A real snow job.

Oh yes, then there was this in the first ten years.
East Los Angeles 1949.
It was a chilling cold and near freezing January morning. In retrospect, a bit cold for southern California. I was in kindergarten at Montebello Park Elementary school and this was the only time I was at the same school my oldest sister Peggy attended. She was in sixth and again I was in kindergarten.
None the less, somewhere in my mother’s collection of photos kept in a fruitcake tin is a black and white photograph of my sister Peg and a friend tossing snow balls. The photo was taken out front on a grassy area of our elementary school. Mr. Steelman, the school principal, allowed we kids to play in the sparsely accumulated snow up until it melted. Knowing this is a rare occurrence and he proclaimed let’s have fun while the snow lasts.
Based on my own witness this snow was the first and last snow I had experienced in L A proper. Before that event I’m not sure if I knew what snow was. Since then, there were maybe two or three days reaching down to 32-degrees but no snow for decades. At least up to the time I had left California back in 1972.
To play in the snow after that rare 1949 event we had to drive miles to the east to a mountain southern Californians called Mount Baldy. The official name of this 10K foot peak was Mount San Antonio. A mountain peak during the winter season would be covered in snow. Certainly, a favorite place to take your 4-man toboggan and sled down until one became sick of it all.
Before more houses were built around us and smog became a factor one could see Mount Baldy from our back yard. Our backyard was about fifty miles from the icon peak. Snowball fight anyone?

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Suddenly he was on fire.

Once again, more from the first ten years.

So many tear drops falling from my eye… eyes.
We Los Angeles Okies had a limited eating repertoire. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes just to suggest two Okie entrees out of a possibility of two. Not to mention gallons of milk and purple Koo lade.
But, Boy Howdy, my oldest sister Peggy was most resourceful with providing restaurant reviews for we Okie folk long before it became popular in the newspapers. Beating out the food reviewers of the New York and L A Times back in the 1950s.
None the less, being my only sibling with her own money she started sampling eateries when she was in high school. Peg talked about Mexican and Chinese food and her favorite, pasta or Italian.
But when her earning power began to grow with babysitting and later promoted to ticket seller at the UA theater on Whittier boulevard in East L A she began her early career of restaurant reviewer for we Okies. .
However, while in high school she often mentioned a cool place called Rod’s Hamburgers at the corner of Wilcox and Whittier boulevard. Just a short walk south from the school. What’s a hamburger? A sandwich thing I had never tried. A round bun-like bread with a ground beef patty and a pickle with a drizzle of catsup. All in one big stack. I liked it.
So as often as we could afford it we managed to buy a few burgers and sometimes with French fries.
Never the less, the only time available to drive five miles to Rod’s Hamburgers was on Sunday night. Sunday night after Sunday evening church services. The added incentive was Rod’s would sell us Okies six burgers for a buck. But the real motivation going to Rod’s was we kids endless whining and begging. And my dad’s stern farmer boy upbringings would cave in just to shut-up we kids.
Before we continue on, let me give you a picture of Rod’s hamburger joint. The joint was about a total of four-hundred square feet. As soon as you enter the place you are facing an order counter with cash register and other counter items. If you go to the right or left there was counter space to eat with three or four stools to sit. Behind the order counter was the kitchen divided by a shoulder high wall separating the ordering area and the kitchen. High above the opening to the kitchen was a drawn caricature of Rod himself with a tiny body with both hands holding jalapeno peppers. I wonder if all this is still there. Mostly likely not. Probably a Walgreens or Seven/eleven.
But one of our most memorable trips to Rod’s Hamburgers was when my dad and I went in to place our order for a bag of burgers one Sunday evening. So, sitting on the counter top near the register was a four-gallon glass wide mouth jar filled with pickled peppers with metal lid. Conveniently located nearby and tied to a thick cotton string was a pair of metal tongs. Making it easy to reach in and get your peppers and not make off with the tongs.
So, we gave the guy our order. But while standing there my dad decided to reach in with the tongs and pick out a pickle pepper. Then he popped the entire pickle pepper into his mouth and started to chew. A sudden moment of silence occurred, tears started to stream from his squinted eyes, and a big “Boy Howdy” came to his burning lips. Never mind the six-foot 200-pound strong Okie man. Eternal fire was erupting inside. Tears continued to flow. So much for macho man on Sunday night. Yessir, boy howdy. “Get those burgers and let’s get out of here. Where’s my hanky?”

