Watching the Cadillacs go by, a relic of ancient vintage (circa
1984). Predating the Perils of Pauline, Buster Keaton’s reality scene of silent
nail biters, demonstrating the
absurdities of human nature
II
Joel Farnham, a 38 year boy and
recreation director for the Los Angeles Recreation&Parks and amateur
realestatnik, steered his Volkswagon thru the Sunday morning traffic on the San
Bernardino Freeway.
A former cream cheese bandit who
had seen the kliegs of rehabilitation after being nabbed shoplifting a pocket
size Philadelphia cream cheese from a Los Angeles super market. He was bound
for Gilman Hot Springs, a resort in the desert for those economizers who
couldn’t afford the ego inflated rates of Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage.
III
Gilman, a Shangra-ila for tired
glands and exasperating souls, had all the scents and flavors of Grossingers
(Eddie Cantor, Dinah Shore, Eddie Fisher) Bright0n Beach and the St. George
Hotel
around the corner of Montague
and Court Street ,and the once swanky but down to earth offices of the Dodgers,
before they bailed out for Chavez Ravine , eventual bankruptcy, and new owners.
Joel’s father, a retired vet
from the Surrogate’s Court and the Democratic Kings County wars, was playing
out his role of a “lady gayer” these days, basking in the sun and rolling in
the Gilman mud.
IV
.....”I got my responsibility to
the old man” said Joel to himself. Bring him back to the quicksand of the City
of Angels before he finds a home in the mud.
Anyway he would have been better
off, if he stayed in Flatbush and
retired....you got convenience, you got the ghetto. Out here, you’re like a
desert rat out of central casting, the way humans treat you.if you’re retired.
And the stuff they feed you
about the sunshine and the smog and rain and trremors didn’t exist,no less
prevail. It’s a constant Buster Keaton to stay afloat.
V
The old man had to sell the
apartment and migrate.He’d be viable if was cutting it daily instead of sorting
out his dailies, everytime the sun comes up.
That’s what happens when you
retire . You’re in a squeeze play that fails. The catcher runs you down for the
final out and the ball game.
The old lady doesn’t buy him
into lounging around. Busting with some busy work “You’re a lady gayer, Kurt,”
she assails the old man.
VI
You’d think the momma would be
settled in the sun Always finding fault and criticizing.The kosher franks are
skinnier and smaller than the ones on Avenue J.
Why a man with an imagination
and a thick frank like Nathan’s at Coney Island, could make a bundle. (Like
these social networks going public in our 21st century)
A good frank is short and thick.
Not decrepit like the ones out here. But lucky for mom and dad, they got each
oither.
They make more noise than two
alley cats.
“Esther, what’s it with this
semi tropical sun. Doesn’t anybody walk
the streets at night?”
“Kurt, if they had sidewalks
like they should, the humans would walk, talk, shuffleboard their way. Without
street lights, you want the male of the species to be muscled. The women to be
raped.
VII
“And where’s the noise? You knew
in Flatbush when it was quiet, someone had passed beyond the pearly gates. And
when times were normal, there were mob scenes, street fights, punch ball ,
stick ball, hide and go seek. Ladies wheeling baby buggies, people’s
people,sitting on the stoops, mothers with their heads out of windows, doing
a holler.”
“Look Kurt, you want me to
holler on you. Humans out here do things differently.They holler on one another
inside the house..”
“You mean they holler on one
another when they’re inside a court room, suing for divorce. Mental cruelty is
big out here. Wherever the baby boomers coexist, Esther.No one hollers inside
the space they share. They carry it inside of their souls.
It’s called the silent
treatment”
“Out here there’s nothing
like a good holler. Everybody hollers in Flatbush.And they stick it out.
,in good times and bad. That couple on tee vee, married in 1919. The secret of
their durability? Depression, soup lines, wars, recession, extending supply
lines over oceans and land..
When times are good, no one hollers. They get
a legal eagle to do the hollering for them. You want Kurt, we should move back
to the elevator apartment and hear Art Carney whistle his whistle from across
the street. His folks living above the Bohack store on the corner.
The Puerto Ricans and Chinese
are moving in. Learn a little “Habla el Espanol”. Cantonese or Mandarin dialect
and you got all the humans you need.”
“There I can’t speak the
language. Here no one speaks to me. It’s all relative,Esther. But it’s still
the Frontier. The west is for a young man. I’m a schmutta compared to these
studs. Maybe Mexico City Acapulco is our Destiny.
