“If you’re so smart mister, why ain’t we rich,” said the feminine side of the family owned Nixon burger, a drive in, mimicking the Hula Hut without the scantily clad car hops, waiting for their break....Whittier California circa 1952. Momma flipping the pattiets to the ceiling, playing out her role as wife mother confessor and fry cook in pursuit of business.
But what the hell is the business you ask, neighbor
II
The ding a ling off the wall phone
“A big order in La Habra...who should we say.... The tennis pro off that Glen Aire country club south of Ventura in Sherman Oaks ....Joel Arden..a sumptuous feast for three. His lady and son Lefty.”
A nickel an d dime bandit. His own shop, giving lessons, re stringing racquets.....Remember Herby Titler’s Church&Utica....in the 30's..Harry Diamond, Nathan Goldstein. Tubby Raskin those 6 clay courts.....re stringing racquets.
Remember pigs have guts, neighbor.
III
“Where is that testy son of ours?....cultivating the paparazzi for his run for Helen Gahagan Douglas’s Congressional seat.....get him back on his game...
“Tricky Dick where are thou kiddo? An order from a fat cat Olancha Drive.....he’s a tipper in La Habra.”....”
“But can he tickle the 88 keys?” asked the Nixon burgerTricky in hisfootbasll helmet and shoulder pads.... a Chopin polonaise spinoff... his self serving heroics.
Scoring the winning T.D. whupping the sororities being the best in his fantasy, never
succumbing to the Burger. But rising above it.
“Awesome”
IV
“Nixon burger sir,”he said offering the platter to Joe, the Fullerton Orange County panorama beneath the one bedroom cliff estate..a one acre with space for a tennis court.. swimming pool..
Nixon knew the lay of the land as he tried to make a score outside trhe gridiron in his search for mantra...Hillcrest Brentwood country clubs... the Riveria 18 holes... Beverly Hills tennis club...
“You’re the pro at Glen Aire...wow....a major W in that wow,”he said ,,,”Los ?Angeles tennis club and Perry Jones.....Jack Kramer Ted Schroeder Ted Olewine
Denying any “passport” to Pancho Gonzales from East Los Angeles....the barrio...
Garfield High School.... the other side of the tracks, neighbor.
V
“Keep the change,”said the tennis pro, ratcheting back those depression laden memories in Brooklyn at Herbie Titler tennis shop....
Wasn’t his expansiveness a mirror of Tricky Dick’s burger aggressions. The two seekers into the their destinies, shaking hands, their palms moist with sweat beads as they recognized each other in their cynical eye scathing configurations......
VI
Sitting on the bench, Richard Nixon waited for his chance. A varsity lettrer ‘W’ ut the coach savoring moment when could remove the splinters from sitting so long.....
What more could a junior high scrub from Yorba Linda prove?
Didn’t the vice principal introduce him to his girl friend and wife in futuro Pat...
All he needed was a break...
“Dear Duke watching you riding shotgun on “Stagecoach”, Pat and I savvy you as our hero..Your friend, Dick
VII
Three years at Duke law school, a stint as a Naval Officer in Aleutian waters playing poker......he got out of his mothballs....into luck and hope at the Nixonburger, “Slim”
(Howard Hughes)bankrolling Ma and Pa with $250,000 big ones......
Little did the protagonist of “Nixon in China” know he would beat Helen Gahagan Douglas ..Melvyn Douglas ‘s frau, co star with Greta Garbo “Ninotocha” Ernest Lubitsch with crafted added dialogue by Billy Wilder, the German emigre. allying with Jack Lemmon
Walter Matthau and Fred MacMurray.
VIII
The character assassination of Helen Gahagan Douglas....
Go after Helen Gahagan as a Commie but she is a well entrenched living North of Franklin in Hollywood...she has star quality but she can be whupped Tricky.....
.A liberal fer sure neighbor but her actor husband Melvin D. is a pinko, favors the American people....you can spear her like Professor Titus quoted in ‘Politics’....
Halderman and Erlichman sitting in his seating chart.not knowing you Tricky would chose them to guard the oval office from the true believers, neighbor. .....
“Welcome to the neighborhood of skulldollery Repeating the big lie until the public believes it. A hypnosis., a trance Tricky...y’gotta have balls...politics isn’t for faint hearted idealists..”.
Like Harry Truman said “if you can’t stand the heat... stay out of my kitchen.....why my son son had his eyes on the oval office...he could have made a good iving with the Nixonburger....Him and Pat and the girls Tricia and Julie could have settled in Yorba Linda where his library is....buthe had to get the splinters out of his butt first..
Good marriages for the girls......They deserve the best..
You betta believe it, neighbor..
IX
Pumped up.... he drove the coupe up to the Arden acre estate and trhir two bedroom at the edge of the hill, the panoramic view over the Fullerton Whittier Yorba Linda Pico reality scene: orange groves and chicken ranches..the rooster wake up call at dawn..
Tricky had come a long way since the boys vice principal at the middle school introduced him to his Pat, his life’s partner in his drive to capture the Iago like fuel to the promised land...the Congressional seat
Into theSenate.... kissing up with Ike’s coattails...
The “Senator from Formoso’s” suicide of Californiaa’s senior Senator..Bill Knowland..and the JFK assassination..........
A whirl for a kiddo who got splinters sitting on the Whittier College pigskin bench, waiting for the call, he had come a long way.....hearing the choo choo of the Southern Pacific locomotive..