You mean I have to read the thing?

Newspaper shrinkage.
As you have noticed newspapers are becoming smaller. Fewer pages. Fewer articles. Reduced sections. Some papers have eliminated two days of the week. Some stopped printing the Monday and Tuesday issues. Some papers resemble my smaller old “Weekly Reader” from grade school. Some newspapers are so small these days they could easily be sent in the mail.
However, these modern times many of us get our news online. From information websites like Facebook or the former Twitter. Many of which have no real credibility or trained professional journalists. Possibly passing on hearsay or rumors. Absolutely not fact checked. Just creative non-fiction. Bluster and baloney.
But as a result of viewing a blue computer screen for hours on end, eye or vision difficulties can occur. Requiring special glasses or resulting in acuity loss. This also might happen viewing too much cable or network news. MSNBC and Fox goes on 24/7. One could easily go visually or politically blind watching this stuff hours on end.
Then some tell us to “buy American.” What could be more American than subscribing and reading a local or national printed on paper newspaper. Easy to operate. No start up time waiting. Fits easily on the coffee table or in your Gucci tote bag. If left on the breakfast table, there’s a possibility a child or grandchild might pick it up and read.
But subscribing to a daily newspaper just might create more jobs for trained newspaper reporters and paperboys and girls. Some do complain about the high cost of a daily paper subscription. But compare that cost with a 108-inch flat screen TV or expensive Dell PC combo.
When breaking news occurs you will have a fantastic souvenir to keep with big headlines on the masthead of your delivered newspaper. Don’t you just love the smell of newsprint? Fresh news right in your hands. Turn off that vision sucking PC or TV. Buy American. Subscribe to a local newspaper.

I hear him but don’t see him.

Good Humor?
You could hear him coming from afar. His repetitious jingle played over and over. He slowly made his way down our street on Simmons Avenue in East L A. It seemed forever before he made his way near our house. Once in sight I would run and wave him down. And I mean He. In all my early childhood did I ever see a woman Good Humor Man.
Once stopped I would excitedly ask him for a ‘Drumstick.’ And to explain, a drumstick was a scoop of vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate with crushed peanuts in the mix. Looking something like a chicken drumstick. All frozen in a cone package and ready for a ten-year-old Okie boy to quickly devoured. All for just 15-cents. Just a dime and a nickel.
Anyway, he would stop his blue and white Good Humor truck with a multi-doored cooler box filled with crushed ice and with boxes and boxes of fudgsicles , popsicles , push up pops, chocolate and peanut eskimo bars, and more.
If neighbor parents wondered where their children were, the Good Humor man would flush them out. Here they would come running with nickel, dimes and quarters in hand. Ready to forfeit their hard-earned cash for some creamy chocolatey goodness.
The only thing through all the years chasing the Good Humor man, the Good Humor man never told me a joke. So, where’s the humor in that?
Why did the Good Humor man cross the road? To accommodate smaller children who were not allowed to cross the road without a mom. Get it?
I know for certain there is a special place in heaven for the Good Humor man. Amen.

What is this all about?

Ask Teddy Truman.
Dear Teddy,
I am a middle-aged white Republican woman. Plus, I am non-queer, married but recently widowed, and for sure binary. None the less, I was told by others to never call anybody queer. I am a she and female. A girl. I don’t get all this pronoun stuff and to be honest, I’m not sure what a pronoun is. I didn’t do well with senior English in high school. So, tell me what is all this queer, non-binary, anti-pronoun hog wash is. I feel left out.
Dear Left Out,
I too do feel left out. However, if you remember your pre-teen, teen, and post teen years and it’s disparaging names and things we use to call each other. You know, dipsey, blockhead, moron, square, nerdy, fathead, straight, cockamamie, and my favorite, dumbbell. And those in the in-crowd called each other, sharp, with it, cool, and again my favorite, Awesome. Get it? Hope this answers your query. Otherwise just stop watching The Voice and go play pickleball instead.
Teddy.