A couple of pensioners on social security.
Have ourselves a ball. All California is fahren and essen anyway.”
“Kurt, why did you tell me to
close out the apartment, sell the furniture. Take the next bus”
“Esther bubbala, if the movie house
of dreams hadn’t given up the ghost. Waiting around for the Loews contact,
while living on unemployment, Maybe the scenario would have worked out. But a
mensch like me can’t have a quiet mind.. What could I do? All my life I was an
amateur photographer..
“An ordinary camera on an
ordinary screen. Until’ Titanic’ sweeps into our living rooms like a
cinemascope .. The large screen
ambushing me behind my back.
Trreading
the film differently.
“I would have taken the bubba
monza. But the Unon is hungry for youth I couldn’t make things happen.”.”
VIII
The San Bernardino Freeway
curved around the Kaiser steel mills in Fontana.....”.this is no place for
civilized humans. They need culture said Joel to himself. The best in anything
that’s been said or done.
Yet the old man’s immersing
himself in mud for his cure. Mud like you can find in your own backyard. The
Palm, cactus, lemon tree.
He has to run away to escape his
own tsores, while listening to to the other men schmose about theirs’
VIII
“My son is 47. He sweats for
Conrad Hilton. Manages a nice hotel....a nice boychek.a nice job. Marries a
nice rich girl. They have twins. She dies.. He leaves the twins with his in
laws. Marries a shiksa. He discovers she’s
an anti semite.”
“Give me some more mud,
landsman Schver tsu sein a yid,” says
the landsman, snoozing in the soft mud..
IX
Joel was a nice 38 year old boy.
Kind and gentle to his old man and old lady and all living humans that didn’t
cross him.
To him the good life was a house
in the Hollywood Hills,a two car garage, a swimming pool, a Reserve commission
in the Navy, and a pregnant wife.
He would have had presence of
mind if he could eliminate the pregnant wife from his auto insurance. He can
get comprehensive fifty bucks cheaper. But he didn’t want to offend. Hurt her
feelings.
Times were good. Only 4 hundred
thousand divorces a year. And an election year. Two wards and “weapons of
mass destruction”
IX
Joel parked behind the solarium.
The old man waved his arm from the mud..
“Hi ya,Dad”, he said, greeting
his 140 pound father, who never made a penny for putting Joel on this here
Earth, except the tsorees of his taumts and insults..
“You’re looking like a momza from the North
side of Santa Monica Boulevard befdore Wilshire and the sprayed technicolor water
fountains..”.
The father of the 38 year old
boy looked out over the mud.”The answer isn’t money. It’s mud. “Wer got enough
schlepers from Oregon ,Washington, and LA..We got a minyan. I found myself
a home here.. Where’s the momma?”
“ She had some deal lined up
with a broker to see some homes South of Ventura..” said the son “You know how
hot she is for her own home. Her dream.”
X
“Your mother is a straw buyer
who likes to gas.,” said the tanned bald headed man. His little hair gray
around the sides. “She’s been a gasser since she started chasing down pot
cheese bargains after the first World War.”
“Yeah Dad. But what if she gets
the shaft. Those hustlers in the Valley are shrewdies from the word ‘go’. Mom
doesn’t know a thing about financing, trust deeds and resale values, Economics
is a dead language to her. Absolutely dead.”
“The shaft will do her good asd
long as it isn’t my money. She thinks the planet will stop revolvig on its
moral axis for a two bedroom home in a nice neighborhood. If she didn’t win
that black&white tee vee from Davega
‘s,
“ And then she turned over $500
on that dog stock three years ago, she lost her humility.”
“She’s convinced herself about
the good guys beating up the bad guys. Life is a happy ending with a sunset of
answers and dollar bills.
That’s her Messiah and I’m only
her husband. Who am I to say her character’s gone wrong.
Only God can do that.”
XI
Joel Farnham, the 38 year old
boy and recreation director for the Los Angeles Recreation and
Parks and amateur real
estatenik, looked out over the swirling mud.
He looked at his old man’s tanned face and
leaping blue eyes. The gray hair around the sides of his bald head.
And he thought he and his wife
and the kid on the way were seeing the wrong movies. Visuals whatever.....
Anyway what kind of mud did
those mud baths have.? He had a house a top the Hollywood Hills. A two car
garage, a swimming pool, a Reserve commission in the Navy and a pregnant wife.
The city that nevr sleeps May 6,
2012