The Glen Aire tennis pro Joe Arden and his missus and son were but links toward the good life the Brentwood Beverly Hills Beverly Wood Pacific Palisades Malibu reality scenes in comparison with the drive in Nixon burger black top.
Yorba Linda Whittier origins
X
However the first leg of the Nixon odyssey was to capture the Helen gahagan Douglas Congressional seat.....the underpinnings of that aggressive myth that the Nixon burger legal eagle could brush the lady with a paint of red.
“Wasn’t she a front for Commies....a pinko of an actor husband. How could she represent these hard working nose to the grindstone..... humans believing in the American dDeam.
The Nixon burger thinking, the IBM Wastson wonder of wonders wyhupping the incumbent....the Nixon burger mother taking the apron off,
Those burgers marketing a Westside target, the management extended into a
seductive quest.
XI
Meanwhile Chairman Mao and his alter ego Chou en Lai escaped the wrath of Chaing Kai shek and his madame, fleeing to the caves in the central provinces..
Chairman Mao when he wasn’t scribbling in his book ...rehearsed his foxtrot later to bve reprised in “Nixon in China”, his madame playing out her ballet lkie scene..her dancers in their spiked heels, carrying rifles......but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we neighbor?
Tricky hungered for recognition, an appropriation from those chicken farm orange grove Nixon burger Orange County plains.
The North Rossmore LA Tennis club environs of the upper crust...wasn’t that the “snakes” for the hoit poloi...The Hearsts Miriam what’s Heart’s mistress. He wanted to make a star out of her lack of charisma..
Miriam Davies, thats who.
Who wouldn’t long for that reality scene? To rub elbows with the powerful? Isn’t that what’s
What the “soaps” are all about..”All my children”
Ask ‘The Great Gatsby” Fitzgerald, Hemingway they all want that clawing achievment....
North Rossmore Pancho Gonzales couldn’t make the grade. Even as great as he was....controlled power quoteh the tennis pro Joe Arden who practiced hittingf with the great Pancho at the courts behind the Coliseum
Ghettos and barrios why not . Porque whjy should the Caucasians rub elbows with the
these pegged pants and chains, these Chicanos must mind their place. Stay in Garfield High School, that’s their barrio..Wilson Lincoln....the El Sereno reality scene .
Their peyote......their lot in life...... the Jews settling in Boyle Heights off Whittier Boulevard and Brooklyn Avenue....the ghetto is their reoots, their place......but don’t get me wrong like the Jews, their dinero at Nixon burger we’ll buy into it...
I’m no antisemite...and neither are Halderman from Redlands or “honest man” Erlichman from
Santa Monica..One of my best friends is a Rabbi, neighbor.
“We haven’t worked out the bugs for kosher burgers yet....bwith techniology Mom and Pops my brother we’ll have kosher for our Boyle Heighs and Lake Elsinore market....you gotta believe it,
neighbor.” said the self aggrandized status seeker.
”Handsome? With his five o’clock shadow?” asked a car hop.,off the record.
XII
Taking a cue the East Los Angeles turf...Belvedere Gardens where Margo and Tony Quinn and sultry Martha Soto grew up, the latter a voluptuous USC conveertible original” blowing her persona...the same reality scene for Tony Quinn and Margo rider Tricky’s coefficient of expansion was up and away...”the skies the limit” “ as he navigated the skoals of Washington D.C. with his five oclock shadow, neighbor
XIII
But as time is running late, the final two issus...our man’s best friend caper with the Checkers flush fund. Running on Ike’s coattails, he was upset that his veep captured monies in the name
of “Checkers”....
Taking to the black and white screens of ‘52' we put on our five oclock shadow, explaining it away to the moral majority, our Amerifcan public...the moral majority..
Assuaged Ike felt there was hardly a dent in his legacy...and wse continued in our passion for the high office...the yardage we missed out getting splinters sitting on the bench at those Whittier College pigskin fracas.
XIV
Running late so shifting gears neighbor we’ll go to the caper with Alger Hiss. A career diplomat and a structured apparatus was furthered by Dean Acheson and his diplomatic superiors.
Thirty lashes with a wet noodle, we found a ready willing and able co conspirator in Whitaker Chambers, a Time magazine editor racking the coals with a Remington typewriter in Hew Jersey..
Cryptic typewritten messages..the “pumpkin papers” by “experts”, we were able with the complicity of discreet allies in the media to take mister Hiss to the cleaners
Wasn’t it my committee that did the dirty work....bigger than the Emile Zola Drefus case on Devil’s Island in retrospect.
“Everything is relative, isn’t it neighbor.” A marketing pro, I’m prone to hyperbole “quoteth he.
A red baiter , (“When did you stop beating your wife?”) to some fierce collaboration with mister Hiss the darling persona of the liberal establishment. An Ivy lague star that e brought down by
“our pumpkin papers. “ and W.C’s broken Remington.
The tackle we never made on the field. sitting on the bench
getting splinters......waiting waiting for my number to be called..
Chairman Mao into his fox trot,. His Madame into her ballet troupe...spiked heels, h9olding rifles......and Choi en Lai wailing “Aging isn’t for sissies.... growing older, neighbor..”
Deja vu all over again, neighbor. 22 minutes of oval office Watergate tapes.
.”Give me a downbeat, Tricky”
1/27/11..birthday boys’ 255th..Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