I need to use a pay phone.

Charlie boy, phone home.
I absolutely don’t know how I did it. Did it without loss of limb or life. But I did get through it all with no major or minor difficulties. I made it easily through junior high and high school without a cell phone.
However, there were two payphones in the main hallway in the admin buildings. There for just a nickel or a thin dime per call. I must had been a genius never needing to phone home. Either that or just lucky. Or both.
But today we have sissy kids and sissy moms. Mom’s will whine, ‘I need to talk to my babies when I need to talk to them” The sissy kids will complain to their sissy moms that Benji is calling me names.” Yeah right!
Again, how did I make it all those years without a thousand dollar smart-phone.
Even my adult grandkids had no high dollar phone in school. A flip-phone maybe, but nothing more.

And I say all this because a few school here and there are forbidding school kids from bringing their Android to class. I am so glad I’m not a teacher. I would take a hammer to the offending pocket phone. But again, the sissy moms complain. “But what if…what if…what if. Give me a break!

He came, he saw, and he leftt.

Who was that masked man?
I believe it was a Sunday night. Yes a Sunday night when we use to attend church on Sunday morning and Sunday night back in the 1960s. And by the way we also attended church on Wednesday nights as well just to clarify things.
But anyway, it seemed the pews were full. An almost full house. We had just had our pre-sermon songs and prayers and were settled in to listening to our assistant minister’s evening words of truth. The listeners were pretty much focused on the theme of the preacher’s gleanings from the scriptures.
Suddenly then, a man in a gray suit burst into the rear foyer door and appeared harried and in a hurry with a most serious look on his face. He was wearing a dark pair of wraparound sunglasses. A clean-shaven man with neatly combed black hair. But his expression was that of a person seeking if not revenge but intending to capture someone an bring harm on him or her. He briskly walked forward down the center church aisle glancing his head back and forth as if looking for someone. Possibly looking for someone crouched down and hiding.
But all the while the preacher kept on preaching as if transfixed into his sermon. Plus, the church people watched this man make his way down the aisle but did not respond nor say anything to the mystery man.
Once the mystery man came to the front of the auditorium , he dashed out the side exit leaving all of us in wonderment. Who was that guy? What did he want. Who was he looking for? To this date no one knows.
In retrospect, he could have been a ‘hitman’ looking for his prey or possibly and hopefully a plain clothed police officer chasing down a criminal. Or some suspected he was looking for a runaway kitten. What do you think? He certainly didn’t bother to explain his barging in and surveying the church attendees. Again, poof, he was gone.

Book Report.

Book Report

To be quite honest, I have had enough of books bloviating about the wealthy and the very pretty. Women with thin yoga bodies. Independently wealthy men. Fairy tales of idealist privileged people with unlimited resources and above average education. Too many books out there including improbable scenarios such as CEO’s and their spouses and driven in bullet proof Rolls-Royces by uniformed body guards. No, I don’t want that. I do not relate.
I want a book narrative about people who had to sweat and toil or even die to get where they or their love ones wanted to go. People by their own initiative or ingenuity make it by the seat of their pants. Gutsy or driven by fear. Maybe a guy who might be a bit pudgy with thinning hair and willing to take a chance and make his own life by sweat, blood, and tears. Well, I think I found one of those books. Title Raised in Ruins, a memoir by Tara Neilson. Non-fiction biography. 2020.

