tarzana, he subbed in Lenny’s Junior High classes..

What was the skinny on Lenny Ross?”

The school’s enlightened leadership: Bill Farmer, a handball player extra ordinaire; Bob Bennett Dorothy Kirby vice principals, Mrs. Burke, school secretary, a dangling Novella Roma purse on her arm. ....

Charismatic Herman Adams into advanced algebra the chess club: his state of mind. like his door always open....

IX

Meanwhile Jenkyl and Lenny kibitzed about his stock market prowess...”gimme a few tips, .Y’ like Royal Dutch?”

“Who’s your broker? Joe the pro?” asked the vunder kid, spitting out a pistachio shell of price&earnings, many moons before Madoff’s “Sheik of Araby” costumed fall from 6th grade grace.

Sweating jumping jacks on the football field... a shower...., Sy Korach, the basketball coach, monitoring Lenny’s spritz, snapping his towel.... vicariously morphing his own Midwood High memories...Mister Ralston, a pro in snapping his tosches.

Building his home on North Bundy Drive, while coaching at LA Trade Tech ...the on ramp freeway geometries ....Harbor Long Beach Hollywood Ventura San Diego Santa Monica playing out a “trick or treat”..... to Disneyland.

“Who’s yer Daddy? “

City of Brotherly Love, the Bronx Bombers 2 - 1, World Series, November 1, 2009