As the wheel turns my friends, the Cream Cheese Bandit

As the wheel turns  my friends, the Cream Cheese Bandit, caught with his pants down, by the  Safeway store manager, the “Tiny Tim” size cream cheese in his foul weather jacket pocket, was given a slap on the wrist, the store manager’s “Don’t let it happen again,coach. We’ll forward the shoplifting photos to Central Division, Parkler Center.......you’ll have a rap sheet like a Siamese twin....into your umbilical cord, coach.”

“You should know better.....Hollywood Hills,(adjacent Stan Kenton’s pad) Trousdale Estates, Maylord Apartments. Venice, Eagle Rock, La Habra. Westwood, Santa Monica. Sawtelle West L.A.”.Beverly Hills..... Fox Wilshire kliegs off La Cienega’s restaurant row.

 Bel Air’s Stone Canyon Road, Bellagio Road’s oil painting, pogo stick croquette on the back lawn..”.Dutch’s (President Reagan)  homestead before his “win one for the Gipper” Presidential library, above Simi Valley.

 “Why coach,. you got more addresses than a Deputy Sheriff out of the Dakotas ...Aldo Ray, sleeping on your driveway... in his station wagon , day dreaming Columbia Pictures could finding him a place in the sun, named Gower Gulch.”

                                        II

“In the mail room..” said the coach, placing the cream cheese on the counter.” Max Arno” said he could place me in the mail room when we first saw the light of day at Gower Gulch two blocks from Hollywood&Vine, Archie Leach aka Cary Grant, Clark Gable’s 8x10's in the windows..... 

 The Brown Derby, down away from Charley Parker’s Dizzy Gillipsie ...Slim Galliard, Errol Garner at Sunset across the street where Al Lapin, founder of the House of Pancakes, tried his  hand at flapping kiddie television..in the air, before he and his brother, Jerry,  in Toluca Lake’s turf for The 3 Stooges Moe Howard and his wife’s “coz”, Harry Houdini.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope teeing off at nearbvy Lakeside golf club, while Olivia de Haviland was waiting to spread her  “Snake pit” in retirement to London’s Mayfair.

                                        

                                               III

Meanwhile the Witch Doctors across the Continent were sorting out the Cream Cheese bandit’s Uncle Max’s dossier at the Islip, Long Island, asylum for the insane.

 “What was the diagnosis, doc?” the Cream cheese Bandit’s younger brother was into hia probing... What the hell was wrong with him for writing a  letter to President McKinley? Is that  a facility for locking him up? Putting him behind bars?  maddening incarceration day after day for five decades. Who’s insane here ,doc?”

                                                IV

“There’s nothing wrong with your Uncle Max. All he needed was emotional support,” said the shrink. “Penis envy by any other name, Major.. Emasculation....once a month his four sisters would pay a visit, playing out their roles. ..emancipated women. “30 lashes with a wet noodle”, Major.”

The interior of the closed ward. A small boned human, his grayng wavy once black hair, toupeed as he gripped the bars. Those scared eyes widened as he saw but a figure of what he could have been....

 “All he neededwas emotional support.”

                                                        V

Major Fenton in his USA Blues, his hands reaching between the bars. Uncle Max scared like a rabbit, backed away, retreating to the guarded hole in the wall, whence he came.

The sisters had withered away his being, he remembered nothing but his four sisters, ministering to their grand design: hiring a limo, cutting the costs four ways,and making their due to Islip....on a black widow cruise, paying their filial obligations to a boy and young man they grew up with....but had long forgotten in playing out their drives for competitive acclaim and recognition.

“All he needed was emotional support.”

 

The day before  New Year’s Eve... the City that nev er sleeps, December 30, 2012