Library of Congress annotation:
“In the 1980s the Neilson family moved out on a floathouse to the remote site of a former cannery in Southeast Alaska that had burned to the ground before statehood. They were miles away from any neighbors, surrounded on all sides by wolves, bears and other wildlife, entering the world of subsistence living in an uninviting land of dangerous weather and storms; yet the Neilsons were able to make themselves a home where few others would have found possible. Led by a jack-of-all-trades handyman for a father and a mother who was afraid of everything in the wilderness, Tara and her four siblings cleared the rough terrain to build atop the blackened, rusty ruins a new way of life that was completely their own. From a young age, Tara learned that anything was possible, so long as one can imagine it and then make it happen.
Again, the book: “Raised in Ruins.”
Plenty of ups and downs. Starts and stops. Successes and failures. But certainly, a lot to relate to. Read it. You’ll like it. Sorry, no romance. Just hard boil living.

A great place to buy potato chips.

It was a wonderful place to visit.
The banyan tree in Lahaina Maui was one good reason to visit the old whaler village. Its expansive canopy almost covered the entire park. Yes, it was severely burned but efforts are now underway to revive it. Not being an expert arborist I’m not sure how this is done except to cut away the dead and charred branches. It was a wonderous sight and hopefully will continue to be.
None the less and all due respect to those who died in the horrific fire but one of the reasons I had visited Maui was to find a local grocery store that sold the famous Maui Potato chips. Oh, you laugh. I’m serious. There is nothing on earth like the famous Maui Potato chip. Thick, well toasted, and gnarly. All with the right amount of salt. Absolutely no flavor chips. No sour cream. No BBQ flavorings. No cheese and no nothing except a delicious crunchy po-ta-to chip. Yes, there has been knock-offs but not near the gratifying taste of an authentic Maui Potato chip. Just ask others who sampled this glorious chip. Don’t take my word for it.
But with the recent fire in mind, I got to wonder if the chip factory was also burned. Well, the answer is no. Unfortunately, the chip factory closed down last November. The Kobioshi family decided to close it down and retire.
My prayers go out to the families who lost love ones to this awful conflagration. Amen.

Winning is not my game.

I am one of those guys who often says, I have never won anything. And to demonstrate this sorrowful fact, and having seen many a Saturday noon matinee way back when as a grade schooler, dropping my theater ticket stub into a drawing basket and never ever won anything. Zip. Zero. Then later I filled out a drawing ticket carefully with my name, address, and phone number at Joe Miller’s market and didn’t win the Schwinn 3-speed racer bike. But a dorky kid no one liked did. I have, through the years, here and there filled out all kinds of information about myself in order to win something but didn’t. All I got was all kinds of mailers wanting to sell me stuff I didn’t want. Then as a result, I came to the conclusion I was a consistent loser. A poor loser. Or better yet a sore loser.
But wait, by accident back in 1977 I was listening to my favorite FM station and they announced an on-the-air trivia question with a prize I’d like to have. So, the radio person said the first person to give the right answer wins tickets for two to a concert. So, after a couple of songs the radio person came back on the air and read the question. “Who was the announcer’s voice on the TV show Dragnet. I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Thinking who else on earth would know the answer. Certainly, an obscure question to ask twenty years after the show went off the air. “The story you are about to hear is true but the names were changed to protect the innocent.”
The answer to the question is…George Fenneman. The same sidekick announcer seen on the Groucho Marx show, You bet your life. A nice-looking man with a mellifluous voice “Say the secret word and win fifty dollars.”
So, I won two tickets to the first Eagles concert performed in the present-day Cox Center in Tulsa. Again, this was back in August 1977. Best concert I have ever been to prior and since. And I’ve been to a bunch. Well, maybe the Neil Diamond concert was pretty good as well. Oh, there was the Olivia Newton John concert. What a cutie she was. My oh my, I forgot the Blood Sweat and Tears concert at Mayfest years ago. OH yeah, there was Johnny Mathis at the Greek Theater in L A. And how could I forget Dotie Stephens at our Junior/Senior banquet singing her one-hit-wonder, Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces. Wow! Have I ever seen it all and totally won big. But wait again, I think we got off track. Oh yes, I did win a five-dollar bill at my high school graduation party. But, that’s it.